CHAPTER TWO
Understanding Conﬂict
in the 1880s ranchers in the western United States fought over water
rights; in 1939 Germany attacked Poland; last week a husband and wife
argued bitterly over their ﬁnances. That all were engaged in a conﬂict
is obvious. In fact, it may seem that nothing is simpler than recognizing
a conﬂict – after all, it involves ﬁghting, does it not? Actually, no, not
always. Some conﬂicts are “latent” and do not involve overt ﬁghting;
and some overt ﬁghts, such as wrestling matches, are not due to a
conﬂict. Thus it is important to agree on what is and what is not a
conﬂict.
What Is a Conﬂict?
It might not surprise you to hear that even theoreticians differ in how
they view conﬂict. For many practical purposes, they may understand
it as a special set of interrelated elements: parties, issues, dynamics,
and contexts. To gain a deeper understanding, however, they may use
certain abstract concepts such as cause and effect; direct, indirect, and
intervening causes; and payoff matrices. The discussion in this chapter
deals with these concepts.
Students of social conﬂict have offered many different deﬁnitions
of conﬂict. Early on, Park and Burgess deﬁned it simply as struggle for
status. Somewhat later, Mack and Snyder deﬁned it as struggle not only
for status but also for scarce resources and signiﬁcant social change
12
UNDERSTANDING CONFLICT 13
(Himes 1980, 12). Other writers have offered additional deﬁnitions.1
How then should we conceive of conﬂict?
We may begin by acknowledging that there is a good reason for the
great variety of deﬁnitions. They tend to reﬂect authors’ theoretical
orientations: psychologists might deﬁne conﬂict in terms of the adversaries’
inner states,2
sociologists in terms of observable behavior,3
and so on. The deﬁnition used here is similarly anchored in theory –
our theory. That theory assumes that conﬂict can originate either in
goal incompatibility or in hostility (or in both), and that it involves
a unique type of behavior, conﬂict behavior. Thus conﬂict is deﬁned
here as a situation in which actors use conﬂict behavior against each other
to attain incompatible goals and/or to express their hostility.
But, once again, this deﬁnition is more complex than you might
think: the actors referred to in the deﬁnition can be not only individuals
but also groups. This means that, at times, we speak about the
“behavior” of groups, a practice that some scholars might ﬁnd objectionable.
Yet it preserves uniformity of terminology – after all, we view
both individuals and groups as actors – as well as brevity. Moreover,
it is common practice to refer to groups “acting.” For example, we
say that “In 1941, Japan launched an unprovoked attack against the
United States” instead of saying, “In 1941, members of the Japanese
government decided, without provocation, to send airplanes manned
by Japanese pilots to attack Pearl Harbor.”
The remaining three concepts used in the deﬁnition – goal incompatibility,
hostility, and conﬂict behavior – are so important that they are
discussed in detail in the following pages. Some additional conﬂictrelated
terms, such as violence, fairness, and negotiation, are consideredlater:the
conceptsof fairnessandjusticeinChapter3;the concept
of negotiation in Chapter 9. But two important – and controversial –
distinctions can be considered now. We begin with the distinction between
conﬂict and competition.
When several businesspeople bid for a contract, without engaging
in conﬂict action such as spreading false rumors or making threats,
they are in competition – but not conﬂict – with each other. In general,
people who are in competition do not engage in conﬂict interaction
and, in fact, may not even be aware that they are competing;
they are always seeking the same end; and they usually seek what
belongs to a third party rather than what belongs to the opponent
14 USING CONFLICT THEORY
(Kriesberg [1973] 1982, 17). If, on the other hand, they do direct conﬂict
behavior at each other, they are in a conﬂict. It should be added
that some writers disagree, viewing competition as a special kind of
conﬂict.
A second distinction that should be made is that between nonviolent
and violent conﬂict. Let us illustrate the difference with the annual
fall rut in a herd of elk. In the conﬂict over females, the males use
several types of conﬂict action: threat postures, strength testing, snorting
and bellowing, antler locking, even ﬂight and pursuit. Yet rarely
is real violence done in such combat, and then only unintentionally.
Humans too use nonviolent conﬂict actions such as threat, ﬂight, testing,
and promise in their conﬂict – but, unlike male elk, they also do
physical and psychological harm to one another. Thus the term “conﬂict
action” will be used here to apply to both violent and nonviolent
behavior.
Incompatible Goals
It is often difﬁcult to determine reliably whether goals are in fact incompatible.
Two approaches are quite helpful. The ﬁrst approach is
something that probably occurs to you ﬁrst: you ask whether it is logically
impossible for both parties’ goals to be achieved simultaneously.4
For example, if workers in a factory wish to work as little as possible
and be paid as much as possible, while the owners wish them to work
as hard as possible for as little pay as possible, it is logically impossible
for both goals to be reached simultaneously. Similarly, it is logically impossible
for a wife and her husband each to have her or his way if the
wife wishes to have children and the husband does not. It is impossible
for both the Israelis and the Syrians to have exclusive sovereignty over
the Golan Heights.
The second approach is more complex but theoretically more rewarding:
you ask whether the two parties have incompatible “payoffs.”5
Using Payoff Matrices
To introduce matrix representation of conﬂict, consider an example.
Suppose a husband does not want any children but his wife wants four.
Suppose furthermore that you had a way to assess – perhaps through
UNDERSTANDING CONFLICT 15
Table 2.1. Incompatible Interests of
Wife and Husband
Conﬂict Parties
Husband Wife
Goals
Four children −3 10
No children 4 −8
a questionnaire – how much each outcome is worth to each party and
found that having four children was worth −3 points to the husband,6
10 points to the wife; and that having no children was worth 4 points to
the husband, −8 points to the wife. This situation may be represented
by the “payoff matrix” displayed in Table 2.1. Note that, in this table,
the goals of each spouse are represented by a row that has a positive
payoff for him (her): having no children is the husband’s goal because
it has for him the payoff of +4; having four children is the wife’s goal
because it has for her the payoff of +10.
When you face new terminology, you often need to stay alert to certain
distinctions. In this case, you need to remember the difference
between an alternative, its outcome, and its payoff. An alternative is
one of the actions that the decision maker can choose from (such as
having four children); an outcome comprises all the consequences of
that action (such as feeling fulﬁlled, having less money and time for
leisure activities, having less time with the spouse); and a payoff is the
total value the decision maker assigns to the outcome (such as the +10
the wife presumably assigns to having four children). Note that a payoff
matrix speciﬁes explicitly only what the alternatives are (the rows
of the matrix) and what the payoffs are (the numbers within the cells).
The outcomes are left unspeciﬁed, and readers must use their imagination
to ﬁll them in.
Perhaps you are puzzled by the numbers that appear in Table 2.1. Although
they are to a large extent arbitrary, they represent a fact of real
life: that the importance people attach to various events varies. In this
case, the wife values having four children highly, while devaluing the
possibility of having no children; the husband’s values are the opposite
16 USING CONFLICT THEORY
of hers, though less intense. This being the case, we conclude that
the goals and the interests of the husband and wife are incompatible
because when an event has a positive payoff for one of them, it always
has a negative payoff for the other.
Advantages of Matrix Representation
Payoff tables of the kind given in Table 2.1 have certain advantages.
First, they permit us to identify incompatibility: two goals are incompatible
if one has a positive payoff only for the party and the other
only for the opponent. For example, Table 2.1 shows the goal of four
children as incompatible with the goal of no children because the ﬁrst
goal has positive payoff only for the wife (+10), the other only for
the husband (+4). Incidentally, we may say that one goal is “not mutually
acceptable” if it has a positive payoff for only one side. Thus, in
Table 2.1, having four children is not mutually acceptable because it
has positive payoff only for the wife.
Second, using payoff matrices allows you to consider conﬂicts in
which there are more than two alternatives under consideration. For
example, suppose that you surveyed workers and managers in a factory
and concluded that they have three main goals, and that the attractiveness
of these goals can be represented by the payoffs shown in
Table 2.2.7
You will no doubt note that, while there are two incompatible
goals (wage of $20 versus $10), there is also a third goal, the
solvency of the ﬁrm, that is shared by both parties (i.e., that has positive
payoff for both sides).
Table 2.2. Incompatible and Compatible Goals of
Workers and Managers
Conﬂict Parties
Workers Managers
Goals
Wage: $20 per hour 7 −3
Wage: $10 per hour −4 8
Solvency of the ﬁrm 2 5
UNDERSTANDING CONFLICT 17
Table 2.3. An Example of a Zero-Sum
Conﬂict
Conﬂict Parties
Husband Wife
Goals
Four children −10 10
No children 8 −8
A third advantage might not seem to be very important, but it is to a
theoretician: payoff matrices allow him or her to distinguish between
goals and interests. The goals of a party are quite speciﬁc: they are the
alternatives that have a positive payoff for the party.8
Thus Table 2.2
speciﬁes that the workers have two goals, the wage of $20 and the
solvency of the ﬁrm; the managers also have two goals, the wage of
$10 and the solvency of the ﬁrm. The interests of a party are more
diffuse: they are all the outcomes from all possible alternatives that
have positive payoffs for the party. Because certain desired outcomes –
such as security, recognition, respect, and justice – seem to be universal,
they are sometimes viewed as the party’s “true” interests. As we discuss
shortly, interests are incompatible if, in general, they are negatively
correlated: when the party’s payoff for an outcome is high, the payoff
of the opponent tends to be low.
Fourth, payoff representation allows you to determine the extent
to which the goals and interests are incompatible. In the example of
Table 2.1, the payoffs of the husband and wife, although divergent, are
not totally incompatible. They could be, for example, exactly opposite
for the two parties, as shown in Table 2.3. Incidentally, you now know
that the often-used term “zero-sum game” corresponds to an extreme
conﬂict and that it can be represented by a matrix in which each row
sums up to zero.
Fifth, matrix representation of payoffs in a conﬂict allows us to
determine whether an agreement is possible. For example, because in
the case represented by Table 2.2 “solvency of the ﬁrm” has a positive
payoff for both adversaries, the workers and the managers could begin
their negotiation by agreeing to pursue this goal. It is also possible
18 USING CONFLICT THEORY
to determine whether a compromise is possible on something about
which the parties do not agree. One possible solution is to “split the
difference,” giving the workers a wage that is halfway between what
they demand ($20) and what the management is willing to pay ($10),
that is, a wage of $15.
To determine whether this compromise is acceptable to the two
parties, we must compute the payoffs (rather than wages) associated
with it. It turns out that this can be accomplished by performing the
following computations (see Bartos 1967):
Workers’ payoff: .50 * (7) + .50 * (−4) = 1.5
Management’s payoff: .50 * (−3) + .50 * (8) = 2.5
Because the resulting “compromise” payoffs (1.5 for the workers and
2.5 for the managers) are positive for both sides, this 50–50 split is
acceptable to both.
Finally, matrix representation allows you to determine what agreement
is “best” for both sides. In our example, a strong argument can be
made that the wage corresponding to the 50–50 split ($15) is close to
being best: it can be shown that it is even better to agree on a wage that
is only slightly higher, $15.46. If you are willing to go through a fairly
technical discussion, you can learn why this wage is best by reading
about the so-called Nash solution (Nash 1950; Luce and Raiffa 1967;
Bartos 1967).
Identifying Goals and Interests
The practical consequence of this discussion is that you can beneﬁt
from both the concept of logical contradiction and the concept of
payoff matrix. To illustrate, suppose that one country invades another.
How do you determine whether the goals and interests of the two
countries involved in the conﬂict action are incompatible?
First, you ask whether each country claims sovereignty over the same
territory, as do both Israelis and Palestinians over East Jerusalem. If
both do, then, since sovereignty means exclusive control, it is logically
impossible for either of them to claim sovereignty over the territory
and accept its occupation by the opponent. Second, you try to obtain a
rough estimate of the payoffs. True, it is seldom possible to assign exact
payoffs in real-world conﬂicts. Still, if each party is “vitally interested”
UNDERSTANDING CONFLICT 19
in the territory, you may assume that each assigns high positive payoffs
to its own occupation of it and very low negative payoffs to its occupation
by the opponent. You may also try to guess the payoffs for
additional alternatives, such as assigning each country only a part of
the territory, or having the territory administered by a neutral body.
This helps you to determine whether an agreement can be reached.
Thus you can gain considerable insight into any conﬂict if you keep
in mind the matrix approach. You then can determine what the main
alternatives are; speculate on the likely consequences of each alternative;
and guess whether a party assigns high, low, or negative payoffs
to these consequences.
Hostility
The deﬁnition of conﬂict offered here implies that conﬂict behavior
can occur not only because the parties have incompatible goals but also
because they feel hostility toward each other. Whether you rely on your
intuitive understanding of hostility or on a more formal deﬁnition such
as an “antagonism, opposition, or resistance in thought or principle”
(Webster’s 1976, 553), you undoubtedly realize that hostility plays quite
a different role in conﬂict than do incompatible goals. The distinction
between rational and nonrational behavior helps us to understand this
difference.
Rational Behavior
During the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, the United States and the
Soviet Union came close to war. Soviet Premier Krushchev decided
to challenge U.S. missile supremacy by secretly installing mediumrange
missiles in Cuba. Informed about this, President Kennedy faced
a crucial decision: if the United States responded too strongly, a nuclear
war might result; if he responded too weakly, the inﬂuence of
the Soviet Union would increase. During lengthy cabinet meetings,
several options were considered, ranging from invading Cuba and destroying
the missile sites to registering a strong protest and demanding
the removal of the missiles. After listening to arguments from his
aides for and against each option, Kennedy decided on an action that
was neither too provocative nor too submissive: he ordered the U.S.
Navy to start a blockade of Cuba, inspecting Soviet ships to determine
20 USING CONFLICT THEORY
whether they carried missile-related cargo. At the same time, he started
a personal dialogue with Krushchev, informing him of the impending
blockade. For a while, the Soviets did not respond, and two of
their ships proceeded toward Cuba, protected by a submarine. As the
ships were approaching the 500-mile barrier imposed by the United
States, confrontation appeared inevitable. But, to the Americans’ huge
relief, the Russian ships stopped before crossing the barrier, and intense
negotiations ensued. A compromise was worked out: the Soviets
agreed to withdraw their missiles; the United States agreed not to invade
Cuba and to withdraw American missiles from Turkey (Kennedy
1969).
In most important respects, Kennedy’s decision-making process was
“rational,” because he reached his decision through lengthy deliberation
during which he (1) considered a number of possible actions,
(2) considered the likely consequences of each action, (3) evaluated
each set of consequences, and (4) chose the action with the most desirable
consequences.
Given the fact that payoff matrices play an important role in the
theory of rational decision making,9
it is not surprising that there is a
close parallel between these steps and the steps involved in constructing
a payoff matrix. To construct a payoff matrix and use it rationally,
you must:
1. Determine the possible alternatives.
2. Determine the outcomes associated with each alternative.
3. Assign a payoff to each outcome.
4. Choose the alternative with the highest payoff.
Some theoreticians – notably Weber ([1922] 1947) – argue that we
should distinguish between two types of rationality. One of these is the
“instrumental” rationality. It occurs when your action is directed at a
speciﬁc goal that can be obtained, such as the best way to avoid rush
hour trafﬁc, buying the best car with the money you have, or deciding
whether you should study in order to pass tomorrow’s examination
or can afford to go to a party. The other type is “value” rationality.
It occurs when your objective is to conform to a vaguely deﬁned set of
values, such as when a Catholic is trying to decide which of several
possible alternatives – making a contribution to her church, going to
confession, and so on – might be the most appropriate behavior.
UNDERSTANDING CONFLICT 21
Although the abstract principles guiding rational actions are clear,
their practical implementation is fraught with difﬁculties, because
different individuals, faced with the same situation, may differ in what
action they see as rational: they might consider a different set of alternatives,
have different beliefs about what outcomes are likely, or
evaluate the outcomes differently. For example, had Kennedy not considered
a blockade as a feasible alternative, he might have opted for
invading Cuba; had Krushchev foreseen correctly how Kennedy would
react, he might have chosen not to install the missiles; had Krushchev
not considered the inferior power of the Soviet Union unacceptable,
he might have chosen not to act the way he did.
Despite these complications, one can draw a clear (abstract) distinction
between rational and nonrational action. An action is (objectively)
rational if it is reached by an actor who not only followed
the steps outlined here but did it with an almost supernatural skill: he
or she considered a set of all relevant alternatives, assessed their outcomes
correctly, evaluated them in accordance with his or her values
(or the values of the group he or she represents), and then chose the
action that was the best. An action is (objectively) nonrational if it is
not best (not highest-valued) in this sense.
Hostility as Nonrational Behavior
When we are angry, we often act contrary to our better judgment – that
is, we act nonrationally. Most acts driven by emotions such as anger
tend to be spontaneous and quick, and often at odds with what a
more careful deliberation might suggest. For example, a husband and
a wife, after spending hours deciding where to go for their vacation,
may ﬁnally reach a compromise accepted by both. And then, when
it is time to make reservations, one of the pair may say, “I really do
not want to do this; I hate that place.” It does not help for the other
person to say, “But you agreed!” because the reluctant partner may
simply answer, “I know, but I do not feel like doing it.”
The main reason why rational and emotional actions are often
at odds is that whereas rational action takes into account all of the
possible consequences, emotional action does not. When I am angry,
I need to strike out at somebody, and damn the consequences. Thus
feelings – especially feelings of hostility – are often an obstacle to
22 USING CONFLICT THEORY
settling a conﬂict and implementing the settlement. A skillful mediator
is well aware of this fact and works hard to remove this obstacle.
Validating hostility and allowing it to express itself in harmless ways
are among the tools that help this process.
In a conﬂict, the most important emotion is hostility toward the enemy.
Thus Kennedy, instead of engaging in careful deliberation, might
have responded impulsively and ordered immediate invasion of Cuba.
In some cases, a conﬂict may start rationally, only to deteriorate into
nonrationality. Thus while a demonstration may have been planned as
a disciplined way of letting one’s point of view be known, it may turn
into a riot that is fueled by hatred, expressed in rock throwing, burning
of cars, looting, and even killing. Similarly, reasonable efforts by police
to maintain order may be transformed into a “police riot” if they are
carried away by hostile emotions toward the demonstrators. Such was
the case in the Chicago demonstrations in the summer of 1968.
The relationship between hostility and conﬂict behavior is complex.
On the one hand, hostility adds fuel to and intensiﬁes conﬂict behavior.
On the other hand, conﬂict also intensiﬁes hostility: as conﬂict
continues and the parties inﬂict injuries on each other, the participants
are no longer motivated solely by a desire to reach their original
goals; increasingly, they become determined to destroy the enemy. The
nature of conﬂict is thus transformed.
Conﬂict Action
Conﬂict has been deﬁned here as “a situation in which actors use conﬂict
behavior against each other to attain incompatible goals and/or
to express their hostility.” But what is – and what is not – “conﬂict behavior”?
To most of us, this term evokes images of ﬁghting, violence,
coercion, and force. But our deﬁnition of conﬂict suggests that conﬂict
behavior is any behavior that helps the party to achieve its goal
that is incompatible with that of the opponent or that expresses its
hostility toward him or her.
Social scientists are sometimes accused of using obscure language to
express relatively simple ideas. In some cases, we must plead guilty. But
some technical terms are essential if you wish to understand conﬂict.
One pair of useful terms is conﬂict action and conﬂict behavior. We
speak about participants’ conﬂict “action” when we are assuming that
UNDERSTANDING CONFLICT 23
they are guided by rational considerations; when we assume that they
may be rational or nonrational, we use the term conﬂict “behavior.”
For example, we might say that demonstrators are engaged in conﬂict
action when they march through a city in a planned fashion, using
signs and nonviolent language to demand the ouster of a crooked
politician. When such intent and planning may be absent, we might
use a more general term conﬂict behavior. This distinction is not hard
and fast, but, because we hope to show how to approach conﬂict in a
thoughtful manner, we use, most of the time, the term conﬂict action.
Another important distinction is between “coercive” and “noncoercive”
action (behavior). This distinction is so important that we give
it special attention later. You should know, however, that some writers
use the terms “competitive” and “cooperative” instead.10
We prefer our
terminology because it captures an essential point: a conﬂict is quite
different when the adversaries use force than when they don’t.
Coercive Action
Coercion forces the opponents to do what they do not wish to do. It
accomplishes this by threatening to inﬂict injury on them, or by actually
inﬂicting it (Kriesberg [1973] 1982, 116). The distinction between
threatening and actually inﬂicting injury is necessary because the two
have theoretically different interpretations: while the threat of injury
is best conceived within the framework of a payoff matrix, the actual
injury is not.
Actual Coercion. We use “actual” coercion if we try to weaken our opponents
by injuring them. It is useful to distinguish between physical
violence and symbolic injury. Severe physical injury can be violent: hurting
or killing the opponents, or destroying their property (Himes 1980,
103). For example, soldiers of one nation try to kill those of another, or
boys ﬁghting in a schoolyard try to knock each other down. Or physical
injury can be nonviolent, such as depriving the opponents of resources
they need. For example, a nation may punish its opponent by preventing
ships from going in or out of its harbors, or a wife may lock her
husband out of their house. Symbolic injury, on the other hand, weakens
the opponent by inducing fear, shame, or guilt through actions
such as jeering or using derogatory names. For example, strikers may
24 USING CONFLICT THEORY
Table 2.4. A Revised Version of a
Husband-Wife Conﬂict
Conﬂict Parties
Husband Wife
Goals
Four children −3 10
No children 4−10 = −6 −8
try to dissuade nonunion workers from entering a factory by calling
them “scabs.”
Threat of Coercion. The primary consequence of an actual injury is
to decrease the opponents’ ability to continue the conﬂict. Thus it
should not be viewed as involving a change in their payoffs. A threat of
violence, on the other hand, is best understood within the framework
of payoff matrices: if the opponents’ payoffs for their original goal are
sufﬁciently reduced by the threat, they will abandon it and may adopt
the threatening party’s goal.
Let us illustrate using the conﬂict between husband and wife, represented
in Table 2.2. Suppose that the wife threatens to leave her husband
if he does not agree to have four children, and that this threat
is believed by the husband.11
Moreover, the wife’s leaving would be
so devastating to him that the threat decreases his payoff for having
no children by 10 points (see Table 2.4). Because now his payoff for
“four children” is higher (−3) than the payoff for “no children” (−6),
a rational husband who does not have any other choice will agree to
having four children. But he has been coerced into choosing an option
that has negative payoff for him, that is, he will do something he
does not want to do12
– which, incidentally, suggests why threats are
often a bad strategy: when a person is forced to choose an option with
a negative payoff, he or she is bound to feel hostile and will be less
likely to cooperate in the future.
Although the distinction between threatening and actually inﬂicting
an injury is conceptually clear, in practice the two are often intertwined
and hard to separate. For example, consider two men who have
been ﬁghting until one of them gives up. How should we interpret the
UNDERSTANDING CONFLICT 25
defeated man’s actions? Should we assume that he no longer views
ﬁghting as proﬁtable, or should we assume that he is no longer capable
of ﬁghting? Another complication is that threats do more than
make resistance less desirable. As we discuss in Chapter 8, threats may
increase the opponents’ hostility and thus make them less likely to
yield.
Noncoercive Conﬂict Action
Not all conﬂict actions involve coercion. Some, such as joint searching
for new options, involve “pure” cooperation. Others, such as persuasion
and rewarding, lie somewhere between full-scale coercion and
pure cooperation: they resemble coercion in that their objective is
to make the opponent accept the player’s goal; they resemble pure
cooperation in that they use inducements rather than force.
Persuasion. Like a threat of coercion, persuasion works by changing
the payoffs that the goals offer to the opponents. But while threat
of coercion decreases the payoff for one’s opponents’ original goal,
persuasion increases their payoff for the party’s own goal. It does so at
no cost to itself, simply by bringing to the opponents’ attention certain
favorable outcomes they had originally not considered. For example,
suppose that parents want their son to go to college, but he does not
wish to go. They can try to persuade him by pointing out that, if he goes
to college, he will be able to make new friends, enjoy sports, and take
interesting courses. If he does not go to college, he will have to ﬁnd
employment immediately. And surely that would not be as pleasant as
college life.
Note that successful persuasion seldom involves abstract logical arguments
or righteous positioning. Instead, it involves showing one’s
opponents that it is to their advantage to adopt “our” goals. Thus a prochoice
advocate, trying to persuade a pro-life advocate to change her
action should not argue that his point of view is morally right; instead,
he should point out that the pro-life advocate could herself have an
unwanted or high-risk pregnancy, that an abortion performed under
medical supervision would save her from having to raise an unwanted
child, or might even save her life.
26 USING CONFLICT THEORY
Promising a Reward. Another type of conﬂict action involves promising
rewards. Those who promise a reward also play to the opponent’s selfinterest,
but instead of emphasizing existing options the opponent has
overlooked, they create – usually at their own expense – new outcomes
that are rewarding for the opponent.13
In the parlance of the theory
of games, they create “side payments” that is, a commitment to reward
their opponents if they accept the ﬁrst party’s goals. Thus the parents
may try to induce their son to go to college by promising to buy him
a new car to take him there.
Pure Cooperation. What may be called “pure” cooperation differs from
the actions discussed so far in that its objective is to ﬁnd a solution
that is gratifying to both parties. Usually, it involves searching for a
goal that is different from those the parties had originally pursued.
In some cases, each party searches for such a solution on its own; in
other cases, the search itself is a joint one, involving a continuing dialogue.
Some cooperative actions are preparatory to ﬁnding such a
solution. For example, a party may try to understand its opponents’
point of view; it may attempt to validate that point of view; or it may seek
third-party assistance in resolving the conﬂict. We consider such cooperative
actions here and in the coming chapters and devote Chapter 9
exclusively to them.
Degree of Coerciveness
For many purposes it is important to consider the speciﬁc types of
action described thus far. But for other purposes – such as making
causal statements of the form “An increase in X leads to an increase to
Y” – it is necessary to have a term that refers to the “degree” of a conﬂict,
terms like intensity, destructiveness, or strength. There does not seem
to be a word that captures this perfectly, but the term “coerciveness”
seems quite appropriate. For example, when two boys start to hit each
other after merely exchanging sarcastic remarks, it may be said that
their behavior becomes more coercive.
Figure 2.1 shows that our use of the term “degree of coerciveness”
runs into a slight conceptual problem: we identify the lower end of
the continuum both as corresponding to (a low level of) coerciveness
UNDERSTANDING CONFLICT 27
Low High
coer- coerciveness
civeness
“Pure” t
coop-
eration
Noncoercive action Coercive action
Violent
coercion
Nonviolent
coercion
Threat of
coercion
Trying to
persuade
Promising
a reward
Figure 2.1. Coerciveness of Conﬂict Action
and to “noncoercive action.” How can something be both coercive and
noncoercive? We ask the reader to bear with us, recognizing that this
problem is often encountered when one tries to convert a continuum
into a concept with only two categories.14
In general, it is possible to arrange the different types of conﬂict
action on a continuum from low to high degree of coerciveness, as
shown in Figure 2.1. “Pure cooperation” is an action that is minimally
coercive: while inducing the opponent to abandon his original goal, it
takes his interests as much into account as those of the actor herself.
“Promising reward” is somewhat more coercive: although it rewards
the opponent, it does so only in order to promote the actor’s own
interests. “Trying to persuade” is even more coercive: it pursues the
actor’s own interests without rewarding the opponent’s in any way; it
merely notes which of his interests coincide with those of the actor. The
remaining three benchmarks – threats, nonviolent coerciveness, and
violent coerciveness – clearly manifest increasing coerciveness: “threat
of coercion” because it decreases the opponent’s payoffs; “nonviolent
coerciveness” because it is punishing to the opponent; and “violent
coerciveness” because it is highly punishing, possibly even fatal, to the
opponent.
Conclusions
Although the very concept of conﬂict is the subject of considerable
controversy, the theories to be discussed in subsequent chapters suggest
a fairly simple deﬁnition: conﬂict is a situation in which actors
28 USING CONFLICT THEORY
use conﬂict action against each other to attain incompatible goals
and/or to express their hostility. To make this deﬁnition meaningful,
one must understand its three main terms: incompatible goals, hostility,
and conﬂict behavior. The term “incompatible goals” invites several
questions. What is meant by incompatibility? What is a goal, and how
does it differ from an “interest”? Is it possible to have different degrees
of incompatibility? How can one identify a goal that is acceptable to
both sides? A goal that is best for both? So-called payoff matrices help
one to answer these questions.
Much could be said about hostility, but to understand the unique
role it plays in conﬂicts, consider its nonrational aspects. Unlike rational
action (which is based on careful deliberation and uses a speciﬁc
procedure of judgment and valuing), expressions of hostility are nonrational
in that they are quick, impulsive, and often at odds with what
action a rational analysis might suggest. Thus conﬂict behavior that
is heavily inﬂuenced by hostility is often damaging to the actor’s own
long-range interests.
“Conﬂict behavior” is an umbrella term that covers many diverse
types of behavior. It refers to (more or less) rational action as well as to
(nonrational) expressions of hostilities; to behavior that is highly coercive
(such as physically harming the opponent) as well as to behavior
that is fully cooperative (such as searching for a mutually acceptable
solution). Still, it is desirable to have a concept that treats these qualitative
differences as matters of degree – and the concept of coerciveness
is such a concept (see Figure 2.1).