I William Zartman: A Pioneer in Conflict Management and Area Studies: Essays on Contention and Governance [1st ed.] 978-3-030-06078-7;978-3-030-06079-4

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xxvi
Front Matter ....Pages 1-1
An Autobiographical Essay (I. William Zartman)....Pages 3-26
Comprehensive Bibliography (I. William Zartman)....Pages 27-38
Front Matter ....Pages 39-39
Revolution and Development (I. William Zartman)....Pages 41-56
Political Pluralism in Morocco (I. William Zartman)....Pages 57-70
Succession as a Conceptual Event: Algeria and Tunisia (I. William Zartman)....Pages 71-94
Need, Creed and Greed in Intrastate Conflict (I. William Zartman)....Pages 95-117
A Theory of Elite Circulation (I. William Zartman)....Pages 119-149
Democracy and Islam: The Cultural Dialectic (I. William Zartman)....Pages 151-160
Dynamics and Constraints in Negotiating Internal Conflicts (I. William Zartman)....Pages 161-172
Mutually Enticing Opportunities and Durable Settlements (I. William Zartman)....Pages 173-194
Negotiating with Terrorists and the Tactical Question (I. William Zartman, Tanya Alfredson)....Pages 195-223
Analyzing Intractability (I. William Zartman)....Pages 225-238
The State of Collapse (I. William Zartman)....Pages 239-255
Challenges of Prevention and Resolution (I. William Zartman)....Pages 257-265
Memories Between War and Peace (I. William Zartman)....Pages 267-268
Front Matter ....Pages 269-269
Systems of World Order (I. William Zartman)....Pages 271-291
Justice in Decision-Making (I. William Zartman)....Pages 293-316
The Process of Social Reconciliation (I. William Zartman)....Pages 317-324
Return to Theories of Cooperation (I. William Zartman)....Pages 325-338
Governance as Conflict Management (I. William Zartman)....Pages 339-370
Alliance Formation (I. William Zartman)....Pages 371-378
National Interest and Ideology (I. William Zartman)....Pages 379-399
Self and Space (I. William Zartman)....Pages 401-416
Putting Humpty Together Again (I. William Zartman)....Pages 417-438
The Diplomacy of African Boundaries (I. William Zartman)....Pages 439-449
Middle East Boundaries (I. William Zartman)....Pages 451-464
Identity, Movement and Response (I. William Zartman)....Pages 465-480
Maghreb Matters (I. William Zartman)....Pages 481-495
The Ubiquity of Prevention (I. William Zartman)....Pages 497-515
Front Matter ....Pages 517-517
The Courage to Prevent (Bruce Jentleson)....Pages 519-521
Back Matter ....Pages 523-535

Citation preview

Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 23

I. William Zartman

I William Zartman: A Pioneer in Conflict Management and Area Studies Essays on Contention and Governance With a Foreword by Francis Deng and a Preface by Ellen Laipson

Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice Volume 23

Series Editor Hans Günter Brauch, Peace Research and European Security Studies (AFES-PRESS), Mosbach, Germany

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15230 http://www.afes-press-books.de/html/PAHSEP.htm http://www.afes-press-books.de/html/PAHSEP_Zartman.htm

I. William Zartman

I William Zartman: A Pioneer in Conflict Management and Area Studies Essays on Contention and Governance

With a Foreword by Francis Deng and a Preface by Ellen Laipson

123

I. William Zartman Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies Washington, DC, USA

Acknowledgement: The cover photo portrays Ira William Zartman. This cover photo as well as all other photos in this volume were taken from the personal photo collection of the author who also granted the permission for their publication in this volume. A book website with additional information on I. William Zartman and his major book covers is at: http://www. afes-press-books.de/html/PAHSEP_Zartman.htm. ISSN 2509-5579 ISSN 2509-5587 (electronic) Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice ISBN 978-3-030-06078-7 ISBN 978-3-030-06079-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06079-4 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018964693 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Copyediting: PD Dr. Hans Günter Brauch, AFES-PRESS e.V., Mosbach, Germany This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Gratefully to my gracious family, from Grace to Grace: Edythe Grace Z, my mother, to Grace Marie-Margaret Z, my granddaughter

Foreword by Francis Deng

A Collaboration with I. William Zartman: A Partnership of Ideas

My wife tells me that the late UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali once asked her where I find the time to write the many books I have written, and her answer was that I write in my dreams. My wife’s response was an attempt at a joke, which I suspect received a diplomatic laugh. Reviewing I. William Zartman’s accomplishments, I cannot help but ask the same question. Bill is of course well known as an accomplished visionary scholar, who effectively related theory to practice, grounded concepts in the reality on the ground, and enjoyed passing knowledge on to successive generations of students. But he has also been a well rounded human being, who enjoyed painting and construction, sailing and biking, painting and listening to music. It will not be possible for me to do him justice in this representation. What I can do is report on my collaboration with him over the years and hope that my presentation will reflect my great admiration for Bill.

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I first met Bill in Washington DC in the mid 1980s when I established the African Studies branch of the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution. In establishing the Program, I was conscious of the soft ground under my feet, having been trained in law, trespassed into anthropology, and braved my way into the world of diplomacy. I was therefore fortunate to have spotted Bill Zartman in my Washington intellectual adventures. I soon realized that he was the man I needed to cover for my weak points and insecurity in the scholarly jungle I was bravely venturing into. Our first challenge was to develop a conceptual framework for the Program. Bill had a way of immediately giving meaning and depth to even half cooked ideas from intellectual and institutional partners, although he had no tolerance for presumptuousness, arrogance or rudeness. I could not have found a more qualified, congenial, and resourceful person to help me develop the Africa program at Brookings. His vast scholarship and field experiences cut across much of Africa, in particular Northern. Western, and Southern regions of the continent. His European, and indeed global, outreach also provided a very useful comparative context for approaching African studies. At the time, he was the Director of the African Studies Program at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of The John’s Hopkins University. We started by identifying the priority issues for Africa that required analysis with policy implications and capable of practical application. The issues were easy to discern. They included: the prevention, management and resolution of conflicts; good and effective governance; protection of human rights; socio-economic development; gender balance; and later, protection of the environment. I also had a strong bias for taking culture as a cross-cutting theme in addressing these substantive areas. While we produced several published works addressing aspects of these areas over the years, our focus was in the area of conflicts. The question we asked ourselves was how to approach African conflicts in the context of the immanent end of the Cold War. During the Cold War, we saw conflicts, internal and regional, as aspects of the global confrontation of the Super Powers. The ability to address these conflicts also depended on the super powers. The end of the Cold War would mean the withdrawal of the strategic interests and motivations of the Super Powers. This meant that we would now see these conflicts in their proper contexts as internal and regional, which would be a good development. But who would then be responsible for managing or resolving the conflicts? Bill and I proceeded to organize a research conference that addressed the questions we had posed at the outset, and covered both conceptual analyses and lessons from empirical field studies. We co-edited the conference papers in our first project publication: Conflict Resolution in Africa (1991), for which General Olusegun Obasanjo, former President of Nigeria, contributed the Introduction. We then commissioned experts to prepare regional and country specific studies which covered West Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa, South Africa, Sudan and Somalia.

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Our original hypothesis was substantiated and expounded in these series. Bill Zartman’s main conceptual framework of approaching governance as conflict management, elaborated in the West African Case study which he edited, became an overarching theme. This implied that post Cold War management and resolution of conflicts would fall primarily on the state concerned, with the international community playing a subsidiary role, if called upon to help. The sub-text was that human rights and humanitarian principles and concerns would emerge as central to the normative framework of the new world order and that failure by a state to meet the needs of an affected population would trigger international action. Sovereignty would no longer be seen as a barricade against international involvement to remedy state failure to protect and assist the needy population. We then proceeded to consider the elements of the normative framework that constituted state responsibility. We embarked on a collaborative volume to substantiate the concept. Governance as conflict management involved political, social, cultural and economic aspects, ultimately resulting in internal peace, security and stability. How this should translate into state responsibility that would override sovereignty became a subject of considerable differences among the chapter authors. My inclination was to postulate sovereignty as a positive concept of state responsibility to protect and assist its needy populations, and if necessary, to call on the international community to render a helping hand to assist the state to discharge what is essentially its domestic responsibility. With his genius for formulating catchy titles, Bill came up with Sovereignty as Responsibility: Conflict Management in Africa as the title for the volume (1996). That ended the discussion. This concept was later developed by the Canadian sponsored International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) into the Responsibility to Protect, which became popularly known as R2P. The concept is widely acknowledged as rooted in our Brookings work on the sovereignty of responsibility. But what substantively constituted state responsibility? We decided to focus on human rights and commissioned experts to prepare papers on the evolution of the relevant principles of international human rights and humanitarian law, with related institutional arrangements. The outcome was another volume: African Reckoning: A quest for good governance (1998). Bill and I were also involved in a parallel process which was initiated by General Obasanjo. Through the African Leadership Forum, General Obasanjo undertook an Initiative modeled after the Helsinki process that culminated in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The initiative led to the convening of a meeting in Kampala which was attended by over 500 people, including a number of Heads of State. The most contentious issue was how to reconcile state responsibility with sovereignty. A heated debate ended with the adoption of a language that ambiguously acknowledged sovereignty, but also stipulated state responsibility for its citizens, and the supportive role of the international community. It was essentially what we had outlined in Sovereignty as Responsibility. The meeting adopted the Kampala Document: Conference on Security, Stability, Development and

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Cooperation in Africa (CSSDCA) which was quite a revolutionary statement. The document was presented to the Organization of African Unity (OAU) for adoption, but was blocked by a number of states that felt vulnerable under the framework. To make things worse, General Obasanjo was arrested and detained by the Nigerian dictator, General Sani Abacha. He asked me from detention to act as Chairman of the Africa Leadership Forum. Our efforts to change the position of the OAU were to no avail. Bill and I decided to push the process forward by writing the book, A Strategic Vision for Africa: the Kampala Movement (2002), in which we reformulated the principles of CSSCA and placed them in the wider context that reflected the spirit of Sovereignty as Responsibility. Obasanjo was eventually freed and in the radical turn of events retuned to the helm of Nigerian power structure as the elected President. He and his likeminded colleagues, foremost of whom was President Thabu Mbeki of South Africa, resuscitated CSSDCA within the OAU and had it adopted and integrated into the Organization’s Mechanism for Conflict Management. At about the same time, African heads of State initiated the process that transformed the Organization into the African Union, in many respects a model of the European Union, but with distinct African characteristics. I was privileged to be among the so-called Eminent Persons who assisted in the transformation. In one of the early discussions of the draft constitutive document, we faced the same controversy over the issue of sovereignty and ended with the same delicate balance between respect for sovereignty and the authorization of intervention to stop egregious crimes, including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. That culminated in the famous article 4h of the Constitutive Act, often cited as evidence of African leadership in the formal adoption of Sovereignty as Responsibility and the Responsibility to Protect. These two are twin concepts with identical principles based on three pillars: the primary responsibility of the step for its population, the responsibility of the international community to assist in enhancing the capacity of the state to provide protection, and the residual responsibility of the international community to intervene when states manifestly fail to discharge their responsibility in crises situations of greatest need. However, the popular perception is that while Sovereignty as Responsibility underscores the responsibility of the state, the Responsibility to Protect is understood to call for coercive international intervention. The former is welcomed, while the latter is resisted. To allay the fears that my mandate on internal displacement was a threat to sovereignty, I was able to win the cooperation of Governments by invoking the principles of Sovereignty as Responsibility, which again resonated with most Governments. Later, after I left the UN and became the first Permanent Representative of the newly independent Republic of South Sudan to the United Nations, I decided as Chairman of the Africa Group for the month to inject into our routine diplomatic activities some intellectual exercise. So I invited Bill and another old friend, Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naim, an Islamic scholar and Professor of law at Emory University, to speak on the subject of constructive management of diversity. Both were stimulatingly provocative, which generated a lively discussion.

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When Bill and I first met in the mid 1980s, he had been st SAIS for only several years, which means that we have known one another for over thirty years. Our collaboration has continued ever since. He involved me in a number of his initiatives and I contributed chapters to a number of books which he edited. I also sought his help in many of my projects and activities. Bill recalls that in his ‘Negotiation Practicum class’ he asked ‘famous negotiators to give us their 10 maxims for success’. I was, honored to be included in the group and I wrote what I was tempted to call ‘Ten Commandments’ but feared that I might offend the Christians. Instead, I modestly called them ‘Ten Principles on Negotiations’ which I presented in the cultural context of my Dinka ethnic group. I later presented the Principles in the Kenya-hosted negotiations that concluded the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement in the Sudan. I have also reproduced them as chapters in three books. Speaking of the cultural context, Bill and I engaged in a heated debate on the normative characteristics of conflict. Bill saw that the normal state of human interaction is one of conflict, involving incompatible interests that can become violent. The challenge is to overcome the escalation to violence. I argued to the contrary that the normal state of human relations is one of harmony and that conflict is a violation of the norm. The challenge then is to regulate relations constructively to maintain harmony and avoid or overcome disruption. It was a good debate, as Bill indeed recalls, and I believe we eventually forged a common ground in the middle. One of the aspects of Bill’s academic, scholarly and occupational life that resonates with me is his ability to move seamlessly with the currents of change. I have learned in my own experience that there is no straight line to the course of life. Yes, the river will end up flowing into its destination in the ocean or the lake, but it will meander to avoid or overcome obstacles in its inexorable flow. This is a journey that requires strategic optimism and seeking opportunities in crises, I believe this is part of what Bill means when he writes: ‘I was raised as a good Christian which means that I know how sinful I am. It is and has been a good life, nonetheless, but I know that there is a better one and that I will be there, not through my own merit but through God’s grace and Christ’s sacrifice’. The only qualification I would make, one that reflects the traditional religious and moral values of my indigenous background, is that while life continues in the mysterious world of the hereafter, a form of immortality is assured in this world through the relationships one creates and leaves behind, including relatives, friends, and the wide circle of people one has touched and, above all, through the memory of all the good things one has done in this world. Even by this supposedly alien moral and spiritual code, I am confident that Bill is assured a comfortable place in what the Chairman of my Doctoral Committee at Yale Law School, Professor Harold Lasswell, called ‘The myth of permanent identity and influence’. Francis Mading Deng Former United Nations Under-Secretary-General

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Francis Mading Deng is a politician and diplomat from South Sudan who served as its first ambassador to the United Nations from 2012 to July 2016. He was educated at Khartoum University (Bachelor of Laws) and a Master of Laws (LL.M.) and a Doctor of Juridical Science (J.S.D.) from Yale University. He also took graduate courses at King’s College London. Under Presidents Ismail al-Azhari and Gaafar Nimeiry Dr. Deng served as Human Rights Officer in the United Nations Secretariat (from 1967 to 1972) and subsequently as the Ambassador of Sudan to Canada, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and the United States. He also served as the Sudan’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs. After leaving his country’s service, he was appointed the first Rockefeller Brothers Fund Distinguished Fellow. From 1992 until 2004 Dr. Francis M. Deng of the Sudan served as the United Nations’ first Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons. On 29 May 2007, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced the appointment of Deng as the new Special Adviser for the Prevention of Genocide, a position he held until 17 July 2012 at the level of Under-Secretary General. From 2006 to 2007, Deng served as director of the Sudan Peace Support Project based at the United States Institute of Peace. He also was a Wilhelm Fellow at the Center for International Studies of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a research professor of international politics, law and society at Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. Before joining the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Deng was a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the John Kluge Center of the Library of Congress. Dr. Deng served as Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General on Internally Displaced Persons from 1992 to 2004, and from 2002 to 2003 was also a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace. He was at the Woodrow Wilson International Center first as a guest scholar and then as a senior research associate, after which he joined the Brookings Institution as a senior fellow, where he founded and directed the Africa Project for 12 years. He was then appointed distinguished professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York before joining Johns Hopkins University. Among his numerous awards in his country and abroad, Dr. Deng is co-recipient with Roberta Cohen of the 2005 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for “Ideas Improving World Order” and the 2007 Merage Foundation American Dream Leadership Award. In 2000, Dr. Deng also received the Rome Prize for Peace and Humanitarian Action. He has authored and edited 40 books in the fields of law, conflict resolution, internal displacement, human rights, anthropology, folklore, history and politics and has also written two novels on the theme of the crisis of national identity in the Sudan. He was born in 1938 and in 1972 married Dorothy Anne Ludwig, with whom he has four sons, Donald, Daniel, David and Dennis.

Preface by Ellen Laipson

Reflections on the Career of I. William Zartman

It is an honor to share some thoughts about the remarkable career of I. William Zartman. Many know his important scholarly work on conflict issues: how, why and when conflicts end, and how best to use the roles of mediators and facilitators. My connection is to his books and activities related to North Africa as well as conflict analysis, and to the bridges he has built between the worlds of academia and those of government analysis and policy. I can bear witness to the impact of his life’s work on generations of analysts and diplomats trying to improve outcomes in US and international efforts to bring tragic conflicts in the developing world to an end. It is a common complaint among scholars of international relations and of regional studies that people in government are not as available and willing to listen and learn from the wisdom of academic experts. That has not been a problem for Bill Zartman, whose work is well known among key communities of diplomats, military officers and other policymakers. He has managed to find the sweet spot between abstract conceptual ideas, and their practical application in the messy

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world of governments and non-governmental organizations engaged in working with parties to conflicts. He has been a player through the relevance and usefulness of his conceptual work, and through his ability to communicate those ideas so effectively to people outside the ivory tower. His original use of language to explain conflict ideas—ripeness for resolution, mutually hurting stalemate, the 50% solution—are so deeply embedded in the profession today that young scholars may not appreciate that this vocabulary was in fact the invention of Bill Zartman. His career has been unique in several respects. One is the breadth of his interests over time, from basic international relations to area studies (North Africa and Africa) to conflict analysis to negotiations processes. Another is the sheer volume of productivity, from single author books to edited books with collaborators of diverse nationality and discipline, and a remarkable collection of articles in respected journals of diverse disciplines, including some he founded. A third has been his pioneering role creating new institutions and networks to promote collaboration with young scholars, from Morocco to Russia, and empowering his students to apply their work in the classroom to the real world in local communities and in distant venues. It was new to me but not surprising to learn in his own essay in this volume that the precocious and curious young Bill Zartman somehow never formally finished high school or college, but had a Ph.D. by age 24, and a teaching position at Yale. His career was not destined to progress on a predictable linear path; he was open to outside influences and opportunities, from the call to serve in the military to the serendipity of chance opportunities to live and study in Denmark, Morocco, West Africa, France and Egypt, to name just a few of his adventures. He did not always follow the advice of his mentors along the way, nor did he live within the boundaries set by his institutional bosses in academia. He went where his restless heart and his curiosity led him, and was able to master subfields of international relations serially, rather than settling down to one distinct field of study. We are all the beneficiaries of that graceful flow of interests and ideas. He has built of body of work that really connects the dots, and integrates the particular knowledge of regional experts with the broader insights of comparative work on conflicts and how they eventually end. My professional associations with him began in the 1980s when I was an analyst of Middle East and North African issues at the Library of Congress, and have continued across the decades and various positions in and out of government. Our bond has always been over shared interests in the political developments and foreign policies of Arab countries, perhaps more than his more familiar claim to fame as the inventor of a new vocabulary of conflicts and negotiations processes. He bought me in, as a relatively junior government analyst without full academic credentials (I received a master’s from SAIS before Zartman joined the faculty there), to his activities building scholarly networks in Tunisia and Morocco. I contributed as coauthor with Mary Jane Deeb to one of his books about the foreign policies of the Maghreb States; we wrote on Tunisia’s relations with the European Union and the United States. In more recent years, I’ve participated in symposia

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and workshops commenting on his latest interests, such as his recent project analyzing the Arab Spring as a negotiation process. Among the many impressive and distinctive features of Zartman’s long career, let me focus on three: the impact of his original scholarship on the “real world” of policy and diplomacy; the value of his cross disciplinary and eclectic subject matter interests; and his commitment to his students and mentoring rising talent in the field.

Bridging the Gap Professor Zartman’s interest in negotiations evolved at a time when peacekeeping and eventually peacemaking were coming into fashion. As the Cold War wound down, Washington and Moscow gradually moved to a new form of cooperation in the UN Security Council to bring an end to the proxy wars in the developing world, in places such as Mozambique and Nicaragua. The 1980s and 1990s were years of experimentation and innovation in international affairs, as the rigidity of the bipolar contest gave way to a more fluid set of options and opportunities for small states. The creation of the US Institute for Peace in 1984 captured the zeitgeist. In the debates from the late 1970s through a commission in 1981 to determine the shape and mission of a peace institution, Prof. Zartman staked out his position as an authority in the emerging field of conflict analysis. In testimony before the Senate, he favored a research and training mission, rather than an academic institution. Once established, he was an early and active contributor to USIP’s work and its collaborative research with independent scholars and universities. It was a mutually beneficial association, and enabled his work to reach current and former practitioners in productive collaborations. In the early 1990s, I was in the intelligence community, and we drew on Zartman’s work and valued his participation in expert consultations on the conflicts in various parts of Africa, including the long dispute between Algeria and Morocco over territory once part of Spanish colonial rule. He was always pithy and pointed in his remarks, knowing how to move quickly from setting the scene in a foreign crisis zone, to developing policy-relevant ideas about how the outside actors could help move a negotiations process along. He had his own views; we did not always see the Western Sahara, for example, in the same way, but he was a cordial and clever interlocutor, who consistently raised the level of discussion and sent the government officials back to their offices enriched and stimulated. When he moved from New York to Washington, he had a great sense of timing. Both the substance of his work and his effective communications style suited that moment, and the bridges he helped establish between policy and conflict analysis continue to be a vital part of the policymaking infrastructure.

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Working Across Disciplines I have long admired the seamless way Prof. Zartman moved between his early passions for North and West Africa. Knowing him first as part of the Maghreb mafia, I recall being surprised to learn that he was spending a year in Senegal, but I soon learned that he had no geographic prejudices, and enjoyed spending time in more than one continent and across cultures and historical experiences. He could engage the colonizers and colonized with equal respect and affection, becoming a trusted interlocutor and insightful analyst. But he did not see himself as a “regional” expert, those hearty souls who dig deeply into a particular place for an entire career, mastering dialects and befriending generations of leaders and influentials. Bill could do that, but he painted on a larger palette, and moved easily between field research and conceptual work in the evolving international relations arena. Today, we have a better understanding of the importance of integrating knowledge, of avoiding stovepipes and over-specialization. Bill Zartman knew it instinctively, and we are all the better for his wanderlust and talent for connecting the dots between general theories and specialized knowledge. His response to the Arab spring, for example, was to look at the political activists in the streets of Tunis and Cairo as engaging their states in a form of negotiation. It was a more innovative and useful approach than seeing the outcome of the protests in black and white, win or lose terms.

Investing in New Generations All teachers can make the claim that their most important work is helping students prepare themselves for their grown up lives. Bill Zartman has brought a special zest to the task, with a steady sequence of students who became collaborators and friends. His support for good scholars and scholarship has not been limited by geography or nationality; his former student collaborators come from many institutions and disciplines. Those students and a wider circle of those whose academic and professional work he has supported, including yours truly, benefitted from yet another attribute of Bill Zartman and his many talents. He has a special gift for living, and has brought inspiration to his friends and associates by living the good life, embracing travel, history, food and art along side and as part of his scholarly pursuits. His charmed life in wonderful homes, made even more special by his wife Danielle’s artistic and domestic gifts, have only deepened appreciation and admiration for this pioneer of the social sciences. Washington, DC, USA July 2018

Ellen Laipson Former President, Stimson Center

Preface by Ellen Laipson

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Ellen Laipson is a Distinguished Fellow and President Emeritus of Stimson. Laipson joined Stimson in 2002, after 25 years of government service. Her last post was Vice Chair of the National Intelligence Council (1997–2002). She also served on the State Department’s policy planning staff and was a specialist in Middle East affairs for the Congressional Research Service. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and serves on the International Advisory Council of the International Institute of Strategic Studies. She served on the board of the Asia Foundation (2003–2015). She was a member of President Obama’s Intelligence Advisory Board from 2009–2013, and on the Secretary of State’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board 2011–2014. Laipson has an M.A. from the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University and an AB from Cornell University.

Acknowledgements

Numerous grants have supported this work and have been acknowledged as the results appeared. I owe much more to my three successive fantastic assistants— Elena Pellacani Arena, Theresa Taylor Simmons, and Isabelle Talpain-Long, and to the continual loving support of my wife, Marie-Danièle Harmel Zartman. Washington, DC, USA September 2018

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Contents

Part I

About I. William Zartman

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An Autobiographical Essay . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 My Ancestors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Baltimore—The War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Europe—The World Beyond . . . . . . . . 1.4 Morocco—The Navy to See the World 1.5 South Carolina—A New Introduction . . 1.6 New York—Biting the Big Apple . . . . 1.7 Washington—Capital of the World . . . 1.8 PIN—A New World . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Comprehensive Bibliography . . . . 2.1 Books Authored . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Books Edited and Coauthored 2.3 Articles and Chapters . . . . . .

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Revolution and Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Revolution and Development: Form and Substance . 3.2 How Long a Revolution? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 How National a Revolution? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Why Are Revolutions Truncated? . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Political Pluralism in Morocco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 The Pattern of Modernization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 The Specific Evolution of Morocco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Part II

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I. William Zartman Essays on Contention

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5

Contents

4.3 The 1962 Constitution and After . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

64 67 69

Succession as a Conceptual Event: Algeria 5.1 The Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 The Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 Algeria: The BenJendid Accession . . . 5.4 Tunisia: Ben’Ali’s Accession . . . . . . . 5.5 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

71 72 74 79 86 92 94

and Tunisia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Creed and Greed in Intrastate Conflict . Sources of Conflict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Meanings and Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Models and Reality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Prevention and Management . . . . . . . . . .

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6

Need, 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4

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A Theory of Elite Circulation . . . 7.1 Defining Elites . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 Elite Circulation . . . . . . . . . 7.3 Incumbents and New Elites . 7.4 New Challenges . . . . . . . . . 7.5 Analysis and Review . . . . . 7.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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119 120 124 126 131 139 145 147

8

Democracy and Islam: The Cultural Dialectic . . . . . 8.1 Islam: The Cultural Dialectic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2 Democracy—The Consummation of Nationalism 8.3 Democracy and Islam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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151 152 154 157 159

9

Dynamics and Constraints in Negotiating Internal Conflicts . . . . . . 161 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

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10 Mutually Enticing Opportunities and Durable Settlements . 10.1 Terms of Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.2 Cases for Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3 Analysis and Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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173 174 179 186 192

11 Negotiating with Terrorists and the Tactical Question . . . . . . . . . . 195 I. William Zartman and Tanya Alfredson 11.1 Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 11.2 Negotiations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198

Contents

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11.3 Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.3.1 Rwanda 1993 . . . . . . . 11.3.2 Kosovo 1989–1999 . . 11.3.3 Macedonia 2001–2003 11.3.4 Palestine 1993 . . . . . . 11.4 Decisions and Lessons . . . . . .

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199 199 204 211 213 218

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225 226 231 234 237

13 The State of Collapse . . . . . . . . . . . 13.1 State Collapse in Africa . . . . . 13.2 The Concept of State Collapse . 13.3 Putting Things Back Together . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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239 240 243 248 254

12 Analyzing Intractability 12.1 Process . . . . . . . . . 12.2 Geopolitics . . . . . . 12.3 Policy . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . .

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14 Challenges of Prevention and Resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257 14.1 Excuses and Responses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 14.2 Skills and Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260 15 Memories Between War and Peace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 Part III

I. William Zartman Essays on Governance

16 Systems of World Order . . . . . 16.1 Concept of Order . . . . . . 16.2 The Universality of Order 16.3 Orders as a Process . . . . . 16.4 Contemporary Concerns . 16.5 Order and Power . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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271 274 275 278 282 284 288

17 Justice in Decision-Making 17.1 Power and Justice . . . 17.2 The Argument . . . . . 17.3 The Problem . . . . . . . 17.4 The Evidence . . . . . . 17.5 Conclusions . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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293 294 295 297 298 311 314

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Contents

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317 319 322 323

19 Return to Theories of Cooperation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.1 Conflict and Cooperation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.2 Nature and Cooperation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.3 The Nature of the State System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.4 Limitations on Cooperation and Its Explanation: Kinship 19.5 Limitations on Cooperation and Its Explanation: Size . . . 19.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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325 326 328 329 331 334 336 337

20 Governance as Conflict Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20.1 The Nationalist Movement and the Suppression of Conflict . 20.2 Independence and the Social Contract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20.3 The Military and the Repression of Conflict . . . . . . . . . . . . 20.4 Ethno-regional and Socio-economic Demand Groups . . . . . 20.5 The Rise of Procedural Demands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20.6 The Future of Substantive Demands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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339 345 347 352 355 359 365 369

21 Alliance Formation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.1 Geopolitical—The Checkerboard . . . . . . . . . 21.2 Securitarian—The Neighborhood/The Family 21.3 Ideopolitical—The Club . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.4 Strategic—The Mechanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.5 Conclusions—Sources and Durability . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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371 372 372 374 376 377 377

22 National Interest and Ideology 22.1 Insecurity . . . . . . . . . . . . 22.2 National Interest . . . . . . . 22.3 Ideology . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22.4 Reconciling the Two . . . .

18 The Process of Social Reconciliation 18.1 The Elements of Reconciliation 18.2 The Ends of Reconciliation . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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379 380 382 386 395

23 Self and Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23.1 Zero- and Positive-Sum Worlds . 23.2 Remembrance of Sums Past . . . 23.3 Making Soft and Open Space . . 23.4 Building Integrative Identities . . 23.5 Negotiating Space and Self . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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401 401 403 406 409 411 414

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24 Putting Humpty Together Again . . . . . . . . . . . 24.1 Identity Principles and Conflict Solutions . 24.2 Formulas for Identity and Territory . . . . . 24.3 Formulas for Regimes and Institutions . . . 24.4 Roles for Insiders and Outsiders . . . . . . . 24.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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417 418 422 427 433 435 436

25 The Diplomacy of African Boundaries 25.1 Artificiality and Naturalness . . . . 25.2 Africanization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25.3 Problems and Prospects . . . . . . . . 25.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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439 440 442 444 449

26 Middle East Boundaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26.1 Territorial States, Sovereignty, and Borders 26.2 Regional State Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26.3 The Shape of Things to Come . . . . . . . . . . 26.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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451 452 457 458 462 463

27 Identity, Movement and Response 27.1 Borders and Borderlands . . . . 27.2 Dynamics and Reactions . . . . 27.3 Objects and Policies . . . . . . . 27.4 Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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28 Maghreb Matters . 28.1 The Concern . 28.2 The Interests . 28.3 The Needs . . 28.4 The Options . 28.5 Conclusion . .

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481 481 482 485 488 494

29 The Ubiquity of Prevention . . . . . 29.1 Who Done It? . . . . . . . . . . . 29.2 Security Conflict . . . . . . . . . 29.2.1 Territorial Conflict . 29.2.2 Ethnic Conflicts . . . 29.3 The First Line of Prevention References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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xxvi

Part IV

Contents

Critique

30 The Courage to Prevent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 519 Bruce Jentleson References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 521 About Johns Hopkins University . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 523 About the School for Advanced International Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525 About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529

Part I

About I. William Zartman

Chapter 1

An Autobiographical Essay

1.1

My Ancestors

There was no way of telling how it would turn out from the beginning, and that is the joy of the story. The stream of my life flowed around some boulders in its course, changed its path, and took off in new directions, scarcely foreseeable from its original spring. That’s the richest kind of flow, because it has its own eddies, ideas and surprises but also because it waters many banks and plains that wouldn’t be touched if it followed a concrete channel. Yet, at the same time there is no denying that one can find antecedents to the turns the stream took when confronted by new events, and even one main stream that gave a main course to the flow. The contexts made for the contours but the headwaters made the course comprehensible, in hindsight if not ahead. To begin with, I have not yet figured out why we are here on earth except by some marvelously inexorable evolution set in motion by the Supreme Being. But now that we are here, I do believe that we are charged with the care of the other parts of the creation than ourselves and that our purpose here is to contribute to making a better world. Creation, evolution and improvement are the grand lines that have been set behind and before us and wherein we find our place. My family was about as undiversified as they come, two Pennsylvania Germans who had never left America until after I had been abroad. Our ancestors came to America in 1728, from Ittlingen between the Neckar and the Rhine, probably fleeing nothing more than lean conditions and responding to a broadside from William Penn’s sons tacked on a wall announcing free land across the Atlantic; Alexander and Anna Catharina had just lost their second son and doubtless thought a new land would give them a new beginning. They found 350 fertile acres on the frontier in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, set to work on it, helped found a Lutheran church and then had another son, all within three years of their arrival. As the family grew, many members, including the first son, headed west, bit by bit, but

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 I. W. Zartman, I William Zartman: A Pioneer in Conflict Management and Area Studies, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06079-4_1

3

4

1 An Autobiographical Essay

Alexander II stayed on the homestead and founded a line that, at its core, never left the land. My Father, Ira Forry, broke from this mold with resoluteness in the early 1920s. He graduated from Muhlenberg College in 1923, something his own father never completely understood but his mother quietly urged, and eloped to New York, where he was in graduate school at NYU, to marry Edythe Grace Wenger, whose family roots followed a similar course since 1730. He was a son of a miller and she the daughter of a department store clerk in a small town. He was a home-raised scientist and went on to the University of California for his doctorate; she majored in French but didn’t finish college, yet in California became secretary to the eminent William Popper in Oriental Studies, his first secretary who didn’t know Hebrew (or Arabic); I use her dictionary. They then went back to Muhlenberg College, where Father founded the Physics Department, and in 1932, on the edge of the Depression, they had a son. Ira William, then, grew up in the middle-sized college and industrial town of Allentown. I was formed in my parents’ two traditions, from Father an inquisitive scientific mind that loved to dig deep into causes and never lost its childhood “Why?”, and from Mother a wider range of humanistic interests including French and music. My childhood was unremarkable, playing with neighborhood kids, going to church downtown where I had the leading role in a number of successive children’s plays, biking to school later on, making the annual trips down to the family’s Pennsylvania German roots around Lititz and Ephrata in Lancaster county on festive intervals, and going to Dorney Park for fancy rides on special occasions. We lived on the edge of Allentown civilization, overlooking Trexler Park, where my collie Lassie once killed a county-owned duck, and had a garden next to the cornfields where cock pheasants proudly paraded in their vibrant plumage just out of range of Lassie’s tether. One summer, when 9, I made a fine painter’s box for Mother in Father’s Physics Department workshop out of black walnut from the family’s woodlands in Lancaster County; Father had devised an ingenious way to hold the palette without smearing everything even when paints were still on it, and the box exists today with my paints in it. I attended art classes under the warm, paternal eye of Walter Emerson Baum of the Bucks County school, Allentown’s most famous painter. I still have some of my paintings from that time and a nice Baum landscape as well.

1.2

Baltimore—The War

Into this very normal life with its normal pleasures came the War, the first boulder in the placid course of the life’s stream. In 1939 we all were to go abroad, Mother’s dream, and I was taught French for the occasion, but the war loomed and we went to Florida instead, then to Johns Hopkins University for Father’s sabbatical work. We all became attached to Baltimore, and later spent some summer weeks on the Severn outside Annapolis learning to eat crabs and swim. But four years later,

1.2 Baltimore—The War

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Father was called to Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab on leave from Muhlenberg to join the team to make the proximity (VT) fuse and he commuted every week. In those formative years came a shift in parental orientations; the science side dropped away with Father and the humanities took over as junior high began. The arrangement was a bit of a strain on a Mother raising a teenager, and weekends were quarrelsome over household maintenance and repairs. In the end, the parents decided to move to Baltimore to make life easier. It was a new adventure to leave the home they had built on the outskirts of Allentown for a house in Baltimore near Hopkins, although curiously I didn’t feel any disorientation at having left my friends and being dumped into already established networks. In the school season, I biked to Roland Park School for 8th grade; it was just as well because the next year I was enrolled in an “Opportunity School” program at Baltimore City College (BCC), a historic high school with a 4 year advanced-placement program, three languages (French, German, Latin), pre-calculus, a newspaper and a drama club, and a short walk from home. It was a bright, diverse (but no Blacks) crowd, some of whom lived in the neighborhood. One neighbor was Charles Moylan, son of a judge and to become a federal judge himself, who played baseball in the crossroads before our houses and who grabbed my interest by talking politics. Another friend of influence was Bill Evans, who got me into the writing and layout for the BCC newspaper that I have never stopped since. One afternoon, at the end of 10th grade we were all in Brian Jones’ family room predicting our futures; Moylan was to be a judge of course and me they dismissed without debate as future professor. I didn’t believe it; I thought I would be a politician or a diplomat. The conversion was completed by a morning ritual: on a big plywood board in the dining room were two National Geographic maps of the European and Asian theatre of Operations, each crisscrossed by orange strings marking the battle lines that I adjusted each morning according to the daily news. It opened up new vistas, new names and languages, new places and countries. Beyond Allentown and Lititz, beyond Baltimore and Annapolis there was a whole congeries of other towns and cities, not that we didn’t know about it before but now they became part of America’s front and backyards, and our morning dining room. One of those mornings in early June 1944, a new line was tacked onto the mapboard on the coasts of Normandy. It moved steadily inland and then got stuck for the month between the village of Le Fresne-Camilly and the town of Caen. On a farm in the village, the Canadians from Juno Beach found a family of six children between 7 and 19; they set up a field hospital with a big red cross to protect it from air attack and took the youngest, little Marie-Danièle, on rides in their tank, until the parents returned by a frantic bike ride from Paris. All survived through the Battle of Caen that I had carefully recorded on my map board by keeping the string unmoved for a month.

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1935, already writing on my 4th birthday

I followed only 2 years of the BCC Opportunity because Father then returned to Allentown and Muhlenberg when the War ended. But our world had been too irrevocably broadened; the next year Father went back to JHU as a faculty member and I went along as a student, skipping 12th grade and entering directly into Hopkins as a freshmen (after the advanced program in Baltimore, Allentown didn’t have enough courses for me to take anyhow). Hopkins was wonderful. I entered political science under the wing of Malcolm Moos, who later became President Eisenhower’s speechwriter. I co-organized a congressional campaign (we lost) and became a ward executive, was inducted into UBK and ODK, was elected editor of the Hullabaloo (yearbook) and managing editor of the Newsletter and president of the Barnstormers, danced with Danilova in the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo’s Sheharazade (as a soldier of the Grand Vizir), and was the first (and last) in a new Hopkins program where you just keep on studying till you drop and get whatever degree you are at when you do. So I never got a BA but an MA instead, and so never graduated from college anymore than from high school, just kept on going.

1.3 Europe—The World Beyond

1.3

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Europe—The World Beyond

Graduation usually brings unforeseen turns in life’s course. What one does is to apply to opportunities and roll the dice, in this case to study overseas. I applied to all the good doctoral program in International Relations; Yale offered me more money than Harvard, Columbia and elsewhere, so I took it up on it. I also applied to English-speaking places abroad for a year since I had never practiced my French, German and Latin on the ground. Fulbright had just opened to Denmark and they went through all other applications to find the likely candidates. With my MA thesis on Schleswig-Holstein elections (chosen by another odd twist after a term paper on interwar German foreign policy), I was asked to a apply to a place whose language I never heard of, and off I went to Copenhagen. It was a wonderful year, eight years after the War’s end in a kind, rebuilding society, with side trips to Norway and Sweden for my thesis on Scandinavian neutralism. At the end of the school year I biked across northwest Europe (that I knew well from my War I maps) to attend Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, having got lodging in London and a ticket in the Indian Embassy section in youth hostels along the way. On my return, it was Yale’s turn. After a year in classes, my avuncular mentor Arnold Wolfers urged me to do a thesis on IR theory but I was stuck on my neutralism and so set off to explain its occurrence in France during the years of the formation of NATO and European unity after the War. This led me to Paris to interview the founders of Le Monde, Maurice Duverger, fellow travelers, and the political literati. On my return I started writing but was called in and told I was on the wrong track. So I trashed the draft, sat down and wrote the whole new version in one track, and marched to get my degree in June 1956, age 24. I settled down in my parents’ summer place near Annapolis to prepare my courses as a junior instructor at Yale.

1.4

Morocco—The Navy to See the World

The Yale doctorate was a major (and planned) turning point but it was to be unhinged by another, unexpected. That summer I received the usual postcard from “Friends and Neighbors” calling me to the military service. Not wanting to be an Army private, I ran to the Navy and entered Officer Candidate School in Newport RI, not far from New Haven and at the same time as I was to have begun teaching at Yale. Four months at OCS made me a Mister after having been a Doctor, then a year of schools in Jacksonville and Anacostia prepared me for air intelligence in the Pacific or the Atlantic. Only the Atlantic offered me a post in a foreign land, and so in February 1958 I flew to the base at Port Lyautey, less than 2 years after Moroccan independence. Another unexpected turn made me an adopted Moroccan for the rest of my life.

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I told myself that to grasp IR, I needed to add either USSR or the Third World to my palette, and so I made a list of things to do: learn Arabic, write a book, and travel in the area. The Navy part was without incident: I never went to sea and never flew, altho “brown shoe” (naval air), and was on a ship only once when I briefed the admiral, at anchor at Gibraltar! But when a new twist provided a chance to go with the Navy Christmas mail to West Africa, Henry Schuler and I went to Conakry (handwritten visa #138 after independence), Dakar and Bamako (not yet independent), places that were on my calendar in the years to come. The same year I was on an inspection visit to the NATO submarine base at Mers el-Kebir in Algeria (“an integral part of France”). I almost ended up teaching at Rabat University, thanks to the efforts of my “twin” (same age, same interests), Remy Leveau, the first French Ph.D. in Political Science, sent from France to help set up elections, but I was rejected by the French university administration as a dangerous interference. A group of us took our cars back and forth across the Atlas, including places where there were no roads, and toured the desert from Erfoud to Goulmima. The base at Kenitra (former Pt Lyautey) was a Franco-Moroccan base but across town was the base of the Moroccan Army Engineer Corps. The young officers were of the Promotion Mohammed V, the first class to graduate after independence. One day, the word went out to the Navy officers dress up and to go to town to take part in a ceremony; I didn’t take the bus but drove into town and was told “the officers were up there on the podium,” where I dutifully went, to find myself among the Moroccan officers, with my Navy colleagues outranking me down in front in the audience. I made many trips, mechouis, celebrations with the young Moroccan army officers. Two friendships have been everlasting. Mohammed Bouzoubaa was the favored son of a kind Fassi leather merchant; he left the army after a few years, became a Casablanca small businessman. One day, unusually, he called us in the US, mumbled a few awkward greetings, hung up and died soon after. Touched by this final farewell, we “adopted” his daughter as our “godchild;” Mohammed had Nejwa married before he died, and she went on to become a dental surgeon with doctorate at age 24 (and our implant dentist). We and our children have been constantly in touch. Mahfoudh Kamili, son of a tribal leaders’ family, stayed in the army, became the general in charge of the Engineering Battalion and built the berm across the Western Sahara for Hassan II. Unexpectedly, through one of the many turns in the flow, Morocco has become one of our second homes. One day, a French friend in Kenitra and I decided to go to a bullfight starring Dominguin and some bulls. My friend had a sweet sister and so, to be polite, I suggested we take her along. As she remembers it, I paid more attention to her than to the bulls, although I do remember the bullfight. It turned out (although I didn’t know it till much later) that she was the little girl of 7 who had ridden in the Canadian tank in Normandy, and so began another unforeseen twist in life’s course. Danièle Harmel would be with our group of explorers on our weekend excursions around Morocco; we would visit the mechouar (palace grounds) along with le Tout Rabat for horse shows and “jumpings” (a French word). When her mother went back to Normandy, Danièle moved to Rabat to be librarian in the American Cultural Center, and at the end of my tour in Morocco we were married in the town hall in

1.4 Morocco—The Navy to See the World

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Kenitra. That was not on my list when I came to Morocco two years before. Again, an eddy and a big happy surprise.

1.5

South Carolina—A New Introduction

After the religious wedding in Caen, Normandy, which Father was able to attend, we returned to Morocco so I could finish my books (they were on the list). We returned to Washington to be present as Mother passed away, and then I went back to Morocco to close the interviews and pack up, leaving Danièle, knowing no English, to comfort Father, knowing no French. In the meantime Dick Walker, who had set up a new IR program at the University of South Carolina, asked Arnold Wolfers for young faculty suggestions, and so in late August 1960 the river finally returned to its assigned course and I entered my prepared profession in an unexpected place. But the previous twist still made its effect felt: I was hired to teach IR, in which I was trained, but thanks to the intelligence work in the Navy, also to cover Africa and the Middle East, in which I had no formal academic training. Those two hats were to cover my academic head for the rest of my life—one conceptual and the other in area studies.

1962 on stage at University of South Carolina. Source Author’s personal photo collection

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South Carolina was another place where we never expected to be. Yankee Me had never been in The South and never heard of USC; for Danièle in Wonderland, it was down the Rabbit’s Hole but, also unexpectedly, a wonderful place to learn English, slowly (nonetheless, she did not pick up a Southern accent and in fact has never lost the French one). The IR Department was a feisty intruder into the USC establishment and we wrote audacious op-eds for a series in the newspaper. The two Moroccan books came out—Problems of New Power (1964) and Destiny of a Dynasty (1964), only the second academic studies of independent Morocco, preceded by Government and Politics in Northern Africa (1963). Morocco and the rest were less than a decade into their new independence and the meeting of established concepts and new issues in traditional societies posed a fascinating challenge. While I was doing this, Danièle taught French in two Black colleges (Allen and Benedict). We enjoyed Columbia, made warm and lasting friendships with Bill and Harriette Douglas and others, but we didn’t stay long. After two years we were back in North and West Africa on a Rockefeller grant in a Citroën 2-chevaux doing research for the next book, International Relations in the New Africa (1966). It gave me a chance to apply IR concepts to new states where such Western analysis was just beginning to be applied, and the book was dedicated to Arnold Wolfers. We started in Morocco; Bouzoubaa put our 2CV on the boat for us to Conakry and we drove on, spending one to two months each in Guinea, Ivory Coast, Ghana (and ready to go to Togo just when Olympio was assassinated and the borders closed), Mali, Senegal, Mauritania, reshipped the car to France, then to Tunisia and Algeria (on the first anniversary of independence, with lots of shooting going on, for fun!), where we finally sold the car; 2CV’s don’t have a mileage counter (nor a gas or oil gauge or radiator) so we don’t know how far it had taken us. We took our Ivorian cat, Gris-Gris, back to Normandy where he made deep impressions on the local female cat population. The book opened a new field; it has been reissued (1987) but never really replicated.

1970 with Saadia Touval, my “twin”, in Israel. Source Author’s personal photo collection

1.5 South Carolina—A New Introduction

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Although the study was very well reviewed, one reviewer said that it was energy wasted on an unimportant subject; the only relations that mattered for Africa were with Europe. So I said, OK, I’ll do a book on that, and I produced The Weak Confront the Strong: The Politics of Trade Negotiations between Africa and the European Economic Community (1971). It was a turning point for me, a natural one this time. In the last chapter I reviewed the state of conceptual literature on negotiations and finding it unrealistic and unhelpful, I invented a conceptual framework—I think “theory” is too high-sounding—of my own. It introduced a number of ideas that grew into trademark concepts (e.g. power as threat/warning and promise/prediction, concession and compensation, reference points and focal points) and above all emphasized the importance of analyzing negotiation as a process, as the explanitor of the outcomes. The book was the capital bridge and turning point for me between area studies and negotiation analysis.

1.6

New York—Biting the Big Apple

Soon after our return to Columbia, another new twist appeared, out of the blue. Dick Swift invited me to come to NYU for a year to teach about the UN, a bit odd since the UN had been in NY for two decades but I had never been. We moved to the Big Apple, and since we had planned for just one year, we took out subscriptions to the Met Opera (last year in the old building), City Opera, New York City Ballet, and ABT. At year’s end, I was invited to stay as a tenured professor and we kept the subscriptions. NYU was full of some new thinkers, such as Steve Brams and Kal Silvert, and some dead wood. Politics was not favored by the NYU administration, probably for the latter reason, but the classes were exciting, particularly during the late ‘60s when students challenged authority instead of taking lectures as the given word. Since I encourage participation in lectures and the Socratic method in graduate seminars, it was a relief. Unlike Columbia, we had a controlled ‘68 in Washington Square: the Provost said, “Never herd them into a cul-de-sac; always leave room to escape,” good piece of advice for a negotiation process as well as for street mobs. I was made associate director of Tom Frank’s Center for International Studies, which I didn’t rise to very well, and later was given license to launch a similar center, which didn’t take off the ground. However other opportunities for institution-building came up, opening up another new broad course and one at which I grew to enjoy and excel. Under the regional hat, things were more promising, if again in unexpected directions. Dean Bayly Winder was eager to push his colleagues in the newly forming Middle East Studies Association (MESA), strategically founded just before the June War, and was happy to find a Maghribist untainted by the Palestine dispute, and so I became the founding executive secretary. Three years later I was sent off to tour the Mideast, since I had never been east of Tunis, and I kept the job for 17 years, a pleasurable adventure into new areas. After an appropriate delay, Charles Butterworth managed to have me nominated president of MESA, during

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which year I established a committee on academic freedom after hearing a speech by President Carter calling for academics to monitor and defend their own working conditions. A bit later, presciently just before the October war, Ann Radwan at USIA decided that the time was ready for an American Overseas Research Center (AORC) in North Africa, like the American Research Center in Cairo (ARCE), Istanbul (ARIT) and elsewhere especially in the Mideast. The institute was to be backed by a consortium of US universities and run by academics working the area, but funded by USIS, later using the Council of American Research Centers (CAORC) as the pass-through. I was asked to chair the committee founding the American Institute of Maghrib Studies (AIMS), the first AORC to cover a region instead of a single state. I stayed on as president for 12 years, with George Sabagh as the diligent treasurer preparing the annual grant proposals. We soon established the actual overseas research center in Tunis (CEMAT), and soon engaged the marvelous services of Jeanne Mrad as resident director for 15 years. AIMS was a significant project bringing US and Maghribi scholars together (and bringing the latter in touch with each other in tense times). I began a book series published each year in the country of the annual quadripartite conference, and we developed new collaborations and academic friendships. In 1976 the old American Legation in Tangier, given to the US in 1821, was handed over to a new Society to house a museum and library, and I was invited to join the Board of Directors, mainly retired ambassadors more eager to suggest than to do. A few years later, during an interregnum among appropriate ambassadors I was elected president and then had a new constitution written which allowed me to stay in office for the next 27 years. However, the Tangier American Legation Museum Society (TALMS) had no real vocation, and no Tangier activity, although Bob Shea diligently kept the Legation alive; a museum with few visitors and a specialized library with few users was not a calling. It occurred to me that AIMS needed another Center in addition to CEMAT in Tunis, so the president of AIMS talked to the president of TALMS and I (being both) agreed that the Legation should become the Moroccan Center of AIMS, giving it a purpose as a research center, with USIA fellowship money and an outreach base. At the 200th anniversary of the Moroccan-America Friendship Treaty, we had a fine celebration with a port visit and the US Navy band playing “Begin the Beguin” in the Gran Socco (where it was originally inspired); that started our TALMS April Seminars on topics of joint US-Moroccan interest. Thor Kuniholm was the wonderful resident director for 15 years. Later TALMS completed its identity by changing its name to the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies (TALIM, which means “education,” with an odd letter missing, in Arabic, by inspiration of Diane Ponasik, our secretary). When I left, Dale Eickelman provided new leadership as president. It was my long association with Morocco (and perhaps later my support for the autonomy plan as a compromise solution for the Western Sahara), that earned me a commander positioning the Order of the Alouites from the hands of King Mohammed VI.

1.6 New York—Biting the Big Apple

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2000 upon the award of Commander in the Order of the Alawites by King Mohammed VI. Source Author’s personal photo collection

The area studies hat also produced calls from Washington, none of which worked out. I was proposed by Ambassador Bob Neuman as his successor in Rabat but the State Department closed ranks behind one of their own and Angier Biddle Duke came in. Gary Sick of Navy days proposed me for the NSC under President Carter but I didn’t share the idea that Namibian independence would reduce the pressure on South Africa (to the contrary, I knew). I was later proposed for the Policy Planning Staff under Dick Solomon but I felt that Chet Crocker had matters in hand and I had a book to finish. They all would have provided wonderful experiences but I have no regrets. Instead, I became All-University Chairman of the Politics Department at NYU, over the two campuses. I was able to do a bit of hiring, but it turned out that my main challenge was in firing junior staff in a University financial crunch of the mid-’70s. Elena Pelecani Arena was with me as one of my three great secretaries in my career. Danièle during this time used her USIA experience to win employment as the UN Collection librarian at NYU. We also broadened our NY experience by moving from our I M Pei apartment off Washington Square to a 1895 brownstone on Park Slope, Brooklyn, a block from Prospect Park. “We own a piece of New York City!” Danièle exclaimed. It was a fruitful time: upon buying the house, we went to the Aix en Provence Maghrib Research Center (CRESM) and on our return Alexander was born.

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1975, on the stoop of our Park Slope Brooklyn home, with Danièle and Alex. Source personal files

Earlier, after five years at NYU, I got a Fulbright to go to Algeria to do a study similar to the one on Morocco, analyzing the decision-making process in a number of key areas. Research went well but one day two men in trench coats came to the house we rented, ostensibly to inspect because it was government property, vacated by pieds noirs at independence; Danièle stood at the door and told them to go away. I carried all my notes to the Swiss Embassy, which acted for the US in the absence of relations. I continued work and then we went back to the CRESM in Aix en Provence. After a few weeks, I returned to catch up on a few loose ends, and that night, a knock on the hotel room door led me to the Military Security prison and interrogation; they took my shoelaces so I wouldn’t hang myself! The next day I was on a plane back to Aix. The experience shook me: If I were to write a critical book, one could say it was because I was jailed, but if I wrote a friendly-sounding book, one could say it was because I was jailed. I turned to other things, having already written an article (not unfriendly but accurate) in the Annuaire de l’Afrique du Nord that appeared just when I arrived, on “The Algerian Army in Politics.” However, I pledged not to go back to Algeria until the state invited me, travel paid. Within the year, we were visited by the Algerian deputy minister to the UN, who persisted in friendly contacts. He succeeded: we became great friends with Fatih Bouayad and his wife, Annick, a painter with Will Barnett who became our son Alexander’s godmother. I was invited back some years later for a Club of Rome conference, and we worked hard with courageous Annick to get Fatih free when his own government jailed for trumped up “reasons.”

1.6 New York—Biting the Big Apple

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My experience with the Africa-EEC book and the state of negotiation literature led me further into the conceptual forest to stake out a claim. I started with a review article on “The Political Analysis of Negotiation: How Who Gets What and When” in World Politics. I wanted to compile a collection of useful and basic negotiation literature, and approached Liz Knappman at Anchor Books. It was a time when negotiation analysis began to rise as a field to be filled, so it was no surprise that Oran Young came up with almost the same table of contents for his book (1975). Liz suggested something conceptual but more practical instead, and the resulting edited collection was The 50% Solution (1976). It set out the basic negotiation structure of formula and detail (diagnosis, the first phase, came in the next book), along with discussions and cases studies. Then, with support from AED and with the help of Maureen Berman, Bob Janosik and Marc Wall, I launched a project of interviews among UN ambassadors and put the data together in my statement of negotiation analysis, a structural strategy that informed the process and bridged the gap between concept and practice, The Practical Negotiator (1982), a year later than Roger Fisher’s more tactical Getting to Yes. The regional and conceptual hats then joined as I began to take part in the Council on Foreign Relations Africa program. Building on the idea of the stages through which negotiations proceed, I wanted to examine the necessary conditions for negotiations to take place: When can negotiations begin? Using four analytical studies (Horn of Africa, Western Sahara, Zaire, and Namibia), I put forward the theory of ripeness in Ripe for Resolution: Conflict and Intervention in Africa (1985, updated in paperback 1989, in French in 1990). The theory indicated that a mutually hurting stalemate and a shared sense of a way out were the necessary if insufficient conditions for negotiations or mediation to begin. As I further developed the idea, the condition for a successful ending involved developing the way out into a mutually enticing opportunity. In the cases studied, only Namibia showed ripeness and it translated the concept well into facts on the ground. After Algeria, I looked for other places to go and found a grant from another AORC, the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE), on the suggestion of Butterworth, with some teaching (about negotiation) at the American University in Cairo (AUC). The latter allowed us housing and administrative care arranged by the University and so, without bureaucracy to fight, Cairo was a wonderful adventure. It produced a few articles but an eye-opening contact with more of the Arab world, indeed the center of it—misr oom al-duniya (Egypt is the mother of the world), they say—and a chance to make visits elsewhere in the area as chair of the Fulbright Middle East Committee. It also gave Danièle a chance to work at the University of Chicago Center at Luxor as a bookbinder (where Alex and I got a chance to visit, as a dependants for the first time!); Alex went to a French kindergarten and also learned to ride horseback. Danièle had developed bookbinding and restoration as a job, making beautiful modern bindings and restoring old books and incunabulae for the Brooklyn Public Library.

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1979 with my wife Danièle in Cairo. Source Author’s personal photo collection

1.7

Washington—Capital of the World

We had decided that we didn’t want to raise a child in NY but had no plans at the moment. Sometime earlier, the director of ARCE had fallen in love with our house in Brooklyn and offered to buy if ever we wanted to sell, one of those offhand remakes. But, in another of those major channel changes in the course of life, while in Egypt I was proposed as a new director of the African Studies Program at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)—later to become the Paul H. Nitze School—of The Johns Hopkins University. As an undergrad, I had written the first article in the Hopkins Magazine on SAIS when it joined JHU and had worked with it on occasion, beginning with a chapter in Vernon McKay’s African Diplomacy (1966). Furthermore, Washington was the only place that could replace NYC. So we never returned to NYU, probably improperly but I figured that a sabbatical was the relief from the past 7 years, not a promise for 7 more. I wasn’t going to fight the changing river current, far from it. Washington was indeed a turning point: all the past currents came together and new branches opened up in profusion. We gave up our urban brownstone for a suburban 1851 farmhouse with an acre of land, trees, and a garden. Danièle became the restorer for the rare book collection of Georgetown University Library, a Jesuit university with some good old stuff to work on, in addition to providing us with garden-based autarchy. Alex went on to magnet schools and the International Bac

1.7 Washington—Capital of the World

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program, with French all the way through. To replace our 1818 and then 1905 historic houses in Annapolis, we got a beach house that we called Lewes Ends and an 1812 mill in the Shenandoah, on which, with our wonderful neighbor Marge Copenhaver, we prepared designation as a National Historic Landmark for the whole village of Opequon (6 houses, 20 people). But all this was possible through the enormous academic opening and opportunities that SAIS provided, beginning with the fine deanship of George Packard.

2001 The African Studies Program at SAIS, with Dr. Gilbert Khadiagala and Theresa Simmons. Source Author’s personal photo collection

SAIS gave me a chance to organize conferences and edit the results into books, create a program, associate a colleague in the activities, and then set up another new program of studies for the School. It provided a base from which I could find grants to do the conferences and books, above all the new US Institute of Peace but also others. Another association for support and camaraderie was the Brookings Institution across the avenue, where I worked with the brilliant director of their Africa Program, Frances Deng (and through him with Olesegun Obasanjo) and launched the idea of Sovereignty as Responsibility (1994) that became the notion,

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adopted by the UN, of R2P (Responsibility to Protect, whereby a state is responsible for its citizens’ welfare and other states have the responsibility to help it). As part of the Brookings Program, I also edited Governance as Conflict Managemen: Politics and Violence in West Africa (1997) that brought that responsibility into focus as the core of governance. Although I carried my Council on Foreign Relations work on Africa to Washington to direct the SAIS African Program, I also carried the negotiation work from NYU, insisting on Professor of International Politics as my title, and in three years I created a new concentration (major) for SAIS in Conflict Management. My three great junior associates in African Studies—Mike Schatzberg (who went to Wisconsin), Steve Stedman (who went to Stanford and was research director for the UN Millennial Summit in 2005), and Gilbert Khadiagala (who went to Witwatersrand)—shared my interest in Con Man (as we call it) as well. In a few more years I became the Jacob Blaustein Distinguished Professor of International Organization and Conflict Resolution, and in a few more year secured a further Blaustein grant to support the new program. Jacob Blaustein of Amoco was at San Francisco for the founding of the UN in 1945 and his heirs gave us good support. One element in the package was the underwriting of a new journal, International Negotiation (jIN), the only regular peer-reviewed academic journal published at SAIS, edited for over 25 years with skill and dedication by Bert Spector my former student; the editorial board consists of the founding member of an ongoing seminar, the Washington Interest in Negotiation (WIN) Group, including Dean Pruitt, Dan Druckman and Terry Hopmann, my fine successor in directing the Program. SAIS gave me the opportunity to work with my second great secretary, Theresa Taylor Simmons. The students at SAIS have been exciting, and I have kept up contacts with many of them, who are in a sense my adopted (and now grown up) children. I do miss teaching undergrads, but the level of work at SAIS has been highly rewarding. In the African Studies Program, I set up a summer internship program so that students could go to Africa for the summer for a research project of their own, initially to Kenya until they PNGed Schatzberg and required preregistration of our students, and then to Senegal which was smoothly accommodating. We used the West African Research Center (WARC) as our Dakar base. We also had a program, funded by the Equator bank, whereby a teacher from the majority from South Africa would come to SAIS for a year to teach the South Africa course, a great opportunity for both sides; one of then later was awarded membership the Society for Scholars, Hopkins’ highest award. I was put on the SoS committee to represent the School and have gotten some distinguished figures who served in a junior capacity at SAIS and went on to be famous—Hynd Bouhia, Bob Gallucci, Ibrahim Gambari, Jim Piscatori, Chet Crocker, among others. The North Africa initiative that had produced AIMS with CEMAT and TALIM as its Overseas Research Centers (AORCs) gave a model for other extensions. Mary Ellen Lane was the dynamic director of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC) who took an active role in expanding overseas research activities, with a special interest in Africa, where possibilities seemed great and no

1.7 Washington—Capital of the World

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such institution existed. I helped in the efforts to establish the West Africa Research Center (WARC), with WARAssociation as its US base and me as its founding treasurer. I was also involved in CAORC’s general activities, becoming its secretary and then vice-president, but the most important extension of its activities, I felt, was its brief launch into publication. AORCs sponsored research on usually single-state topics, but no one ever brought them together across areas into world-wide knowledge. I undertook such a project, factoring all recent grants to find the leading common topics and out of them picking the material for Understanding Life in Borderlands: Boundaries in Depth and in Motion (2010), the only work I ever edited that covered four millennia to bring out lessons across time and place.

2007 following a consultation with President George W. Bush. Source Author’s personal photo collection

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The conference series in African Studies allowed me to edit some important works for the SAIS African Library published by Lynne Rienner, pulling in a broad collaboration of colleagues in the Program and outside. An important contribution ahead of the curve was Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority (1995) that opened the study of fragile states, broadened somewhat immeasurably beyond the original focus. Another was Traditional Cures for Modern Conflicts: African Conflict “Medicine” (2000) that extended the endogenous knowledge inquiry into Africa’s contribution to conflict management, tying together my two hats. On the ConMan side, a number of programmatic innovations besides WIN and jIN were introduced. When students came back from a year in Bologna where they took a side trip to Sarajevo, they asked, “Where are we going this year?” I hadn’t thought much of it, but I had just come back from poll watching for IRI in Haiti, so I went back with 16 students for a week in January 2006, talked with some 35 people starting with President René Préval and edited a book of our analysis of the situation presented publicly in 4 months later. That pattern has continued year after year, and imitated by other SAIS Programs, taking us to Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Mindanao, Kosovo, Tunisia, Nagorno Karabakh, Colombia, Senegal, China, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Israel-Palestine, and going, a great learning experience. On another occasion, I learned that Strategic Studies, our opposite Program, had gone to a local high school with its simulation on impending war; I thought we could do better. I suggested to students a course in which they would teach conflict management to inner city middle school kids; there were a dozen takers the first year. They invented the 3 R’s: Recognize, Respect, Resolve, and called it PeaceKidZ (for Zartman, thank you). The program started with one semester of 9 lessons and expanded to be offered again the spring semester, with a dozen or more SAIS students doing the teaching in pairs. It has run for some 15 years and still going. School administrators say it makes a difference, our students find it an exhilarating challenge, and it is being picked up by the Homewood campus in Baltimore. The course has been a real outlet into challenging practice for SAIS students and an energizer for the kids. Isabelle Talpain-Long has been the administrator of PeaceKidZ as well as the Fields Trips and the ConMan Program, my third great secretary. I started other initiatives, like writing term papers for contracted use, picked up by my second successor, Dan Serwer, and others. The freedom to invent and the ready response of good students has made teaching so rewarding, as I continue into nearly 40 years at SAIS and a decade after my “retirement.”

1.7 Washington—Capital of the World

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2004 upon “retirement” from African Studies at SAIS, with Danièle. Source Author’s personal files

SAIS also gave us the chance to move out of Washington on occasion. On two different semesters, I got to teach at SAIS in Bologna where we all learned Italian and Alex fit right in an Italian public school under the direction of his devoted teacher, Giulia Lombardi. Twice I also taught in Sciences Pô in Paris, thanks to our great, erudite friend Jean Leca, introducing the work of François de Callières (1716) to his homeland universities; thanks again to Butterworth, we lived in the Maison Suger, a 15th century reconverted house two blocks from boulevards St Michel and St Germain. Leca, when elected president of the International Political Science Association, also appointed me as program director for the 1997 annual meeting in Seoul, an honor considering the difficulties.

1.8

PIN—A New World

Another new development, a major widening of the stream, carried me abroad. It focused my interests and changed the way I worked, and opened a whole continent, indeed a world of colleagues. During the first détente, the US and USSR looked around for something they could do together—conflict transformation—and came up with research centered on the concept of a system. After a struggle between Fontainbleau and Laxenburg, the hunting lodge of Maria Theresia won the contest to house the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) with

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Howard Raiffa as director, promising to create a negotiations program. The Processes of International Negotiation (PIN) Program was established with a small group of members: Victor Kremenyuk, who was sent by Sheverdnadze to find out why warring parties turned to the US for mediation but the other Russian disappeared; Jeff Rubin and myself; Gunnar Sjöstedt, and Ambassador Winfried Lang were soon joined by Guy-Olivier Faure of France, Rudolf Avenhaus of Germany and then by Paul Meerts of the Netherlands. Later two sad losses by death were Jeff Rubin and Winfried Lang; the latter was replaced by Franz Cede but we felt that the one person per country was the best formula for maintaining diversity and avoiding conflict, so I was left as the American. For a time, Bert Spector was resident director of the Program. So constituted, the PIN Steering Committee continued to operate into the 2000s. To me, PIN presented a wonderful opportunity to promote the study of negotiation outside the US, principally in Europe, and to further my own work around the subject. It brought me into the business of editing books in a major way, writing introductions and conclusions and sometimes a chapter. I am a tough editor (even a rewriter on occasion), but edited work allows the consolidation of knowledge and authority difficult for one author to attain and gives visibility to young scholars in good company. PIN conducted a number of activities. At IIASA we participated in the Young Scientists Summer Program, leaving the natural science programs with ideas about how to implement scientific projects in the policy world, and many of our YSSPs have gone on to solid positions. We carried our negotiation message to the COPs (Conferences of Parties) of the Framework Convention on Climate Change. We brought some significant groups to our annual workshops, most notably leading IR scholars for our SAGE Handbook. We held an annual workshop on a topic organized by one or two members, who then edited the results into a book. The rhythm of a book a year (not in a year) has been maintained and has given us the opportunity to bring in a widespread international group of contributors. The first book, International Negotiation: Approaches, Analyses, Issues (1991, second edition 2002) that won a best-book award from a major dispute settlement organization, combined our contributions with an additional 16 scholars and we chose to put Kremenyuk as the editor. Thereafter, we kept up the schedule, each of us taking on the job of organizing the workshop and editing the book, with review and participation by the whole group I edited Negotiating International Regimes: Lessons from UNCEF (1994) with Bert Sector and Gunnar Sjöstedt distilling traits from a large multilateral encounter; International Multilateral Negotiations (1994) about managing complexity beyond bilateral order; Power and Negotiation (2000) with Jeff Rubin on perceived asymmetry; Preventive Negotiations (for the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict) (2001) on negotiation before violence; Getting it Done: Post Agreement Negotiations and International Regimes (2004 with the support of USIP) with Bert Spector that redefined regimes as recursive negotiations rather than law compliance; Peace versus Justice: Negotiating Forward- and Backward-looking Outcomes (2005) with Victor Kremenyuk on the need to look ahead rather than simply salve old wounds; The Slippery Slope to Genocide: Reducing Identity Conflicts and Preventing Mass Murder (2012, with

1.8 PIN—A New World

23

support from the UN Office for the Prevention of Genocide) with Mark Anstey and Paul Meerts that called for anti-genocide policies to begin before the actual outbreak; Banning the Bomb or the Bang? Negotiating the CTBT (2014, with the support of the CTBTO) on the multilateral test-ban negotiations and subsequent inspection negotiations; Arab Spring: Negotiating in the Shadow of the Intifadat (2015) analyzing the course of the uprisings as negotiation; and How Negotiations End: Negotiator Behavior in the Endgame (2018), a path-breaking analysis of the other end of ripeness.

2003 making a serious point in Louvain. Source Author’s personal photo collection

At some point Kremenyuk, following the neo-Soviet line, declared I was an agent of American imperialism, that he was part of the Asian countries, and that PIN had produced nothing besides “his” book and should be dissolved. We accepted his resignation but the harm was done; PIN was terminated at IIASA after 17 years where we had outlived Peter de Janosi and had flourished under Leon Hordijk. We accepted the invitation of The Netherlands Institute of International Relations at Clingendael in The Hague and moved our biannual newsletter, PINPoints, now with substantive articles, and website. Victor had said that we were an irreplaceable group of famous authorities, whereas I said we were an institution and needed to continue our activities, with a “delegate” by country. We replaced him with Mikhail Troitskiy, and invited Rudolf Schüssler to succeed Avenhause and Cecilia Albin, a former YS, to succeed Sjöstedt; we added Valerie Rosoux from Belgium, Mark Anstey of South Africa, and Fen Osler Hampson of Canada to the

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Steering Committee and most recently Amrita Narlikar representing either UK or India. Thus PIN has continued through three decades and is still finding challenging aspects of negotiation—either conflict- or concept-related—where we can bring new light to the subject to enrich understanding and practice. It is certainly that work, and the kind attentions of Valerie Rosoux and Peter Wallensteen, that got me honorary doctorates, from the Catholic University of Louvain and the University of Uppsala, of which I am very proud. Occasionally, I did get some rare practical experience. I was proposed by Bruce Bagley, a most collegial initiative, to advise Virgilio Braco, newly elected to the presidency in Colombia, and I wrote the peace plan that figured in his inaugural address; the proposal was, simply, disarmament of the FARC rebels in exchange for participation in normal electoral life, a formula that was half the basis for the 2016 peace agreement three decades later (the other half was attention to the agrarian question in exchange for recognition of war crimes). I also joined Mwesiga Baregu in the Great Lakes Region in 1997 in preparing a report for the African heads of states on possibilities of peace in Congo, and joined Joyce Neu (in a bad cop good cop routine) to mediate the dispute among the three presidential claimants in Congo Brazzaville. In Washington, I joined Herbert Weiss, a fine old friend from NYU and the world’s best expert on Congo, to set up the International Watch on Zaire (IWZ, sic) to combine public interest, private expertise, and official policy; the monthly meetings continue as the Great Lakes Policy Forum a quarter century later. There is no doubt that these snippets of practical involvement and others contributed to making my efforts at making conceptualization practical. Once in my Negotiation Practicum class where I ask famous negotiators to give us their 10 maxims for success, Aaron Miller declared, “You can’t teach negotiation without having done it,” to the gasp of the class. To which I thought to answer, “Yes, I learned a lot from my experiences. In the end, they failed, but you would understand that!” As a result of teaching using counterfactuals as a chance to test concept of conflict management, I analyzed the problem of Cowardly Lions: Missed Opportunities to Prevent Deadly Conflict and State Collapse (2005) as related on Lebanon, Liberia, Somalia, Zaire, Yugoslavia and Haiti in the last decades of the century, evaluating neglected possibilities mooted at the time. The theme of prevention has run through many of my studies and a decade later I gathered much of my accumulated understanding of the challenge in Preventing Deadly Conflict (2015), which emphasized the unrecognized success of prevention, its difficulties and the need to address the problem early in the life of a conflict, and then turned to measures to be taken at various stages. I also undertook, with a long lost friend Ray Hinnebusch, an evaluation of the UN mediation efforts by Kofi Annan and Lakhdar Brahimi to UN Mediation in the Syrian Crisis (2016), emphasizing the importance of ripeness for even skilled negotiators.

1.8 PIN—A New World

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1990 with former president Jimmy Carter. Source Author’s personal photo collection

On a personal note, I have enjoyed painting as a relief and an expression, ever since the early training in Allentown by Walter Emerson Baum, and also woodwork —construction and sculpture—with our son Alexander and then his son Matthew ever since making that painting box as a youngster with my Father. Danièle and I and sometimes Alex have relished up-to-400-mile bike trips down rivers and across mountains. We began by following Hadrian’s Wall and back to Newcastle for Alex’ graduation, and then followed David Balfour’s escape from the Isle of Mull to Edinburgh in Robert Lewis Stevenson’s Kidnapped. We then pedaled down the Loire from its source to Orleans (with Warren Clark), down the Danube from its source near Oberzart (we couldn’t miss that) to IIASA in Vienna, down the Potomac, along the camino from St Jean Pied de Port across the Pyrenees through Asturia to Santiago de Compostella (it got us a papal injunction out of purgatory), and, last, through (not over) the Rockies at Jackson Hole, with Bill Douglas. We used to ski and used to sail my Rainbows, I Will and I Will II. Now it is a quieter time and I paint and enjoy music. I have conceived my calling as a teacher and a conceptualist. I left area studies, after obtaining a solid grounding, because there was not enough challenge in merely keeping up to date with events in a few countries, and I went beyond the book-of-proverbs stage of negotiation studies and the case concentration of diplomatic history: historians and novelists aside, no one is interested in what

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happened in the past except in order to learn more about how things should and could happen in the future. That challenge has kept me busy. I enjoy it (I told the graduation ceremony upon my “retirement,” “I have enjoyed teaching so much that I will keep on doing it. Only I will get paid less.”) and I dare hope that it has contributed to my goal, to make a better world.

2016 on a PIN Roadshow in Montenegro. Source Author’s personal photo collection

I was raised as a good Christian (thanks to my Mother, and a scientist, thanks to my Father) which means that I know how sinful and imperfect I am. It is and has been a good life, nonetheless, but I know that there is a better one and that I will be there, not through my own merit but through God’s grace and Christ’s sacrifice.

Chapter 2

Comprehensive Bibliography

2.1

Books Authored

Government & Politics in Northern Africa (Praeger, 1963; and Greenwood reprint, 1978). Destiny of a Dynasty (University of South Carolina Press, 1964). Morocco: Problems of New Power (Atherton, 1964). International Relations in the New Africa (Prentice-Hall, 1966; reprinted University Press of America, 1987). The Politics of Trade Negotiations Between Africa & the European Economic Community (Princeton, 1971). Africa in the 1980s: A Continent in Crisis (McGraw Hill, 1979) with Colin Legum, Steven Langdon, & Lynn Mytelka (Chinese edition, 1982). The Practical Negotiator (Yale, 1981) with Maureen Berman (Japanese edition, 1988). Ripe for Resolution: Conflict and Intervention in Africa (Council on Foreign Relations, Oxford 1985, 2nd ed., 1989; French edition, Harmattan, 1989). The Panama Canal Negotiations, with Mark Habeeb (SAIS Foreign Policy Institute, 1986). The Algerian Gas Negotiations, with Antonella Bassani (SAIS Foreign Policy Institute, 1987). Mediation in Middle East Conflicts, with Harold Saunders and Edward Azar (Syracuse University, 1987). Negotiations as a Mechanism for Resolution in the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Occasional Paper 72 (Leonard Davis Institute, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1999). Peace Agreements: The Case of Angola. Case Series 1, with Christine Knudsen, Alexander Mundt (ACCORD, Natal, Republic of South Africa, 2000). Cowardly Lions: Missed Opportunities to Prevent Deadly Conflict and State Collapse (Lynne Rienner, 2005). A Strategic Vision for Africa, The Kampala Movement, with Francis M Deng (The Brookings Institution, 2002). Negotiation and Conflict Management: Essays on Theory and Practice (Routledge Publishers, 2007). The Global Power of Talk: Negotiating America’s Interests, with Fen Osler Hampson (Paradigm Publishers, 2012). Preventing Deadly Conflict (Polity, 2015).

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 I. W. Zartman, I William Zartman: A Pioneer in Conflict Management and Area Studies, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06079-4_2

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2.2

2 Comprehensive Bibliography

Books Edited and Coauthored

Czechoslovakia Intervention & Impact (NYU Press, 1970). Man, State & Society in the Contemporary Maghrib (Praeger, 1973). The 50% Solution (Doubleday Anchor, 1976; Yale University Press reprint, 1987). The Negotiation Process: Theories and Applications (Sage, 1978). Elites in the Middle East (Praeger, 1979). Continent in Crisis, Africa in the 1980s, with Lynn Mytelka, Colin Legum, & Steven Langdon (McGraw-Hill). Political Elites in Arab North Africa (Longman’s, 1981). The Political Economy of Nigeria (Praeger, 1982). The Political Economy of Ivory Coast, with Christopher Delgado (Praeger, 1984). The Organization of Africa Unity after 20 Years, with Yassin El-Ayouty (Praeger, 1984). The Political Economy of Cameroon, with Michael Schatzberg (Praeger, 1985). International Mediation in Theory and Practice, with Saadia Touval (Westview, 1985). Positive Sum: The Political Economy of North-South Negotiations (Transaction, 1987). Political Economy of Morocco (Praeger, 1987). Beyond Coercion: The Durability of the Arab State, with Adeed Dawisha (Croom Helm, 1988). Resolving Regional Conflicts: International Perspectives, special issue #518, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences (AAPSS, 1991). Conflict Resolution in Africa, with Francis Deng (Brookings, 1991). Tunisia: The Political Economy of Reform (Lynne Rienner, 1993; French edition, CERES Editions, 1992). Europe and Africa: The New Phase (Lynne Rienner, 1992). Political Islam, special issue #522, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, with Charles Butterworth (AAPSS, 1992). Les experiences d’intégration regionale dans les pays du Tiers-monde, with Sadok Belaid (CERP, 1993). Polity and Society in Contemporary North Africa, with Mark Habeeb (Westview, 1994). International Multilateral Negotiation: Approaches to the Management of Complexity (Jossey-Bass, 1994; in Japanese, Keio U P, 2000). Cooperative Security: Reducing Third World Wars, with Victor A Kremenyuk (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1994). Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1995). Elusive Peace: Negotiating and End to Civil Wars (Brookings, 1995). Sovereignty as Responsibility: Conflict Management in Africa (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1996). Governance as Conflict Management: Politics and Violence in West Africa (Brookings, 1996). International Negotiation: Actors, Structure/Process, Values, with Peter Berton & Hiroshi Kimura (St. Martin’s, 1999). Islam and the State, with Charles Butterworth (Cambridge University Press, with the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, 2000). Preventive Negotiation: Avoiding Conflict Escalation (Rowman & Littlefield, 2001, for the Carnegie Commission for the Prevention of Deadly Conflict). Peacemaking in International Conflict: Methods and Techniques, with Lewis Rasmussen (United States Institute of Peace, 1997; 2nd ed., I William Zartman ed., 2001). Power and Negotiation, with Jeffrey Z Rubin (University of Michigan Press, 2000). Getting It Done: Post-Agreement Negotiation and International Regimes, with Bertram I Spector (United States Institute of Peace Press, 2003). Rethinking the Economics of War: The Intersection of Need, Creed and Greed, with Cynthia Arnson (Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005).

2.2 Books Edited and Coauthored

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Peace Versus Justice: Negotiating Forward- and Backward-Looking Outcomes, with Victor Kremenyuk (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005). Negotiating with Terrorists (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2005, revised edition). Escalation and Negotiation in International Conflict, with Guy Olivier Faure (Cambridge University Press, 2005). Getting In: Mediators’ Entry into the Settlement of African Conflicts, with Mohammed Maundi (United States Institute of Peace Press, 2006). Diplomacy Games: Formal Models and International Negotiations, with Rudolf Avenhaus (Springer, 2009). Understanding Life in the Borderlands: Boundaries in Depth and in Motion (University of Georgia Press, 2009). Imbalance of Power (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2009). SAGE Handbook of Conflict Resolution, with Jacob Bercovitch & Victor Kremenyuk (SAGE, 2009). International Cooperation: The Extents and Limits of Multilateralism, with Saadia Touval (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Timing Mediation Initiatives, with Alvaro deSotoo (USIP for UN DPA MSU, 2010). Negotiating with Terrorists: Strategy, Tactics, and Politics, with Guy Olivier Faure (Routledge Publishers, 2010). Engaging Extremists: Trade-offs, Timing and Diplomacy, with Guy Olivier Faure (United States Institute of Peace Press, 2011). Peacemaking in West Africa, special issue, African Conflict and Peace Review I, 2 (Fall, 2011). The Slippery Slope to Genocide: Reducing Identity Conflicts and Preventing Mass Murder, with Paul Meerts and Mark Anstey (Oxford University Press, 2012). Banning the Bang or the Bomb? Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Negotiations, with Mordechai Melamud, and Paul Meerts (Cambridge University Press, 2014). Arab Spring: Negotiating in the Shadow of the Intifadat (University of Georgia Press, 2015). How Negotiations End: Negotiator Behavior in the Endgame (Cambridge University Press, 2019).

2.3

Articles and Chapters

“Makers of Music,” Johns Hopkins Magazine II (April 1951). “Whither the Draftable College Man,” Johns Hopkins Magazine II (June 1951). “Neutralism and Neutrality in Scandinavia,” Western Political Quarterly VII 7:125–160 (June 1964). “The Professors and the Election,” The Johns Hopkins Magazine VI 2:14–18 (June 1956). “French Communist Foreign Policy,” Western Political Quarterly IX 2:344–362. “Communist China and the Arab-African Area,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings LXXXVI 9:23–31. “The King in Moroccan Constitutional Law,” Muslim World LIX 2:129–136 and 3:183–188 (April and July 1962). “Tiger in the Jungle: Communist China in Africa,” Current Scene II 6:1–11 (6 August 1962). Reprinted in Harper, ed., This is China (Dragonfly, 1965). “Les problems posés par l’arabisation,” Confluent VIX 26:766–778 (December 1962). Reprinted in Rivlin & Szyliowicz, eds., The Contemporary Middle East (Random, 1965). “The Sahara: Bridge or Barrier,” International Conciliation 541:1–62 (January 1963). Reprinted in Ronald Steel, ed., North Africa (Wilson, 1967). “Moroccan Agriculture and Land Ownership,” Land Economics XXXIV 2:187–198 (May 1963). “Communism in Africa,” Kirkpatrick, ed., Strategy of Deception (Farrer Strauss, 1963, also Book of the Month).

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2 Comprehensive Bibliography

“A Disputed Frontier is Solved (Mali-Mauritania),” Africa Report VIII 8:13–14 (August 1963) and Correction IX 3:31 (March 1964). “URTNA, Joint Approach to Media-Building,” Africa Report VIII 8:20 (August 1963). “Mushkilat at-ta’rib fi madaris al-maghrib,” Hiwar I 6:14–22. “Counter-Insurgency in Portuguese Guinea,” Monograph (Special Operations Research Office, American University, 1964). “Africa’s Quiet War in Portuguese Guinea,” Africa Report IX 2:8–12 (1964). “Les relations entre la France et l’Algérie,” Revue française de science politique XIV 6:1087–1113 (December 1964). “The Moroccan American Base Negotiations,” Middle East Journal XVIII 1:27–40 (Winter 1964). “The Monarchy and the Constitution in Morocco,” II Politico XXX 1:126–134 (1965). “Morocco,” XV Focus 6:1–6 (February 1965). “The Nature of the Moroccan Monarchy,” Studies in Islam II 3:127–143 (July 1965). “The Politics of Boundaries in North and West Africa,” Journal of Modern African Studies III 2:155–174 (August 1965). Reprinted in McEwan, ed., Twentieth Century Africa (Oxford, 1970). “Problems in American Policy Toward Africa,” Motive XXVI 4:48–50 (January 1966). “Mauritania’s Stand on Regionalism,” Africa Report XI 1:19–37 (January 1966). William Lewis, ed., French-Speaking Africa (Walker, 1965). “North African Foreign Policy,” in L Carl Brown, ed., State & Society in Independent North Africa (Middle East Institute, 1966). “Algerian Army in Politics,” in Welch, ed., Soldier & State in Africa (Northwestern University Press, 1970). “Connaissance et étude du Maghreb aux Etats-Unis,” Maghreb 16:39–43 (July–August 1966). “National Interest and Ideology,” in McKay, ed., African Diplomacy (Praeger, 1966). “Morocco’s Modernizing Monarchy,” in John Mikhail, ed., Political Modernization in the Middle East and North Africa (Princeton University Press). “Rapports entre le Maghreb et l’Afrique,” Maghreb 19 (January–February 1967). “Political Pluralism in Morocco,” Government and Opposition II 4:568–83 (Fall 1967). “The Mediterranean: Bridge or Barrier,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings XCIII 2:63–71 (1967). “Guinea: The Quiet War Goes On,” Africa Report XII 8:62–72 (November 1967). “L’Armée dans la politique algérienne,” 1967 Annuaire de l’Afrique du Nord 265–78. “North Africa and the EEC Negotiations,” Middle East Journal XXII 1:1–15 (Winter 1968). “Intervention among Developing States,” Journal of International Affairs XXII 2:188–197 (1968). “A New View of Vietnam,” with David Hapgood. CIS Policy Papers, II 6 (October 1968). “Les elections departementales algeriennes,” Annuaire de l’Afrique du Nord 312–27 (1969). “Military Elements in Regional Unrest,” in J C Hurewitz, ed., Soviet-American Rivalry in the Middle East (Praeger, 1969). “The Politics of African Boundaries,” in Carl Widstrand, ed., African Boundaries (Uppsala, 1969). “Africa as a Subordinate State System in International Relations,” International Organization XXI 3:(Summer 1967). Reprinted in Doro & Stultz, eds., Governing Black Africa (Prentice-Hall, 1970). “The EEC’s New Deal with Africa,” Africa Report XV 2:28–31 (February 1970). “Revolution and Development,” Civilizations XX 2:181–99 (1970). “Refugees in West Africa,” in Hugh Brooks & Yassin El-Ayouty, eds., Refugees South of the Sahara (Negro Universal Press, 1970). “Decision-Making Among African Governments on Inter-African Affairs,” Journal of Development Studies II 2: 98–119 (January 1966). Reprinted in Doro & Stultz, eds., Governing Black Africa (Prentice-Hall, 1970). “The African State System,” in Louis Cantori & Stephen Spiegel, eds., The International Politics of Regions (Prentice-Hall, 1970). Spinelli, ed., Conflitti & Sviluppo nel Mediterraneo (Istituto Affari Internazionale, 1970).

2.3 Articles and Chapters

31

“Algeria: A Post-Revolutionary Elite,” in Frank Tachau, ed., Elites & Development in the Middle East (Schenkman, 1975). “An Economic Indicator of Socio-Political Unrest,” With James Paul & John Entelis, International Journal of Middle East Studies II 4:293–310 (October 1971). “The Southwest Shore,” International Journal XXVII 4:593–605 (Autumn 1972). “Morocco,” in Blaustein & Flanz, Constitutions of the Countries of the World (Oceana, 1971). “The Political Analysis of Negotiations: How Who gets What and When,” World Politics XXVI 3:385–399 (April 1974). “The Study of Elite Circulation: Who’s on First and What’s He Doing There?,” VI Comparative Politics 3:465–83 (April 1974). “Negotiations: Theory and Reality,” XXIX Journal of International Affairs 1:69–78 (Spring 1975). “The Elites of the Maghreb,” VI International Journal of Middle East Studies 4:495–504 (October 1975). “La politique étrangère libyenne,” with Aureliano Buendia, in M Flory, ed., La Libye nouvelle (CNRS, 1975). “Africa,” in James Rosenau, Kenneth Thompson, & Gavin Boyd, eds., World Politics (Free, 1976). “The African State System,” in Yassin el-Ayouty, ed., The OAU After 10 Years (Praeger, 1975). “Inflazione e Scelte Politiche,” in Adachiara Zevi, ed., Europa-Mediterraneo: Quale Cooperazione (Istituto Affari Internazionale, 1975). “African Subordinate State System,” in Richard Falk & Saul Mendlovitz, eds., Regional Politics and World Order (Freeman, 1973). “Political Science,” in Leonard Binder, ed., The State of the Art of Middle East Studies (Wiley, 1976). “Negotiating the Lome Agreement,” in Alting von Geusau, ed., The Lome Convention & The New International Economic Order (Sijtof, 1977). “Europe and Africa: Decolonization and Dependency,” Foreign Affairs LIV 2:325–343 (January 1976). “Africa,” in Zbigniev Brzezinzki & William Overholt, Global Political Analysis (biennial 1976– 1979) (Columbia University Research Institute on International Change). “U.S. Foreign Policy and the Iberian Peninsula: Strategic Alternatives,” in Riordan Roett, ed., National Security Policy Issues and Contemporary Portugal (Washington Center for Foreign Policy Research, 1977). “Les transferts d’armements en Afrique,” VIII Etudes Internationales 3:478–86 (1977). “Ottoman Turkey and the Maghreb in the 19th & 20th Centuries,” with Serif Mardin, XX Items 4:61–66 (December 1976). “Algeria,” in Colin Legum, ed., Africa Contemporary Record (Africana, yearly since 1979). “Negotiation as a Joint Decision-Making Process,” XXI Journal of Conflict Resolution 4:619–38 (December 1977). “Morocco,” in Human Rights Conditions in Selected Countries and the U.S. Response (prepared for the House Committee on International Relations, 25 July 1978). “Pouvoir et État dans l’Islam,” Pouvoirs 12:5–14 (Les Regimes Islamiques, January 1980). “Boundaries and Nations,” XXIX Focus 4:2–7, special issue, The Sahara; Zartman ed. (March– April 1979). “The African States as a Source of Change,” in Richard Bissell & Chester Crocker, eds., Southern Africa into the 1980s (Westview, 1979). “Foreign Policy Dynamics of Countries Great and Small in Africa and the South African Issue,” in International Affairs Bulletin IV 5:18–25 (1980). “Explaining Reconciliation,” in Jeffrey Rubin, ed., The Dynamics of Third Party Intervention: Kissinger in the Middle East (Praeger, for the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, 1980).

32

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“The Future of Europe in Africa: Decolonization or Dependency?,” in Timothy Shaw, ed., Alternative Futures for Africa (Westview, 1981). “Coming Political Problems in Black Africa,” in Jennifer Whitaker, ed., Africa and the United States: Vital Interests (New York University Press, 1978; French edition, Harmattan, 1981). “Aspects politiques de l’étude de l’urbanisation en Algérie,” in Rassam & Abdelqader Zghal, eds., Système urbain et dèveloppement au Maghreb (CERES, 1981). “The Power of American Purposes,” XXXV Middle East Journal 2:163–177 (Spring 1981). “Statement, before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Africa Subcommittee, Libya-SudanChad Triangle: Dilemma for US Policy (29 October 1981). “Conflict in the Sahara: Options for an Outside Power,” SAIS Review (Winter 1982). “Issues of African Diplomacy in the 1980s,” Orbis XXV 4:1011–1024 (Winter 1982). “The USSR and the Third World.” Problems of Communism (September–October 1982). “Arms Imports-The Libyan Experience,” World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers 1971– 1980 (ACDA, 1983). “For an Appropriate Alternative to an American Peace Academy,” Testimony Before the U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources. 97th Cong., 2nd Session, 16 March 1983. “The Sources and Goals of Qaddafi’s Foreign Policy,” with A.G. Kluge, American Arab Affairs 6:59–60 (Fall 1983). “What’s at Stake in Chad,” in XXVI Worldview 11:4–7 (Nov. 1983). “MESA Presidential Address: Policies and Paradigms in the Middle East,” MESA Bulletin (June 1983). “Explaining the nearly Inexplicable: The Absence if Islam in Moroccan Foreign Policy,” in Adeed Dawisha, ed., Islam in Foreign Policy (Cambridge, 1983). “Pouvoir et État dans l’Islam,” Pouvoirs 12:5–14 (1984). Bissell & Rada, eds., Africa in the Post-Decolonization Era (Transaction, 1984). “Global Negotiations: Path to the Future or Dead End Street,?” with John Sewell, in Jagdish Bhagwati & John Ruggie, eds., Power Passions and Purpose: Prospects for North-South Negotiation (M.I.T. Press, 1984). “Profiles of Conflict: A Methodological Note,” in J David Singer & Richard J Stoll, eds., Quantitative Indicators of World Politics (Praeger, 1984). Taylor, Maaranen & Gong, eds., Strategic Responses to Conflict in the 1980s (Lexington Books 1984, for the Center for Strategic and International Studies). “The USA-Africa—Themes and Challenges,” in Marcel Daneau, ed., L’Afrique: Enjeu des grandes puissances et des puissances regionales (Centre Quebecois des Relations Internationales, 1984). “The Strategy of Preventive Diplomacy in Third World Conflicts,” in Alexander George, Managing U.S.-Soviet Rivalry (Westview, 1984). “Negotiation: Theory and Practice,” in Diane BenDahmane & John McDonald, eds., International Negotiation: Art & Science (Department of State Foreign Service Institute, 1984). “Africa and the West: The French Connection,” in Bruca Arlinghaus, ed., African Security Issues (Westview, 1984). “Global Negotiations: Path to the Future or Dead-End Street,” with John Sewell, VI Third World Quarterly 2:374–410 (Apr. 1984). “L’élite algerienne sous le President Chadli BenDjedid,” Maghreb-Machrek 106:37–53 (October 1984). “Maghrebi Politics and Mediterranean Implications,” in Giacomo Luciani, ed., The Mediterranean Region (Croom, Helm, 1984). “Negotiating from Asymmetry: The North-South Stalemate,” I Negotiation Journal 121–138 (April 1985). “International Mediation: Conflict Resolution and Power Politics,” with Saadia Touval, XXXXI Journal of Social Issues 2:27–45 (1985). “The Cultural Dialectic,” in Halim Barakat, ed., Contemporary North Africa (Croom Helm, 1985).

2.3 Articles and Chapters

33

“International Mediation: Conflict Resolution and Power Politics,” with Saadia Touval, Journal of Social Issues, XXXXI 2:27–46 (1985). “Strengthening the OAU,” in Onwuka, Abegunrin, & Ghista, eds., African Development (Breuncwick, 1985). “Northern and Western Africa: Past Trends and Future Prospects,” in Timothy Shaw & Olajide Aluko, eds., Africa Projected (Macmillan, 1985). “Conflict in Chad,” in Arthur Day & Michael Doyle, eds., Escalation and Intervention (Westview, 1986). “Practitioners’ Theories of International Negotiation,” II Negotiation Journal 3:299–310 (July 1986). “Algeria Today and Tomorrow: An Assessment,” CSIS Africa Notes 65:1–10 (November 1986). Diane Ben Dahmane & John McDonald, eds., Perspectives on Negotiation (Department of State Foreign Service Institute, 1986). “Negotiating the Lome Convention,” in Carol Cosgrove & Jamar, eds., European Community’s Development Policy: The Strategies Ahead (Bruges: De Tempel, 1986). “Practitioners’ Theories of Negotiation,” Negotiation Journal II 3:299–310 (1986). “Multilateral Negotiations,” Encyclopedia of Law and Social Science. UNESCO. “Algerian Army in Politics,” in John Harbeson, ed., The African Military in Politics (Praeger, 1987). “The Middle East—The Ripe Moment?,” in Gabriel Ben-Dor & David Dewitt, eds., Conflict Management in the Middle East (Lexington, 1987). “Foreign Relations of North Africa,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 489:13–27 (January 1987). “The Impact of Oil Price Collapse in Algeria: An Overall Security Assessment,” in G Henry & M Schuler, eds., The Strategic Consequences of the Oil Price Collapse (CSIS, 1987). “Timing and Process: Principles of Conflict Management,” VII American Journal of Social Psychiatry 3:177–180 (Summer 1987). “Common Elements in the Analysis of the Negotiation Process,” IV Negotiation Journal 1:31–44 (January 1988). “Negotiations in South Africa,” XI Washington Quarterly 4:141–58 (Autumn 1988). “Why Africa Matters,” CSIS Africa Notes 86 (30 June 1988). “Alternative Attempts at Crisis Management: Concepts and Processes,” in Gil Winham, ed., New Issues in International Crisis Management (Westview, 1988). “Soviet-Maghreb Relations in the 1980s,” in Roger Kanet & Edward Kolodziej, eds., The Limits of Soviet Power in the Developing World: Thermidor in the Revolutionary Struggle (Macmillan, 1988). “The Beginning, The Middle and the End,” in Joseph Montville, ed., Conflict and Peacemaking in Multi-Ethnic Societies (Lexington, 1989). “Introduction,” in John McDonald & Diane Bendahmane, eds., U.S. Base Negotiations (Westview, 1989). “Mediation in International Conflicts,” with Saadia Touval, in Kenneth Kressel & Dean Pruitt, eds., Mediation Research (Jossey Bass, 1989). “African Insurgencies: Negotiation & Mediation,” Intelligence Research Report 206 (U.S. Department of State, 1 June 1989). “Prenegotiations: Phases & Functions,” XLIV International Journal 2:237–53 (Spring 1989). “Processes of International Prenegotiation,” XLIV International Journal 2: 231–36 (Spring 1989). “Negotiations in Ethnic Conflict: The Beginning, the Middle and the Ends,” in Joseph Montville, ed., Conflict and Peacemaking in Multiethnic Societies (Heath Lexington, 1990). “Negotiating Effectively with Terrorists,” in Barney Rubin, ed., The Politics of Counter-Terrorism (SAIS Foreign Policy Institute, 1990). “Prenegotiation: Phases and Functions,” in Janice Stein, ed., Getting to the Table (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989). “Opposition as Support of the State,” in Giacomo Luciani, ed., The Arab State (Routledge, 1990).

34

2 Comprehensive Bibliography

“Foreign Policy of Libya,” with Alouette Kluge, in Dessouki & Korany, eds., The Foreign Policies of Arab States (Westview, 1984; 2nd ed., 1990). “Negotiations and the South African Conflict,” XI SAIS Review 1:113–32 (Winter 1991). “Common Elements in the Approaches to Negotiation Analysis,” in Jeffrey Rubin & William Breslin, eds., Negotiation Theory and Practice (Harvard Program on Negotiation, 1991). “Negotiation and the South African Conflict,” in Louise Nieuwmeijer & Fanie Cloete, eds., The Dynamics of Negotiations in South Africa (Human Sciences Research Council, 1991). “Cooperation in North Africa,” in Roger Kanet & Edward Kolodziej, eds., The Cold War as Cooperation (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991). Bahgat Korany, Noble & Rex Brynen, eds., The New Face of National Security in the Arab World (Macmillan, 1991). “Structure” and “Regional Conflict Negotiations,” in Victor Kremenyuk, ed., International Negotiation: Analysis, Approaches, Issues (Jossey-Bass, 1991, 2nd edition 2001). “Conflict and Resolution: Contest, Cost, and Change,” Annals of the American Academy of Political & Social Science 518: 11–22 (November 1991). “International Environmental Negotiations: Challenges to Negotiation and Practice,” VIII Negotiation Journal 2:113–24 (April 1992). “Lessons for Analysis and Practice,” in Gunnar Sjöstedt, ed., International Environmental Negotiation (Sage, 1992). “Negotiating the Arab-Israei Conflict,” in Steven Spiegel, ed., The Arab-Israeli Search for Peace (Lynne Rienner, 1992). “Mediation,” in Brown & Schraub, eds., Resolving Third World Conflict (U.S. Institute of Peace, 1992). “Diplomacy,” in Mary Hawkesworth & Maurice Kogan, eds., Encyclopedia of Government and Politics (Routledge, 1992). “Mediation by Regional Organizations: The OAU in Chad,” with Samuel Amoo, in Jacob Bercovitch & Jeffrey Rubin, eds., Mediation in International Relations (Macmillan, 1992). “Internationalization of Communal Strife: Temptations and Opportunities of Triangulation,” on Manus Midlarsky, ed., The Internationalization of Communal Strife (Macmillan, 1992). “Moments of Ripeness,” in Paul Kriesberg & Thorson, eds., Timing the Deescalation of International Conflicts (Syracuse, 1992). “International Environmental Negotiations: Challenges for Analysis and Practice,” Negotiation Journal VIII 2:113–124 (April 1992). “The Unfinished Agenda: Negotiating Internal Conflicts,” in Roy Licklider, Stopping the Killing (New York University Press, 1993). “Pre-Negotiation Phases and Functions,” in Janice Stein, Getting to the Table (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). “A Skeptic’s View,” in Guy Olivier Faure & Jeffrey Z Rubin, eds., Culture and Negotiations (Sage, 1993). “Mediation: The Role of Third Party Diplomacy and Informal Peacemaking,” with Saadia Touval, testimony before the CSCE, at the US Congress (14 October 1993). “‘Ripeness’ for Negotiation,” in Robin Twite & Tamar Herman, eds., The Arab-Israeli Negotiations (Papurus/Steinmetz Center, 1993). “Decision Support and Negotiation Research,” in Bertram I Spector, ed., Supporting Negotiations: Methods, Techniques, and Practice (IIASA, October 1993). “Changing Forms of Conflict Management,” in Robert Slater, Barry Schutz, & Steven Dorr, eds., Global Transformation and the Third World (Lynne Rienner, 1993). “Putting the State Back Together,” SAIS Review XIII 249–58 (Summer 1993). “The Challenge of Democratic Alternatives in the Maghreb,” in John Ruedy, ed., Islam and Secularism in North Africa (St Martin’s, 1994). “Local Negotiations in South Africa,” in Stephen Stedman., ed., South Africa: The Political Economy of Transformation (Lynne Rienner, 1994).

2.3 Articles and Chapters

35

“Dynamics and Constraints in Negotiations in Internal Conflicts,” in Louise Nieuwmeijer & Renée du Toit, eds., Multilateral Conflict Management in Changing Societies (HSRC, 1994). “Forward,” in Zaki Laidi, ed., Power and Purpose after the Cold War (Berg, 1994). “The Role of Justice in Security Negotiations,” American Behavioral Scientist XVIII 6:889–903 (1995). “Asymmetrical Negotiations: Some Survey Results that Might Surprise,” with Jeffrey Z Rubin, Negotiation Journal XI 4:349–364 (October 1995). “The Large Small War in Angola,” with Christine Knudsem, in W J Olson, ed., Small Wars, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 541:130–143 (September 1995). “African Regional Security and Changing Patterns of Relations,” in Edmond Keller & Donald Rothchild, eds., Africa in the New International Order (Westview, 1996). “The United Nations Response,” in Richard B Parker, ed., The Six-Day War (University Pres of Florida, 1996). “International Mediation after the Cold War,” with Saadia Touval, in Chester Crocker, Fen Hampson & Pamela Aall, eds., Managing Global Chaos (United States Institute of Peace, 1996). “Two Koreas’ Negotiating Strategies Revisited: Focusing on the Nuclear Issue,” with Narushige Michishita, in Byong-Moo Hwang & Young-Kwa Yoon, ed., Middle Powers in the Age of Globalization (Korean Association in International Studies, 1996). “The African State,” in Vasu Gounden, ed., State Sovereignty and Responsibility: African Solution for African Problems (African Center for Constructive Resolution of Disputes, 1996). “In Search of the New World Order,” in Han Sung-Joo., ed., The New International System: Regional and Global Dimensions (Ilmin International Relations Institute, 1996). “Negotiation as a Search for Justice,” International Negotiation I 1:79–98 (1996). “The State on a Tightrope,” in Dirk Vandewalle, ed., North Africa: Development and Reform in a Changing Global Economy (St Martin’s, 1996). “The Internationalization of North Africa Environmental Concerns,” with Pamela Chasek and Lynn Wagner, in Will Swearingen & Abdellatif Bencherifa, eds., The North African Environment at Risk (Westview, 1996). “Bargaining and Conflict Reduction,” in Roger Kanet & Edward Kolodziej, eds., Coping with Conflict after the Cold War (Johns Hopkins University, 1996). “Desarrollos recientes en la estructura de la negcianes,” in Juan Carlos Beltramini, ed. m Jornadas sobre Requierimientos y Tendencias Actuales de la Negociatcion Internatioanle (CARI, 1997). “Collapsed States in Africa,” in Harry West, ed., Conflict and its Resolution in Contemporary Africa (University Press of America, 1997). “Political Islam: A Loyal Opposition?” with Mumtaz Ahmad. Middle East Policy V 1:68–84 (January 1997). “Zaire: Collapse of an African Giant,” testimony before the House Committee of International Relations, African Subcommittee (8 April 1997). “Explaining Oslo,” International Negotiation II 2:195–215 (1997). “The International Politics of Democracy in North Africa,” in John Entelis, ed., Islam, Democracy and the State (Indiana University Press, 1997). “Justice in Negotiation,” International Political Science Review XVIII 2:121–138 (1997). “Putting Humpty-Dumpty Together Again,” in David Lake & Donald Rothchild, eds., The International Spread of Ethnic Conflict (Princeton UP, 1998). “The EU and it Potential for Conflict Resolution in the Middle East,” in The Political Role of the European Union in the Middle East (University of Munich, January 1998). “Inter-African Negotiations and State Renewal,” in John Harbeson & Donald Rothchild, eds., Africa in World Politics (Westview, 1991, 1995, 1997, 2000. 2009, 2016). “Rewriting the Future of the Maghreb,” in Azzedine Layachi, ed., Economic Crisis and Political Change in North Africa (Westview, 1998).

36

2 Comprehensive Bibliography

“A Quest for a Model of Conflict Management/Resolution in the Relations between the States and the Islamic Movements,” in Amad-ad-Dean Ahmad & Ahmed Yousef, eds., Islam and the West: A Dialog (American Muslim Foundation, 1998). “Preventive Diplomacy, Setting the Stage,” Kosmopolis (Alamanakh, 1999). “Prevention Won, Prevention Lost: Preventing Coup and Collapse in Congo,” with Katherina Vogeli, in Bruce Jentleson, Opportunities Seized, Opportunities Lost (Rowman & Littlefield 2000). “Mediating Conflicts of Need, Greed and Creed,” Orbis XXXIV 2:255–67 (2000). “Self and Space: Negotiating a Future From the Past,” in Joseph Ciprut, ed., The Art of the Feud (Praeger, 2000). “Ripeness: the Hurting Stalemate and Beyond,” in Paul Stern & Daniel Druckman, eds., International Conflict Resolution after the Cold War (National Academy Press, 2000). “Conflict Management: The Long and the Short of It,” SAIS Review XX 1:27–36 (Winter 2000). “Mediating Conflicts of Need, Creed and Greed,” Orbis XXXXIV 2:255–266 (Spring 2000). “Snake in the Tunnel: Monetary Negotiations in the European Union,” with Lynn Wagner, in Gunnar Sjösted, ed., International Economic Negotiations (Edward Elgar, 2000). “L’administration Clinton et l’Afrique,” Afrique Contemporaine 197:3–11 (January 2001). “Negotiation of Regimes,” Japan Negotiation Journal XI 1:12–27 (2001). “Preventing Deadly Conflict, Security Dialogue XXXII 2:137154 (June 2001). “Fin de conflits et réconciliation: conditions pour une paix durable,” in Gerard Conac, ed., Fin des conflits et réconciliation (Centre mondial de la Paix, 2001). “The Failure of Diplomacy,” in Richard B Parker, ed., The October War (University Press of Florida, 2001). “Moroccan Foreign Policy,” in L Carl Brown, ed., Diplomacy in the Middle East (I B Taurus, 2001). “La politique étrangère et le réglement des conflits,” in Frédéric Charillon, ed., Politique étrangère: nouveaux regards (Presses de Science Pô, 2002). “Mediation by Regional Organizations: The OAU in Chad and Congo,” in Jacob Bercovitch, ed., Studies in International Mediation (Palgrave, 2002). “Du progrès en relations internationals,” Un autre mondes est-il imaginable? Doctor honoris causa presentation (Presse Universitaire de Louvain, 2003). “Negotiating in the Deep Freeze,” in Guy Olovoer Faure, ed., How People Negotiate (Kluwer, 2003). “Intervention in Sierra Leone,” with Kawku Nuamah, in William Lahneman, ed., Military Intervention (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004). “Success and Settlement of Ethnic Conflicts,” in Andreas Wimmer et al., eds., Facing Ethnic Conflict (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004). “Early and ‘Early Late’ Prevention,” in Simon Chesterman, Michael Ignatieff, & Ramesh Thakur, eds., Making States Work (United Nations University Press, 2005). “Forward,” in Angela Kailhauge, Gunnar Sjöstedt, & Elisabeth Corell, eds., Global Challenges: Furthering the Multilateral Process for Sustainable Development (Greenleaf, 2005). “Managing Terrorism and Insurgency through Peace Processes,” in L Sergio Germani & D R Kaarthikeyan, eds., Pathways out of Terrorism and Insurgency (New Down Press, 2005). “Diplomacy,” in Karin Aggestam & Magnus Jerneck, eds., Diplomacy in Theory and Practice (Liber 2006). “Ripeness Revisited: The Push and Pull of Conflict Management,” in Cotinna Hauswedell, ed., Deeskalation von Gewaltkonflikten seit 1945. Klartext. “Justice, Regrets, Revenge,” in Serge Jaumain & Eric Remacle, eds., Mémoire de guerre et construction de la paix (Peter Lang, 2006). “L’indispensable État,” in Eric Remacle, Valerie Rosoux & Leon Saur, eds., L’Afrique des Grands Lacs (Peter Lang, 2007). “International Mediation,” with Saadia Touval, in Chester Crocker, Pen Osler Hampson, & Pamela Aall, eds., Leashing the Dogs of War (USIP, 2007).

2.3 Articles and Chapters

37

“Sub-Saharan Africa: Implosion or Take-Off?,” Politique Étrangère, special issue for World Policy Forum (2008). “The Far West of the Near East: The Foreign Policy of Morocco,” with Jennifer Rosenbloom, in Bahgat Korany & Ali E Hillal Dessouki, eds., Foreign Policies of Arab States (American University in Cairo Press, 2008). “Why the Maghreb Matters,” Special Report, SAIS Conflict Management & Potomac Institute, March 2009, reprinted, with Suart Eizenstat, in Geopolitics of the Middle East, II 1:51–72 (January 2009). “Conflict Mediation—Challenges from Experiences and Practices,” Development Dialogue 53:60– 72 (November 2009). “Cooperation and Negotiation,” in Agnieszka Aleksy-Szucsich, ed., The Art of International Negotiations. Zurawia Papers, XIV (University of Warsaw, 2009). “Opposition in Support of the State Revisited,” in Holger Albrecht, ed., Contentious Politics in the Middle East (University Press of Florida, 2010). “Negotiating about the Republic of China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” in Niklas Swanström, Sofia Ledcberg & Alec Forst, eds., Conflict Prevention and Management in Northeast Asia (Cambridge: Scholars Publishing, 2011). “Les enjeux de la relation avec les États-unis,” in Khadija Mohsen-Finan, ed., Le Maghreb dans les relations internationals (CNRS Éditions, 2011). “International Negotiation and Conflict Prevention,” in Christopher Coyne & Rachel Mathers, eds., The Handbook on the Political Economy of War (Edward Elgar, 2011). “Greed and Grievance: Methodological and Epistemological Underpinnings of the Debate,” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism XI 2:298–308 (2011). “What is to be learned from failed negotiations?” (with Guy Olivier Faure), and “Process Reasons for failure,” in Guy Olivier Faure, ed., Unfinished Business: Why International Negotiations Fail (University of Georgia Press, 2012). “La multilatéralité international, Essai de modelisation,” Négociations 1:39–50 (2012). “The Diplomacy of Conflict Management,” in Stefan Wolff & Christalla Yakinthou, eds., Conflict Management in Divided Societies (Routledge, 2012). “Mediation Roles for Large Small Countries,” Canadian Foreign Policy Journal XIX 1:13–25 (2013). “Senegal; The Limits of Hyper-Centralization,” with Hilary Thomas Lake & Arame Tall, in Alan Kuperman, ed., Constitutions and Conflict Management in Africa (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). “Mediation: Ripeness and its Challenges in the Middle Rast,” International Negotiation XX 3:479–493 (2015). “The Tools of Negotiation,” with Fen Osler Hampson, in Chester Crocker, Fen Hampson & Pamela Aall, eds., Managing Conflict in a World Adrift (USIP, 2015). “Diplomacy and Negotiation,” in Costas Constantinou, Pauline Kerr & Paul Sharp, eds., The SAGE Handbook of Diplomacy (SAGE, 2016). “Mediation and Diplomacy in the Preventing Genocide,” in Adam Lupel & Ernesto Verdeja, eds., Responding to Genocide (International Peace Institute, 2016). “Mediation and Political Toos in Africa,” in Pamela Aall & Chester Crocker, eds., Minding the Gap (CIGI, 2016). “Relying on One’s Self: Traditional Methods of Conflict Management,” in Pamela Aall & Chester Crocker, eds., The Fabric of Peace in Africa: Looking Beyond the State (CIGI, 2017). “Negotiating Status and Security around the Caspian: The Web of many Spiders,” in Fen Osler Hampson & Mikhail Troitskiy, eds., Tug of War: Negotiating Security in Eurasia (CIGI, 2017). “What do you do if they won’t negotiate?,” Négociations 29:9–20 (Spring 2018). “Diplomacy as Negotiation and Mediation,” in Paulien Kerr & Goeffrey Wiseman, eds., Diplomacy in a Globalizing World (Oxford, 2013, 2018).

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“Preventing Deadly Conflict,” in Samuel Totten, ed., Last Lectures on the Prevention and Intervention of Genocide (Routledge, 2018). “New Elements for Introducing Symmetry in the Middle East Peace Process,” International Negotiation XXIII 1:1–7 (2018). “Soft Power and Traditional African Conflict Management,” (Morocco: OCP 2018). “Construire des compromise non-compromettants?,” Negociations 21:161–170 (2014), revised in Christophe Thuderoz, ed., La négociation des compromise (2019). “Conclusions?,” in Anna Leander & Ole Waever, eds., Assembling Exclusive Expertise (Routledge, 2019). “State Formation and Failure,” in Bertrand Badie, Leonardo Morlino, & Dirk Berg-Schlosser, eds., SAGE Handbook of Political Science (SAGE, 2019). “Negotiation and Violent Extremism: What Engage and Why Not?,” in Lisa Schirch, ed., The Ecology of Violent Extremism (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019).

Part II

I. William Zartman Essays on Contention

Chapter 3

Revolution and Development

3.1

Revolution and Development: Form and Substance

The likelihood “that there will be ten to fifteen revolutions a year for the foreseeable future in the less developed societies” is often asserted (Black 1966: 166; Julien 1969).1 The purpose of this article is to show that such an occurrence is improbable, and, in the process of so demonstrating, to draw some useful analytical distinctions within the concept of revolution. In brief, it is the thesis of this analysis that the anticolonial revolution has sapped the political energies necessary for a national revolution, and that at best (and then only rarely) revolutions in developing countries are truncated revolutions, limited to the first stage of revolutionary overthrow but presently incapable of undertaking a revolutionary transformation of society. National revolution, to be sure, lurks in the background, but at a distant date, when the frustrations of the truncated revolution have been fully felt and new energies and blockages accumulated. Obviously, although any such debate can be reduced to the semantics of terminology, there are limits (for an excellent discussion of “superfluous coexistensiveness,” see Sartori 1969). Anticolonial revolutions are usually considered a once-and-for-all event in any one country; however, by extending colonial presence through the conceptual device of neocolonialism, one can also treat them as repetitive events. Indeed, the “revolutions” of Egypt, Syria, Sudan and Iraq of the postwar decades can usefully be analyzed as prolongations or reaffirmations of an anticolonial revolt. The concept can also be used even more broadly to include any kind of extralegal political change, but to do so would make “coup” a superfluous word and “revolution” a vague one. No reasonable or meaningful concept of revolution would fit Senegal, Jordan, or Thailand, nor even Mali, Morocco or Pakistan. Our task here then becomes a familiar one: to identify revolution and its component characteristics, and to isolate clusters of events that, through cause or resemblance, 1 I. William Zartman, “Revolution and development: form and substance,” Civilisations 20 2:181– 196. 1970. Reprinted with permission.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 I. W. Zartman, I William Zartman: A Pioneer in Conflict Management and Area Studies, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06079-4_3

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constitute recognizable wholes to which can be applied labels that fit and stick. The task is also to go beyond “what?” and answer “why?”. To attack these questions, it will be necessary to establish distinctions and components within the general phenomenon of revolution. In doing so, it must be remembered that sharp distinctions are often artificial, analytical devices. The raw material for analysis is more accurately portrayed as an irregular continuum, in which gaps between clusters are usually even less apparent than curves through points. The most troublesome cases are on the borderlines. By breaking down a concept such as revolution into components, our intention is not to present a pure ideal case that has no correspondent in reality, but to portray the make-up of the whole phenomenon so that the dynamics of partial cases can be better understood through the absence or presence of crucial components. We are thus interested in isolating the necessary and sufficient components of the phenomenon; in borderline cases, we are more interested in being able to identify which of these components are or are not present and what the consequences of this fact are than in trying to find the dividing line between phenomenon and non-phenomenon among the admittedly partial cases. As in all attempts to refine analysis, this effort pushes the task of judgment from the total phenomenon to its components. If this does not eliminate debate—such is certainly not our purpose—it does displace it onto more manageable terrain.

3.2

How Long a Revolution?

The first distinction to be made is between overthrow and transformation (Huntington 1968: 266, 308). It is not our intention here to go into the problems of antecedents, precipitants, and triggers. For present purposes (although not for all purposes), the analysis can begin with the revolutionary act itself: a change in political structures involving the replacement of one elite by another (counter-elite) through violence. The three important components of this first stage are political structural change, instrumental violence, and elite replacement by a new group coming from elsewhere (by definition from below) in the social structure. The Great Revolutions—English, American, French, Russian, Chinese—all involved the overthrow of monarchy, but republican revolutions are not the only type of political structural changes envisageable. Colonial structures are a common ancien regime in modern times, and parliamentary or autocratic structures can also be overthrown. The new structure of a monolithic oligarchy with a popular base—in its extreme form, totalitarian democracy (Talmon 1961)—the seemingly contradictory political structure commonly associated with revolutionary regimes, is not always evident at this stage; the new structures may involve a good deal of pluralism under monolithic appearances immediately after overthrow. Most of the Great Revolutions, as well as Yemen, Sudan, Egypt, and Algeria shared this characteristic. But political structures unquestionably changed. The element of violence seems clear enough and is generally accepted, but it is not unambiguous. How much violence is

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violence? Since it takes two to make a fight, is unrequited bellicosity equivalent to the real thing? These are disturbing questions because they are important, for a sustained, collective engagement in violence indicates (and causes) a change in attitudes, stakes, and values. But adding adjectives does not help the ambiguity: How long is sustained? How widespread is collective? There is a difference between the independence struggles in Senegal and Mali, Morocco and Tunisia, and Algeria, that can be ascribed to differences in degree of violence. Yet even in the latter case, not all people were violent, nor did violence last as long as elsewhere, in Vietnam or China. Violence is important because it rep1aces political bargaining with the ultimatum of force. But again, the ultimatum was present at a greater or lesser distance in all seven cases mentioned above, and even in Vietnam and Algeria force was an ingredient in the final political bargaining, not an exclusive instrumentality. Finally, if not precisely, it must be said that violence is a necessary ingredient in revolutionary overthrow, more for its secondary effects as a cause of destruction and a symptom of anger than in and of itself. The element of elite replacement is equally important, for it separates coup from revolutionary overthrow, a coup being the substitution of one part of an elite by others from the same social group without a change in political structures. Coups may well involve violence (and by definition, extralegal procedures) but they are responses to promotion blockages of individuals, not social groups. (Thus, coup, overthrow and transformation parallel the Aristotelean division of personal change, institutional change, and societal change.) The causes of revolution, on the other hand, may often be multiple but much of the multiplicity can almost always be reduced to promotion blockages for specific social groups (Huntington 1968: 266, 274f, 278). Revolutionary overthrow is therefore the violent breakthrough of suppressed groups, overcoming blockages that are something more than merely personal by means that are something more than merely political, changing political structures. A crucial question, to which little attention has been paid, is why some incipient revolutions never make it beyond the first stage.2 An event composed of violence, political structural change and elite replacement carries within itself certain contradictory tendencies, including some that work to bring it to a halt. The simplest is that, with overthrow, the initial purpose is accomplished; the work is done, the strains eased, and attention can naturally be turned to governing again. Since a social group is being evicted and political structures changed, the myths that allowed the old group to rule and blocked the door to the new have at least lost their basis in practice, and probably been discredited. The overthrowers install themselves in their own myths, explaining their right to have upset the old order and to inaugurate the new; they turn on the defensive. The bringing of new elites to power may help bring the political order in line with social reality. There are usually some

2 Brinton (1967: 8) begs the question. Moore (1966: 104, 109f) discusses it only in passing, on France. Rudebeck (1969: 2) poses and drops it in regard to Tunisia, in Development pressure and political limits (Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies).

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members of the new elite who want to go further and continue the revolution— repeat the process of violent overthrow—but they often find themselves without the social basis and the pressing grievances that lay behind the initial outbreak; obstructed by the new regime and unable to find sufficient social groups as allies, they may wither away or be eliminated. Other influences can work to halt the revolution at the act of overthrow. If the mounting process of struggle preceding overthrow was long, political energies tend to be exhausted; the warriors need a rest.3 The longer the struggle, the greater the pressure of daily problems that have been piling up, aggravated by the violence of the struggle: the warriors also want some immediate returns or payoffs. Thus, for both political and social reasons, there is some pressure on any revolutionary overthrow to entrench, defend, and preserve, all conservative reflexes: in a word to freeze the revolution at the point of overthrow. Common sense usage of the term “revolution” sometimes reduces the concept to a single act of overthrow, as for example the practice of dating the Russian Revolution by a single year (or even a single month) indicates. Current scholarly calculations about the antecedents of revolution also reinforce this understanding, implicitly, by using takeover as a cutoff date (Leiden/Schmitt 1968: 66–68; Gurr 1967). The revolution has taken place when overthrow occurs, and all that follows is aftermath. But this view of revolution also clashes with other common sense elements, notably the slogans of “post-revolutionary” polities that proclaim the continuation, extension, and reinforcement of the revolution, as well as its defense, preservation, and consolidation. Apparently there is more to revolution than overthrow. A second and separate concept covered by revolution is the transformation of society, through social structural change. As important as the first stage distinction between coup and revolutionary overthrow is the second stage differentiation between a revolutionary change in social structures and a change—more properly evolutionary—in methods, although the relationship may be closer than between the first pair of terms (White 1966; Mead 1955; Hapgood/Millikan 1967). The mechanization of agriculture and the extension of farm credit, the introduction of new classrooms, techniques and subjects, even the change from home to factory industry, as well as the national expansion of infrastructure, are all matters that are distinct from changes in the national social structures. In the long run, the latter changes may result from the former, to be sure, and the two types of changes are often assumed to go hand in hand; but that assumption should not be taken as a blanket description of concomitant cause and effect. Purposeful effort, or at least time, is needed to turn change in methods into change of structures. The same sorts of pressures that can lead to halting revolution at the first stage of overthrow can also work to continue it through transformation of social structures. These pressures have been identified as myth, social system, political energies, and

The notion of “political energies”, used here as more than a metaphor, has never been fully developed.

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daily problems and expectations. The myths that legitimize the overthrow can push the new elite into offensive, rather than defensive, action, obliging them to root out potential challenges to their supremacy through pogroms and maintain the purity of their leadership through purges. The social system is doubtless more complex than the new elite’s reflection of it, and islands of privilege and hillocks of opposition literally invite leveling in the name of the egalitarian imperative of the revolution. Political energies, and indeed expectations, may not be sapped and sated by simple overthrow, but may require new efforts of long duration aimed at creating a new society. Since economic disruption is an evitable result of overthrow, the longer the civil disturbance continues, the greater the disruption, the greater the pressure for new ways of distribution, and the greater the call for sacrifices, faith and vigilance. Daily problems too must be solved according to some criteria, lest their ad hoc or technical solution merely perpetuate the old order; policy, programs, and ideology all tend to arise under the pressures of the need to govern in accordance with the general ideas behind the initial overthrow. As in the case of overthrow, one common component of the response to these pressures that imparts a revolutionary quality is the element of violence. Violence in the second or transformation stage of revolution is generally more organized than in the first or overthrow stage; but in both it is the instrumentality of the stage.4 Other instrumentalities of solidarity-making, problem-solving and conflict-resolution such as negotiation, legislation and taxation/remuneration can also be used, as they are in other governing systems, but in revolutionary transformation, they are incidental to violence. Many of the aspects of instrumental violence—pogrom, purge, elimination of counterrevolution and privilege, mobilization, instillation of ideological conformity and commitment—are at least partially covered by the common term of “terror”, but it is not simply a terror of paranoia and arbitrariness that is involved. Violence is used precisely because the rapid authoritarian restructuring of society requires it. Thus, the second component of the transformation is social structural change. Overthrow reflects the structuring of a society suffering from promotion blockage; transformation changes the structure of that society. One is an upward explosion; the other is a downward operation.5 It would be an exaggeration to call the first easy, but the required skills and efforts tend to be short-term and tactical; the second is a strategic exercise of long duration. Because the “enemy” is a vast and resilient body, and because the agents of transformation are by definition a minority, they must protect themselves from active attack as well as overcoming the passive resistance of the social structure they seek to change. A first measure is to redefine 4

Cf. the dispute in Algeria between Ahmed Ben Bella and Houari Boumedienne on the use of violence versus negotiations; Zartman (1970); on the Tactical Question on other cases and the broader question, see Zartman/Alfredson (2006). On the effects of violence, see, i.e., Fanon (1964), Coser (1956). 5 Jacqueries, as in France in 1789 and Algeria in 1962, appear to be rare, and can probably be treated as exceptions that do not invalidate the statement. Cf. the discussion of Jacqueries in Chalmers Johnson.

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society, excluding from the political community those groups that do not coincide with the future image; this redefinition restores the transforming regime to a majority position, since its enemies are closed out of the system. Afterward by various measures, reality can be brought more closely in line with the a priori definition. By recognizing (granting power) and distributing benefits to certain social groups, individuals can be induced to move into these categories to win payoffs. Where inducements do not work or are slow to take hold, violence is needed to channel choice and eliminate alternatives. There are four other elements that are also required, and that work to buttress and create the conditions for violence, two on the input and two on the output side of the political process. Behind the violence, an organization is necessary for mobilizing and monopolizing political energies. Thus, a party is needed to organize the new society politically and give it power and benefits (Huntington 1968: 313; Moore 1954: 8 et passim). There must also be a blueprint for restructuring society and a continuing myth for legitimizing the use and users of violence; myth and blueprint must be believed as part of the process of mobilizing and monopolizing political energies, to hold the hopes and attentions of the audience over the long struggle. Hence, an ideology must be invented or discovered to fit national realities (Sartori 1969; Apter 1964; Zartman 1966 [in this collection]). On the output side, an evident requirement is an effective police apparatus to exercise violence. Equally necessary is a growing economic base from which payoffs can be extracted and which give substance from time to time to the effectiveness of the ideological formulas. Something must be available soon after overthrow to provide an initial distribution (usually made available, in fact, by redistribution); thereafter, growth is needed to provide resources to maintain faith, hope, and loyalty. So posed, the requisites for revolutionary transformation are immense, and the pressures for moving from overthrow to transformation ambiguous. A number of analyses have discerned intermediate steps by which revolution passes from its first to its second stage, but that analysis is not necessary to the present argument. The present discussion concerns the existence of two separate phases of revolution and the possibilities and reasons for a slip between them (Huntington 1968: esp. Chap. 4; Brinton 1965). If the second stage is hard to attain, what alternatives are available when revolutionary overthrow does not lead to revolutionary transformation? Except for the obvious possibility of counter-revolution—a rather rare phenomenon if properly taken in the sense of restoration rather than simply Thermidor—alternatives to transformation logically grow out of the component of overthrow that dominates. Pre-dominant reliance on the new instrumentality, violence, yields a constrictive type of regime; dominance by the new elite produces a coalescent regime. Thus, the revolutionary process may stop at overthrow, breaking up, the old order but leaving in place a new balance of forces and interests reflecting the social order that had been repressed by the old regime, without, however, proceeding to structure society in the image of their views (Moore 1964). The lack of a need to transform the social structure and the lack of a repressed base for opposition elements allow such a coalescent regime to discontinue the revolutionary heritage of

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violence. Negotiation and legislation become its instrumentalities. A regime of this type is likely to turn its attention to changes in methods, to the extent that it seeks to improve internal conditions at all; in time these may produce structural changes that threaten the balance of interests and forces, as noted, but the run is long. While the mobilization of thought and action is useful to the success of such a regime, monopolization has not the same necessity as under a regime of revolutionary transformation; thus, single party, and ideology become as superfluous as a major police arm, although parties and programs remain important. There is no attempt intended to describe the coalescent regime as one that is necessarily developmental, dynamic, or constructive, anymore than it is inherently stagnant, stable, or conservative. On this level of analysis both possibilities exist. The balance of forces and interests may maintain an unproductive stalemate or contain dynamic tensions. The same ambiguous pressures may leave in place a regime of overthrowers that spends all its energies in defending its position, leaving no free thought and activity for the transformation of society. In such a regime, which may be called constrictive, ideology and party have little place but the police is not; yet the latter’s role is less active than in a regime of revolutionary transformation. It is easier to prevent change than to force it, and even if some violence is necessary for both, it can be passive and implicit under a constrictive regime. Ideology and party are superfluous because mobilization is a threat to constrictive regimes; apathy is their support, for constriction implies the narrowing of the political system and the reduction of participation. Again, “progress” is not impossible, but is likely to be limited to methodological changes introduced and controlled by technicians, with structural changes following only incidentally and at a distance. Administrators and military are the two usual partners in constrictive regimes, which—abstracting the settler population and its political relations—strongly resembles colonial regimes in their relations to the colonial populations. In sum, the distinction needs to be made between revolutionary overthrow and revolutionary transformation. Both involve violence and both involve changes in the social structure. Overthrow, however, is a change from below, replacing a dominant elite by a suppressed elite presumptive, whereas transformation is a change from above, restructuring society according to the new elite’s ideas. Revolutionary overthrow does not necessarily lead to revolutionary transformation. The overthrow can reflect a given social equilibrium, with no desire for violent transformation held by the new coalescent elite. Or the overthrowers can preserve the form without the substance of revolutionary transformation, with a constrictive regime of passive violence. Other eventualities may also be possible, such as counter-revolution, for example. Whether both overthrow and transformation are necessary to qualify for the term “revolution” is perhaps less important (and more of a semantic question) than the real distinction itself, but it does seem a waste of a word to limit revolution to the first act and relegate the harder task of transformation to the indefiniteness of “postrevolutionary.” It is the lack of clarity over the distinction between the two acts, and the vague use of the term to cover only

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overthrow, and sometimes coup as well, that creates misunderstanding of revolution in developing countries. There are many coups, some revolutionary overthrows, followed by coalescent or constrictive regimes, but few revolutionary transformations.

3.3

How National a Revolution?

Before turning to the “why”, there is a second pair of distinctions to be recalled. The difference between national and anticolonial revolution is a commonplace and should be beyond confusion. Yet confusion persists, not over the anticolonial nature of a national liberation movement, but over its character as a national revolution. The problem is that anticolonial “revolutions” have many of the characteristics of revolutionary overthrow and transformation, some to a very strong degree, and yet lack other components of both phases very markedly. Even when violence is lacking, nationalist movements have much that seems to qualify them as agents of revolutionary overthrow. Above all, they replace one elite with an entirely different one. The difference is not merely political, it is also social. Political levers were in the hands of the settler population, whose cohesion and exclusiveness in social and political affairs provided the cause about which the new colonial elite formed, first as a reform group, then as a nationalist movement, and finally in a few cases as an organization of revolutionary violence. In general, in practically any colony, a few members of the traditional elite joined the modern or nationalist elite, just as any revolution has its transfers from the elite of the old order to the counterelite of the overthrow, but in most such cases, a social change in the individual accompanied his change in political views. For the most part, nationalist elites are a new type of man compared with traditional society: labor leaders, schoolteachers, liberal professions. Traditional elites were often torn between two pressures: although collaborators with the colonial regime, they were also the repository of national values. The contradiction helped destroy their group solidarity. They had their roles to play in both directions, and generally did not lead the revolt or accomplish the overthrow. Yet a close look at nationalist elites shows that they were partially within the system, partially without, a position that explains their resentment at blockage, and that they were revolting against collaborating traditional elites as well as against the colonial rulers. Indeed the bitterest fights in any anticolonial struggle are directed against the traitors: they are guilty of acting against their nature, while the colonialists can be pardoned—or at least explained—for acting consistently. A reverse interpretation can be put forward, however: Traditional elites acted very much in their interest and nature; the last in the line of an increasingly outmoded regime, they benefitted from the colonial presence to buttress their position against a new elite within their own action. Although colonialism is certainly responsible for the

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introduction and acceleration of modernization in most of the third world, sooner or later modernization would have been invented or discovered in the same countries even without colonization and the confrontation or mutation of elites would have occurred nonetheless. By keeping traditional elites in their positions past their social prime, the colonial regime helped reinforce the revolutionary nature of the overthrow when independence finally came (de Montety 1970). But the case has been overstated, or rather incompletely stated. Two additional considerations temper the revolutionary nature of independence. One is the comparative ease of independence, granted before the nationalist movement could ever launch itself into violence; subsequent independent governments are therefore far from using instrumental violence on their own population, having never used it on the colonial enemy (Emerson 1963: 110f; Huntington 1968: 418).6 The second weakening factor is the colonial enemy itself. Although “in fact”, the confrontation may be between a national elite and counterelite, in which the colonial presence is merely a catalyst, it is nevertheless seen by the participants as a struggle between national and foreign elites. Irrecuperable collaborators are enemies, not because the colonial regime has worked with them but because they have worked with the colonial regime. Independence becomes the “funnel phase” through which all grievances and demands pass only to the extent that they are reducible to the single goal of self-government. Any ally becomes acceptable, as long as he is nationalistically oriented (which is merely the reverse of the colonial reasoning). In such circumstances, revolutionary criteria and visions are hard to keep pure. If colonialism has brought modernization to the third world, semiconsciously, it has also postponed national revolution, willy-nilly. In summary, despite the clear conceptual distinction between national and anticolonial revolutions, there is much real overlap. In terms of the dual polity, anticolonial revolution represents revolutionary overthrow (if violence is used); in terms of the dual society, it represents revolutionary transformation. But in terms of the national society and polity, anticolonial revolution often replaces and postpones national revolution, or at best leaves it incomplete. By the process of reforming the lines of struggle between collaborators and nationalists, rather than between traditional and modern elites, and by absorbing some traditional elements of society while repulsing others, it postpones social restructuring (revolutionary transformation) and tends to leave in place coalescent or constricting regimes. To date, ours is not so much an age of revolution as an age of putative revolutions that finally never took place.

6 There is a good discussion in Huntington (1968, esp. Chap. 4); Brinton, op. cit. There is no implication here that phases and alternatives are stable stages; the problem of transition and particularly of military overthrow is not touched here.

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Why Are Revolutions Truncated?

The initial question can now be posed. Why is revolutionary overthrow and transformation unlikely in newly independent, developing countries? We have seen first of all that by passing through the “funnel phase” imposed by the unique and coalescing goal of independence, what might otherwise have been an overthrow of traditional elites by blocked modern counterelites turned instead into a national coalition grouping all elements—traditional and modern—who could adhere to the national goal of independence. Furthermore, there was an additional compromising element—from the point of view of revolution—working on the other side of the coalition: before the “funnel phase” arrived, elements of the modern elite were included in the colonial system, blocked from promotion but not from entry. Thus scarcely a country has achieved independence with a predominant elite replacement. Instead, there has been a political polarization in the final phase, but not a corresponding social polarization. Finally, as seen, there has been relatively little violence in the attainment of independence. But the moment of independence is a thing of the past; most newly independent countries are now a decade or more old. In a number of such countries the social split—plastered over by the independence struggle—has again shown signs of appearing. Our attention is focused on the future: how can we say that revolutions are unlikely in the short and middle run? In a word, our answer is that the same absence of necessary components that prevents current regimes from effecting revolutionary transformation also prevents their revolutionary overthrow. Such regimes are more stable, indeed stagnant, than might be suspected, for they reflect accurately the current stalemate of social and political forces as well as their own lack of political direction and energy. The first and most important reason for the non-revolutionary future of developing nations is that the colonial overthrow—revolutionary or not—brought to power a new balance of interests that is unlikely to change in the near future, while at the same time accessorily removing the traditional elites from dominance along with the colonial rulers (Marais 1970). Rather than being pushed along the revolutionary path by an upsurge of liberated peasantry or proletariat, the replacement of elites stopped with the arrival in power of an unusual but essentially urban coalition of forces and interests, which stick in a position of deadlocked equilibrium rather than acting as an avant-grade of social transformation.7 The coalition includes civil servants, merchants and businessmen, and labor, with the addition of a special group, the military. All four groups grew up under colonial rule and are the inheritors and agents for the continuation of a colonial-type regime, rather than agents of change. All four had legitimate grievances with the colonial regime, which can be summarized as grievances of blockage by parallel 7

Guinea, which in all other way, appears to have undergone at least revolutionary overthrow, showed considerable embarrassment over not having a real martyr in its nonviolent liberation and discovered one only with great difficulty (and strain).

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groups within the colonial population; their action of overthrow involves lateral replacement of their colonial competitors, but not a change in social structures. All have grown in numbers under the national, independent regime, and their interest lies in maintaining current political and social structures. There is no one to overthrow them, as yet; changes in regime can only occur as a shift of emphasis within the coalition, in the form of a coup. All of these groups are interest groups in their own right, responsible to no larger clientele but rather thrown on the defensive of their own interests and hence of the system—by the competitive encirclement of pressing onlookers who seek their jobs. This potential competition prevents any class consciousness from forming across the line which separates employed from unemployed, and would (or, someday, will) produce an incipient revolutionary pressure on the part of the onlookers were they not physically held under control by the weight of the system and their own inertia. The businessmen (who might better be put into quotation marks) are an infinitesimal number compared with the civil servants, and more to be managers or rapid-return or rainy-day investors rather than industrialists. But they are relatively sacred to the system because they include a number of higher civil servants with some money to place and traditionalist ideas on where to place it, and also because those who do qualify as managers and industrialists are necessary to holding the third member of the coalition—labor—in place in the structure. Labor, rather than being an oppressed class, is rather a favored segment of the proletariat, and is particularly illustrative of the status quo nature of participants in the system: organized labor helps hold the larger proletarian group in place by organizing the best or at least most favored among them, and by then placing the labor organization in feudal relation to the state, trading off order for material benefits. There is little left in urban society that is not tied in with the balance of interests behind the status quo. The rural migrants who make up the proletarian mass, sitting on the edge of urban society as they camp on the outskirts of the cities in their bidonvilles and shantytowns, are not part of urban society; their nonentry into urban life forces them to maintain their rural ties (and often to return to the fields in season), while also forcing them to remain on good behavior for the day when they will finally gain a job and become enrolled in the defensive, system-linked labor organization. Until then, their expectations from state and society tend to be low, and their activities are concentrated on making a go of it, as small marginal collectivities of individualists.8 The real mass remains in the countryside. In many areas—most of Africa, for example—it is still out of the modern circuit, tied to traditional ways of subsistence farming, and so precariously dependent on these ways for its subsistence and unaware of the value of others that it resists all attempts at change of methods or of structures. In other areas, it has become more deeply involved in a commercial— hence, national—economy, but for the same reasons seeks primarily to be left

8

For a condemnation of truncated revolutions, see Hussein (1969), Ameillon (1964: esp. 129), Ziegler (1964), Humbaraci (1966).

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alone. If there are any reforms acceptable, they are reforms of methods; the colonial regime brought a reform of structures by seizing land and peasants have had enough of it. Peasants in these areas, disrupted by direct contact with the colonial presence, helped fight for independence, but their part of the struggle was more of a latter-day xenophobic reaction to a disruptive foreign presence than an antitraditional-cum-anticolonial revolution. Once the struggle was over, this pare of its supporters were the first to slip back into apathy and undisturbed subsistence. Those who did not have taken to migrating to the cities, where they have joined the marginal group already described. Peasant apathy is one of the greatest supports of newly independent regimes; it assures the new elite of a tranquil mass that will remain apathetic and untroublesome as long as left alone, while the peasant mass tends to support the incumbent regime (assuming it adopts a laisser-faire attitude toward its peasant supporters) since the most mooted alternatives (radicals, revolutionaries; and social transformers) are all worse. There are therefore simply not enough people in whose interest it is to rock the boat. In broader terms, leaving aside an analysis of component social groups, the position of the regimes in dead center can also be understood in the light of traditional and modern segments of society. In broad lines, developmental strategy demands rationalizing agriculture through a change in methods while absorbing the excess capital and population in industry, producing a concomitant transformation of structures. This involves more rural disruption than independent regimes are able to afford, since their base lies in rural apathy, and more productive expansion and political direction in the urban sector than they are able to undertake, since their resources are strictly limited (a point to be expanded later) and their supporting coalition favors a status quo defense of limited interest groups. Caught between a stagnant rural mass and status quo urban interests, they are unable to move. The weight of the modern sector alone, and the resources available to it, are not enough to allow independent national regimes to forge ahead on the basis of this support alone. Beholden a little bit to everyone, beleaguered by rivals within its own coalition, it can neither choose nor reconcile, but merely placate and control (c.f. Wilcox 1966). It was said above that current independent regimes are of a colonial type; the characteristic grows out of the needs of their position. Unable to satisfy demands for change that might arise—unable to create an evolution that meets rising expectations, independent regimes are obliged to undercut such demands, by reducing interest articulation and participation. This can either be accomplished, paradoxically, by controlled mobilization or by demobilization, each with its risks. Under the former strategy, interests are organized and controlled within a state or party structure; their energies are turned from demands to supports; their conveyor belts run downhill, to prevent them from running upward. In the latter system, the party is allowed to die; the state governs, “feels” the needs of its people (in fact, such needs are so evident that uphill conveyor belts are often superfluous), and is responsible to itself (Zartman 1966: 70–80). Basically, the choice of strategies depends on the degree of autonomous development of separate interest groups, and hence on the degree of socioeconomic development of the society: demobilization

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is easier in Africa, for example, than in the Middle East (Wallerstein 1966). In either case, the regime becomes an administrative technocracy, with a vigilant (if not active) police or army, responsible to a narrow group of urban interests, providing the nation with security and limited public services (within its means) but concentrating their impact on urban areas where its clientele lives. Compared with the colonial regime, the client groups are the same (under different skin), the methods of government (degree and nature of integration and allocation) are similar, and what was the beginning of social transformation in an earlier era is now only continuity. In addition to the balance of interests, two other elements help block revolution in developing countries. One is the absence of a viable ideology.9 Except for communism and its variants, no guiding ideology has come out of a single country of the developing world, and those where communism has found to be applicable and has stuck are few. The qualification of viability is important, for the third world has indeed invented (or developed) an ideology of its own, that of anticolonialism. But in so doing, it chose the wrong enemy, and created an explanation for present evils that was outmoded the day independence was achieved. It is hard for a nationalist regime to continue to use anticolonialism as its ideology for social transformation once it has evicted the external enemy. If the enemy is redefined into neocolonialism, it becomes even harder for the sovereign regime to load it with blame and still pursue its policies of continuity and cooperation. To be viable as an ideology, anticolonialism would have to be able to keep the faith, identify the enemy, and indicate the long path to the millennium even after the colonial ruler has been expelled. For governments or for their aspirant successors, anticolonialism as an ideology is as insufficient as communism would be if it were only anticapitalism. Even if anticolonialism is expanded by the addition of nationalism (in any its many meanings), the content is too vague, and, in addition, too atavistic to be viable; nationalism is bound to glorify the past, or traditional, qualities of the nation, compounding the static dilemma of the regime. Although this is scarcely the place, or the space, to develop them, it might be suggested very tentatively that potential ideologies do exist. Three can be suggested: a neutralist, populist, self-management, agrarian doctrine expanding on Rousseau (c. f. Talmon 1961: 38–68, esp. 59); an ideology of perpetual, purgative violence developed beyond the ideas of Trotzky, Fanon, Soekarno and the Ba’th (Weatherbee 1966; Abu-Jaber 1967); and an industrialist, technocratic, urbanist doctrine. Without attempting to outline the content of these ideologies, it does appear that there is a cluster of ideas in each case that is susceptible of development.10 Suffice it to say 9

There are enough studies on urban immigration to convince us of its marginality and disabuse us of its urban nature; see Huntington (1968: 278ff), Moore (1964: 477), Descloitres et al. (1970); see also Banfield (1958). 10 On the need for ideology, see Moore (1966: 89). Most of the discussions of third world ideology, for all their other qualities, use the term loosely to mean simply values. On this level, see Benot (1969), Laraoui (1967), Skurnik (1967), Chilcote (1968). For anticolonialism as a positive ideology, however, see Memmi (1960), Driff (1917).

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that while Soekarno and Fanon, and perhaps a few others, have tried, they have been rejected by their own societies and have not been adopted by others. The third world has still not given birth to its ideologue, and its regimes are in no position to adopt him should he appear. The final obstacle to revolution is also linked with the colonial heritage. It has often been said that colonial rule did much for the country and little for the people, except for the elite that ultimately led the nationalist movement. This movement and the ideas behind the overthrow of colonial rule share with all revolutions the element of egalitarianism, seen in anti-colonial terms as the spread of the benefits of modern society to the entire nation. The need to spread is reinforced by the new elite’s need to reward followers and secure support through the distribution of goods and services. Recalling their origins in reform groups, the nationalist elites are under pressure to redistribute the benefits inherited from colonial society equally, using the standards of colonial society as well as internal parity within the national society as the measure of equality. (The more revolutionary the nationalist movement and the overthrow, the greater the internal pressure for internal parity; but revolutionary or not, the pressure for meeting the standards of colonial society —in wages, education, social services, status and dignity—is everywhere present.) Overthrow becomes a movement of consumers. Successful cases of revolutionary transformation have been more than that: they have involved not only a restructuring of society to reflect a redistribution of the pie but a gradual increase in the size of the pie as well. The complex relation among consumption, production, and transformation is not clear, but it seems unlikely that redistribution of consumption alone would bring about lasting changes in social structure. Changes in production are necessary, both to give an economic basis for social restructuring and to provide a continuing element for allocation (or distribution). To be sure, new recipients may take their newly-distributed talents and make them bear fruit, thus perpetuating their change in social position, but the result is a change in production. The shift from a consumption-oriented society to a production-oriented one is a major change, accomplished in a short time only through concerted government efforts. Yet, as seen above, these efforts tend to be lacking in newly independent countries, and, more important, pressures to arouse them are also lacking as long as the colonial heritage is on hand to be distributed. There is little worry about tomorrow’s golden egg production as long as the dinner guests are filled with yesterday’s stock of goose and eggs. The dinner can last a relatively long time (it has already lasted decades in most countries); the colonial heritage was substantial, can be tapped at will by piecemeal nationalization, and is continually augmented by foreign aid and single crop or extractive exports. The relatively small feedback from such consumption serves only to reinforce the social composition of the new elites: burgeoning bureaucracies, defensive labor, protected business. At some point, consumption values are likely to run out, but that time has not yet come. It is the thesis of this article that revolution in developing countries is further in the future than frequently thought, but not that it is never going to take place. To argue the latter would be logically impossible, and realistically difficult since the

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parameters of prediction become more and more uncertain with time. Stability would depend either on developing societies’ satisfaction through rapid development or on their rigorous control of dissention, both of which capabilities seem to be beyond the scope of the comparatively weak governments of developing states. Furthermore, it is not even certain that these two achievements can erase the potentiality for revolution that appears to be inherent in the development process. Rapid development brings new groups into existence, challenging or changing the social composition of the ruling coalition. Reliance on controls and violence alone (even without an underlying social transformation) invites forceful overthrow. What is necessary, then, for revolution to invade the developing areas? The answer lies, locally, in the reversal of conditions explained above which have thus far prevented revolution from taking place. One is a change in the balance of forces and interests underlying coalescent regimes: More precisely, a separation of labor and business and of rural peasant and rural labor, the formation of a new rural-urban coalition, and the rise in urban intellectual (educated) and proletarian unemployed. Another is the development of resentment against recruitment blockages among new groups; a third, the exhaustion of the colonial heritage of goods and services (employment); and a fourth, the reappearance of violence as an instrumentality through the over-reliance on force to maintain order. If all of these conditions are now present to some degree in the new nations, there is a period of maturation that has not yet elapsed. We still do not know enough about revolutions to predict how long this period must be for this, still more work needs to be done on antecedents and precipitants. Our purpose here has been otherwise: to signal and explain why the truncated revolutions of colonial overthrow and their non-revolutionary aftermath have replaced and postponed revolutionary overthrow transformation within the newly independent societies. Between the revolution of rising expectations which colonial rule aroused and the subsequent revolution of falling satisfactions there is a gap in time that has not yet run out.

References Abu-Jaber, Kamel 1967. The Arab Ba’th Socialist Party (Syracuse University Press). Ameillon, B 1964. La Guinée:Bilan d’une indépendance (Maspero). Apter, David, ed. 1964. Ideology and Discontent (Free Press). Banfield, Edward 1958. Moral Basis of a Backward Society (Free Press). Benot, Yves 1969. Ideologies des indépendances africaines (Maspero). Black, C E 1966. The Dynamics of Modernization (Harper & Row). Brinton, Crain 1967. Anatomy of Revolution (Random House). Chilcote, Ronald 1968. “The Political Thought of Amilcar Cabral,” VI Journal of Modern African Studies 3:373–388. Coser, Lewis 1956. The Functions of Social Conflict (Free Press). de Montety, Henry 1970. “Old Families and New Elite in Tunisia’’, in I. William Zartman, ed., Man, State and Society in Contemporary Maghreb (Praeger).

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Descloitres, Robert, Descloitres, Claudine, & Reverdy, J C 1970. “Urban Organization and Social Change in Algeria,” in Zartman, ed. Man, State and Society in Contemporary Maghreb (Praeger). Emerson, Rupert 1963. “Nation Building in Africa,” in Karl Deutsch & William Foltz, eds., Nation-Building (Atherton). Fanon, Frantz 1964. The Wretched of the Earth (Grove Press). Gurr, Ted 1967. The Conditions of Civil Violence (Princeton University Center of International Studies, Research Monograph 28). Hapgood, David & Millikan, Max 1967. No Easy Harvest (Little Brown). Humbaraci, Arslan 1966. Algeria: A Revolution that Failed (Praeger). Huntington, Samuel 1968. Political Order in Developing Societies (Yale University Press). Hussein, Mahmoud 1969. La Lutte des classes en Egypte de 194 5 à 1968 (Maspero). Johnson, Chalmers 1964. Revolution & the Social System (Hoover). Julien, Claude 1969. L’empire americain (Paris). Laraoui, Abdullah 1967. L’idéologie arabe contemporaine (Paris: Maspero). Leiden Carl & Schmitt, Karl M. 1968. The Politics of Violence: Revolution in the Modern World (Prentice-Hall). Marais, Octave 1970. “The Ruling Class in Morocco,” in Zartman, ed. Man, State and Society in Contemporary Maghreb (Praege). Mead, Margaret, ed. 1955. Cultural Patterns and Technological Change (New York: Mentor). Memmi, Albert 1960. The colonizer and the colonized (Beacon). Moore, Barrington 1954. Terror and Progress: USSR (Harvard University Press). Moore, Barrington 1966. Social Origins of Dictatorship & Democracy (Beacon). Moore, Clementv H 1966. “Mass Party Regimes in Africa,” in Herbert Spiro, Africa: The Primacy of Politics (Random House). Rudebeck, Lars 1969. Development Pressure and Political Limits (Scandinavian Institute of African Studies). Sartori, Giovanni 1969. “Politics, Ideology, and Belief Systems,” American Political Science Review LXIII 2:398–411 (June). Sigmund, Paul. The Ideologies of Developing Nations (Praeger). Skurnik, W A E, ed. 1967. African Political Thought (University of Denver, Social Science Foundation Monograph V: 3–4). Talmon, J L 1961. The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (Mercury). Wallerstein, Immanuel 1966. “The Decline of the Party in Single-Party African States,” in Joseph La Palombara & Myron Weiner, eds., Political Parties and Political Development (Princeton University Press). Weatherbee, Donald 1966. Ideology in Indonesia (Yale University Press). White, Lynn Jr. 1966. Medieval Technology and Social Change (Oxford). Wilcox, Wayne 1966. “Strategies and Alliances in India and Pakistan,” Papers Presented Before the American Political Science Association. Zartman, I. William 1964. “Ideology and National Interest,” in Vernon McKay, ed., African Diplomacy (Praeger) [in this collection]. Zartman, I William 1966. International Relations in the New AFRICA (Prentice-Hall) [in this collection]. Zartman, I William & Alfredson, Tanya 2006. “Negotiating with Terrorists and the Tactical Question,” in Rafael Reuveny & William R Thompson, ed., Coping with Terrorism (State University of New York Press 2010) [in this collection]. Ziegler, Jean 1964. Sociologie de la nouvelle Afrique (Gallimard).

Chapter 4

Political Pluralism in Morocco

Le système politique marocain est original en Afrique, non seulement parce que le Maroc est doté d’un régime monarchique mais aussi parce que ce pays est le seul à avoir tenté et poursuivi depuis son independence un experience de multipartisme.1

Societies are generally neither monolithic nor homogeneous; every political system must deal with the problem of pluralism in some way.2 But political systems tend to be organized hierarchically, with power and authority concentrated at the top. The confrontation of social pluralism and political concentration can well give rise to tensions, since centtical structure itself, as factions form on the bases of personalities, programmes and interests. Factions can exist within a single organizational or institutional framework, or they can be reflected in competing patties, checking and balancing institutions, and separated powers. The single-party regime has often become a familiar way of containing these tensions and factions in developing countries, particularly in Africa, and the existence of many African single-party regimes has led to efforts to discover the common elements behind the common phenomenon. The purpose of this study is not to challenge these explanations, but to look more broadly into the nature of interests, factions and power in developing polities, suggesting a model of political development that puts both unipartism and political pluralism in their place. The question to be answered in relation to Morocco, becomes not: Why did the Istiqlal not become a single party? or even: Why did the divided nationalist movement not unite? but rather: How have the inevitable pressures for pluralization affected the Moroccan political system?

‘Où en sont !es partis politiques marocains ?’ Maghreb, 19 July 1965. I. William Zartman, “Political Pluralism in Morocco,” Government and Opposition II 4:568–584 (July 1967). Reprinted with permission.

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The Pattern of Modernization

Students of African politics have suggested that there is a typical sequence in the evolution of political organization in response to the challenge of political modernization (see Coleman 1955; Zartman 1965; Moore 1965). The end of the colonial conquest and the beginning of the colonial pact was marked by a period of imitation, in which the newly formed and educated elite tried to show the colonizer that it was westernized and to stand before the traditional society as an: example of the way to the modern world. This double purpose faced a double rejection, since the elite tended to lose contact with its own traditional society but was still not accepted on equal terms by the colonizer. The reaction to this double rejection was a dual reform movement: one regressed to seek the pure elements of traditional culture and to reform the local society along these lines, while the other intensified its efforts to gain acceptance by putting pressure on the colonial rulers to grant reforms leading to equality, integration and assimilation (see Rezette 1955; Abun Nasr 1966). In the next stage—dyarchy, the work of both reactions—was bypassed and replaced by the formation of a nationalist movement which sought to create a rival political system and to overthrow the colonial system by wielding mass support, the one element of power left to it by colonial rule. ln Apter’s terms (1965: 181–182), the movement became—for the first time—both a dependent and an independent variable in the political process, depending on the structure of society for its leadership and followers but introducing its own means of generating power. Its goal, that of becoming “an intervening variable between the public and the governments” now came into sight (Apter 1965: 181). The colonial government’s opposition to the nationalist movement welded it into a united or unified organization, for if it were not united (or as long as it was not united) the colonial government could keep it weak by playing on its internal divisions. Thus, it approached independence as a representative of the great majority of the population. With the attainment of independence, which usually follows at this stage, the nationalist movement has been obliged to reverse its position: it no longer seeks to overthrow the old political system but to dominate the new one. Indeed, because of its united, popular nature, it is used to thinking of itself as the political system: sympathy with the movement, not citizenship, becomes equivalent to membership in the system. But the task of government poses new challenges to the movement and opens new alternative stages. The first tendency of the movement is to preserve its unity but to turn itself into a political party, with members instead of sympathizers. The presence of members, however, puts pressure on the party to aggregate their diverse interests instead of merely voicing their support for a single undifferentiated goal. Although the underdeveloped nature of society may tend to keep these interests rather simple and few, the rise of expectations and the lack of resources to satisfy them can lead rapidly to a sharpening and a multiplication of demands, and (not too long after) either to dissatisfaction or to apathy bred of frustration. Thus, with membership comes pressure both for organization and control, and for programmes and policies, the former working for party unity and

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the latter putting strains on that unity. Ethnic, social and geographic differences also tend to add further strains, as do ideological divergences and personal rivalries, although these must find an appeal in the interests of potential followers to be effective. Thus, the attempt of the nationalist movement to adapt to the new situation brings strains which can lead to several results. If the political organization can satisfy competing demands, if it can monopolize the means of control and coercion, if it can contain factionalism within its midst with a combination of carrots and sticks, the nationalist movement can turn into a nation-party, at least as long as it can aggregate and allocate effectively (see Zartman 1966). If interest divergence is low, if enthusiasm gives way to apathy as the colonial enemy and the single goal disappear, if party organization atrophies, the single-party state can turn into a no-party state, at least until these conditions change (Wallerstein 1967). If interests are not aggregated and demands not met, if enthusiasm gives way to dissatisfaction and becomes organized against the system, if there is no way of changing leaders or policies within the system, the party government can fall prey to revolution, until a new political system is established (Friedrich 1966; Johnson 1966). But if these conditions do not obtain, if alternative sources of authority are operative, if there is an effective (that is legal and enforced) possibility of free political organization and electoral participation, a multiparty system can emerge. Three qualifications should be placed on this model. First, the words ‘progression’, ‘sequence’ and ‘stages’ should not be read to imply a strict and exclusive succession of events. Some of the pre-independence stages—notably the two reform reactions—can overlap, the lengths of the periods can vary widely, and in exceptional cases the order and the relation to the independence-point may change (particularly if pre-independence elections bring in the need for an organized party); similarly, the reactions to independence can appear in varying order (on proper sequencing, see Micaud 1964: 5). Second, the model is open ended, and should be able to be extended by further studies in comparative politics and political sociology. Third, this analysis is presented in terms of plural interests, in a rather broad sense. Admittedly, an explanation of Moroccan politics could also be made in terms of regions or personalities, for both are real factors and both stand in a particular relationship-offering a geographical base and leadership role—to the formation of interests. Neither is to be ignored for a full understanding of Moroccan politics; but neither by itself gives the broad and dynamic framework of understanding that an analysis of interests provides.

4.2

The Specific Evolution of Morocco

It is the thesis of this article that the single-party system is a natural but-fleeting-stage-in-political-development; that Morocco’s evolution into a multi-party system is atypical only in the speed with which it occurred; that certain specifically Moroccan conditions—notably the existence of an independent

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institution of power and legitimacy, and the presence of a number of well-developed strata and interests—account for this acceleration; and that these conditions can be approximated in other developing political systems, particularly during the generation which grew up after independence. When Morocco became independent in 1956, its nationalist movement enjoyed the sympathy of the overwhelming majority of the population, under a leadership with roots in specific social strata (see Marais 1964; Adam 1955; Bousquet 1962). The Old Leaders, generally either modern or traditionally educated intellectuals coming from the old—mainly Fassi—bourgeoisie, emerged from exile, deportation or international lobbying to reassume direction of the movement. Another group was the Makhzen which was associated with the palace and the protectorate government, at least up to 1953 when Sultan Mohammed V was exiled and many who formerly worked for him in civil service and local government resigned; when they returned they brought an essentially non-partisan element of middle class civil servants back into the political system. Within the nationalist movement was also a group of activist Younger Leaders who remained in Morocco before independence to organize resistance to the Protectorate, some of whom were also jailed or under house arrest; they tended to come from new middle class intellectual (i.e. educated in secondary schools) and from proletarian groups, and gathered around them a large number of mostly urban followers: students, workers and unemployed. The most significant rural group in the nationalist movement was the Army of Liberation, based in specific (and largely Berber) tribal areas, largely traditional in nature. Political organisations cut across group lines. The overwhelming majority of the Old Leaders, Young Leaders and their followers were Istiqlalis; a few others were members or the Democratic Istiqlal (PDI) and, to an even smaller extent, the Moroccan Reform (PRM) and Unity (PUM) parties in the Spanish zone. One small club in the Makhzen was called the Liberal Independent Party; another consisted of intellectuals in the Moroccan Communist Party. The Berber Army of Liberation group no longer had any organization by the end of 1956 and much of the rest of the countryside was only unevenly penetrated by the Istiqlal. As was to be expected, after the return of the sultan in November 1955, the Istiqlal began to turn itself into a party and to convert the Moroccan political system into a single-party state. It launched a recruiting campaign for members, particularly within the civil service, the police and the army but also in the rural areas, to which little attention had previously been paid and which had often harboured animosity towards the Istiqlal. At the same time the party also sought to destroy competing membership drives, particularly by the PDI and liberal independents in the towns (Ashford 1961: 302–333). It also began a campaign for a homogeneous (i.e. all-Istiqlal) government, a claim which was supposed to be validated by the success of the Istiqlal membership drive and the failure of its opponents. By the end of two years of independence, the Istiqlal appeared to have reached its goals without exception. In May 1958 a government of Istiqlalis and sympathizers was formed under party secretary-general Ahmed Balafrej. The liberal independents and the PDIs had been squeezed out, the premiership had been taken

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over from a respected independent, the defence ministry was finally in Istiqlal hands. Berber and palace-associated attempt at dissidence against the government had been quickly brought under control by the army. The three opposition parties and their press were lifeless; a first attempt in October 1957 by the Berber group to constitute a new party was squashed with alacrity; one party in the ex-Spanish zone had affiliated with the Istiqlal and the other had melted away. Istiqlal infiltration of the civil service and police was well under way. Economic interests within the society—businessmen and artisans, landowners (large and small), labour—had been organized and their organizations dominated by the party. Yet by the beginning of 1959, the Istiqlal had lost control of the government, the party and its functional auxiliaries had split, two new major parties had been authorized and organized dissidence had again broken out in some mountain areas, new newspapers had appeared, and major political figures had left the Istiqlal to become independents. What had happened? The most important factor was that Morocco had an alternative source of legitimacy and power in the monarch, who was not dependent on any party but had his own sources of authority and popularity, and who in subtle ways opposed the concentration of rival power in any political organization and encouraged the creation of conditions wherein plural organizations could be formed.3 Each of these characteristics deserves separate investigation. Although the nationalist movement had created a dyarchy by the end of the 1940s, both political systems—protectorate and nationalist—looked on the sultanate as their apex. When the French deposed Mohammed V and replaced him with their puppet in 1953, they in fact handed over the legitimate sultan to the nationalists as the head of their system alone. Thus, in Morocco, membership in the system after independence was equated with allegiance to the king, not to a political organization. The king legitimized the independent Moroccan system, because of his traditional position as head of a historic dynasty and of the national religion but also because of his symbolic leadership of the nationalist struggle (albeit under the pressure of the nationalist movement) and his patronage of continuing modernization. Because of the important traditionalist roots in the nationalist movement and the decision of its leaders to militate under and for, not against, the symbolic leadership of the sultan, the movement gave up any chance of posing as an alternative legitimizer of the political system. Large numbers of civil servants, businessmen, and peasants remained directly loyal to the king, outside the reach of the Istiqlal. While continuing to recognize and encourage the parties’ allegiance to him, the king also set about developing ways of strengthening his own sources of support, and of weakening—without actually trying to destroy—the support of the parties when they threatened to become too strong. This meant reaffirming direct ties between people and palace, and also meant balancing off the predominant

“The importance of the political party in providing legitimacy and stability in modernizing political system varies inversely with the institutional inheritance of the system from traditional society,” Huntington (1965: 424).

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organization—the Istiqlal—with strengthened rivals. Thus the king appointed governors who were his personal representatives, kept the army directly and exclusively loyal to the throne through the crown prince as chief of staff, sought to set up non-party elections; and kept channels of communication, interest articulation and redress of grievances open between himself and constituent groups. Maintaining the power to appoint both his prime minister and his consultative councils, he imposed proportional formulas on cabinet and council memberships so that the Istiqlal, while predominant, was balanced both by PDIs and liberal independents (inflated beyond their popular strength) and by independents directly loyal to him. At the same time he played a quasi-parliamentary game in the choice of his prime ministers by calling the candidate of the strongest faction in a governmental crisis to form the next government (Zartman 1965). When (in 1958) this meant the creation of an exclusively Istiqlal government, he insisted on maintaining a key post (Interior) in non-Istiqlal hands and on including sufficient independents (four out of eleven) to insure control over government policy. Through his representatives, through his own policy guidelines, through restraints and pressures on the government, and through his acceptance of minimal measures to undercut activists’ demands for accelerated programs, the king was able to slow social change and foster political liberalization. The most important results were the impatience of activists (mainly the Young Leaders) with the more conservative party leadership’s acquiescence in this moderation, and the passage of legislation allowing both the restive activists and the Berber Army of Liberation group to form new political organizations. By 1959 the situation had changed. Instead of one predominant political organization which contained a number of interest groups and factions, organized Moroccan politics had grown into interest parties. The Old Leaders and their followers in traditional cities and the central agricultural plain maintained control of the Istiqlal. The Young Leaders and their proletarian followers in the growing industrial cities (plus farmers and traders from the trans-Atlas Souss valley) became first the Confederated Istiqlal and then, with similar elements from the PDI, renamed themselves the National Union of Popular Forces (UNFP); during 1959 and half of 1960, this UNFP group formed the government, with the job of preparing local elections. The rural, Berber, mountain group established the Popular Movement. Bourgeois intellectuals maintained the small Liberal Independent, Democratic Constitutional (ex-PDI) and Communist Parties. The functionally and politically representative National Consultative Assembly was allowed to lapse (Ebrard 1964: 32–81); the first nation-wide elections, in May 1960, for local councils, confirmed the regional and social clientele of the parties. A further and more subtle change corresponding to this pluralization of parties was the reduction of party participation in government. The ‘UNFP government’ was chosen ‘in a personal capacity’. An increasing number of leading nationalist figures regained their independence as non-partisan, palace-oriented figures when the Istiqlal split. In the local elections, a quarter of the seats, particularly in the rural

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areas, was won by independents. After the elections, the ‘UNFP government’ was replaced by a government of technicians (four members of parties—the UNFP refused to participate—were named as individuals and not as representatives of their political organizations) with the king as prime minister and the prince as acting premier. Not yet ready to put effective governing power in the hands of an electoral majority without formal safeguards for the paramount position of the monarchy, the king tightened his hold on the reins of government but promised a democratic, monarchical constitution by 1963, and then died. Essentially, Mohammed V’s tactics in encouraging and maintaining pluralism had been to maintain his own predominance in position and power, and to wear down the momentary challenge of a rising political organization by saddling it with the burden of government.4 The tactics of Hassan II have been similar in their goal of maintaining pluralism but less formal in their methods. Hassan has not saddled parties with authority, but rather has kept them alive only by offering the hope of participation in power, never fully attained, and has kept them weak by competition and control. The father practised a sort of constitutional parliamentarianism without written constitution or elected parliament; the son has had a constitution and a parliament without any durable constitutionialism or parliamentarianism. From one point of view, it can be seen that Hassan is working under conditions more difficult (although of his own creation) than those confronting his father. Under Mohammed V, parties worked and waited for the golden moment when a constitutional system with an elected parliament would be established (Aubin 1964: 77). Political effort— much of it constructive—was channelled into preparing for the new structure. As long as events seemed to be heading towards its creation, realistic hopes could be kept alive. When the moment came, however, it was scarcely golden; the letter of the constitution turned out to be filled with more democratic promise than the spirit of its application. In this situation, it has been much more difficult to keep the parties’ hope alive, and it is tempting to draw the inference—however unsubstantiated—that all the crises befalling Morocco after 1962 were manufactured by the palace to avoid having to make the constitutional system work. Because of the problems in this situation which he created, Hassan has had to resort to political maneuvering to maintain the pluralistic political system, and to crisis management to maintain its stability. To Mohammed V, the problem was to encourage political pluralism by wearing the parties out with governing responsibility. For Hassan, who seeks to maintain political pluralism by wearing the parties out in opposition, the problem is to keep the parties in the political system without giving them any governing responsibility.5 These tactics demand more political skill and a more active political role for the king, but their long range goal and merit are not very evident.

4

No one has ever been able to document the extent to which this tactic was conscious or planned, rather than simply instinctive and informal. 5 [Written in 1967, this evaluation was the key to the king’s strategy after the 1972 coup. Zartman 1980.]

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The 1962 Constitution and After

The first step in keeping the situation fluid was the constitution, promulgated after a referendum at the end of 1962; the constitution provides for a government responsible to king and parliament, and specifically forbids a single-party state. Thereafter, elections had to be held for national, local and intermediate institutions, occupying attention during most of 1963. Other crises arose in the form of plots uncovered in 1963 and 1964, and a border war with Algeria in late 1963; at least in the case of the plots there is some doubt of their reality, although there is no doubt of their use as an occasion to clip the wings of the opposition. When a riot broke out in Casablanca in March 1965, the reality of the popular—and probably spontaneous —outburst was not in doubt, nor was the effectiveness of the police and army repression. Hassan used the occasion to blame and then suspend parliament, dismiss and take personal charge of the government, declare a state of emergency and raise hopes for constitutional reform, new elections, and an opening to the left. While the UNFP opposition lived on its hopes, encouraged by discreet talks with the palace, the king himself enacted one of its prime policies, the nationalization of a large part of foreign commerce, and at the same time continued to encourage the separation of the major labour union from the political parties by granting new labour benefits. The UMT declared its non-partisan position in its January 1963 congress, in exchange for palace support against the UGTM; the latter, Istiqlal-affiliated, is less effective in any role because of its smaller membership. Both unions, however, were reduced to pressure groups because of the need to defend workers’ interests against the growing mass of unemployed. In late 1965, a new crisis arose—again with no clear evidence as to how much the king himself was involved—when Mehdi ben Barka was kidnapped and probably assassinated, possibly on orders from the Ministry of the Interior. Whatever had been the hopes for the return of political parties to government before this latest crisis, they were sharply reduced afterwards. In a first period, following the promulgation of the constitution, the Icing fostered further organizational pluralism by encouraging the palace-oriented independents and other groups to form their own party. Thus the elections of 1963 were contested not only by the Istiqlal and the UNFP (until charges of plotting caused the two parties to boycott them), but also by a new Front for the Defence of the Constitutional Institutions (FDIC), which grouped independents, liberal independents, and the Popular Movement, under royal patronage. [A similar attempt, with the same participants, including the then premier, was discussed in early 1958, before the formation of the ‘homogeneous’ Istiqlal government, but failed because of Istiqlal strength and ‘king’s men’s’ indecision (Marais 1965: 85).] The instability of the new body was soon apparent: it was only an electoral alliance, too poorly organized to be called a party; its own unity lasted only as long as the elections themselves; and both the party and the king were somewhat restricted in their freedom of action by too close an association. Once the constitutional institutions were established with a tenuous FDIC majority, independents and liberal

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independents made a second attempt to form a political organization, in order to balance the Popular Movement within the FDIC. The resulting Socialist Democratic Party also proved ephemeral, for it never developed any grass roots organization, and it lost control of the government when the state of emergency was declared. Nevertheless, through their candidates and their voters, the parties in the 1963 elections showed increased identification with distinguishable sectors and interests (Marais 1965: 85–106). The Istiqlal drew its votes from traditional elements in older cities, small towns and rural areas between the Atlas and the Rif, particularly in the Gharb, Doukkala and Tadla farming areas and among the small town traders, artisans, and petite bourgeoisie. Over a third of its successful candidates were farmers, a quarter traders, and an eighth teachers, whereas none came from the modern professions; over a quarter had only elementary Quranic education, another quarter had only elementary modem education, and of more than a quarter that had higher education, half came from the traditional school system. Generally, Istiqlal candidates tended to be older, traditionally educated figures; younger Istiqlalis were kept out of the running or were beaten, although youth does have great importance in party councils. Thus the party represented a traditional, status quo (defensive) segment of small urban and rural population, under Fassi leadership. The UNFP found its clientele in the proletariat (employed and unemployed) of coastal, modernizing cities from Tangier to Agadir (even though it was on cool terms with the UMT during the election) and in its peculiar fief in the Agadir-Souss region between the Atlas and Anti-Atlas; it also attracted lower civil servants such as teachers and rural agents in the countryside, but their numbers are small. Its elected members were evenly divided among farmers, traders, modem professions (lawyers and doctors) and civil servants (mainly teachers); nearly half had higher modern education, although a third had only primary or secondary traditional schooling. Broadly, the party represented modern urban dissatisfaction (the Souss population being a large source of migrants and traders in UNFP towns, particularly in Casablanca) (Montagne 1951). Some interpretation is necessary to separate Popular Movement clienteles from those of the PSD-to-be within the FDIC, but the differences are fairly clear. Rather ironically, the Popular Movement brought most of the former bled as-siba or dissident region (minus the Souss) into the FDIC column, along with the Marrakesh region; the 40 rural members of the FDIC group in parliament were generally all Popular Movement members, as were most of the 42 FDIC members who had no more than primary education (28 of whom had only Quranic schooling and seven of whom had none at all). The siba parallel is only partially paradoxical, however, for the party represents the dissatisfied traditionalists who inhabit the ‘disinherited’ regions of the country; unlike their ancestors, they see redress of their grievances in effective attachment to the palace but, like the old siba, they react against the Fassi bourgeoisie (i.e. today, not the palace but the Istiqlal). The PSD appealed more to mixed elements in the towns, from unemployed to businessmen, ranging from those who benefit from the social services offered by local administrators to those who see their commercial interests defended by the palace. Although it is less accurate to group all this clientele together under one description, the PSD in general received

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its votes from urban populations touched by modernization and with interests to defend. The difficulty of generalization and the ability of the business interests to achieve direct access to the palace account to a large extent for the lack of cohesion of the short-lived party. Its deputies came mostly from the 27 FD IC members who had modern education on the secondary level or higher (almost two-thirds of whom had a higher education diploma). In a second period, the effects of downgrading the political organizations which began as early as 1960 have become apparent in several ways. First, the centre of politics has shifted from the parties to the palace, where factions headed by the royal cabinet’s director general, the Minister of the Interior and security chief and the rather anonymous, technocratic ministers, all manoeuvre to strengthen their positions (even more than their programs) close to the king. Rather than supplying political guidelines and checking and prodding the executants, as his father did, the young king takes a more active personal hand in policy decisions than ever before. Notable in this development is the increased importance of the army. Since 1964, army officers have filled one or two ministries as well as half the provincial governorships. The army played a hero’s role in the Algerian War, and has been brought into greater prominence as a result of the frequent suspicion of plots, as well as the fear of another conflict with Algeria. The officers, in turn, tend to scorn the civilian government and parties for muffing diplomatic opportunities after the Algerian War and for making increased security measures necessary. While it is too early to say that there is a military-based regime, or that the military has become a political organization in its own right, or even that it is the client group of the Minister of the Interior, it is certain that the army has moved from an apolitical to simply a non-partisan position. With increased importance comes an increased awareness of its own interests—in terms of pay, equipment, activity. Already in negotiations with the left opposition (which ended with the ben Barka affair), the role of army officers in government was a point of discussion. When the military enters into competition with political organizations, it brings into play new elements of power which tend to change the rules of the game, as well as the nature of the army. The decline of political parties as national interest-aggregating and political recruiting organizations increases the possibility of the army’s playing the same role. Then, an increasing number of Morocco’s leading political figures have withdrawn to the sidelines of politics, where they bide their time, tend to business or mutter clandestinely. As ministerial positions are filled more and more with technocratic nonentities, and party positions are divorced from direct or constant influence on governmental programs, both the parties and the palace have lost some of their most notable figures. Many of those ex-politicians appear to have lost interest in politics, and only a small number seem to have been planning for a return. Similarly, many high and middle cadres have left government service, which they consider stifling to initiative and efficiency, for less useful private jobs. The same phenomenon of apathy is evident on the popular level, where there has been a

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notable drop in organized political interest—not merely a change in focus from broad issues like independence to bread-and-butter problems, but even a depoliticization of the latter. The 1963 elections were understood by the majority of the electorate in terms of loyalty to the king and of local interests and attachments rather than as preparing for responsible national government (Marais 1964: 67). The demonstration of March 1965 is not a contradiction of this lack of interest in national politics, but rather the other side of the same coin, for when organized political participation loses its effectiveness and hence its attraction, anomic outbursts become more likely as expressions of demands and dissatisfaction. Again, the decline in political recruiting and organization has been reflected by the increased success of pressure groups in representing various interests in society. Even the parties have sometimes shifted to operate as pressure groups since their opportunities for electoral and institutional representation have been curtailed. Functional associations and political figures are consulted by the palace on specific measures, thus increasing the direct aggregative functions of the king himself, rather than enabling the parties to serve as aggregators for several interests. A role as a pressure group, however, is a way of keeping the parties alive in a minimal existence. It also increases the possibility of pay-offs, log-rolling and dealing with the group representatives individually, while reducing their ability to create broad and effective sources of power. Finally, this has led to the further division of political organizations. Thus the palace has succeeded in separating the UMT from the UNFP, leaving the latter with a greatly reduced clientele and it has transformed the former into a labour pressure group. This situation has further intensified the rivalry among the various leaders of the UNFP and weakened the party. Similarly, the Popular Movement has split into two factions, both out of the government since early 1967. Only the Istiqlal has maintained its cohesion, thanks to its strong charismatic leadership and its long-standing organization.

4.4

Conclusions

There are three lessons which can be drawn from the Moroccan experience.

(1) A political party, like any other alliance, tends to fall apart when its enemy is destroyed or when it is unable to attain power. When the nationalist movement achieved its goal of independence, it was unable to make the transition from opposition to control of the political system and at the same time keep its component interests satisfied. Ironically, its very moment of triumph—the ‘homogeneous’ government of 1958—brought out the divergences among leaders and programs, based on the needs and demands of client groups; like other wartime alliances, the Istiqlal broke up in victory, unable to satisfy all its

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members with the booty (conceived of either in narrow terms of ministries, or in broader terms of programs). Thereafter, in their time, the Istiqlal, UNFP, Popular Movement, and PSD have come to represent the four major interest groups in society: defensive (conservative) traditional, offensive (dissatisfied) modernist, offensive traditional, defensive modernist, respectively, depending —in their own view—on whether they had a stake in defending or changing the structure of society and polity. As time has passed, even these political organizations have not been particularly successful in maintaining their internal cohesion; cut off, as organizations, from power, they are nevertheless inhibited from turning their guns on the monarchy and making an enemy of it. (There were threats to do so in the election campaign, however. The plots of 1963–4, to the extent that they existed, also represented a momentary rise of those who considered challenging the political system.) In political terms, they no longer have very evident roles to play. Unable to function as an independent variable, they have lost effectiveness as an intervening variable between public and government, and are left only as a dependent variable, reflecting social pluralism. (2) Thus, in a political system, the pluralism of interests is the dominant factor in determining the pattern of political organizations when power is concentrated beyond their reach. The description given in the preceding point is obviously not the whole picture; just at the moment of Istiqlal ‘victory’, the hand of the throne reached down from on high, arrogating some of the ministries and directing the course of some of the programs. Whether or not the party would have split if the king had remained strictly neutral is an unanswerable question and one that opens up a number of conjectures, but the fact is that the king did enhance the conditions of the preceding point. Thereafter the palace role in Moroccan government increased, and even the king was unable to coalesce the political parties into a government of national unity. The parties then became narrower interest parties and personal factions; they ceased to function as aggregators of interests, once this role was increasingly adopted by the palace. (3) Alliances form among interest groups if they can achieve or create enough governing power to make a minimum coalition meaningful (Riker 1962), or if they find a new surmounting common interest in opposing the political system. The concept of a minimum coalition is significant only if its creation can accomplish something—the distribution of jobs or the enactment of programs. Minimum coalitions in a situation where power is distributed as it is in Morocco would be expected to involve the palace as well as the political organizations as members; thus a governing coalition could be established by the king sharing his governing power with one party, as discussed in 1965–6 with first the UNFP and then the Istiqlal. Otherwise, the only conditions for forming a coalition would be the creation of an alternative (revolutionary) political system to challenge the monarchy. The reasons why this has not taken place are simple: as long as the king gives parties a minimum, consultative role in the present formation of policy and as long as he is able to keep alive their

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future hopes of governing, their interests as pressure groups are better served by playing the game than by challenging the system. Furthermore, and equally important, as long as the king’s security forces remain strong and loyal enough to show potential revolutionaries that they have no chance of success, the parties will continue to believe that their interests are better served in the system than outside it. It is therefore important for the king to keep the parties minimally active as pressure groups, for if he went to the point of totally destroying the parties and liberating their leaders from their client interests, he would decrease their stake in the system and increase their interest in destroying it. This study of Morocco has attempted to show that such party pluralism is highly likely when there is an alternative centre of political gravity. It has also attempted to show that, even in the absence of this condition, the pluralism of society can be expected to increase as development proceeds; that crises of the single party tend to take the form of pluralistic challenges; and that, in this respect, Morocco may not be atypical, but simply ahead of the rest in African political development.

References Abun-Nasr, J 1966. “The Salafiyya Movement in Morocco,” in Immanuel Wallerstein, ed., Social Change: The Colonial Situation. Adam, Andre 1955. “Naissance et developpement d’une classe moyenne au Maroc,” Bulletin Economique et Social du Maroc LXVIII 4:489–492. Apter, David 1965. The Politics of Modemization (University of Chicago Press). Aubin, Jules & Aubin, Jim 1966. “Le Maroc en suspens,” Annuaire de l’ Afrique du Nord, 1964 (CNRS). Bousquet, Marie 1962. “Les rapports de la bourgeoisie et de la monarchie au Maroc,” Les Temps Modernes, April 1962, 1483–1492. Coleman, James S 1955. “The Emergence of African Political Parties,” in C Grove Haines, ed., Africa Today, 226–253. Ebrard, Pierre 1964. “L’assemblee nationale consultative marocaine”, in Annaire de l’Afrique du Nord, 1962 (CNRS–Centre national de la recherche scientifique). Friedrich, Carl J, ed. 1966. Revolution (Atherton). Huntington, Samuel P 1965. “Political Development and Political Decay,” World Politics XV II 3, April 1965. Johnson, Chalmers A 1966. Revolutionary Change (Little Brown). Marais, Octave 1964. “La classe dirigeante au Maroc,” Revue f rançaise de science politique, August XIV 4:709–737. Marais, Octave 1965. “L’election de la chambre des representants du Maroc,” Annuaire de l’ Afrique du Nord, 1963 (CNRS). Micaud, Charles, Brown, L Carl, & Moore, Clement Henry 1964. Tunisia: The Politics of Modernization (Praeger). Moore, Clement H 1965. Tunisia since Independence (University of California Press). Rezette, Robert 1955. Les Partis Politiques Marocains (Colin). Riker, William H 1962. The Theory of Political Coalitions (Yale University Press). Robert, Montagne et al. 1951. Naissance du Prolétariat Marocain (Paris).

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Wallerstein, Immanuel 1967. “The Decline of the Party in Single-Party African States,” in Joseph LaPalombara & Myron Weiner, eds., Political Parties and Political Development (Princeton University Press). Zartman, I William 1965. Problems of New Power (Atherton). Zartman, I William 1966. “Morocco’s Modernizing Monarchy,” in John Mikhail, ed., Political Modernization in the Middle East and North Africa (Princeton University Press).

Chapter 5

Succession as a Conceptual Event: Algeria and Tunisia

This study proposes to consider elite succession as a political concept and independent variable.1 Succession has long been studied as a dependent variable, usually of no special depth or dimension. Particular antecedents are generally seen to produce a particular type of succession, which is then considered to be a door through which history marches, but without any real effect on what ensues. There is no denying that succession is the result of previous causes, but there is too little recognition that particular types of succession are independent variables in their own rights, causing different types of events by their very nature. The problem then becomes, What is the nature of these different types of successions and what are their implications? Literature on certain types of elite succession is copious, even though it does not relate the types to each other or to the central concept of which they are subcategories. Unexpected violent succession of top leadership in a polity—revolutions, coups de force, revolts—are of course the subject of a vast literature. But it reflects the initial observation of this discussion, that the subject is seen as a caused rather than a causing event. Most analysis is about what produces a revolution, not what a revolution produces. A similar situation surrounds analysis of unexpected nonviolent successions, as in regularly scheduled elections. There is much more analysis of the causes of the outcome than of its effects as a particular type of succession. However, there is some consideration of regular nonviolent succession as an independent variable (Bunce 1981; Wilson 1976; Quandt 1987). These studies show that the interval between the moments of expected succession, generally associated with elections, is marked off after each election or are counted down toward the next one. Through the campaign, the new leader focusses on certain issues, articulates a program, and recruits a group of advisors. Innovation is high during the first year, and relations between elected and electorate are marked by a honeymoon of confidence and activism. “As these are worn down, the policy “Political Succession as a Conceptual Event: The Cases of Algeria and Tunisia,” presented at the XIV World Congress of the International Political Association, Washington 1988.

1

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 I. W. Zartman, I William Zartman: A Pioneer in Conflict Management and Area Studies, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06079-4_5

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cycle moves on to focus on smaller issues, like puzzles after a paradigm shift at the end it becomes impossible to sustain a credible policy initiative because the support is gone” (Kuhn 1962). “The key question, then, is not whether leaders matter, but rather where they are in their terms and what they tell us about their impact” (Bunce 1981: 229). Expected nonviolent succession (EVS) has never taken place in North Africa before 1990 and unexpected violent change (UVC) only twice—in 1965 in Algeria (Ahmed benBella to Houari Boumedienne) and 1969 in Libya (King Idriss to Mu’ammar Qadhdhafi). Indeed the drama of the Third World is that the first takes place rarely, leaving the second by default, and since it takes place by default many of the conditions of revolutionary change remain unfulfilled (see Zartman 1980).

5.1

The Concept

But there is a third form between the two, not simply a hybrid but an event and concept with its own integrity and characteristics worthy of identification, which funds frequent examples in and outside North Africa. This is unexpected nonviolent succession (UNS), or accession, between the expected nonviolent (ENS) and unexpected violent event (UVC). Accession occurs when the incumbent is removed unpredictably, but nonviolently, by the hand of man or of God, and a new leader as suddenly and unexpectedly is called to take his place. Like election, accession is a political process, not a succession based on force; the incumbent and his supporters do not offer resistance. But its unforeseen nature means that the new leader does not come in with a campaign-hardened platform and support, and that the countdown mechanics of the policy cycle cannot operate. Like takeover, accession is unexpected, but unlike it, accession is torn between the need to bring in new people and the recognition that it is the ongoing system which brought the new leader to power. Yet, the new leader has been legitimized only to the extent of his institutional succession; he has neither a campaign or a coup behind him, or at least not one as important as in election or coup. Twentieth Century North Africa has known almost nothing but accessions, unexpected nonviolent successions. Morocco experienced change of leadership since independence in 1956 [and again in 1999], in the most unexpected death of Mohammed V in 1961 on the operating table from an anesthesia reaction and the consequent ascension of his eldest son Hassan II to his throne [with a similar scenario on the accession of his son, Mohammed VI]. The event was institutionally provided for but was a surprise. Algeria experienced its unexpected nonviolent handover as well, when Houari Boumedienne died of a rare illness in 1978, not as suddenly but just as unexpectedly as Mohammed V. Chadli BenJedid was his successor after a caucus campaign and then an unopposed election. Again, the succession was institutionally anticipated but unexpected. Tunisia had its accession when Premier Zine Labidine ben’Ali put Habib Bourguiba into early retirement in 1987. People had long despaired of the event and it took some creative and literal

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reading of the constitution to see its institutional blueprint, but it was there, termed by some a constitutional coup. The pattern is not a North African invention, although the following discussion will be limited to North African cases to flesh out the model and its implications. Twentieth Century accessions in Egypt, Senegal, Cameroun, Niger, Angola, Nigeria, and, beyond, in Latin America and in the Soviet Union, followed a similar pattern, so that a better understanding of handover would permit a deeper appreciation of the limits and directions of policy in the early years after accession in many states. Accession is not just a matter of one person’s replacement by another. Other important variables involved include the succession of second-level political leaders, or the effect of the top person’s succession on the second level; the succession of—or the effect of succession on—the symbols and groups of support; and the succession of—or effects of succession on—the demand groups and interests. Succession does not move only one person along his path of life; it moves along the entire body politic in all its component parts. It is most unlikely, even if not completely impossible, that all other parts of the polity and all other companions of leadership remain unchanged after change in the top position, and the greater the age difference between the former incumbent and his successor, the more likely and the greater the extent of a generational change. (On generational change see Stewart 1977; Zartman 1980; Samuels 1977; Mcintyre 1988.) Personal relations alone, but also policy differences, mean that the new leader will have different sources of support from his predecessor. But more deeply, despite any institutional legitimization, he will have to develop his own basis of acceptance and even legitimization. The longer the incumbency of the predecessor, and the greater his charisma and unusual status (father of his country, wartime leader, etc), the more the successor will have to reestablish his own legitimacy. Similarly, policies are likely to change, particularly in those areas where the incumbent was stuck with a contested or unpopular idea or had decided himself into a corner on policy contradictions. More broadly, the issue focus of the population or public is likely to have changed over a period of time, whereas the orientation of the incumbent tends to become more fixed; the incumbent tend more and more to refine and adjust the details of his policy, while pressures grow for reevaluations, reorientations, and innovations. The longer the previous incumbent has been in office, the more likely and the greater are pressures for both specific and general policy change (on issue reorientation, see Burnham 1970). Yet the paradox of accession is that the pressures for change co-exist with pressures for continuity. Accession is not takeover, not a coup or a revolution. It is an inside job, in which most of the former actors are still in place, having gotten to where they are through the incumbent system. There is pressure to change but not too much, pressure to reform but also to consolidate. The neatness of the change inherent in either election or takeover is not present; the mechanisms for cleaning the stables that are found in elections and coups are not available in unexpected nonviolent succession. Pressures for continuity are not present only on the level of personnel; they also operate on the level of policy. Since the former regime has been neither voted nor kicked out of office, there is an expectation that some things

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will remain the same but that some things will change. Furthermore, the personnel were generally part of the old team, and therefore committed to at least much of the policy stance of the former incumbents. Above all, interests are entrenched. The longer the previous incumbency, the greater the pressures for continuity. In sum, the first few years of the new leader’s tenure are dominated by tension between pressures for change and for continuity along the three dimensions of personnel, authority, and policies, producing processes which may be termed consolidation, legitimization and orientation. As indicated, these dimensions concern relations with elites, relation of public support, and relations of public demands and programmatic responses. There may be other effects and relations involved in succession, particularly of the nonviolent unexpected type, but they are not or only incidentally important. However, not only are there inherent tensions determining the course of the new leader along these dimensions but there are also tensions and relations among the three dimensions themselves. Responses to the problem of legitimization may either further or hinder appropriate responses to the problem of consolidation, and these in turn cannot avoid having some effect on the problems of orientation. The arrows of effect flow in both directions. With so many inter-relations in all directions, it might appear difficult to say more than that everything is influencing everything, hardly an analytically helpful situation. However, by evaluating the strength of pressures at successive points in time, it may be possible to construct an ideal-type model that will serve as a baseline for understanding the nature of nonviolent unexpected accession.

5.2

The Model

A model that is both conceptual and empirical can be constructed of events following accession, using the three dimensions of personnel, authority, and policies. Such a model can be useful in many ways. It can help provide hypothetical explanations for events where otherwise difficult, random, or idiosyncratic hypotheses would be the only way to account for their occurrence. By providing a normal baseline, it can help highlight unusual events and separate them from normal consequences. It can avoid surprises. And it can point up some crucial decision points where there are forks in the baseline. Obviously, such a model is only suggestive, not determinative, providing hypotheses whose purported explanations must be checked against events in individual cases. One major question concerning the nature of the model involves the element of time and sequence. It is not yet clear how much the model is a list of functions that need to be accomplished in some general, logical relation to each other and how much is a strictly temporal succession whose explanatory power depends on performance of each task on sequence. In the sloppy world of human behavior, it is unlikely that the sharp distinction between stages will be observed as rigorously as a model might suggest or require; yet the logic that makes the model work is based on some sense of sequencing. By extension, it is not clear how important and how

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precise the span of time can be. It is likely that this model covers events of the first two years of a new regime but that is only approximate. How much can that ideal time be compressed or expanded? And if there are four identifiable functional phases in the model, do they each take a quarter of the 24-month period? The notion of appropriate time and maturation in each phase may be helpful here (Brown 1963; Quandt 1969). To some extent, consolidation, legitimization and orientation are continual challenges to leadership, old or new, but life seen as ongoing activities without any stages defies modeling. Somewhere between rigor and a ball of wax lies the model of events set into motion by unexpected nonviolent accession. Phase O is the Pre-Accession Phase whose characteristics set up many of the events of the succeeding phases.The characteristics are largely common sense. In personnel, the leader has often accumulated a number of positions in one person and by the same token has allowed a gap to grow between himself and much of the rest of people. The top elite is characterized by a paramount leader with an inner staff and a group of lieutenants about him. One can usually make a distinction, not always evident or emphasized at the time, between those second-level elites who are totally dependent on the leader for their positions (staff) and those who have some independent source of power (lieutenants). Each of the figures in both categories may be expected to have clients and followers under them. Both staff and lieutenants are likely to be held together in many cases only by their common attachment to the leader and by defense of the incumbent regime, rather than by political ties and commonalities among themselves. While this attachment and defence may be quite solid when it occurs, it can evaporate overnight when the central leadership figure disappears. The incumbent leader has developed a strong legitimacy from a number of sources. His career within the nation’s history, the method of his corning to office, the policies he has provided, and his political personality are all common ingredients which make a standard mix of legitimization. However, all of these can go sour. The longer the leader has been in office, the more likely it is that any of these sources will have grown thin. The past career and the corning to office have become history, perhaps even a target for revisionists; the personality has aged from great to grating; and the policies have aroused their reactions and dissatisfactions. Where the balance lies depends on individual cases, but the constant point is that long incumbency creates strains, despite the appearances of solidarity at the time. Such strains may not be very relevant to the politics of the incumbent regime but they can become dominant when the leader goes. In policies, less can be said with any certainty beyond the previous discussion. Takeover may come at the height of a leader’s programmatic popularity, or at a point of revival of that popularity after a midterm downswing, but it may also come with waning programmatic attractions if the leader is in office for a long time. In that case, ideas will have run thin, initiatives run dry, and the issue orientations of the regime run their course. Phase 1 is the Takeover Phase. Unexpectedly, one of the incumbent’s lieutenants comes to power. The occasion has some impact on subsequent events but for the moment it can be assumed to be the death or other incapacity of the incumbent. In most systems, the successor has benefitted from some constitutional designation as

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heir apparent or at least from some systematic investiture in that position upon the incumbent’s vacancy. In personnel, the staff of the former incumbent is likely to be removed with him. Their position depended on personal relations, and is unlikely to be refilled in the immediate, since similar relations have not had a chance to develop with the new leader. Instead, the whole second row of lieutenants takes one step forward, dividing among themselves the positions that the former incumbent had accumulated in one person. At least, the new successor may only be primus inter pares, and at most he will be surrounded by a few strong colleagues with sources of power of their own. Therefore, not only do a number of new individuals crowd the apex, but with them come interests related to sources of power that come closer to placing their demands on the central leadership. In authority, the new leader is legitimized by his pre-ordained succession according to constitutional or systemic rules, but the effect is only momentary, in reality only a license to apply for legitimization on a broader basis. Part of that effort will involve the successor’s own personality and illustrious past, but more important aspects concern programmatic responses (discussed below) and personnel actions. The new leader will attempt to build a great coalition, quickly bringing in representatives of all groups and interests in the country to show that everyone supports him and no one is (or has any grounds to be) against him. This movement to a great coalition is facilitated by the formal movement of lieutenants, and it, in turn, facilitates negotiations and amnesties about former opposition groups and figures who can be brought into the coalition (or at least out of dissidence). In policies, the new leader will enact immediate measures of the liberalization that correct easy, notable grievances built up under the previous regime. Although these represent a significant policy shift of liberalization, they are otherwise unimportant as a policy indicator. Less noticed will be measures of control, which serve to curb any overreactions of liberalism and maintain an ability to deal with events and potential challenges. Phase 2 is the Opening Phase. It continues the great coalition and the policy liberalization of the earlier period, but associates with them the first attempts to weed out incompatibles from among the surrounding lieutenants and to build up sources of support and policy orientation. At the same time, questions arise about the new leader’s intentions, abilities and ultimately legitimacy, since the initial stop-gap measures have had only a short-run effect. In personnel, the initial promotion of colleagues and sometimes potential rivals of the new leader brings out conflicts and personnel changes. These changes are personal, not programmatic, but they add strains to the continuing maintenance of a great coalition. Great coalition and the campaign for new support bring into the official circle new individuals and interests who try to present themselves as essential elements of the new leader’s support and at the same time as representatives of important demands that need attention, two aspects that may be conflicting. Thus the personnel policies of the previous phase have produced pressures which indicate uncertainty and tensions.

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In authority, the new leader is equally between two effects. His legitimization efforts have not run out in such short a time, but they have been perceived as being short-run stop-gaps, leaving open longer run questions of effectiveness. The great coalition appeals mean that the regime is required to present itself as all things to all men, a position that it obviously cannot sustain. It is too early for disaffection but not for questions about the direction of the regime. It is in policies that the biggest questions arise. The unexpected nature of the succession has meant that the new leader has no team ready to create new programs and no campaign debate to create momentum for new directions. Results are expected but causes are unclear. The leader is still condemned to making broad appeals and ad hoc decisions, while demand-bearing groups begin to pose policy tests to the new regime. As a result of general strains produced in the Opening (Phase 2), the major fork in the succession phases appears. Important consequences for the nature of the successor regime depend on which of the two next phases comes first. The looseness of the constraints on the polity—controls, personnel cohesion, programmatic coherence, legitimization—indicate that struggle for power is likely. Challenges may be designed to capture the new leader and make him beholden to a particular group of individuals and/or interests, or they may be more hostile, to the point of overthrowing the new leader before he becomes fully entrenched. Even without these challenges, the leader himself has his own imperative, to consolidate his position and render his support and direction more coherent. His imperative raises the need for the challengers to act before it is too late; their imperative raises the need for him to consolidate first, before it is too late. The two flow directly from the previous phase and spur each other into a race. Phase 3/4 is the Power Struggle. A group of individuals and interests sees a danger in the new directions—real or anticipated—of the successor regime. Although prominent potential rivals have been removed in the previous phase, this only alarm\s some among the remaining lieutenants, who fear for their own position and interests as the regime evolves. Their reaction may be to try to remove the new leader but even if not, it is likely to be to increase and assure their weight among his advisors and correct his directions. These new directions, real or foreseen, depending on whether this phase precedes or follows consolidation—involve reforms made necessary by the policies of the old regime; whereas the proponents of unaltered continuity will have been removed from among the lieutenants, those who remain will divide over the speed and degree of reforms required, and they will find natural allies in the bureaucratic and other interests left in place by the previous regime. These groups are much more opposed to any change of course and are looking for spokesmen among the lieutenants to protect their interests. Depending on the degree of changes, with positive results not yet in, there may even be a backlash as some start longing for the good old days of the former regime. Furthermore, the new groups and sources of support brought into the political system under the Opening Phase only serve to threaten further the anxiety of the opponents. This dynamic makes the opposition conservative in a contextual sense,

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although the orientations they are defending may be substantively more leftist than the new regime (Chow 1987: 296). In personnel, then, Power Struggle involves a confrontation between a growing number of newcomers in terms of individuals and interests, pitted against an alliance of increasingly disaffected lieutenants and vested interests from within the government (including party) machinery. The opposing coalition appears as a defender of the old order, although it is distinct from the close associates of the former incumbent who were eliminated in the Takeover and even in the Opening. Its cause benefits both from any mistakes of the new leaders and from his increasing need to focus his own support and direction. In authority, the focus of activity during this phase and the actual locus of the Power Struggle is within state and party institutions. Between the short-run measures of personal legitimization and the long-run efforts at programmatic legitimization lie immediate benefits from assuring control of major institutions and shaping them to the leader’s own needs for support. If state and party institutions are under-diversified control, the leader’s leeway is restricted and there is room for diversified rewards to client groups, whereas centralized control of such institutions concentrates legitimizing support and gives the leader the rewards to distribute to his followers. The institutional battlefield can be varied—party congress and central committee, constitutional revision, military, unions or legislature. In orientation, the main efforts of the phase concentrate procedural policies as described above, but there are also substantive issues. Indeed, substantive policy issues are needed to keep the Power Struggle from looking like crass and illegitimate personnel politics, and the fight for institutional control will doubtless involve some crucial break with the past of greater import than the cosmetic changes of Phase 1. Phase 4/3 is the Consolidation Phase. Consolidation involves the efforts of the new leader to complete his takeover of the political system. It may come before the Power Struggle, for which it serves as the trigger, or it may come after, for which it serves as the culmination if the leader is successful in the Power Struggle. If the leader loses the Power Struggle and ends up hemmed in by pluralistic forces, consolidation will be a continual, ongoing process that dominates the rest of the regime. In general, the Consolidation Phase is a major turning point in the nature of the regime, comparable to the election and entry of a new administration in the case of Regular Political Succession; in this sense, the preceding phases of Takeover can be compared in many ways to the pre-electoral campaign. Under Consolidation, the new team finally comes to office, with a new program to launch, and the new leader launches a new program. He was not able to do all this before because of the unexpectedness of the Takeover and the need to establish a broad base of personnel, authority and programs. That is a simple insight but it is the key to the dynamics that characterize and differentiate the whole Takeover concept. In personnel, the new leader has finally been able to bring together a staff of his own, a team of idea-people. He could not do this before because he was not in a position to use this kind of staff; the people around him were supporters (input

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organizers) rather than output organizers. A new team means a new program, one that makes choices and breaks away from the need to serve a great coalition. As a result, further personnel choices are possible; it is better to have committed support from specific sectors than barely satisfied general support, and therefore personnel from the supporting sectors must be incorporated and rewarded. In terms of authority, the shift to a focused program aims at a new kind of legitimization. With all its risks of inherent failure and of alienating excluded sectors if successful, a new programmatic direction constitutes a gamble in legitimization by satisfaction and by performance. What the particular direction is, of course, depends on the specific problems and composition of the country. Depending on the sequence, too, legitimization through performance either follows or requires the control of institutions to be used for advancing the program. In orientation, the new program is the crucial output of the Consolidation Phase. As noted, it is both the means of legitimization and the goal of the new personnel changes. The model ends at the end of five phases since the outcome of the sequence of the last two phases sends it off into different directions. Substance also begins to take over, depending on the nature of the different challenges in personality and program that face the particular leader and country. Furthermore, many other variables begin to clutter the neatness of the evolution; succession is no longer the dominant theme. But until this point is reached, the model provides a framework for understanding some otherwise unusual events, and above all the big question: Why doesn’t he just take over? What takes so long? Why does this type of succession have a different type of life than elections and coups (takeover)?

5.3

Algeria: The BenJendid Accession

Chadli BenJedid came to power by stages, moving from titular head of state surrounded by political rivals in 1979 to the consolidating center and source of power in 1981 and then to an ongoing contesting and consolidating relationship thereafter. After the disappearance of the strong centralized leadership of Boumedienne, the BenJedid succession marked a return to collective leadership that then organized its own hierarchy on the job until a new centralized power structure emerged. A single leader emerged out of the collectivity, his competitors and their followers as well as the followers of his predecessor were removed, and even the custodians of power during the collective interregnum were disbanded and dispersed. Since the last succession occurred when Boumedienne put himself into power rather than succeeding to a vacated position and since the BenJedid succession took place within newly established institutions (both bodies and procedure), BenJedid’s accession was the first of its kind in Algeria. Pre-Accession. When Houari Boumedienne overthrew the regime of Ahmed benBella in 1965, he ousted the government that his army had helped install during the struggle for power three years earlier at the time of independence. There are four

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periods into which the Boumedienne regime can be divided. First was its own timing of power struggle, covering the years 1965–1967 and ending with the coup attempt of Col. Tahar Zbiri and the elimination of the mujahidin (interior guerrillas) from the top political circles. The second and third periods span the years 1968–1977, and may be subdivided in mid-1970 when a few ministerial positions were shifted. It is a decade of significant stability, accompanied by the implementation of both landmark and continuing reform programs, including the socialist management of industry and the agricultural revolution, decided in 1971 and applied beginning in 1972. Yet within this period of personnel stability, the subdivision is important. 1968–1971 was a time of preparation and hammering out policy; 1972–1977 was a time of implementation. Some of the personnel changes were made to permit a policy decision; others were made to replace deciders with implementors. The fourth period is a time of transition for the purposes of institutionalization. Although it properly begins with the passage of the National Charter and the constitution and the election of the President in 1976, the purposes of elite analysis it starts in April 1977 with the installation of a new Council of Ministers, half of whose members were new. This period was supposed to end—presumably during 1978—with the FLN Congress, the first since 1964, when a new team was to be put into place to carry out its (or, in fact, their own) directives. In fact, the period ended at the foreseen time but for a different reason—the illness and death of Boumedienne. The last period of Boumedienne’s reign was therefore a time of intense preparations among the entire political elite, under a surface of absolute domination by the president. Boumedienne was quite distant from the various groups of lieutenants around him. His latest government, formed in April 1977 after the various institution-building measures of the previous year, was both a test of the new institutions and a preparation for the coming party congress; the date of the long-awaited meeting, however, was not yet decided. Yet its challenge of policy reorientation was clear. Boumedienne’s austerity had run its course and pressure was rising for a more consumerist direction of the economy. The top-heavy oil sector was badly in need of restructuring. Yet until the illness which struck in September was revealed a few months later, no one thought that the dour visage of Boumedienne would not continue to be the dominant feature of the political scene for years to come. When the illness gradually became known within the inner circle of government, after September, a muted struggle for control of the affairs of state ensued (involving even the president’s wife as a temporarily powerful actor), and as he slipped into a coma, the remaining members of his original great coalition, the Council of the Revolution, were reactivated (some out of political retirement) to watch over the power transfer. This group, and the army guardians behind it, decided to guarantee that the succession would be played out according to the new constitutional rules and that the successor would be a person acceptable to the army—two decisions which undoubtedly were crucial in forestalling any plans of a military coup. Accession. At the time of the illness of Boumedienne, beginning in the summer of 1978 and continuing after his death in December through the IV Party Congress

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of 27–31 January 1979 to the Extraordinary (IVbis) Party Congress of 15–19 June 1980, power was highly diffused, and position politics were all-important. After a period of hesitation, the party caucus (Congress) chose the senior active colonel of the National Peoples Army (ANP) as its candidate for the presidency and he was elected in a national plebiscite in January 1979. The interim presidency was held by the National Peoples Assembly (APN) president, Rabah Bitat, who was not eligible for the succession. The organizing force in the election and the effective interim custodians of power were an informal group of ANP officers who guaranteed adherence to the new (1976) constitutional rules and swung their support behind Col. BenJedid as candidate. This group was not unanimous on all policy options but it developed a general consensus on such basic items as the need to preserve stability, to overcome the economic stagnation, to develop openings to the West in order to counter Soviet ties, and to satisfy consumer demands. It also was restive over not having been consulted by Boumedienne in policy matters since the mid-1970s and was resolved to keep future policy control in friendly hands. After initially supporting former Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Bouteflika, the group chose BenJedid as the candidate because of the overly “Western” and playboy reputation of Bouteflika. But BenJedid’s election left at least two camps in place among the new leadership—the followers of the two defeated candidates, Bouteflika and a rival, leftist colonel Mohammed Salah Yahyaoui. Both leaders were at the time members of the new FLN Political Bureau appointed at the IV Party Congress and both held official positions. Both had followers among the top political elite, so widely placed that neither Political Bureau nor Council of Ministers—the top organs of the party and government—was united under BenJedid’s control. Bouteflika’s camp still contained 3 out of 17 members of the 1979 Political Bureau and 3 out of 30 members of the Council of Ministers even after his former well of sympathy among the military had been dried up by his own political conduct during the campaign and his personal conduct during his past career. Yahyaoui counted 5–8 followers on the Political Bureau and up to 5 on the Council of Ministers. BenJedid had only 2–4 supporters on the Political Bureau and a larger number—but many of them only technocrats—on the Council of Ministers. Even those who were not members of these two camps of internal opposition were not necessarily BenJedid’s men; many were representatives of other groups looking for a patron for protection or individuals just sitting out the continuing power struggle until the direction of the prevailing wind became evident. The death of the late Great Patron also meant that many people blocked in middle positions because they lacked his favor could now make a bid for a higher position as the political system opened up to provide new opportunities. Many had already been positioning themselves to leap to higher levels of power with the coming of the party congress planned for 1978–79 under Boumedienne; others benefitted from a small base of power and the principle of representativeness to participate in the great coalition that came with the succession. For example, military officers moved into ministerial or Political Bureau positions. For the first time, two labor (UGTA) officials became ministers. Three FLN officials including two

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with party careers as undistinguished as they were long, also appeared on the Political Bureau or Council of Ministers. A few independent t politicians were included on the basis of their historic standing and personal qualities rather than their following (Bitat, Taleb Ibrahimi, BenYahya, and Mehri). (Most of the rest of the new elite were technicians, either from the energy sector [3] or from the interior administration [5].) These three characteristics of the new political elite in 1979 created a situation of great maneuvering, in which competing camps were well entrenched behind their patrons and protected in their maneuvering by the watchful eye of the military custodians. But these elements of personnel were compounded by other characteristics of BenJedid himself. BenJedid came to power without a national following. His closest associates were either fellow easterners from the Annaba and Constantinois region or colleagues—particularly military—serving under him in the Oranais region. Faced with others’ established camps, he had to forge a camp and alliances of his own, a task for which he had the advantage of position but the disadvantage of a late start. Furthermore, his style—whether by nature or by necessity—has been to try out individuals in a position, giving them enough rope to prove or to hang themselves, a most appropriate tactic for the situation. Thus, key figures changed their position up or down vis-a-vis the president during his first term, and younger technicians rose after handling their jobs well. Opening. From this formally strong but politically circumscribed position, BenJedid undertook a skillful combination of moves of liberalization and control, of the rules, and personnel shifts. In response to popular feelings and in order to capture popularity, the new regime instituted a number of liberalization measures. Some were immediate and symbolic, such as relaxation on travel permits, liberation of political prisoners (notably former President Ahmed BenBella), and return of exiles (ex-Col. Tahar Zbiri, ex-Minister Bechir Boumaza). Another such measure had more than popular implications: the anti-corruption campaign struck a popular response, but it was also useful for settling accounts at all levels—on the top leadership level by BenJedid as it was slowly turned in 1983 against leading figures of the Boumedienne era such as Bouteflika, Ahmed Draia, and Ahmed BenCherif, but also on lower levels as it was turned against lesser rivals of lesser figure. More significant than symbolic measures were the broader policy reorientations which BenJedid inaugurated, notably the proclaimed revival of private enterprise, the revitalization of Western ties (especially in military procurement), the relaxation of militant foreign policy (especially in regard to Palestine and the Sahara), and the rise of consumerism as best epitomized in the 1980 party congress slogan, “Toward a Better Life.” Too much could be made of any of these changes (1983 party congress slogan was “Work and Rigor”) and many of them were not only slight but also contested within the new elite. The Saharan issue, for example, was long held up by a group of Boumediennists as the last touchstone of fidelity to the late president and therefore sacred even though not a cause of great importance or popularity in other terms. New policy directions also had their implications for personnel consolidation. One procedural policy was decentralization and the breakup of large complexes, notably the energy empire of Abdesslam Belaid, a

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policy which had the several merits of allowing ministerial rewards for a larger number of people and therefore competition both between and within ministries New liberalization policies also allowed new ministers to prove themselves, as in the case of Brerhi’s handling of the 1980 Berber crisis, or Brahimi’s and Khellef’s handling of controlled liberalization of private enterprise. In sum, policy liberalization was an important part of BenJedid’s Opening, first in meeting popular and custodian expectations and creating personal popularity, and second in creating a sense of programmatic commitment among his team. Control was also part of the same phase, serving to limit any tendency toward excess and overreaction in the liberalization. Coercive measures were used against attacks from the Islamic and Berber protest groups outside the political system. The regime showed restraint in the initial confrontations with both groups, but cracked down with severity when the protests took liberalization to heart and got out of hand. The anti-Berber measures came more quickly after the initial disturbances in March 1980; neither the regime nor the Kabyles themselves were prepared for a confrontation or knew how to handle protest, and the matter quickly escalated to a point where firm measures were required. The religious protest covered the first three years of BenJedid’s term and was more delicate to handle, but when it turned overtly political, the government repressed it and arrested its leaders, at the end of 1982. Although Berbers were regularly included in the top elite and some members of the elite were viewed as at least bridges to, if not representatives of, Muslim revivalism, use of coercion against these protest movements did not have any major effect on the composition or relations of the top leadership. Coercion also continues to be used against members of the former regime who can be brought to trial on charges of corruption. It has been directed against particularly egregious offenders and against chief executive officers of ministries and state corporations where corruption had taken place, but also against troublesome political figures (notably Bouteflika). There is no telling what measure of arbitrariness or personal and political settling of accounts is involved in the selection of such targets; certainly others who have enjoyed equal amounts of corruption are not under indictment simply because they have managed to find their way into the new BenJedid team, and public opinion has no illusions on this score. (The Court of Accounts (Cour des Comptes] which handles these matters is popularly called the Court for Settling Accounts.) Another coercive mechanism is the regular arrests which have been used to keep the body politic in line. Immediately prior to the V Party Congress some 600 people were arrested without charges, including a respected lawyer and former minister (‘Abdennour’ Ali Yahya). The use of the judicial system to create political prisoners reminds potential opponents that the BenJedid regime will defend itself actively if necessary. Finally, the FLN was revitalized as a means of control. The model of the Syrian Ba’th has been admired by Algerian leaders as an example of order, rigor and discipline. Algeria is currently making one of its regular quinquennial attempts to get government officials to join the party and it may have a greater chance of

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success than before. Officers of national organizations must be party members. The Discipline Commission of the FLN, under the chairmanship of a respected elder army officer (Col. ben Aouda) has been active. Party policy organs—Political Bureau, Central Committee, party Commissions (on Organizational, Electoral, Economic, Social, Educational and Foreign Affairs)—are also active supports of the government. But the FLN is not a control on the government nor a source of power and programs for its leaders. It is a collection of staffs and supports for the regime, and its staff and support organs have little connection with the membership base. Members of the Political Bureau, Central Committee and part Commissions are chosen from above and rubber-stamped by the party Congress, as are party policies. An Algerian leader is a member of the party because he (or she, in a few cases) is important, not vice versa. In sum, the party became above all a mechanism of recruitment and discipline, not because it has nay power in its own right or because it even has any independent corporate identity, but because it is used for these purposes by the regime. Struggle for Power. An important turning point in the struggle for power was control of the rules, particularly those defining the power to appoint. These changes assured the present and future concentrations of power in BenJedid’s own hands. The crucial shift came on 3–8 May 1980, in the Central Committee meeting prior to the Extraordinary Party Congress. The military custodians had kept a close eye on the performance of the new president and were reportedly prepared to replace him or at least restrict his powers at the time of the Extraordinary Party Congress if he did not provide adequate answers for the nation’s problems. BenJedid heard these reports as well and decided to do something about them, since adequate programs were not yet in place. Party Leader Yahyaoui had prepared a draft giving stronger powers to himself, but BenJedid’s group took over the resolution and replaced “the Party Leader” with “the Party Secretary” in the text, giving BenJedid full powers to carry out all structural reforms in the party which he deemed necessary. After the vote, early adjournment because of the death of Tito left power in the President’s hands and avoided a sharp confrontation which would have split the leadership openly. As a result of the resolution, Ben Jedid changed the Political Bureau membership and set up new party commissions under his men’s leadership to prepare the Congress and plan party reforms. The effect of such shifts in the rules has been to remove the center of power from the party and place it in the hands of a military leadership group and its associates, essentially above and outside the established institutions of government. The conflict between BenJedid and Yahyaoui after 1979 became a conflict between military and party leadership, since those two groups were, in general, the client organization of the two figures. In his consolidation, BenJedid was able to take control of the party out from under Yahyaoui, a necessary prelude to removing him from his party leadership position. The change of rules at the 1980 party congress also allowed BenJedid to remove the Political Bureau from party control and place it under his own control, by appointing it (with Central committee approval). BenJedid’s consolidation also involved putting his particular military supporters in the important military positions and replacing or taming the custodian group that

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had put him in office and tried to oversee him. But, other than the shift of the Military Security service to the President’s office from the Defense Ministry, this element of consolidation did not involve changes in the rules, since BenJedid as president and Defense Minister already had the power to make the necessary military personnel changes. Consolidation. Following the struggle for power, it was possible to proceed to leadership consolidation through personnel shifts accomplished by BenJedid within the top political organs. The first cut of the Political Bureau, from 17 to 7 in June 1980 after the Extraordinary Congress, eliminated carpetbaggers, Boumediennists, and secondary aspirants to leadership, leaving a reduced inner circle of collective leadership that still included the two main rivals for the presidency. A year later, the two rivals were out and the Bureau was enlarged to 10 with the addition of 5 ministers as new members covering the major fields of programmatic competence in government. The Bureau was thus converted by mid-1981 from a political group of surveillance and maneuvering around the president to an executive committee for governance and policy-making. Its membership remained stable for 3 years until January 1984, when the new prime minister (Brahimi) and four military leaders were added as “alternate (nonvoting) members,” bringing military and civilian supporters together into one top staff body. It meets weekly and is the key organ of Algerian government. Changes in the Council of Ministers, on 15 July 1980, 12 January 1982, and 22 January 1984 after the V party congress and the reelection of BenJedid, removed older members, and members tied to rival camps, and replaced them with technicians (mainly younger) and with military men (most of whom were them removed after 1984). People also were shifted from one ministry to another when they began to gather supporters into an independent source of power, but ministers were also sometimes moved about in an effort to find the best position for a good administrator. Of the 44 Ministers and Secretaries of State in 1984, 25 were in the Council of Ministers in 1982, 21 in 1980, 12 in 1979, and 6 in 1977 (Boumedienne’s last Council). Even at the beginning of his term, BenJedid’s government did not escape his control to the degree that his Political Bureau did. But 1982 it had become a technical body of execution under his leadership, with half a dozen strong figures who were at the same time close collaborators (and for the most part also Political Bureau members) with BenJedid. The Council of Ministers of 1984 was larger (44 members) and even more heavily populated with technicians, while the military contingent dropped considerably (from 13 to 7 and from 35 to 18%), showing a new shift of attention from positions to programs. (In his second term, BenJedid changed his government yearly and more, in February 1986, June and November 1987, and February 1988, showing a style that emphasized changes and a consolidation that was not complete. The most difficult job was bringing the military leadership under presidential control and breaking the watchdog group of custodians. Some of this activity was begun early, but for the most part the military changes were the last to be accomplished. Col. Kasdi was quickly moved out of Military Security (SM) and kicked upstairs, first to Vice-Minister of defense, then out of the way to Minister of

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Heavy Industry and now to Minister of Agriculture. But he maintained control of the SM through his successor (Maj. Yazid), who was finally replaced by a BenJedid man (Lt. Col. Ayat) as the service was completely revamped and placed directly under the presidency. The Directors of External Relations, Combat Arms, the Air Force and the Political Commissariat in the Defence Ministry were changed in 1981 and BenJedid’s supporters put in office. Replaced officers are among the 80-odd senior officers who were pensioned off (“chomalux” in Algerian) or promoted out of the way to civilian directorates in parastatal companies. Most regional commanders were replaced in May 1979 by officers with earlier connections with BenJedid. Finally, and less visibly, BenJedid reportedly is seeking to remove entrenched civil servants enjoying their positions as a reward for their guerrilla service, and to replace them with younger educated technicians. Evidence of such efforts surfaced in the new appointments to the biennial Council of Minister, but the extent of these changes at lower levels is impossible to judge. Again, how much the criterion of technical skill is covered by the requirement of political loyalty is hard to determine at lower ranks as at the top. The characteristics of consolidation should explain the gradualness of the process. BenJedid started from a weak position. Although titular head of state, he was watched by the body that was his only support (the military), opposed by a broader competing body (the party) whose leader had allies within BenJedid’s one and only support group (the military), and not in control of any of the institutional bodies over which he presided nor even of all the rules necessary to bring such bodies under his control. Too rapid moves might precipitate a coalition against him, several potential forms of which already existed. Even under Boumedienne, top military officers refused appointments to less powerful positions than the ones they enjoyed at the moment (including BenJedid himself). Since the Algerian system is not totalitarian, since BenJedid’s style is one of reasonableness, pragmatism and moderation, and since liberalization was the popularity-winning tone of the regime, it was hard to repress opposition, especially when it was part of personal maneuvering behind the scenes and not an open challenge to the regime. Boumedienne’s tactics in the same situation, based on an initial takeover by extra-constitutional and violent methods, was to press the opposition until it erupted in overt rebellion and that took over two years (mid-1 965 to the end of 1967). It is no wonder that consolidation under the BenJedid regime took twice as long and its manifestations are still not over.

5.4

Tunisia: Ben’Ali’s Accession

Tunisia is of course an unusual case of accession because former President Habib Bourguiba—as of this writing—is still more or less alive, at least as much so as he was on 7 November when the Prime Minister, Gen. Zine Labidine ben’Ali succeeded him in accordance with article 57 of the Tunisian constitution There is no

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standard term used to describe the Tunisian event or “change,” as it is often referred to in Tunisia. “Constitutional coup” has been suggested, but whatever the term, it is clear that the change was not a military coup (for all the military background of ben’Ali) and was a constitutional succession for presidential incapacity. Pre-Succession. The pre-succession events could be dated from Bourguiba’s illness in 1969, or from the presidential reassertion of control in the XI party congress in Monastir in 1974, or from the beginning of the Mzali government in 1980, or from the riots of January 1984, or from 2 October 1987 when ben’Ali was promoted from Interior Minister to Prime Minister. Although it was only after the last event that the position of constitutional successor was occupied by a man who was capable of declaring a presidential vacancy, the surrounding conditions had been in place for some time. Bourguiba’s worsening illness from 1969 left him only several hours of lucidity each day. The atmosphere of the Presidential Palace was very much of a seraglio, where intrigue and personal politics were the dominant order (Mzali 1987). As a result, the president and his staff were increasingly isolated from Tunisian life but also from the daily people and processes of government. His niece Saadia Sassi, his doctor and Education Minister Amor Chadli, his Equipment and Habitat Minister Mansour Skhiri, and the director of his personal secretariat Hassan Belhacine made up a small circle of close advisors dependent on the president and without political base of their own. A characteristic of the final period was the effect of the president’s loss of memory and or long-term vision on personnel decisions. The council of ministers was repeatedly reshuffled throughout 1987, and toward the end of the period some ministers served only for one day. The direction of the Socialist Constitutional (Destourian) Party (PSD) had long been fought over by two leading figures, Mohammed Sayah and Hedi Baccouche. Sayah was party director from 1964 to 1969 and from 1973 to 1980; Baccouche became party director, from 1984 to April 1987, when he became Social Affairs Minister and Sayah, former Equipment and Habitat Minister, became Higher Education Minister. Although Sayah has frequently been alluded to by Bourguiba as the sort of person he would like as his successor (Le Monde, 4 December 1973), he had never been named prime minister, the position of automatic succession. A number of other lieutenants of the president had their own followings and sources of support. Ben’Ali, the latest addition to the list, had been chief of military intelligence for 16 years before becoming Secretary of State for Internal Security in January 1984, Interior Minister in April 1986, and Minister of state in charge of the Interior in April 1987. Bourguiba’s legitimacy was long among the strongest in the Third World. The nationalist movement and its Supreme Combatant—PSD and Bourguiba—were the two pillars of Tunisian legitimacy, and Bourguiba led the movement—partly since he founded it in 1934, an incredible record. But Bourguiba lived longer than his charisma; his party structures lost their resiliency after the IX Congress which he took over and which made him life president of the Republic; and by the end he had become pitiful and laughable. Widespread among the youth and the lower and middle classes was the feeling that Bourguiba was a sellout to corruption and “Western values,” not the effective synthesis between modern and traditional

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cultures but the target of a new, authentistic antithesis representing truly Tunisian Arabo-Muslim values (Zartman 1987). As a result, opposition to his incumbency became the most effective rallying-point for the Movement of Islamic Ways (MTI) which he in turn repressed. The appeals of the MTI had been considerably reinforced since the “IMF riots” of January 1984, when a sudden price rise for bread produced a violent reaction against the unequal distribution of Tunisia’s economic gains over the past decade. Corruption and conspicuous consumption were grouped together as middle and lower class youth and others protested Bourguiba’s economic policies. At the same time the riots showed the collapse of the organizational framework of Tunisian politics, as the inability of the party to contain and of the labor union to organize the protest were displayed. Accession. There were three triggers to the assumption of ben’Ali. The first was Bourguiba’s deteriorating physical condition, as exemplified by the accelerating personnel shuffles. On the same day as he appointed ben’Ali prime minister, Bourguiba revoked the appointment of a party director made 3 days before; a new director, Mahjoub ben’Ali (no relation) then served only 2 weeks before being replaced in turn by Hamed Karoui. Then again at the end of October, Bourguiba reversed himself on the appointment of two secretaries of state for planning and finances, accusing those around him of lying and trickery. Personnel instability was becoming more and more frequent, making governance impossible. The second and more proximate cause grew out of the ongoing trial of Islamic fundamentalists, members of the banned MTI and others. The state Security court had handed down its verdict judged “clement” by the defense and the opposition— on 27 September; Bourguiba refused clemency and the appeals court rejected the appeal of the two Islamists under death sentence, who were then executed on 8 October. A week later, one of the accused who had also been condemned to death but in absentia was captured, and Bourguiba used the occasion to demand a retrial of other fundamentalists who had received lesser sentences. When ben’Ali pointed out the illegality of this course, he was ordered to reopen the trial by Monday, 9 November, or lose his position. Bourguiba had set his own date for succession. Related to these events was the emergence of an alternative leadership. Although Sayah was not an inner member of the group around Bourguiba, his political skills and hardline reputation made him appear as the man of the hour for the tasks that loomed highest on Bourguiba’s agenda. Although Sayah does not appear to have been an active plotter against ben’Ali, he was the candidate considered by the president to be most appropriate for the challenges of the hour. The third trigger is still partially unclarified. At the beginning of November, incidental arrests brought to light a plot by the militant wing of the MTI which was to assassinate top political figures, including Bourguiba and ben’Ali, if the fundamentalists’ trials were re-opened. The assassinations were to take place on Sunday, 8 November. Subsequently, 73 members of the plot were arrested and remain in prison without trial in Tunis. The assumption of power by ben’Ali occurred on the night of 6–7 November 1987, when he assembled 7 doctors and received from the procurator general their

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statement of Bourguiba’s “absolute incapacity” to govern. Seven members and presumed members of Bourguiba’s inner group were put under house arrest, including Sayah, Skhiri and Belhacine, and the ex-president was sent to his summer palace just outside Tunis at Mornag with Saadia Sassi. A new government was named with Baccouche as prime minister and Habib Ammar, commander of the National Guard who accomplished the takeover of the presidential palace, as Interior Minister; most other portfolios did not change, since the last government change had been only 10 days before the succession. Only two national bodies were reorganized: The Political Bureau of the party was reduced on 9 December from 20 to 12 members, with only 4 carry-over members but at least as many “Baccouche men” as there were “ben’Ali men.” A new National Security Council was created on 23 November composed of the Defence, Foreign and Interior Ministers, the secretaries of states for defense and interior, and the director of military security, and chaired by the president, to survey domestic and external security and defence. Ben’Ali’s initial legitimacy derived entirely from the way he came to power. The fact that he broke the inability of the political system to rid itself of an 85-year old embarrassment was a mark of his decisiveness and courage; the act of ousting the Supreme Combatant was a test of political muscle equal to a coup or a campaign (Burling 1974: 258). The constitution gave formal sanction to that act, but the prime minister had a chance to succeed only because the man of action took the gamble of declaring and enforcing the incapacity. In addition, ben’Ali came to power with a mixed reputation of firmness and humanity. Although his initial appointment to the government brought public concern over the first entry of a military man into the cabinet, in a state where the military has been kept under tight control (Ware 1986), ben’Ali soon became known as the person who argued for clemency and legality in dealing with the fundamentalists. From the beginning, his entry was viewed with mixed welcome, and it is likely that he mended his fences early with the liberal opposition. Yet from the moment of his first radio announcement at 6 a.m. On 7 November, ben’Ali was most careful to preserve all that was positive in the reputation of Bourguiba and to pay his deepest respects to Bourguiba’s primary role in building the state. The accession was accompanied by a number of immediate measures which translated the spirit of the new regime but also broke the worst grievances of the Bourguiba regime. Baccouche announced on the morrow of the coup that opposition figures abroad could return, to which Ammar added a week later that they would nonetheless have to take care of judgements outstanding against them. Various opposition leaders returned, most of their receiving presidential clemency. In general they were has-beens, too involved with the old regime—despite their exiles and sentences—to pose any threat to the new order. Ben’Ali also expanded his contacts with the local opposition parties from the beginning; both he and the prime minister met Ahmed Mestiri, secretary general of the Social Democratic Movement (MDS), Mohammed Harmel, secretary general of the Tunisian communist Party, and Mohammed Belhaj Amor, secretary general of the Party of Popular Unity (PUP) at the end of November and the beginning of December. At

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the same time the president freed all students conscripted in the army for having participated in the university riots of the previous year, and amnestied 2,487 political and criminal prisoners, excepting only the 90 fundamentalists sentenced in September and the 73 plotters of 8 November. The death sentences given in the September trials were commuted to life imprisonment, the trials stopped and the security court was abolished. In other policies, no changes were made but general directions were pursued with a new spirit free of the rigidity of the former president. In foreign policy, a vigorous offensive to improve relations with neighboring Libya and Algeria, while bringing Morocco into the growing North African unity discussions, was part of the same direction as pursued by Bourguiba. In economics, the plan for economic austerity, privatization and revival had already been established under former prime minister Rachid Sfar and directed by former Finance and Planning Minister Ismail Kheli, who had moved on to lead economic orientations as governor of the Central Bank just before ben’Ali’s accession. The new regime began a series of meetings and programs designed to renew economic confidence and advance the Sfar-Kheli program but without major changes of orientation. Probably the most striking measure was the passage of a budgetary law in December with less than a month’s debate and before the opening of the new year to which it applied! Opening. Seen from within the process, it appears that the dynamic of the Opening and subsequent phases hinges on the relation between the president, the party and the people. From the time of his prime ministry, ben’Ali felt uncomfortable with a party role, since he had no past as a party man, and wanted to be relieved of the inherent concomitant of government leadership, the secretaryship general of the PSD. When he became president he was torn from the beginning over his role as president of all Tunisians and president of the party. During the budget debate, he was pressed by PSD deputies, to whom he delivered the message (through Baccouche) that he was indeed president of the party as well as president of the country. Yet the question was not resolved, in any of the players’ minds. In late January 1988, the Central Committee of the PSD, as appointed by Bourguiba, met under the direction of the Political Bureau, the only body that ben’Ali had filled with his own appointees (and some of them holdovers). On the agenda were measures to democratize and strengthen the party, in preparation for the democratization of the country through subsequent general elections. The ambiguity of the response was symbolized by the new name adopted for the PSD, the Democratic Constitutionalist (Destourian) Rally. The historic name, “Destourian,” was kept only in Arabic; the party became a broader and looser “rally”; and “socialist” was traded in for “democratic.” Organizationally, the Political Bureau was to reform party structures by appointing federal committees, who in turn would propose a slate of new names to the president who would appoint section committees from among them, who would in turn recruit new members into the party. The operation was completed in April; 80% of the section committees were new to the committees, but only 20% of the members (i.e., a quarter of the 80%) were new to the party. The cells, sections and federations were then to elect their delegates to the XII Party Congress at the end of July 1988. As

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early as May, presidential advisors were admitting that the remaking or democratization of the party was not likely to be as complete as had been hoped. Opposition to this policy of Opening comes from two sources. One is the rank and file of party figures with a job that depends on the PSD/RCD, notably National Assembly members, regional administrations such as governors, and party committee members from before 1988. This group has no leader from their own midst, all strong party leaders having been run out by Bourguiba even before ben’Ali. Rather, they have made their leader of the former party director who is now the prime minister and close associate of the president, Baccouche. The ties between the two men, both natives of Hammam Sousse, go back to childhood and their collaboration to the early 1960s, when Baccouche, as assistant delegate of the party in Sousse, got ben’Ali an appointment to a special military school in France. Organizational pressures on the prime minister produced strains on his personal ties with the president, with the strains seeming to get the upper hand in early 1988 but the ties returning to the top toward the middle of the year. Beyond relations between the RCD and the president have pressed relations with the larger body politic. As official thinking crystallized in mid-1988 on the subject of elections, originally to be held in 1991 but then advanced to November 1988, presidential relations with other parties became an important subject to decide. Ben’Ali spoke of a “presidential majority,” implying a governing coalition of several parties, notably the MDS and PUP with the PCT. But among the currently legal parties the only one outside of this coalition would be the PCT. Nine other parties, almost all of them likely to be very small, announced their intention to seek legalization under the new law voted at the end of April. However, the important political organization, of genuinely unknown dimensions, is the MTI, the conditions of whose legalization ben’Ali’s team has been debating since its accession to office. Also embroiled in the same question is the decision whether the president should be elected at the same time as the Assembly, and whether he would be the RCD candidate or a candidate of the “presidential majority”. Such questions made the RCD members uncomfortable. Finally, there is the pervasive idea in Tunisia, recognized by both the President and the parties, that free elections and a change in the incumbent personnel are necessary for a restored public faith in the political system. This public feeling, expressed in many ways, is willing to give ben’Ali some time to set his house in order. But when the 1989–90 early elections are held and the results translated to a new governing elite, new faces working with the new president are the price of legitimacy. All five areas of uncertainty—relations between president and party, democratization of the party, relations between president and prime minister as party interests’ spokesman, relations between president and the rest of the body politic, and need for change—have been characteristics of the Opening Phase. They are the consequences of the new leader’s attempt to constitute a broad base of support and reach out beyond the previous regime’s definition of the political system as the political party. The president’s twin goals of democratizing the party and

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democratizing the country created tensions between them, one making the other difficult if not impossible. The one additional characteristic of the period has been the absence of a substantive program, or of substantive new directions beyond the program inherited from Sfar and run by Khelil (who has been kept in place ). The reason behind this has been the absence of a presidential team. Only by mid-1988 were a staff of presidential advisors beginning to be assembled and they focused mainly on the priority tasks of the moment—the democratizing dilemma. The main programs of the first year of the new regime were the constitutional reforms debated in the National Assembly. As of just before the XII Party Congress, it is not clear what happens after Phase Two: Whether Power struggle follows or precedes Consolidation and Whether the institutional battlefield is the Party Congress, the National Assembly (before or after the elections, or indeed the elections themselves), or some other terrain. Since answers are as much a matter of human choice as of structural dynamics, the uncertainty is no weakness of the model. Indeed, the strength of the structural dynamics explanation lies in its identification of the mounting pressures for consolidation versus power struggle. In order to analyze the events in the continuation of Phase 2 and beyond, however, they must first take place.

5.5

Conclusions

This study has above all attempted to establish an idea, that a specific and identifiable type of political elite succession—termed accession—which is neither coup nor election but by its nature has equally identifiable and dominant effect on the ensuing evolution of politics. To the extent of data available (the Tunisian case being less than a year old), the two countries’ experience with accession has supported the case for conceptualizing accession and also for dividing it into functional subcategories. In the process, it has also shown its usefulness in suggesting explanations for aspects of the events and in altering observers and participants to looming problems. The notion and its nature have helped explain the apparent slowness in BenJedid’s consolidation and in aspects of ben’Ali’s accession, and to alert to the intricacies of the power struggle which lay in wait for BenJedid and are gathering before ben’Ali, wrapped up in problems of legitimization and orientation. Probably the most striking aspect of the comparison and concept is found in the similarity of two cases that are apparently so different. The test for a central and identifiable concept was a challenge, since it covered both a “constitutional coup” and post mortem succession by caucus and election. In fact, the concept and scenario has a ring of applicability in cases other than accession—ENS and UVC, suggesting that no matter how the successor comes to power, he faces the same challenges. While that challenges the opening suggestion that accession is difference from the other types of success, it allow for a closer look to exam differences and their causes within the common framework. And it goes back to underscore the

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original ideas that examining succession as an independent variable deserves more attention. Thus, there is much more work to be done. One area concerns the refinement of the concept, notably in answering some of the earlier indicted questions of time and function. Not only is there uncertainty as to whether the phases are functional categories or time sequences. It is also unclear whether BenJedid’s continuing and imperfect consolidation is the result of an incomplete process of accession, a personal style of hiding consolidation under maneuvers of collective leadership, or a foreseeable consequence of politics in the early period for which the model could have provided some group tactical advice (had it been invented at the time). A third area of further work, also planned (Zartman pending b), involves extending the cases, first of all to cover the remaining Maghribi case, in Morocco in 1961. The Egyptian cases also could be studied for a better understanding of accession, and above all more careful comparison needs to be done with the Soviet cases, which have been subject to some study. It is customary to end with a plea for the widest horizons, urging for a new conceptualization of the political process on the basis of succession in this case. It is unlikely, however, that theory is constructed this way. At best, insights into succession may trigger thinking along a relevant variable that provides a handle on the whole process. More likely is the smaller extension of initial work on accession to reach out to other implications inherent in work on election cycles and takeover dynamics, so that at least the beginnings of political regimes of elite groups is better understood.

Sources The Algerian account is based on interviews inside and outside Algeria, and on new sources such as Le Monde, Jeune Afrigue, Maghreb-Machre k, El-Moudjahid, Journal Officiel de la Republigue Algerienne, and others. It follows a series of analyses written by the author on the evolution of the Algerian political elite at five year intervals: “L’armee dans la politique algerienne,” 1967 Annuaire de l’Afrique du Nord (Paris: CNRS, 1969) and “The Algerian Army in Politics,” in Claude Welch, ed., Soldier and State in Africa (Eanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970); “A Post-Revolutionary Elite: Algeria,” in Frank Tachau, ed., Political Elites and Political Development in the Middle East (Cambridge: Schenkman/Wiley, 1975); “The Passing of the Algerian Military Regime,” mimeo, 1979; “L’elite algerienne sous le president Chadli BenJedid,” Maghreb-Machrek 106: 37–53 (October–December 1984) and “The Military in the Politics of Succession: Algeria,” in John Harbeson, ed., The Military in African Politics (New York: Praeger, 1987). See also John Entelis, Algeria: The Revolution Institutionalized (Boulder: Westview, 1986) for a particularly good appreciation of Algerian politics. The Tunisian account is based on current research in Tunisia, including research visits in July 1987, January, March–April, July–August 1988, with interviews and

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use of press and other periodic sources. I am grateful for the opportunity to travel from the American Institute for Maghrib Studies, and for support for this study from the Joint Committee on the Near and Middle East of the Social Science Research Council.

References Binnendijk, Hans, ed. 1987. Authoritarian Regimes in Transition (Washington: Foreign Service Institute). Bunce, Valerie 1981. No New Leaders Make a Difference? (Princeton University Press). Burling, Robbins 1974. The Passage of Power (Academic). Burnham, W Dean 1970. Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics (W.W. Norton). Chow, George 1987. “Development of a More Market-Oriented Economy in China,” CCXXXV Science 295–299 (16 January). Delgado, Christopher, ed. 1993. The Political Economy of Senegal (Praeger). Finer, Samuel 1962. The Man on Horseback (Praeger). Harbeson, John, ed. 1987. The Military in African Politics (Praeger). Kuhn, T S 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (University of Chicago Press). Moore, Clement Henry 1965. Tunisia since Independence (California University Press). Mcintyre, Angus 1988. Aging and Political Leadership (SUNY Press). Nagle, John 1977. System and Succession (University of Texas Press). Nordlinger, Eric 1977. Soldiers in Politics (Prentice Hall). O’Donnell, Guliermo et al. 1985. Transition to Democracy (Johns Hopkins University Press). Quandt, William 1969. Revolution and Political Leadership (MIT Press). Rudebeck, Lars 1965. Party and People (Almquist & Wiksell). Samuels, Richard, ed. 1977. Political Generations and Political Development (Heath). Stone, Russell, & John Simmons, eds. 1976. Change in Tunisia (SUNY Press). Toumi, Mohsen 1979. Tunisie, Pouvoirs et Luttes (Sycamore). Welch, Claude, ed. 1970. Soldiers and State in Africa (Northwestern University Press). Welsh, William 1979. Leaders and Elites (New York: Holt Rinehart & Winston). Zartman, I William, ed. 1980. The Study of Elites (Praeger, for the Social Science Research Council). Zartman, I William et al. 1982. Political Elites in Arab North Africa (Longmans) [in this collection]. Zartman, I William 1987. The Political Economy of Morocco (Lynne Rienner). Zartman, I William, ed. 1992. Tunisia: The Political Economy of Reform (Lynne Rienner).

Chapter 6

Need, Creed and Greed in Intrastate Conflict

One does not have to be a Marxist or an economist to recognize that all conflicts are about resources. But one does not have to be a pastor or a psychologist to also recognize that all conflicts are about identity.1 Nor does one have to be a humanist or a political scientist to see that all conflicts are about basic needs. Thus to claim that conflicts are matters of greed, or rights, or grievances is profoundly uninteresting. If the claim is exclusionary, it is simply wrong; if the claim is contributory, it is banal. The interesting questions are how these factors relate to each other in causing and sustaining conflict, and how, not whether, conflict is related to these three factors. Are they sequential or phasal, or always concomitant, and under what conditions? These questions are important not only for the analytical understanding of the nature of conflict but also for devising appropriate policies to reduce conflict. This inquiry, then, seeks to balance the table of analysis toward a better reflection of reality in the understanding of the etiology of violent intrastate conflict. Beyond its substantive findings are some deeper questions of social science methodology, epistemology, and ontology.

6.1

Sources of Conflict

Social science inquiry hangs on a pendulum. Putative explanations emerge and draw the momentum of scholarship to them, lining up true believers and drawing the fire of true doubters, until a counterproposition appears in turn and the pendulum swings in a new direction. The movement encourages exclusivist and exaggerated claims in order to draw attention to a new explanatory angle, and so it I William Zartman, “Need, Greed and Creed in Interstate Conflicts,” from Cynthia Arnson and I William Zartman. eds., Rethinking the Economics of War: The Intersection of Need, Creed and Greed (Woodrow Wilson Center Press and The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 256–284. Reprinted with permission.

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© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 I. W. Zartman, I William Zartman: A Pioneer in Conflict Management and Area Studies, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06079-4_6

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fuels the work of debunkers. Much value is lost in the process, and the pendulum only comes to rest on one side or in the middle much later, often unnoticed as the debate moves elsewhere.2 Of course, the movement is not as sharply defined as the pendulum image may suggest, as the study of internal conflict shows. The new thrust of explanation that was launched immediately after World War II, which focused primarily on interstate conflict, was that wars begin in people’s minds, with less attention to the material conditions that made their minds turn to war.3 As the Cold War took over the postwar peace, people’s minds viewed internal conflict as the work of international forces, notably communist interference in internal affairs, providing a reverse mirror for Marxist materialist explanations of conflict. With the rise of anticolonial nationalism, the focus turned to ascriptive rights and their denial as the cause of conflict.4 Why external interference was able to take hold was dealt with only by a minority of scholars.5 Later, in reaction, it was proposed that internal conflict was the consequence of poverty, a putative direct link that is hard to kill. It has only been much later that research has turned to seeking to identify the conditions under which poverty does indeed lead to conflict. In turn, this search produced the more focused work on relative deprivation.6 However, as the Cold War waned, new events introduced new conditions to be explained, drawing attention to ethnicity and religion, or concerns of identity, and leading in turn to debates about the role of identity—eternal or primordial versus the conditional.7 Yet the pendulum had swung too far, leaving a large unoccupied area for material explanations, and the latest wave of scholarship has churned up economic explanations of conflict.8 Each of these explanations has enriched 2

Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962, 1970). This effect is the subject of many presentations in Science magazine. For a illustrative discussion, see Michael Balter, “Search for the Indo-Europeans,” Science 303 (February 27, 2004): 1323–26, which ends: “‘There is no need to set up the Kurgan and farming hypotheses at variance with one another,’ says April McMahon, a linguist at the University of Sheffield, United Kingdom. ‘But sadly, this is something that [people] have a tendency to do.’” 3 Jessie Bernard, T. H. Pear, Raymond Aron, and Robert Angell, The Nature of Conflict (UNESCO, 1957). 4 Rudolph Emerson, Empire to Nation (Harvard University Press, 1960); Emmanuel Wallerstein, ed., Social Change (Wiley, 1966). 5 James Rosenau, ed., International Aspects of Civil Strife (Princeton University Press, 1964), a rare book ahead of its times. 6 James C. Davies, “Towards a Theory of Revolution,” American Sociological Review 27 (1962): 5–18. James C. Davies, “The J-Curve of Rising and Declining Satisfactions as a Cause of Some Great Revolutions and a Contained Rebellion,” in Violence in America, ed. Hugh Davis Graham and Ted Robert Gurr (New York: Bantam Books, 1969); Ted Gurr, Why Men Rebel (Princeton University Press, 1970). 7 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (Verso, 1991); Francis Deng et al., Sovereignty as Responsibility (Brookings Institution Press, 1996), esp. Chap. 3, “Identity.” 8 Michael Intriligator and D Brito, “A Predatory–Prey Model of Guerrilla Warfare,” Synthesis 76, no. 2 (1988): 235–49; Jack Hirschleifer, “The Analysis of Continuing Conflict,” Synthesis 76, no. 2 (1988): 201–33; M Lichbach, “An Evaluation of ‘Does Economic Inequality Breed Political Conflict?’ Studies,” World Politics 41, no. 4 (1989): 431–71; D. Brito and Michael Intriligator,

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understanding, yet each has tended to claim that it has the key, to the exclusion of the others. Previous claims to exclusive explanations have been tempered in the ensuing debates and inserted into a bundle of causes, but the new wave of economic claims is still fresh. Of course, economic explanations—and indeed, exclusively economic explanations—of conflict are not new. The latest previous round was composed of the whole body of Marxist scholarship, according to which conditions of economic exploitation produced alienation and rebellion, both in and between nations. The causal mechanism for conflict was not a direct result of poverty but rather a more sophisticated relationship mediated by sociopolitical structures. However, little of this analysis has proven to be relevant for current intrastate conflicts, if indeed for any conflicts. The current return to a search for an economic key to conflict responds to a new wave of evidence, corresponding to a post-Cold War decline in ideology as a driving force and a rise in seemingly purposeless rampages animated by personal gain. The new phenomenon has attracted a new body of scholarship, as is appropriate, including attention from the World Bank, which, in the absence of an ability to recognize political causes, has sought an economic explanation for the debilitating conflicts that hamper its reconstruction and development efforts.9 In this situation, it is not yet clear exactly what the economic claim to causality is. If the argument is that resources sustain rebellions, or that rebellions need resources, or that political entrepreneurs use resources to pursue conflicts, it is unexceptionable and perhaps unexceptional. But if it is that the maldistribution of resources has no relation to conflict, or that the drive for personal (as distinguished from group) gain in resources is the cause of conflict, or that ideological or identity grievances are a hoax without operative effect on the course of conflict, it is empirically wrong and ideologically perverse. Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, for example, “find little evidence for grievances as a determinant of conflict. Neither inequality nor political oppression increase the “An Economic Model of Guerrilla Warfare,” International Transaction 15, no. 3 (1989): 319–29; M. R. Garfinkel and S. Skaperdas, The Political Economy of Conflict and Appropriation (Cambridge University Press, 1996); David Keen, “War: What Is It Good For?” Contemporary Politics 2, no. 1 (1996): 23–36; David Keen, The Economic Functions of Violence in Civil Wars, Adelphi Paper 320 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1998); Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, “On Economic Causes of Civil War,” Oxford Economic Papers 50 (1999): 563–73; F. Jean and Jean-François Rufin, eds., L’économie des guerres civiles (Hachette, 1996). Note that this strain of scholarship is quite different (even if not entirely unrelated) from the longer standing work on the economic consequences of conflict, for which economics is the dependent—not independent—variable; see Paul Collier, “On the Economic Consequences of Civil War,” Oxford Economic Papers 51 (1999): 168–83; F. Stewart and V. Fitzgerald, eds., War and Underdevelopment, vols. 1 and 2 (Oxford University Press, 2000); J. C. Murdoch and Tod Sandler, “Economic Growth, Civil Wars and Spatial Spillovers,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 46, no. 1 (2002): 91–110. 9 Indeed, it can be said that the World Bank’s Development Research Group has done a great service in getting the bank to recognize political causes to conflict by calling them economic. See Paul Collier et al., Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War and Development (Oxford University Press for the World Bank, 2003).

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risk of conflict.”10 But economists, as well as other social scientists, are far from united behind the Collier–Hoeffler thesis on the causes of conflict; Ola Olsson and Heather Congdon Fors apply a game theoretical approach to find that the Congolese wars against both Mobutu and Laurent Kabila were “triggered by institutional grievance.”11 Ballentine identifies “effective governance” as “the critical variable mediating the relationship that Collier has posited between natural resource dependence and the opportunity for rebellion.”12 In analyzing recurrent civil wars, Barbara Walter argues that “civil wars will have little chance to get off the ground unless individual farmers, shopkeepers, and potential workers choose to en-list in the rebel armies that are necessary to pursue a war, and enlistment is only likely to be attractive when two conditions hold. The first is a situation of individual hardship or severe dissatisfaction with one’s current situation. The second is the absence of any nonviolent means for change … a higher quality of life and greater access to political participation have a significant negative effect on the likelihood of renewed war.”13 But there is a deeper dimension to the current debate, which is related not just to a new twist in events but also to new epistemologies.14 It stems from the use of different research methods using different types of data. Most research on internal conflict in the postwar period has focused on in-depth case studies used to test explanatory propositions, with increasing formality.15 The data tend to be longitudinal or sequential, because this approach grew out of historical studies and so is

10 Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, Greed and Grievance in Civil War, Working Paper 2002–01 (Oxford: Centre for the Study of African Economies, Oxford University, 2002), 2. 11 Ola Olsson and Heather Congdon Fors, “Congo: The Prize of Predation,” Journal of Peace Research 41, no. 3 (2004): 321–36. The “institutional grievance” variable used in this article is modeled as deliberate institutional differences between formal- and informal-sector production. This is intended to reflect factors including the strength of property rights and the rule of law that the ruler can control directly. 12 Karen Ballentine, “Beyond Greed and Grievance: Reconsidering the Economic Dynamics of Armed Conflict,” in The Political Economy of Armed Conflict: Beyond Greed and Grievance, ed. Karen Ballentine and Jake Sherman (Lynne Rienner, 2003), 259–83; the quotation here is on 265. 13 Erik Kennes, “Zaire,” and Philippe LeBillon, “Angola,” in Cynthia Arnson and I William Zartman, eds. Rethinking the Economics of War (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005). Barbara F Walter, “Does Conflict Beget Conflict? Explaining Recurring Civil War,” Journal of Peace Research 41, no. 3 (2004): 371–88; the quotation here is on 371. 14 Charles C. Ragin, “Turning the Tables: How Case-Oriented Research Challenges Variable-Oriented Research,” Comparative Social Research 16, no. 1 (1997):27–42; Scott Gates, “Empirically Assessing the Causes of Civil War,” paper presented at an International Studies Association meeting, New Orleans, 2002; Nicholas Sambanis, “Using Case Studies to Expand Economic Models of Civil War,” Perspectives on Politics 2, no. 2 (2004): 259–70. 15 Alexander George, “Case Studies for Theory Development,” paper presented to the Symposium on Information Processing in Organizations, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, 1982; Alexander George & Thomas McKeown, “Case Studies and Theories of Organizational DecisionMaking,” Advances in Information Processing 2 (1985): 21–58; I. William Zartman, ed., Elusive Peace: Negotiations to End Civil War (Brookings Institution Press, 1995); Ballentine and Sherman, Political Economy of Armed Conflict.

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generally process oriented. Propositions may be inductively or deductively derived, but they are used to guide the evaluation of individual cases analyzed in some detail, with causal relationships explicitly posited. This description is obviously an ideal type, more or less rigorously followed in individual scholarship. The previous case study chapters place this work in this tradition. Such studies are more interested in arguing and illustrating how resources, identity, or needs operate in known instances of conflict than in when they operate, and they spend little time on absent effects, noninstances, or control cases. It is doubtless the loose formalization of this approach, its small numbers of cases, and its deference to case idiosyncrasy that gave rise to a newer methodology now in vogue.16 This newer research uses aggregate data on the largest number of cases possible either to test or generate deductive propositions through correlation or factoring. Despite careful coding, it needs to group large numbers of diverse cases together into types, and it is more interested in showing statistically significant correlations than in finding causality or in explaining the category of exceptional cases. Indeed it is more interested in “proneness” than in causality, focusing on the opportunity for conflict rather than the motivation of those who seize that opportunity (yet using seized opportunity as the proxy variable for opportunity per se). Yet opportunities are only half the explanation (and arguably the smaller half) if no one is motivated to seize them. In the words of Willie Sutton, banks are robbed because that’s where the money is (or, in the words of the new methodologists, banks have a proneness for being robbed for that reason), but it takes an entrepreneur to take advantage of that opportunity (or proneness) and be a bank robber. The methodology aims to show whether resources, identity, or penury correlate with conflict rather than to explain and test why or how, and it spends little time on apparently deviant instances. It therefore often ignores some basic research questions: What is it in the correlation that provides causality? And, given several effects of the same cause, which, when, and why? Furthermore, the methodology can only handle comparable, quantifiable data, and so, because it has no “feel” for its subject, has to rely on indicators or “proxies”; subjective elements must be objectified to become data.17 This means that it can only handle data that are quantitatively, objectively measurable and explain only that for which it has data, and in the interest of precision it must make inflexibly quantitative definitions. Such studies do not explain civil conflict; they explain conflict with more than 1,000 deaths, which is a bit like explaining human growth by starting at the age of twelve years. Its indicators, such as per capita income or economic growth, are

See I. William Zartman, “Comparative Case Studies,” in Methodologies of Negotiation Research, special issue of International Negotiation (ed. Peter Carnevale) 9, no. 3 (2005). 17 “Thus, objective grievance [sic] is not a powerful primary cause of conflict, conflict may generate [objective? subjective?] grievances which become powerful additional risk factors”; Collier and Hoeffler, Greed and Grievance in Civil War, where “objective grievances” were indicated by ethnic polarization, political rights, political openness, and ethnic group size, but not how people felt about these situations, with the apparent assumption that all people feel the same about the same situations. 16

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often far away from the effect they are proxying, such as proneness. Thus, the resource school of analysis shows that poverty does not correlate with conflict, which has been known for sometime, but deduces from that fact that grievances have no role in causing conflict, using poverty as a proxy for grievances, as if all poor people were equally rebellious about their condition. Unexplored is the question why poverty leads to (correlates with) conflict in some instances and not others, and which instances those may be—again, the which–when–why question. Even if poverty and conflict do not always coincide, it takes little imagination to see that grievances over deprivation of basic needs have a motor role in conflict. Needs are general qualities required by people for their existence. Satisfied people (which is not the same as rich people) do not revolt, by definition. Satisfaction and dissatisfaction can relate to many values, not just welfare or well-being. Grievances come from unmet needs, unwarranted deprivation, felt hurts, and resentment against the withholding of just deserts, and thus they relate to other dimensions such as distribution and justice. The operative terms—satisfaction, unmet, unwarranted, felt, hurts, resentment, even needs—are all subjective and are felt differently by different people at different times. Distribution concerns the “what” or subject of grievances, which is ultimately related to the basic material elements that people feel they need, whether directly or indirectly as repression, exclusion, and nonparticipation in the control over allocation through positions and values. (In)justice concerns the “why” or reason for grievances. Various theories have sought explanations of when distributions or deprivations are viewed as unjust. The most powerful are the Syllogism of Aristotle: “Inferiors become revolutionaries in order to be equals, and equals in order to be superior;”18 and the Davies–Gurr theory of relative deprivation of falling satisfactions measured against rising expectations. For all its insight, the first does not deal with the question of when, and the second still leaves much room for interpreting the answer. One answer comes in terms of the second factor, claims based on identity or creed. Some types of conflict begin when people feel discriminated against for ascriptive reasons, for what they are. Ascriptive identity is a quality specific to groups and can derive from race or ethnicity, but also from other fixed but less genetic attachments such as religion or nationality. Like need, creed itself does not provide conflict. It is only when two identities are in a zero-sum relationship to each other—that is, when one cannot be oneself except at the expense of the other’s being itself—or when need is restricted or targeted to an identity group that conflict arises. Similarly, not all identities are sources of conflict, and the notion of primordial conflicts lingers only in the minds of journalists. Justice often joins identity, when aroused, to provide the bridge for Aristotle’s Syllogism—why were we unjustly deprived and why should we be justly favored? But, again, the fact that only some identities are sources of conflict does not mean that no identities are, posing again the which–when–why question. Targeted discrimination offers a hypothetical answer, and one that provides a bridge between poverty and resources.

18

Aristotle, Politics (Oxford University Press, 1960), 242.

6.2 Meanings and Models

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Meanings and Models

To get beyond single factor explanations of internal conflict and place the various factors in proper perspective, one has to first explore the meanings of the key elements and the relationships that exist among them. These elements have been posited at the beginning as basic needs, identity, and resources, as the stakes of conflict, or as grievances, rights, and greed as the motivations of conflict. But so identified, they stand on different sides of causality, not just apples and oranges but pits and peels, different parts of apples and oranges. To group them on the same causative level of theories in relation to conflict, however, in the sense used here, grievances occur over a deprivation of basic needs of some sort, claims of rights based on identity react to discrimination, and greed over resources relates to opportunity, termed in the titular shorthand of this work as “need,” “creed,” and “greed.” Each bears some examination, beginning with need. Like needs and identity, resources are stakes over which conflict takes place. Though some explanations emphasize the demand side of resources, as a target of competing and conflicting demands, a current strain of economic explanations focuses on the supply or availability of resources as a source and explanation of conflict.19 Resources may be seen as a subject of conflict over general deprivation or over specific discrimination against one or more identity groups, but they can also be seen positively, as opportunity and an invitation to acquisition. Yet, without falling into the trap of over-rationality, there must be some motivational element of dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs, either to make individuals (and especially followers) take the risks of conflict or to seek the financial benefit that outweighs that risk. Which takes the causal search back to grievances again. What is needed is a model or models of the process of violent conflict generation and sustenance that is or are supported by enough significant cases to be testworthy, and that can then be the subject of more refined aggregate data analysis to find frequencies and then of detailed case analysis to test applicability and explain the difference between apples and oranges rather than staying on the level of fruit. The initial question in building such a model is, Where to begin? In reaction to claims of superficially proximate beginnings, some have argued for going back to a distant determinate condition, such as independence, colonization, or precolonial society. Both the proximate and the distant approaches adopt a predetermined point, the first too near to the event to provide a full sense of causality, the second too deep in a regress often ideologically established to handle significant events. It would be more faithful to notions of cause to start with the outbreak of violence and push back behind the reasons for that outbreak to the reasons for awareness of a problem that eventually would cause the outbreak. From then, the study can move forward to analyze the violence and its persistence. If the inquiry is to answer the which–when question, it needs to focus on process. Thus, the model needs to begin 19

See I. William Zartman, ed., Governance as Conflict Management (Brookings Institution Press, 1995); and Deng et al., Sovereignty as Responsibility, esp. Chap. 2.

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with the identification of a context made of conditions that caused awareness of a problem and a conflictual reaction. In the cases studied here, these conditions were characterized by a deprivation of some sort. In conditions of penury, some parts of the population felt neglected. However, this broad fact raises several questions in order to be the beginning of a satisfying explanation. How much do the theories of deprivation explain? Why were the populations neglected? Why, among lots of neglected people, did they specifically feel neglected? Though there is no doubt that poverty alone does not explain the rise of rebellion, because many poor peoples are not in revolt, poverty was nonetheless the common characteristic in the cases studied, and more specifically poverty expressed as material deprivation relative to heightened expectations.20 The source of the rise in expectations can be varied. In some cases, it was independence that did not provide the expected dividends. In other similar cases, it was a peace agreement to end a civil war that brought benefit inadequately or unequally. In still other cases, it was a promised modernization effort that produced the same generally or unequally disappointing results. The relevance of an explanation based on deprivation relative to heightened expectations appears to be generally present.21 But that explanation is still almost as coarse as the poverty explanation itself. Without any contrivance, one can always, or often, find some source of falling satisfactions that lie at the bottom of aggressions born of frustration. Again, the only problem is that, as is known, not all frustrations lead to aggression. Another contributor to the conflict context is the absence of effective state authority and governance, often expressed as a failed or collapsed state.22 In some cases, it was a weak state incapable of providing the supplies due to the population, often unable to get back on its feet after a previous round of internal conflict or independence war. At other times, it was a state that had completely collapsed, emptied of its resources and capabilities, often by a rapacious leader who privatized the public domain into his own pocket, alienated the population, and even on occasion destroyed civil society. Worse than general incapacity is concentrated capacity and prebendal corruption, in which poverty is caused by (and causes) the rapacious leaders to corner the major resources of the state, repressing those who would protest their exclusion. Thus, the cause behind the conditions of generalized

20

For an excellent discussion of the complex role of poverty in causing and maintaining conflict, see Collier et al., Breaking the Conflict Trap. 21 The Davies J-curve and Gurr relative deprivation theories (see footnote 5 above) were an early expression of prospect theory. 22 “Collapsed state” is used here to refer to “a situation in which the structure, authority (legitimate power), law, and political order have fallen apart” (Zartman, Elusive Peace, 1). “Failed states” are those that have fallen decisively short in performing one or more of their functions but that still exist as a structure of governance. Robert I. Rotberg, ed., State Failure and State Weakness in a Time of Terror (Brookings Institution Press, 2003); Robert I. Rotberg, ed., When States Fail: Causes and Consequences (Princeton University Press, 2004).

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or localized deprivation was sectoral or comprehensive incapacity on the part of the state and greed on the part of its rulers. Yet again, if a state’s collapse almost inevitably brings out the dogs to fight over its corpse, state failure or lesser types of state weakness are only steps in the collapsing process and do not always lead to conflict. But perhaps the problem is being looked at from the wrong end. Poverty, specifically as sensitized by relative deprivation, creates the conditions out of which conflict can grow; state incapacity, from weakness through failure to outright collapse, creates the conditions out of which poverty and deprivation can grow. The causal chain can apply to the entire state or to neglected regions, producing different types of conflict.23 Together, these elements create a condition that can be referred to under the label of need, to be described and explained by appropriate terms of analysis and constituting the subjective and objective contributions to a sense of grievance. Both of these elements are necessary but insufficient components in the emergence of internal conflict. What is needed is some additional element that pulls conflict cases out of preconflict conditions, a trigger that sets off the reaction or a catalyst that crystallizes the supersaturated solution. Frequently the search for such an element has turned to aspects of the existing conditions, such as depth of poverty, or critical mass, or population concentration. But these are merely dimensions of the basic conditions, often to be created once the conflict has started or in the act of triggering it. What is needed is an exogenous variable, and one that takes into account the vagaries of the human or social phenomena that are being examined. One such element is the political entrepreneur. It would be the beginning of infinite regress into the soul and psyche to push the inquiry back further into a search for what makes an entrepreneur. It is sufficient to note that it takes a leadership agent to crystallize the subjective reactions to objective conditions into conflict.24 It takes a pyromaniac to throw a match into the social tinder heap. The state weakness creates an open space for those who would fill the vacuum; the deprivation gives them a cause to do so. However, the political entrepreneurs can rarely—indeed never—mobilize an entire population. Not only may the need or deprivation be selective as a result of targeting or discrimination by the government (or by natural or accidental condition), but even more important, the effectiveness of the entrepreneur depends on his (or her) ability to make a selective appeal to a part of the population. Mobilization in his—and their—cause depends on his ability to seize on their sense of identity as a positive source of consolidation and on their sense of discrimination as a negative source. Again, whether they are objectively worse off than others in the population 23

Zartman, Elusive Peace. Michael Brown, “The Causes and Regional Dimensions of Internal Conflict,” in The International Dimensions of Internal Conflict, ed. Michael Brown (MIT Press, 1996), 575 et seq.; Tui de Figueiredo and Barry Weingast, “The Rationality of Fear,” in Civil Wars, Insecurity and Intervention, ed. Barbara Walter and Jack Snyder (Columbia University Press, 1999); Jane Holl [Lute] et al., Preventing Deadly Conflict (Carnegie Corporation, 1997), 29–30. 24

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is only of secondary importance; as in many things in social politics, the subjective sense of targeted deprivation is made more credible by objective evidence but is not dependent on it. Identity becomes the major resource in the generation of conflict, and so the process passes from need to creed. Identity is involved in all conflicts, albeit in many different forms. In the current era, it frequently takes the form of ethnic identity, in part because the ethnic group is the most easily mobilizable social grouping, and in part—and as a consequence of that fact—because discrimination frequently is conducted by one ethnic group against another. In a previous era, identity was often based on a nationalist appeal in an anticolonial situation. In both eras, religion has contributed to reinforce both forms of identity, or on occasion to replace them. But in a previous era, class also provided a dominant form of identity appeals, furnishing an easy identification of both the target and agent of discrimination. In all cases, creed forms a potent base for justice and a rallying appeal for support and redress.25 Because identity becomes an element in the generation of conflict, it has its own dynamic of mobilization. In an initial political stage of petition, the aggrieved group’s spokespeople request redress from discrimination by the authorities backed by the symbolic mobilization of the referent group; if not satisfied, the conflict moves to a consolidation phase, where political entrepreneurs compete for exclusive leadership of the referent group and work to unite it behind them in their internal political rivalry, seeking to eliminate each other. Once consolidation has taken place, the emergent leader can then turn back to the conflict with the authorities and use the consolidated support group as an arm against the government. The identity group covers the spectrum of the sources of power; it supplies troops, legitimacy, money, subsistence, cover, and other elements needed for the struggle. With these supports, the identity group and its leadership can turn to confrontation.26 At this point, the course of the conflict can be affected by many things but essentially is determined by the relation of forces between the two sides. The course of the conflict, in its turn, has feedback effects on its own evolution. Though resolution is unlikely during the consolidation phase, where intraparty and not interparty politics are predominant and resolution is a distraction to consolidation, continuing progression in the confrontation phase toward some form of resolution follows what may be termed an even course, in which energies and attention shift their focus from the conflict to the terms of resolution. If attempts at resolution then collapse, a return to conflict is required, leading to new attempts at resolution. Resolution can take the form of asymmetrical victory or a stalemate that impels the opening of asymmetrical or symmetrical negotiations, depending on the relation of forces between the two sides.

25

Georg Simmel, Conflict (Free Press, 1955); Lewis Coser, The Functions of Social Conflict (Free Press, 1956). 26 Zartman, Elusive Peace; I. William Zartman, “Toward a Theory of Elite Circulation,” in Elites in the Middle East, ed. I. William Zartman (Praeger, 1980) [in this collection].

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However, if the conflict becomes stuck in its confrontation stage, other directions open up. The more prolonged the struggle, the more the resources become strained and the more the search for resources becomes important, even dominant. At the same time, the more prolonged the struggle, the more the tactical question—that is, the debate over how to conduct the struggle, and principally over whether to adjust the ends and seek a compromise solution, or adjust the means and turn to more violent tactics—becomes important and hence divisive.27 Factionalism throws the conflict back into the consolidation phase and opens the rebellion to divisive tactics on the part of the government. Return to consolidation in turn moves the conflict back into a phase where resolution is not on the agenda and away from the confrontation phase where resolution is the natural evolution. Because resources then become more and more difficult to obtain, the conflict leadership is drawn into an ever-intensifying search for the means to keep the conflict going, to the neglect of the ends themselves. The more prolonged the struggle, the greater the pressure and temptation to move into a time of greed. Privatized means become the only way to keep the followers, because the original ends of need and creed show little chance of being attained, and tactics become oriented toward the attainment of means, to the neglect of ends. The conflict enters the stage of the soft, self-serving, stable stalemate (an “S5” situation), a comfortable resting place for the rebellion and an acceptable division of territories for the government.28 At best, the conflict falls prey to the curse of Robin Hood, where life in the Greenwood becomes sustainable and enjoyable, and victory, if it ever comes, sounds the death of the Merry Men and their leader. Meanwhile, back in the capital (a place where conflict studies often forget to look), the prolonged conflict has a series of negative consequences. Although by providing an external enemy, the conflict in some cases seems to work to the reinforcement of the state whose corruption and weakness was at its origin and its progression, its contribution is a false coherence that adds nothing to the strength and purpose of the state and drains its resources. If there is any strengthening of the state, it is in its repressive capabilities as it tries to keep the allegiance of its own people but that may further alienate them if it does not provide effective security and protection. In other cases, pursuit of the conflict directly contributes to further state collapse. Not only does the state lose territory, resources, and capabilities to the rebellion, but the conflict weakens the state’s ability to carry out its functions toward its own people in its own territory, tending toward further alienation of its own people, resources, and security, and reducing its own rulership to a narrow group focusing on its own resources. In a word, in the worst-case scenario, too often reproduced, there is a race to greed on both sides of the conflict. Although the result is often the 27

Richard Gibson, African Liberation Movements (Oxford University Press for the Institute of Race Relations, 1972). 28 Zartman, Elusive Peace; I. William Zartman, “Analyzing Intractability,” in Grasping the Nettle: Analyzing Cases of Intractability, ed. Chester Crocker, Fen Hampson, and Pamela Aall (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2004), in this collection.

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same in both types of cases, the two paths are different, a difference that calls for further analysis and explanation. In sum, the model of internal conflict begins with state neglect at a time of rising expectations, producing a fact and a sense of deprivation, or grievance, in the first act termed need. This feeling is mobilized into conflict by political entrepreneurs who cultivate and build on the fact and perception of the targeted deprivation of an identity group, moving the conflict into the second act, termed creed. Identity is not only the basis of conflict; it is also a means and the source of other means necessary to sustain the conflict. In the course of confrontation, the conflict may move to victory for one side or another, or to resolution. But if it bogs down, falling short of resolution and outrunning its resources, it can lead to a search for means that replaces the original search for ends, moving both parties into the third act, termed greed. Greed, in the third stage, deforms and obscures the original bases in need and creed, and it hijacks the conflict from social (group) to personal (individual) benefits.

6.3

Models and Reality

A social science model is not a toymaker’s model, a scale replication of reality, faithful in every detail. It is closer to a fashion model—a stylized, idealized version that can be used to measure or evaluate the ordinary that necessarily diverges from it. The need–creed–greed model may not find an absolute coincidence with the reality of all the cases, but the cases do illustrate both the general lines of the models and some important variations. The model begins with conditions of poverty and deprivation deriving from a weakened or collapsed state, often caused by state greed. Three cases illustrate outright collapse, imposing need on all but a select few of the entire population. Sierra Leone provides the strongest example, where the governments of Siaka Stevens and then Joseph Momoh emptied the state of its substance and carried it away in their pockets. When the popular sectors outside the All Peoples Congress made their protest known, repression was added to deprivation. Sierra Leone was a small-class imitation of Zaire under Mobutu Sese Seko, who privatized a rich state, deprived its population of its riches, and bought off any potential counterelites who might seek to represent the alienated population. In Angola, too, state collapse was caused by the intempestive withdrawal of the colonial regime that had done nothing to prepare for its succession, as occurred in the first wave of state collapse in a number of African countries (including earlier in the pre-Zaire Congo).29 Those of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) who came to power ran a corrupt machine as selective in its benefits as the colonial elite it replaced.

29

I. William Zartman, ed., Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority (Lynne Rienner, 1995) [in this collection].

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Anticolonialism itself is a redistributive conflict in that the marginalized native population seeks to obtain the benefits—indeed the increased benefits after the Korean War raw material boom of the 1950s—of which it was deprived under a colonialism that preached modernization, civilization, and development; the population is then once again deprived of the independence dividends when the nationalist state is unable to get on its feet. In a reinforcing reversal of the model in all three cases, state greed was piled on popular (and banned opposition elite) need to create the conditions for revolt. In all these cases and the many others that they represent, deprivation was felt relative to the expectations raised by the political success of the nationalist anticolonial movement, which provided no generalized benefits on taking over power. Other cases began with a lesser level of state failure, and collapse only came after the conflict. Afghanistan was a case of need generated by state failure, but from a different source. A search for the contextual roots of the conflict goes back to the 1960s and 1970s, when the monarchy weakened the state in the process of liberalizing itself and fell prey to interfamily conflict, and the individual warring factions then further weakened the state by turning to foreign countries for outsourcing to meet their own need. Lebanon is another case in which new social forces felt a need born of deprivation relative to the established zu’ama, who controlled the political power of the state and the economic resources of the land rents. Colombia and Peru were cases only of selective or partial failure, not through any generalized weakening of the institution but through its ability to fulfill its supply functions toward the disinherited populations of the interior, particularly in terms of security and distribution of resources. Indeed, in the areas they controlled, these states were actually strengthened by their role in the conflict. The Colombian case is special in its source of feelings of need. The end of La Violencia in 1958, like the end of the anticolonial struggle in Africa and elsewhere, brought heightened expectations for peace dividends. But the settlement was only among the warring factions of the bourgeoisie and specifically excluded new social forces in the population, creating need feelings of relative deprivation that could be used for mobilization at the hands of the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). In Peru, ethnic indigenous isolation and neglect sharpened need, which was heightened by targeted creed discrimination. An important lesson of these latter cases is that state’s collapse is not the necessary if insufficient condition for violent conflict; short of actual collapse, even a state’s failure to fulfill important supply and control functions toward important segments of the population can create the necessary conditions.30

30

See chapters by Marc Chernick and by Cynthia McClintock in Cynthia Arnson and I William Zartman, eds., Rethinking the Economic of War; In systemic terms, the functions of a polity can be divided into inputs, comprising supports and demands from the population to the state, and outputs, comprising supply and control from the state to the population; for a properly functioning political system, the four functions should be in balance. David Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (Wiley, 1965); Zartman, Governance as Conflict Management.

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But weakened and even collapsed states that can neither supply nor control their populations only offer the opportunity; it takes political entrepreneurs to seize it. They came from student leaders and former noncommissioned officers in Sierra Leone, such as Abu Kabba and Foday Sankoh, who were trained in Libya, supported by fellow Libyan trainees in Liberia, and joined by banned opposition leaders from the Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP).31 In Zaire, they also came from opposition leaders inside the country and in exile, such as Etienne Tshisekedi and Laurent Kabila. In Angola, they came from rival nationalist leaders, such as Agostinho Neto, Eduardo dos Santos, and Jonas Savimbi, possessing various quantities of organization, ideology, and charisma. In Afghanistan and Lebanon, they were zu’ama of various ethnic factions excluded from power and its benefits, such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Ahmed Shah Massoud, and as Walid Junblatt and Nabih Berri, respectively. In Colombia and Peru, they were ideological spokesmen for disinherited or marginalized parts of the population, such as Manuel Marulanda and Abimael Guzmán. Analysis needs to go further to give generalized, conceptual explanations of why political entrepreneurs arose and succeeded in these cases and not in others, or what it was that enabled these sociopolitical groups to provide a supply of entrepreneurs and these individuals to emerge successful out of this supply. Perhaps that challenge may be too great for social science analysis and is best left to the luck of the draw, the chance of the moment, the work of free will, the right person in the right place at the right time. But one element is clear, and that is that the political entrepreneur seized on some identity factor to mobilize support within the opportunity offered by felt need. The nature of the identity factor that turned need into creed was determined by the nature of the society in which the deprivation occurred. In some cases, the most readily available identity source was ethnic, but even ethnic identity was mixed with and expressed in other identity terms such as religion and ideology. In Angola, the dominance of the mestiços and Mbundus within the MPLA and the marginalization of the Ovimbundu and Bakongo to the south and northeast provided a ready base for mobilization behind the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) of Savimbi (himself a mestiço) and the National Liberation Front of Angola of Holden Roberto (also mestiço), respectively. The violent conflict in Zaire began with the Banyamulenge, explicitly targeted by Mobutu’s regime, but then spread to all neglected groups outside the capital. The marginalization and deepening impoverishment of the Peruvian Indians made them the ready targets of Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso), although its message was in ideological rather than ethnic terms. In Colombia, too, the mobilizing appeal was made in geographic and class terms within a heavy ideological message, with class Jimmy Kandeh, “Sierra Leone,” in Cynthia Arnson and I William Zartman, ed., Rethinking the Economics of War; Ibrahim Abdullah, “Bush Path to Destruction: The Origin and Character of the Revolutionary United Front/Sierra Leone,” Journal of Modern African Studies 36, no. 2 (1998): 203–35; Abdul Koroma, Sierra Leone: The Agony of a Nation (Freetown, Sierra Leone: Andromeda, 1996).

31

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and geography reinforcing each other. In Afghanistan, while the original forces were the supporters of tribal warlords, that very nature of identity mobilization opened the way for the Taliban’s ostensibly nontribal or antitribal religious identity as a greater unifying force. Even in Lebanon, where ethnicity or religion is usually invoked as a explanation, the following of the leaders was almost exclusively ethnoreligious but the conflict was intraethnic, within and over not between identity groups, and the mobilizing message particularly among the Druze was ideological. Finally, in Sierra Leone, where ethnicity is also usually cited as the source of the conflict, the conflict was one of class cutting across ethnic lines and the mobilizing message reflected its nature; the youth in Sierra Leone discovered their identity as disinherited youth. Sharp conclusions can be drawn about the role of creed. Identity was prominent and crucial in all these conflicts, and there is no reason to suspect that they are not typically representative of internal conflicts in general. It is necessary to appeal to a followership in some terms, and preexisting identities provide a convenient handle if it fits. Political entrepreneurs recruit and mobilize their followers by identifying them as targeted and disinherited parts of the national population, and when their identification fits the situation it contributes to their success. If the appeal is made in ethnic terms to people who do not feel need in terms of that form of creed or in class (ideological) terms to people who feel discrimination as fierce ethnicists, it will fall on deaf ears. Such was the limitation on the Taliban’s appeal in Afghanistan. The cases have shown that ethnic identity tends to need reinforcing in other terms if it is to gain sufficient supporters. Ethnic identity may be more intense because of its narrowness, but religious and ideological identity provides a broader and more unifying appeal. The relative strengths of ideological versus national identities are very situational, as Joseph Stalin found out despite his attempts to define the national question,32 but ethnicity is not always the trump. It has to be based on experience and often has to be reinforced by other coincident cleavages. Finally and curiously, leaders need not come from the identity group to which they appeal. Both in class and ethnic cases, political entrepreneurs may well come from a different group than their followers, although this is less likely to occur in cases of religious identity. It should be noted that “leaders” and “political entrepreneurs” are used here conceptually and functionally, not necessarily referring to unchanging individuals. Individuals may fall prey to rivals, often over the tactical question, and may seize their opportunities and fill their functions well or badly, beyond the reach of any conceptual analysis. Once the violent conflict is engaged, it can move to asymmetrical victory, to hard symmetrical or mutually hurting stalemate (MHS) and resolution, or to soft, stable, self-serving stalemate (S5) and entrenched conflict. In the first, one side has the resources to overcome the other; in the second, both find the resources to check each other; in the third, both tend to become absorbed in a competitive search for resources. The evolution of the conflict in not likely to be linear but rather may bounce from one path to another. After sometimes

32

Joseph Stalin, Marxism and the National Question (International Publishers, 1942).

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on the all three paths, the conflicts in Angola and Sierra Leone finally ended in a government victory, despite some appearances of soft stalemates, hard stalemates, and negotiated agreements. In the process, however, the UNITA rebels and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), respectively, assuaged their grievances and neglect by exploiting the diamond resources of their countries, turning need and creed into greed. The Congo and Lebanon have presented a similar evolution, with an MHS ending in a negotiated agreement slowly turned to government advantage, in the Congo in 1999 through clever government politics and in Lebanon in 1987 through external (Syrian) protection. In the process, however, parties on both sides in the Congo left their need and creed grievances behind and turned to greed for lootable resources—diamonds, coltan, and copper, among others; while in Lebanon it was drugs, land, and remittances that became the privatizable resources for the new militia entrepreneurs. In two other cases, the struggle continues, leading to a resurgence of greed. In Colombia, the original demands of the rebellion have been all but forgotten as the Merry Men of the FARC and the ELN have learned to enjoy living in Sherwood Forest and benefiting from the drug trade and oil trade extortion, while the militias born of the state or parts of it, or in which the state acquiesces, such as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), rival them in the same pursuit. The victim is the civilian population, while the state benefits and concentrates on enhancing its security. In Afghanistan, the struggle in its latest form has reverted to a reinforcement of religious motivations and also to profiteering from the drug trade, as creed and greed vie for the allegiance of the troops on both sides. Finally, although Peru is an instance of asymmetric victory (if indeed the conflict is over), greed is appearing to emerge as Sendero Luminoso attempts to reinvent itself in the country’s coca-growing regions. Again, the cases are eloquent in their lessons. Greed does come in, but only in the course of a prolonged, bogged-down conflict stuck in an S5 situation. Greed is a mark of the evolution of a conflict that has left its “normal” course toward either victory or stalemate and settlement. It is not possible to give a term to that “normalcy,” in the sense of an even approximate period of time, but it is clear that when both outcomes begin to appear elusive, the temptation to turn the means into ends begins to arise. Though that temptation is easy to succumb to when privatizable resources are readily available, greed is the mother of great inventiveness, building roadblocks, billing bribes, requisitions, protection schemes, and other ways of turning a good cause into a money-making scheme. Besides greed, the tactical question—whether to fight or to compromise—is the other source of divisions and distraction from the main goal; it was the source of difference between Kabila and Tshisekedi and then between Jean-Pierre Bemba and Tshisekedi in the Congo, between Carlos Castaño and other AUC leaders in Colombia, and between the SLPP and the RUF in Sierra Leone. Ironically, debates and divisions over the tactical question only weaken the rebellion and promote the S5 stalemate. Greed in the state promotes rebellion, prolonged failure in the rebellion’s struggle for rights and grievances promotes greed among the rebels, and greed within the rebellion promotes greed within the state. States on the road to failure—

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the initial precondition of the conflict—fall into the clutches of a ruling elite increasingly devoted to making money out of their position, at the expense of state functions. The state treasury is the primary lootable resource, and greed and grievance are two sides of the same coin, the one practiced by privatizing rulers and the other the reaction to that occurrence. If the weakened state retains enough responsive capability to push the rebellion into a prolonged, intractable conflict, the rebel leaders face the temptation to turn to private gain because the social cause of the conflict is blocked. Locked in a conflict that it is not winning, state leaders might be expected to launch a major reform program and overtake the original causes of the conflict; unfortunately, such examples are practically nonexistent: The state leaders no longer have the capacity to do so, and so they sink deeper into repression and kleptocracy. Mobutu’s Zaire, Aristide’s Haiti, Siad Barre’s Somalia, Doe’s and then Taylor’s Liberia, and many others, are examples. Thus, greed occurs initially within the state, later (after a soft stalemate) within the rebellion, and then again within the state. Or, in other words, state collapse or failure gives rise to rebellion, but prolonged rebellion leads to state collapse, not so much at the hands of the rebellion as by self-destruction on the part of the state itself. It is this vicious cycle that brings about prolonged and intractable conflict in the poorer areas of the world.33 State collapse and failure as a precursor to conflict has already been noted, but state collapse occurred in Lebanon and Afghanistan in the course of the conflict. Greed, when it sets in, destroys the solidarity and motivation of creed, or is it that greed sets in when the solidarity and motivation of creed have proved inadequate? There is little in the evidence to support the latter, although if there were, it would strengthen greed as a normal evolution or motivation rather than an aberration. Yet the reverse appears to be true from the empirical record; the rebellion’s troops and followers are mobilized and motivated by a sense of deprivation and discrimination, expressed through appeals to identity as targeted populations, not by get-rich-quick schemes based on lootable resources. In most cases, it is only once the troops were mobilized that kleptomania sets in. Picard, writing of Lebanon, expresses well the phenomenon there but also in Sierra Leone, Colombia, Afghanistan, and Angola (but also Algeria, Sri Lanka, Liberia, and elsewhere): “In the beginning, moved by religious [or other identity] conviction and drawn by personal loyalty, they had seen no alternative to their enrollment in the war. However, they soon became able to impose themselves on the traditional elite and the leaders in the contest, for they had mastered an additional source: armed violence organized on a large scale and at a high level. These new militia entrepreneurs seized opportunities to use public means to private ends.” In addition, in many cases, greed has a tendency to be greedy: UNITA in Angola shows that loot floats to the top, using a lack of alternatives plus repression to keep its followers following.

33

Crocker, Hampson, and Aall, Grasping the Nettle; Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars (Stanford University Press, 1999), 92.

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Finally, in another vicious circle, entrance into the greed phase weakens the ability to come to a resolving settlement of the conflict, just as it has arisen because of that same inability. The lesson of both ends of the problem is clear. It is important to reach an outcome—victorious or negotiated—early because the later evolution of the conflict makes it extremely difficult to resolve. Thus the largest lessons fit together well: It is important to strengthen the state and its ability to perform its supply and control functions so that debilitating conflicts of need and the creed do not arise and further weaken the state and sap its functions. But if violent conflict arises, it is important to assure either one side’s victory or a stalemate leading to settlement, lest the unresolved conflict become intractable and unresolvable. And victory or settlement is possible only by recognizing and tending the need and creed bases of the conflict. Whether victory or settlement is better is still open to debate, in the current controversy over agreement durability.34 Some studies assert that one-sided victory is more stable, although longer term analysis underscores that grievances and rights unattended merely go underground, to arise again as the source of more violent conflict at a later, readier date. Rebel victory may be longer lasting than government victory if a new political system is created as a result, bringing the rebels into power but leaving place for the vanquished as well; no study has as yet made this distinction or agreed on a satisfactory period over which to measure it. Other studies indicate that settlements last longer, especially when they address the deeper causes of the conflict and when they provide for forward-looking mechanisms to handle future outbreaks35; certainly an agreement involving both sides of the conflict and providing for future institutions of cooperation, resolution, and reconciliation should form the basis of a longer lasting and more stable outcome than merely effective repression.

34

Fen Osler Hampson, Nurturing Peace (United States Institute of Peace Press, 1996); Barbara Walter, Committing to Peace (Princeton University Press, 2001); Stephen John Stedman, Donald Rothchild, Elizabeth Cousens, eds., Ending Civil Wars (Lynne Rienner, 2002); Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and D. Lalman, War and Reason (Yale University Press, 1992; Suzanne Werner, “The Precarious Nature of Peace: Resolving the Issues, Enforcing Settlement, and Renegotiating,” American Journal of Political Science 43, no. 3 (1999): 912–34; Collier et al., Breaking the Poverty Trap; Virginia Page Fortna, “Inside and Out: Peacekeeping and the Duration of Peace after Civil and Interstate Wars,” International Studies Review 5, no. 4 (2003): 97–115; Barbara Walter, “Explaining the Intractability of Territorial Conflict,” International Studies Review 5, no. 4 (2003): 137–53. 35 Christian Thuderoz, Negotiations (Presse Universitaire de France, 2003); I. William Zartman and Victor Kremenyuk, eds., Peace vs. Justice: Negotiating Forward- and Backward-Looking Outcomes (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005).

6.4 Prevention and Management

6.4

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Prevention and Management

This analysis indicates three moments of intervention when something can be done to reverse the conflict process—literally, at the beginning, the middle, and the end. Each requires some basic remedies but of a different sort. The possibilities of prevention in times of need depend above all on the strengthening of the state so that it can perform its functions of supply, and secondarily of control. Governance is conflict management, conducted through these two output functions, which must be kept in balance to meet the input functions of support and demand from the population.36 Weak states unable to meet the demands of their citizens in general or in groups with appropriately balanced provisions and with judicious controls are both inviting conflict and ill-prepared to handle it. There is often the feeling that weak or even failing states are best left alone because they are not making headlines, but weak states are conflicts waiting to happen. The analysis, backed by the cases, has shown that weak states saddled with rising expectations are ready opportunities for political entrepreneurs in conflict, whose appearance is merely a matter of chance. That is too much of a risk for the states, their populations, and ultimately the world community to take. Even more serious, the preceding analysis indicates that state weakness and state greed feed on each other in a vicious cycle. Shrinking resources and supplies incite leaders to corner the remaining small quantities of available benefits for themselves, thus further reducing state capacity and heightening popular restiveness over unfulfilled expectations and unfilled need. The outcome is either a “time at the trough” mentality, in which a succession of military leaders take power for brief, enriching periods, as in Sierra Leone, or a more stable because more repressive term of office that only makes the final conflict more intractable, as in Zaire/Congo. Dealing with the need base of conflict often requires first dealing with the state greed base of need. State weakness and collapse are the result of many causes, at all levels. External forces, such as drought or terms of trade for primary exports, take their toll, beyond the capabilities of the state to handle the challenge. Internal incapacity or self-destructiveness is involved, for government leaders embarked on a wrong path are not eager to admit mistakes and change course; when taking the wrong path becomes profitable and profit becomes its motive, appeals to civic spirit and future conflict avoidance lack persuasiveness. As in the case of political entrepreneurs of conflict, the occurrence of state leaders capable of facing their challenges is also a matter of chance. The international community, working through interested states or international institutions, can also let its concerns with global politics override local needs for help and can thus contribute to state weakness and conflict, as well as to

36

Zartman, Governance as Conflict Management.

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state strengthening and responsiveness.37 The wide range and interlocking nature of state failure’s cause makes it difficult to forestall the creeping onset of need. The focus on overcoming state failure is a swing of the contemporary pendulum. In the previous century, the focus of concern was rather on limiting the excess powers of the state.38 Prevention rose as a subject of analysis in the 1990s, but it is difficult to practice, because the causes of state weakness and collapse are notoriously inhospitable to efforts to remedy the situation, and so it has fallen away as a subject too difficult to handle.39 Avoiding state collapse and failure obviously does not mean swinging the pendulum so far in the opposite direction that it revives the concerns of the previous era, but that danger is far away. In the post-Cold War era, where international political rivalries are not strong enough to justify the effort and expense of propping up weak allies, state building needs to be restored to importance because of the threat of the quicksand of failure and collapse that will impose domestic casualties and draw in the external world when remedies become much more difficult and costly.40 The cases illustrate various reasons for the neglect of prevention or for its deflection when attempted. Notoriously rapacious governance lay at the heart of state weakness and collapse in Stevens’ Sierra Leone and in Mobutu’s Zaire; Cold War disinterest protected the kleptocratic regime in Sierra Leone; and Cold War interests protected incompetent regimes in Zaire and Afghanistan and even supported debilitating conflict in Afghanistan and Angola. Internal pacts that had outrun their usefulness provided the basis for state weakness and marginalized populations in Lebanon and Colombia. The sad fact is that, given these causes and the international norms of the times, preventive intervention would have been extremely difficult to accomplish. It was attempted in 1979 in Zaire, and the regime completely undid Western efforts to reform the government; fin de regime opportunities in the first half of the 1990s were let slide by the interested Troika of Belgium, France, and the United States with studied inattention.41 Syrian mediation was attempted at the outset of the Lebanese civil war in 1975 and, lacking sufficient international backing, was rebuffed by the parties intent on pursuing their conflict, until the Arab states finally handed the collapsed state back to Syria ten years later.

37

Robert Rotberg, ed., Preventing Failure (Princeton University Press, 2004); I William Zartman, “Early and ‘Early Late’ Prevention,” in Making States Work, ed. Simon Chesterman, Michael Ignatieff, and Ramesh Thakur (United Nations University Press, 2005). 38 Theda Skocpol, “Bringing the State Back In,” Items 36, nos. 1–2 (June 1982): 1–8. 39 The preventive—mislabeled “preemptive”—action in Iraq has also illustrated in reality all the problems of support and consequences that the prevention debate brought out in discussion, and probably helped to squash the earlier focus on prevention. 40 Bruce Jentleson, ed., Opportunities Missed, Opportunities Seized: Preventive Diplomacy in the Post-Cold War Period (Rowman & Littlefield, 2000); I. William Zartman, Cowardly Lions: Missed Opportunities to Prevent State Collapse and Deadly Conflict (Lynne Rienner, 2005). 41 Zartman, Cowardly Lions.

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Changing norms in the twenty-first century may strengthen the possibilities for constructive intervention in such cases and remove the reasons of global politics to protect incompetent regimes, but they also remove the interest in costly and delicate interventions in poor, weak, “unimportant” states. Prevention is admittedly hard to practice and to justify.42 The threat of widespread conflict as a result of state weakness and discrimination may improve justification for intervention by the international community, but appropriate and effective practices remain elusive.43 State strengthening involves building the institutional capacity for handling demands and sharpening appropriate policy responses. Institutional capacity comes from trusted, accountable, and representative bodies and routines for processing needs and responding to them equitably; appropriate policies come from clear analysis and informed responses. If these are not provided domestically, as a result of the weaknesses of the state they are needed to remedy, it remains for the international community to advise, urge, and impel reforms. “Compellence”—the opposite of deterrence—is still beyond international norms and capabilities.44 Dealing with conflict in its middle period, while still in the creed phases, may be more promising, if only because the conflict provides its own urgency and justification for some remedial action. At this period, control of conflict requires first an end or at least suspension of its violence and then the crafting of a new political system capable of responding to the grievances that caused the conflict in the first place. Managing a conflict already in course has the advantage of dealing with more or less clear sides and grievances, which may not have been clarified in the earlier period. It also has the advantage of operating with a ripening context, where a mutually hurting stalemate can either be seized or, if absent or unperceived, produced by the intervener to push the parties into consideration of measures for managing the conflict. But it has the disadvantage of taking place in the midst of fresh wounds as well as grievances, when it is no longer possible to end the conflict by addressing the original substantive complaints. Thus the invention of a new political system to bring in the marginalized is likely to be an additional, procedural requirement for the restoration of harmony. It is rare to find the capacity for such measures among the parties to the conflict themselves, which tend to be too busy and engrossed in the conflict to think of and be attentive to measures to end it. Mediators from the outside are needed: The parties to a conflict need help. Such mediators may be required to act as communicators, to get the parties to hear each other; or as formulators, to get them to focus on new ideas for a solution; or even as manipulators, to expand their options and

42

I William Zartman, Preventing Deadly Conflict (Polity, 2015); Gareth Evans and Mohamed Sahnoun, ed., The Responsibility to Protect: Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (Ottawa: International Development Center, 2001); Simon Chesterman, Michael Ignatieff, and Ramesh Thakur, Making States Work (UNU Press, 2005). 43 Collier et al., Breaking the Conflict Trap. 44 Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Harvard University Press, 1960), 195.

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provide better outcomes to draw them away from conflict.45 Problems abound in such mediation: The conflict may not be ripe enough to turn the parties’ attention to resolution, a solution may require legitimizing unappetizing parties, needs for justice can trouble the search for peace and rebuilding, reconstructing may require heavy outlays from external sources with only indirect interest in the area, and heavy-handed intervention may be necessary to bring unwilling combatants to conciliation. Such measures were tried in many of the cases. Interested neighbors and states further abroad made attempts at mediation and reform in Lebanon in the late 1970s and early 1980s, in Afghanistan in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and in Sierra Leone, Angola, and Zaire in the early and middle 1990s. For the most part, these failed because a good effort was pursued halfheartedly, addressing only some of the sources of grievance, without the necessary perseverance and pressure required to overcome the conflict. The Colombians themselves undertook a major constitutional reform toward a new political system in the early 1990s; the reform efforts were compromised by assassination campaigns of right-wing militias allied to the army, the burgeoning drug trade, and the continued neglect of rural areas. The cases indicate the way to control conflict but also underline the deep investment in political engagement required to make the mediation and reform work. Beyond the mediations themselves lay the reforms required: Procedural demands for inclusion, not just redress of past substantive grievances, were the subject of reforms in the political systems of Lebanon, Colombia, Zaire, Afghanistan, Angola, and Sierra Leone. Because they were not satisfied with promises of new supplies and distributions, marginalized groups and populations demanded to be among the suppliers and distributors. It is important to note that at this stage, it was not a struggle for material resources that motivated the groups and underlay the settlement but a demand for political resources through the sharing of power to decide the distribution of resources. Variously styled identity groups in Lebanon, Sierra Leone, Zaire, and Angola “wanted in” and would not be satisfied by a mere redistribution of resources by a government they no longer saw as legitimate. The process of bringing them into some degree or other brought an end to the conflicts at the creed stage. If obstacles to conflict reduction in the previous periods were not enough, it is at the “end” of the conflict, when the race to greed has denatured the rebellion and further weakened the state, that the task of ending the conflict becomes the most daunting. Rebels need to be bought out of their lairs, but eviscerated states need to have their dry bones reassembled to get the business of governance started. For some reason (which may have to do with matters of legitimacy, curiously), it has seemed easier to buy off rapacious rulers than thieving thugs, as is shown by the 45

Saadia Touval and I. William Zartman, eds., International Mediation in Theory and Practice (Westview Press, 1985); Saadia Touval and I. William Zartman, “International Mediation after the Cold War,” in Turbulent Peace, ed. Chester Crocker, Fen Hampson, and Pamela Aall (United States Institute of Peace Press, 2001). The challenges identified in this paragraph were all later to render mediation attempts in the Syrian civil war unproductive; Raymond Hinnebusch and I William Zartman, UN Mediation in the Syrian Crisis (IPI, 2015).

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cases of Jean-Bedel Bokassa of the Central African “Empire,” Charles Taylor of Liberia, François Duvalier and Raoul Cedras of Haiti, the late Idi Amin of Uganda, and Fernando Marcos of the Philippines, among others. In the end, it is doubtful if conflicts that have passed into the greed period can be brought under control without military force. Greedy leaders—both rulers and rebels—are not just money-greedy; they are power-greedy at the same time. The only way to bring them under control is to threaten, or eventually eliminate, the supply of power and money. Experiences in Peru, Afghanistan, Angola, and Sierra Leone show that rebel movements tend to fall apart when their charismatic and usually greedy leader is removed, especially if the state also begins to respond to the underlying popular grievances born of need at the same time. Experiences in the Congo, Sierra Leone, and Lebanon show that the state, or what is left of it, is up for grabs when the greedy and usually charismatic leader is removed, either to be further looted or to be reconstructed, depending on the leaders available for succession. Removal seems to be the key to change in both cases. It took more or less fifteen years and the direct military intervention of an external force to bring the conflicts under control in Lebanon, Sierra Leone, and Zaire/Congo,46 much longer if one goes back to the roots of the conflict. In Colombia, their drug habit has made both the FARC and AUC fully unmanageable, with no prospects for control, and remnants of Sendero Luminoso in Peru have also begun to take up the habit. Furthermore, it takes an extremely well-disciplined military not to fall prey to the same temptations of greed as the ones they were sent to bring under control, as experiences in the same four conflicts show. At the end of this process comes state collapse, if it did not come earlier, with the enormous cost and effort that reinstatement involves.47 At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone are international wards, painfully emerging from their collapse, and Lebanon and the Congo are occupied by their neighbors. Climbing back up the hill to the reinstatement of legitimate and responsive authority has been an exhausting challenge for all four. If Lebanon is ahead of the others in that climb, it is because its peace agreement came a decade and more earlier and because the strong arms of Syria have been used to install the state, legitimate or not. In Colombia, Peru, and Angola, the state has actually been strengthened to varying degrees by its response to its conflict. Yet the writ of the state in Afghanistan, the Congo, Colombia, and Angola still remains ineffective in large parts of its own territory, and the rebellions in many of these countries have become so indomitable because they have been incurably hooked on drug money. All these cases are the strongest argument for dealing with conflict early, before poverty becomes discrimination and both governance and protest become privatized. As for need, creed, and greed, the ills that conflicts breed: It is best to stop them early, lest the need feed creed and creed feed greed.

46

This is also the case for Angola, if the stories about the covert external assistance in Savimbi’s assassination are accurate. 47 Zartman, Collapsed States.

Chapter 7

A Theory of Elite Circulation

Political systems involve people who use power to make policy in response to group needs and demands.1 The relation between who such people are and what they do therefore becomes an important subject of analysis.2 The effects of elites on policy and policy on elites are the two dimensions necessary to understanding—and eventually to explaining theoretically—the dynamics of a political system in terms of elite circulation. The notion of “new social forces” of Mosca (1939: 65 f et passim), who also introduced the concept of “elite circulation,” appears to be of particular relevance in discussing developing countries, in which the course of politics is often shaped by the differing rates of modernization and democratization within a society.3 The purpose of this chapter is to establish a framework for analysis of elite circulation in order to permit an explanation of associated events, both those that constitute regular patterns of activity in particular types of political systems and those that stand as exceptions to such regularities. Beyond some simple fascination with the dynamics of “who’s on top,” this study also aspires to clear up some conceptual inadequacies that have been troubling political analyses. One concerns the need for a more explicit and more accurate way of framing whole-system analyses of polities, which clearly do not deal equally with everybody in a political system but only with people in relation to the amount of power they exercise. By identifying the objects of study explicitly in these terms, the analyst can pursue his study more clearly than with his sight troubled by extraneous labels. Another I William Zartman, “Toward a Theory of Elite Circulation,” in I William Zartman, ed., Elites in the Middle East (Praeger, 1980). Reprinted with permission. 2 I am grateful to the Office of Research Analysis of the Department of State for helping me start on this study, to the Center for International Studies of New York University for enabling me to pursue it, and to the Joint Committee on the Near and Middle East of the Social Science Research Council and American Council of Learned Societies for providing a continuing context for it. 3 The basic question of this study was also suggested by Bottomore (1964: 61, 63) and, in commenting on Bottomore, by Rustow (1966: 716). “Regular rotation of elites” is Schumpeter’s (1947: 269) definition of procedural democracy. 1

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 I. W. Zartman, I William Zartman: A Pioneer in Conflict Management and Area Studies, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06079-4_7

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problem arises with the notion of class, which is more often asserted than studied. Other things than Marx’s class act as Weber’s party, and yet a clear conceptualization to deal with this reality still remains to be invented. The third inadequacy in current conceptualization concerns the notion of circulation itself. The term connotes something dynamic, interrelated, circular, and yet, thus far, it is translated only by recruitment, in an unrealistically linear concept. These needs, then, create some of the self-imposed challenges to this study.

7.1

Defining Elites

Any study that aspires to explain something about those who exercise power must first indicate explicitly the assumptions and terms of that explanation, beginning with the nature of an elite itself. Not all people use the same degree of power in a polity. Whatever the particular type of system, democracy, dictatorship, or something in between, people exercise more or less power than their share on a strictly proportional basis, the number of people having more power varying according to the type of political system. The degree of disproportion (the shape of the disproportion curve) will also vary according to the political system. In some polities, there is a real gap between those who exercise power and those who do not, while in others the transition between powerful and powerless is gradual; in some there is equality among the powerful, whereas in others there are disparities even among those who exercise power. Furthermore, in most but perhaps not all polities, those who exercise power on one issue may well not be the ones involved in decisions on another, so that differences in the scope of power can also be used to distinguish political systems. These three characteristics—numbers, degree, scope—are useful for describing different types of political systems, but they make it impossible to determine a precise boundary for elites.4 One might well come to a point where the next person on the list could be said to exercise no power or no more than his share in a given system, but such a point is hard to locate precisely and is often too far down the list to be a boundary for the elite. Operationally, the only viable way out of the problem is to assign an intuitive floor to the list of people who exercise most power by defining them in other terms—position, reputation, family, and so on—and then examining their characteristics—attitudes, behavior, but above all power—to ascertain whether anyone has been left out.

4

This discussion begs the boundary question, without feeling vulnerable about it. Most political phenomena are conceptually clear but operationally without boundary. It also begs the question of the amount of power elites really wield (the unity vs. pluralism debate), a question to which an intuitive answer is adequate to allow us to get on with our job for the moment. Lasswell (1965: 8) agrees. Another way of dealing with the boundary problem is through a boundary-in-depth or mediating layer.

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Another problem troubling elite studies, which can be best handled by additional assumptions, concerns kinds of elites. By the division of labor necessary in a complex system, there are specialists (people who expend their primary energies) in politics, as there are in the economic and in the social sectors, even though every individual is inevitably involved in the polity, economy, and society. In other words, everyone can be ranked somewhere on scales of power, wealth, and status. One might think of these sectors as pyramids, since generally there are fewer people with a high degree of the scaled value than with a lower degree. (The level on the pyramid indicates the position or accumulated degree.) There may or may not be any relation between an individual’s position in one sector and in another. In some societies, power confers wealth and status; in some the reverse is true; and, in still others, there is no connection or a connection is viewed as a thing to be avoided or eliminated. In this study, the problem of dominance is resolved definitionally—the political elite is always dominant in politics—but the relationship between sectors is an empirical question. For the three sectors are not exclusive or impermeable piles of bodies. They are functional or role categories of activities that include individuals and groups more than once, according to their activity. Thus, another way of describing different types of political systems, in addition to the three already suggested, is to indicate their relationship with economic and social hierarchies. But such indications can be no more static than politics itself. Relationships change over time and in directions that can be hypothesized in regard to particular pressures. It can be assumed that more people will be attracted to political activity at some times than at others, and, in fact, that they will shift their primary energies from economy or society to polity only when they feel a need to do so. Changes of fortune in other sectors will propel individuals into political activity, first to pose demands to be handled, and then to get into the demand-handling business themselves if the incumbents are not doing it to their satisfaction. (The same individual may not necessarily follow the two-step pattern described; he may become alienated and withdraw in between or adopt a number of other psychological reactions, but the social movement goes on, with another individual picking up the second step.) In the first case, they bring demands that become part of the internal relations of the authoritative political elite. In the second, they themselves seek to become part of that elite, complementing or replacing others to form a coalition that then becomes the new incumbent elite. [Note that the aspirant acts as a spokesman for his client group more than does the incumbent who, by his incumbency, becomes subject to a larger number of demands from groups, and that concentration of authority positions in a limited number of families over a number of generations is more important for those it keeps out than those it keeps in (Bottomore 1964: 43).] The process continues. The two activities can be called the responsive and representative functions of elites (Huntington 1968: 142f).5

5

On the dangers of substantive politics degenerating into procedural (position) politics, see Scott (1967: 119). On elite cooption of group representations who are defined in terms of group dimensions, see Gehlen/McBridge (1868), for another country’s examples.

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A further set of categories to be used in the following analysis concerns these demands. Political actors define themselves as bearers of demands along four major dimensions that may be called ideopolitical, evipolitical, sociopolitical, and geopolitical—or in other words, referring to the terms of Lasswell’s definition of politics, as “who gets what, when, how,” plus “where.”6 The four are intuitive dimensions, for which a theoretical grounding has not as yet been elaborated.7 A justification for each could be lengthy, but will be made only briefly here.8 People may define themselves into camps according to their choice (or rejection) of issues, values, and worldviews, and may formulate demands to effect these goals. They may also picture themselves in terms of age, cohort, or other generational criteria, and shape their demands by the experiential image that their life has thus far afforded them. They can also associate according to the way in which they earn their living, which provides them with socioeconomic interests. Finally, they may identify with their spatial antecedents, their place of origin or their present location, recalling both the physical and human components of the geography. Policy wishes based on such issues, images, interests, and identities can be grouped together under the name of demands. Since people act—both individually and collectively—to express demands, they will band together for that purpose as well, either because their individual action is insufficient or because their demand is for a collective good shared with others. It is this element of group formation—collective consciousness leading to collective organization to overcome the inadequacies of individual action—that links social forces to politics.9 There are many potential groups that generally do not coalesce around a demand based on their common characteristic—redheads, first floor

6

Evipolitical is from Latin oevum (time of life, age) and political, an unavoidable neologism since all current English words use age in the sense of growing old, not simply growing older. 7 These dimensions have often been mentioned individually and sometimes combined, but never systematically. When Harris (1964: 136f) divides Egyptian interwar political groups into three ideological groups plus “young secular intellectuals,” she adds a geopolitical and perhaps a sociopolitical dimension as a reinforcing cleavage with ideological secularism in the fourth group. Lloyd (1966: 15 f et seq.) talks of three types of African elite conflict, ethnic, generational, and functional (sociopolitical). When Finer (1961: 40) talks of military intervention for the defense of region, personal status, class, and military institutional status, he is talking of geopolitical, evipolitical, sociopolitical, and organizational dimensions. See Lasswell (1965), Rustow (1966), Fleuron (1977), and Mayhew (1975). This is an attempt to get beyond triangular relations of class, estate, and party, and the notion that political dynamics derive from the lack of concordance among the three dimensions; see Runciman (1969: 78, 136–142). 8 On evipolitics, see Mead (1970), Eisenstadt (1965), Feuer (1968), Mannheim (1952), Riley et al. (1972), Cutler (1975), Erikson (1968), Sears (1975), Stewart (1969), Palmore (1975), and Beck et al. (1973). On ideopolitics, see Mosca (1939: 70 ff), Higley et al. (1977), Nagle (1977: esp. Chap. 11). On geopolitics, see Ronen (1976). 9 This point is more generally related to the whole social contract literature, such as Thomas Hobbes, The Leviathan [1968], and Ernest Barker, ed., Social Contract [Locke, Hume, Rousseau] [1961]. Not all common demands are for collective or public goods, of course; some are for competitive goods, with a falling out over the distribution of the spoils afterwards, see Raiffa [1953]. For a time when one of these retired people coalesced as a political force, see Holtzman

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dwellers, retired people, parliamentarians, uncles, and so on—because they are not threatened or excluded per se. Only when they become the subject of specific blockages do potential groups organize and express themselves to become demand-bearing groups, with a role to play in politics. (To say that certain analytical categories should coalesce to further their true interests makes for interesting normative exhortation but poor analysis.) Collective political actors, of which sociopolitical class is only one, are thus demand-bearing groups, and their demands can be categorized along the four dimensions previously mentioned. Because of the nature of these groups as a coalescing collectivity, however, there is an additional type of demand that must also be considered, the procedural or organizational, relating to the politics of position rather than of purpose. This type of demand concerns the strength and structure of the organized group or of the authority structure itself, as its fortunes and positions change. Some groups become permanent organizations or formal institutions; one of their demands then becomes the defense of their continued existence, but the content of their other demands— and hence their ability to attract members, be relevant, keep up with the competition, and so on—changes in substance and intensity with the times. But new demand-bearing groups also arise, also with the times, as others disappear, victims of their defeat or of their victory. Such changes with the ‘times, which give rise to new demand-bearing groups and cause the realignment of demands by established groups, can be related directly to changes and inequalities in development, for developmental changes are merely a more specific type of the same effect. The other approach that could be used for the study of elites treats them as political beings impelled by internal or personality-related drives. This approach is not necessarily contradictory with the study of external sources of political action, but it will not be pursued here, although some, such as Greenstein (1969: esp. p. 35), argue that it should be. Of course, demands and their groups do not operate along any one dimension in a vacuum. Dimensions cut across each other, and many writings on pluralist politics have shown how crosscutting ties work to hold society together (Simmel 1955; Coser 1956: 80; Lipset 1960; Dahrendorf 1959; Rae/Taylor 1970: 85 et seq.; Shepsle 1971). It might therefore be supposed that coincidence would provide a measure of intensity when several types of demands and demand-bearing groups are operating together in a political system. But coincidence of cleavages is so rare as to be unlikely. Rather, intensity is more frequently related to polarization along any dimension and the existence of a gap or unmediated distance between extremes. Intensity of political conflict arises not when a demand-bearing group on one dimension adds additional demands on other dimensions, since each new demand tends to reduce its following on the previous dimension; it arises when incumbent elites are faced by aspirant elites who diverge widely on particular demands with no mediating groups in between and who are then able to subsume or to aggregate, but

(1963) and Putnam (1970). Also, not all individuals benefiting from collective goods will cohere because of the free-rider problem. See Olson (1968).

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not crosscut, other divergent demands on other dimensions. Thus, the challenge of young radical poor Northerners in a given polity is not likely to be as serious as the challenge of the young plus the radicals plus the poor plus the Northerners, when the old reactionaries, the rich, and the Southerners are facing them or the challenge of, say, the young who can make other people forget their demands along other dimensions and join them, or, more rarely, the challenge posed when the young are the same as the radicals, the poor, and the Northerners. These various effects can be called reinforcing changes. Coincidence is not the only way of bringing together demand-bearing groups in common action. The other way is through group alliances effected by elites on the basis of group demands. An alliance is merely a conscious means of overcoming the absence of natural reinforcement or coincidence, although, even as a deliberate policy, alliance does best when perceived demands complement or otherwise reinforce each other. There has been much general mention in literature relating social problems to elite or class alliances, but little or no attempt to relate such ad hoc assertions to the theoretical material on coalitions and alliances, on one hand, or to empirical data establishing interests in alliance. Size (minimum winning vs. great coalitions), interests (compromise vs. continuity), power (augmentation vs. diffusion), and sources (complementarity vs. competition) are all important considerations in the formation of alliances among elites and their supporting groups (Axelrod 1970; Riker 1962; Seller 1965). A full discussion of the theoretical aspects beyond these concepts would involve a separate chapter; here it is necessary only to emphasize the relevance of this work as the final aspect in understanding the relations among demand-bearing groups and their elites.

7.2

Elite Circulation

In a utopian polity, one might expect to find perfect mobility, even with the assumption of disproportionate exercise of power. In other words, there would still be an elite stratum, but access to it would be open and unhindered to anyone who wanted to get in (Michels 1962; Dahl 1960: 90; Dahl 1970: 37–39; Putnam 1976: 651). In reality, all elite circulation deviates from the ideal of perfect mobility for a number of reasons. The incumbent elite already has a particular composition, for whatever reason, and hence no polity starts out with a clean slate. In addition, the incumbent elite may well admit certain types of people to its midst and exclude others, whether this action is conscious and directly related to the nature of the groups admitted and excluded or not. Furthermore, the nature of the development process, broadly characterized, is such that certain types of people will be produced as candidates and others will not. Probably because of the first reason, the second may well not coincide with the third, turning quantitative deviation from perfect mobility into a qualitative one; the intake may well not coincide with the input. As a result, combination of these three sources of deviation from the ideal may result in the appearance of new groups of

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candidates who feel blocked and neglected and who, in those two elements of commonality, find reason to band together to “get in.”10 Thus, in addition to an incumbent elite of a particular composition (in whatever terms), a polity also contains aspirant elite groups created by developmental changes and/or by specific blockages. Both of these causes are at least in part, and often totally, the result of the policies and actions of the incumbent elite, just as much as conscious attempts by the incumbent elite to train and prepare its successors are acts of policy. Thus, through various processes, the new elite is a policy outcome of its predecessors. Although this idea is simple and may even be implicit in works on politics, it has not usually been used to organize the study of elite circulation. The most common way of discussing elite circulation is to assume a continuity of elites from one time to the next by merely speaking of those in power and not analyzing their composition or relation to each other. Too often this absence of analysis is assumed to portray a fact, continuity is taken for granted, and a ruling class (intergenerational transmission of power) is portrayed. Ruling classes can exist, of course, but they must be shown, not assumed. ð7:1Þ The first refinement (7.2) on this depiction is found in the notion of elite circulation as recruitment, which recognizes that the elite at a later time is never the same as its predecessor in some terms, but rather results from the intake of new members who were growing up under these predecessors. But it is only with the second refinement (7.3), which recognizes elites as a policy outcome, that the basic relations linking all three components are in place for an analysis of elite circulation. ð7:2Þ

ð7:3Þ

Yet even here, the relations are not complete. For not only is the aspirant elite (e) prepared by the incumbent elite (E) by the creation of specific development measures, but parts of this aspirant category are admitted to elite status by the incumbents, while other parts are blocked (7.4). Up till this point, there is no conflict in the model and hence no politics. It is this disjuncture in the absorption of

“Where a leadership has been accustomed to the assumption that its constituents respond to it as individuals, there may be a rude awakening when organization of those constituents creates nuclei of strength which are able to effectively demand a sharing of power” (Selznick 1966: 15).

10

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aspirants into the new incumbent elite, leading to the conflict for scarce values-in this case positions and other bases of power—that is a (if not the) major element of politics (Friedman 1972).

ð7:4Þ

The sawtoothed nature of the diagram is partially a graphic artifact and partially a depiction of reality. The previous discussion has suggested that, rather than a smooth cycle of circulation, the process is likely to be doubly cycle of circulation, the process is likely to be doubly bumpy: absorption is mixed with blockage, and generation of aspirants is tempered by bunching. It is the second phenomenon that now needs discussion.

7.3

Incumbents and New Elites

The absorptive model of dynamic stability is essentially a self-stabilizing process in which incumbent elites react to new demand-bearing groups generated through differential development. They do so by coopting and controlling group members and by handling their demands. Specific demands can be anticipated from the development process as it is currently occurring, based on generational alienation, regional differences in modernization, ideological issues of equality and distribution, and socioeconomic interests, in other words, based on differentiated access to development along each of the four dimensions. Thus specific age, regional, social, and ideological groups benefit more from development than do others. Yet there is much significance in this simple summary, for it points to the uneven nature of the process of dynamic stability. The mechanism of this type of critical realignment, sometimes associated with competitive (electoral) systems, has recently been the subject of a good deal of attention relevant to the study of clustered challenges in a cooptive system (Burnham 1970; Sundquist 1973).11 In its “ideal-typical” form, … critical alignment is characteristically associated with short-lived but very intensive disruptions of traditional patterns of voting behavior. Majority parties become minorities; politics which was once competitive becomes noncompetitive or, alternatively, hitherto one-party areas now become arenas of intense partisan competition; and large blocks of the active electorate – … – shift their partisan allegiance …Ordinarily accepted “rules of the game” are flouted; the party’s processes,

11

See also Key (1975) for the original definition involving high electoral involvement, readjustment in power relations, and new durable electoral regroupings. (I am grateful to my colleague Rita W Cooley for bringing this literature to my attention.) See also Lowi (1963).

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instead of performing their usual integrative functions, themselves contribute to polarization …. Issue distance between the parties are markedly increased, and elections tend to involve highly salient issue-clusters, often with strongly emotional and symbolic overtones, … Established leadership … become(s) more rigid and dogmatic, which itself contributes greatly to the explosive “bursting stress” of realignment …. The rise in intensity is also normally to be found in abnormally heavy voter participation for the time … Major third-party campaigns are often associated with realignments …. One type is the major-party bolt, which, organizationally and at the mass base, detaches the most acutely dissatisfied parts of a major party’s coalition…. The other variety may be described more accurately as a protest movement which may for a time have broad appeal, which is usually staffed by cadres not prominent in… major-party establishment(s), and which draws mass support cutting across preexisting party lines…. Protoalignment parties… constituted attacks by groups who felt that they were outsiders against an elite whom they frequently viewed in conspiratorial terms. These attacks were made in the name of democratic– humanistic universals against an established political structure which was perceived to be corrupt, undemocratic, and manipulated by insiders for their and their supporters’ benefit …. Moreover, they all “telegraphed,” as it were, the basic issue-clusters which would dominate politics in the next electoral era…. So evident is this pattern that one is led to suspect that the truly “normal” structure of … politics at the mass base is precisely this dynamic, even dialectal polarization between long-term inertia and concentrated bursts of change in this open system of action. It may well be that … political institutions, including the major political parties, are so organized that they have a chronic, cumulative tendency toward underproduction of other than currently “normal” policy outputs. They may tend persistently to ignore, and hence not to aggregate, emergent political demand of a mass character until a boiling point of some kind is reached …. To recapitulate, then, eras of critical realignment are marked short, sharp reorganizations of the mass conditional bases of the major parties which occur at periodic intervals on the national level; are often preceded by major third-party revolts which reveal the incapacity of “politics as usual” to integrate, much less aggregate, emergent political demand; are closely associated with abnormal stress in the socioeconomic system; are marked by ideological polarizations and issue-distances between the major parties which are exceptionally large by normal standards; and have durable consequences as constituent acts which determine the outer boundaries of policy in general, though not necessarily of politics in detail (Burnham 1970: 6–8, 27–39, 10).

This is a partially unfair use of a quotation, since some of the elided material contains specific references to American political systems. Nevertheless, Burnham’s summary of critical elections or national realignments is couched in terms that show the current concern for the subject in the study of American politics to be surprisingly relevant to elite circulation in developing countries.12 A competitive system provides regularly-spaced electoral occasions for changing elites, fixing blames, renewing hopes, and redirecting aspirations; other types of regimes must provide successive, if irregular, occasions for incorporating new demand-bearing group representatives, and demoting or defeating others, and for handling new types of demands. Periodic buildup and bunching of elites and

12

Burnham himself gives an excuse, however, by suggesting that the United States might be a new nation in terms of its horizontal cleavages (1970: 31).

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demands, with normal stretches in between, are a likely characteristic of any political system. It is not merely the fact of periodic realignments, but the reasons for them, to which less than complete attention has been given, that interests the present analysis. As the nature of groups making up society changes, three things can happen. The incumbent coalition can absorb new groups and change the nature of the coalition gradually, although usually there will be a noticeable date or event when the major shift is registered and the fact of a different successor becomes evident nonetheless. Or some of the component groups in the coalition can join with others outside and reconstitute a new coalition that replaces the incumbents. Or, finally, new groups can arise that cannot be made to feel at home in the incumbent coalition without alienating its current supporters; as the latter lose their power base, they are replaced by new coalition. Change may occur for the simple demographic reasons of change in the society’s socioeconomic composition. Or it may occur because the incumbent elite loses its responsiveness to the constant problems of the society, either because it becomes ingrown as a ruling class preoccupied with its own procedural demands or because it is simply incapable of handling its original demands and their consequences. Hatschek’s rule of British party evolution is apposite. First, a party with a distinct and coherent program comes into power. This program gradually loses its appeal in the course of the party’s efforts to realize it. Some parts turn out to be impossible of achievement. Others arouse the antagonism of some of the party’s own following when the practical implications become apparent. The party then breaks into divisions. This disintegration offers to another party, irrespective of whether it has evolved a distinct and realizable program or not, the chance of concentrating and unifying its forces (Friedrich 1950: 417).13

Or again elite change may occur because the nature of the problems has changed. In this case, the elites and the combined position of the incumbent coalition will probably have provided a general option or orientation on the dominant problem or cluster of problems at the beginning of the period; thereafter, further policy debates are likely to concern smaller and smaller details and matters of implementation regarding this major option. In the end, people get tired of debates over minutia when there are new and bigger problems emerging on the horizon, and they look for a new coalition whose demands are geared to the new dominant problem or cluster and whose decision-making capabilities are not exhausted by the previous debates. The difference in this third scenario from Hatchek’s rule is that, in this case, the problems remained the same and wore out the incumbents, whereas, in

13

The general phenomenon of realignment, which involves new issues as well as reaggregation around old issues rearranged, is different from the left-right alternance on the basis of acquisition and conservation, or of acquiring and digesting, as described by Schlesinger (1939, 1949), Aron (1951: Chap. 14), Dahl (1971: Chap. 6), Lipset (1966, 1970: Chap. 8). The two ideas are not incompatible, and the alternance can well be subsumed within the realignment effect, even though the latter includes much more.

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the third case, there is a regular change in the nature of the problems, according to a specific pattern. Thus, the bunching of elites for reasons of issue realignment appears to be a regular and universal phenomenon, although its reflection in the course of political decision-making in any particular polity may vary. Whether a dominant issue is decisively and appropriately handled at a given time or not, issues will change and new elites will come to power at a later time. But this shift of elites will occur in very different ways. If the issue (or cluster of problems) is not appropriately handled and resolved, it will hang around to prevent the maturation of succeeding issues and elites, and eventually the effective operation of the political system may collapse. The inability of the French V Republic to handle the colonial issue(s) and the inability of Faruq’s Egypt to handle the independence issue provide examples of systemic breakdown and dramatic elite succession. But matters of blockage and bunching are not the causes of only cataclysmic effects, such as revolution. They are operative in greater or lesser intensity no matter what the mechanism of elite circulation. If issue realignments and policy outputs produce a new wave of elite aspirants who find no means of access into institutional positions, a revolutionary situation is in the making. But even the most open and permeable system will undergo a noticeable change in the composition of its elite as a result of the cyclical effects of issues and policies. Elections, hiring, institutional change, party splits or takeovers, changes in legal qualifications, and changes in training programs are all ways of producing as important shifts in elites as coups, wars, and revolutions (although the latter’s effects may be more dramatic). Revolution is indeed a story of blockage, but all political change—and all politics is change—is a matter of strategies of accession and strategies of absorption. Developing societies are anything but constant. Their independence was won by new groups who came together in opposition to the incumbent colonial regime, and it is to be expected that these groups, in turn, face new challenges as issues change. Indeed, the dominant issue centered about independence and the shape of the new political system is usually resolved by an elite coalition who stays in power for a time and then is challenged by a new elite group on the basis of a new issue. Studies of critical elections in the United States have shown the periodic interval to be two to three decades; a study of the effect of the development process in generating new demand-bearing groups in new nations would help establish the period for elite turnover in these polities. Since there is not the same wealth of regular long-term data or long-term history for new nations as for .the United States, the following discussion will turn to an examination of the nature of the first cluster of challenges and the establishment of dynamic stability, and then to the building up of the second cluster, which is stretching the limits of available data and inspiration. The clearest case of elites as a policy output with subsequent problems of blockage and bunching occurs under colonization. Independence in many developing countries was won by a great coalition of political groups centered about new social forces that arose as a result of the colonial impact. Their demands initially grew out of frustrated attempts to overcome the disjuncture between their ascriptive inferiority (native status) and their achievement equality or superiority (évolué

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status).14 The nationalist protest evolved through several political stages. When individual imitation of the colonial conquerors’ Western ways proved insufficient to secure equal treatment for members of the small modernizing elite, they joined together in reform groups along the ideopolitical dimension (the first stage). These associations militated for equal treatment for their populations, but particularly for its modernized members, since the reformist elites identified and posed their demands above all in terms of new skills and ideas that came with Western education. Persuasion was the type of power they used, and, as their power base was weak, they frequently appealed to a sense of obligation they hoped to find as members of the modern community. If independence was achieved at this stage, it was granted rather than seized, usually in the hope (on both sides) of continued privileged relations. But if the modernized elite saw that their efforts were not achieving equality but were only separating them from their own national compatriots and national culture, they turned back to the mass as a source of both power and identity and formed a nationalist movement along the geopolitical dimension (the second stage). The nationalist movement no longer recognized the legitimacy of the colonial system, which had proven incapable of accomplishing assimilation but sought to set up its own system of national sovereignty. In the process of creating a mass-type movement, however, the modernized elites were obliged to dilute their modernism and to include traditional leaders whose shared characteristic was nationality, not modernity. The form of power was persuasion mixed with coercion, with the sources of power greatly augmented by the instrumental mass. All issues and groups were subsumed under a single national demand for independence, the issue that underlay the blockage and bunching of the aspirant elites. In most cases, independence was achieved by this point; in some cases, however, the nationalist movement was also unsuccessful, and it was necessary to invoke the ultimate form of power, violence. The result was a revolutionary force recruited along sociopolitical lines (the third stage). Here the mass was no longer in an instrumental stage as before but provided its own leadership, and hence its own demands. Independence was not enough, social change was also deemed necessary. The winning form of the nationalist protest has had much to do with the form of political organization after independence. When reform groups win independence, a system of competitive pluralistic patron-parties generally evolves. When nationalist movements win independence, a cooptive single-party system tends to occur. When revolutionary forces win independence, a controlled technocratic no-party system

14

A good deal has been written about the following model, much of it in connection with empirical analysis of North Africa and elsewhere in Africa and the Middle East. See Gibb (1932: 320–323), Coleman (1955), Hodgkin (1962: esp. Chap. 8), Sharabi (1962: Chap. 20), Zartman (1964: Chap. 7, 1973: Chap. 23), Micaud et al. (1964: esp. Chap. 1), Moore (1965), Kerstjens (1966), Oualalou (1975), Huntington (1968: 412–429). On relative deprivation and nationalist revolt, see Gurr (1970: 142 et seq.).

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usually arises.15 This discussion will focus on the nationalist movement and single-party cooptive system, and, when necessary, on the reform group and competitive patron-parties system, since these are the most common.16 It should be noted, however, that neither single parties nor patron-parties have necessarily any guarantee on life. Their possible evolution and subsequent replacement by other types of systems will be among the topics discussed here. The winning coalition included liberal professionals, petits bureaucrats, landed aristocrats, and small business managers, to which independence soon added party functionaries, civil servants, and technicians. Geographically, they tended to come from the major city built up by colonial rule. Generationally, they tended to be in their 30s and 40s. Ideologically, they were the product of the funnel phase of the nationalist protest, in which all issues become sub ordinate to the goal of independence. Only after achievement of independence in its strict sense of political sovereignty, and often after a period of disarray, did the new goal of development appear—often in the equally strict sense of the construction of a modern economic sector, as the term was also understood during colonial rule.

7.4

New Challenges

Dynamic stability is not a smooth process in which the challenges of demand-bearing groups arise from potential sources at random, evenly spaced across time. It has been noted that the independence movement developed as a logjam, with blocked promotions and aspirations, mounting tactics, age aggregation, and numerical support all building up behind the single independence issue. It has also been noted that the breakup of the logjam at independence set up a certain specific pattern of elite activity that was bunched as a result of the previous blockage. Major positions were occupied by a definable age-experience cohort. Specific regional groups tended to be on top because they were ahead of others in the developmental process. Some social groups predominated at the expense of others because of available needs and chances at given times. Even certain issues 15

Another typology, used by Hopkins (1971: 242–244), labels similar types of political systems bargaining, containment, and coercion, respectively. On the first alternative, see Hodgkin (1962) and Morgenthau (1964). On the second, in addition to the preceding, see Moore (1965) and Micaud et al. (1964). On the third, Roos/Roos (1971). 16 A cooptive system is one in which a given elite brings or accepts new individuals into its membership without their replacing the original elite. In a competitive system, in contrast, one elite replaces another by peaceful means, and there is no constant and overriding group that carries over from one elite to the next and performs the succession. On cooption as a mechanism of stability, see Selznick (1996: esp. pp. 13–16, 259–261), Gehlen/McBridge (1868: 1, 241). Cooptive system is preferred to single-party or mobilization system; the term focuses on the mechanism of elite circulation, which is the topic under consideration, and the mechanism can operate whether the party is alive and mobilizing or not (albeit differently). It can even operate in a multiparty system when there is a comfortably incumbent major party.

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and attitudes outweighed others because of contextual exigencies and opportunities. In other words, specific cohort, regional, social, and ideological groups benefit more from development and independence than do others.17 As a result, a particular cluster of challenges occurs after independence. If it is successfully handled, there is likely to be a stretch of dynamic stability-punctuated at most by incidents that sound worse than they really are because a strong base has not yet built up-until a new, specifically definable cluster of challenges can build up and a new realignment of the political elite take place.

New challenges can arise by various mechanisms, not all of them applicable to all dimensions. They may arise dialectically as a reaction (a move in an opposite direction) to current characteristics, or as a result of a new group born of the development process without previous antecedents, or from splits within a previously cohesive group, or as a continuation of a trend in which the current group is only a partial stage, or as a result of old forces bypassed earlier and now renascent. It should be noted that there is no claim here that in every country cleavages will take place in all dimensions in each way indicated; all that is proposed is an indication of the way and place in which cleavages are likely to take place in other words, a guide to where to look for potentialities and explanations, hopefully useful in identifying both typical and exceptional cases. Geographically, colonial rule tended to be an alliance of the colonist with new urban and traditional rural elites, until the new urban elite broke away. It has already been noted that the new elites tended to identify with the country’s major city. This is understandable since it was the major city that felt the greatest colonially induced change, promotion, and blockage, although it is also conceivable for similar reasons that the new leadership come from the second largest city, rival of the capital. Only as the nationalist elite moves toward the revolutionary force stage does it tend to change its locus from the major city to smaller towns, as it reaches further down the social pyramid for its leadership. With the passage of time after independence, the elite concentration in the major city is most likely to increase. The new political elite replacing the colonial rulers move into the major city as carpetbaggers, and both the new and the old inhabitants of the largest city become the leading claimants on positions of authority. It is only after urban hypercephalism has set in and the incumbent coalition has become concentrated in the major city for a time long enough to give it a narrow identity that some sort of rural revolt, ruralizing election, or Green Uprising can take place (Huntington 1968: 72–78; Roos/Roos 1971; Kearns 1963). A subcase of the geographical dimension is the ethnic factor. Although it may seem curious to call ethnic identity geographical, the basis of identification is quite similar in the two cases and tribes do have a generally definable geographic location. Like cities, tribes can be expected to attain political awareness and 17

The multiplication of these groups, which constitute the more important nuclei of all these revolutionary movements, has been symptomatic of the uneven development of the various spheres of society (Eisenstadt 1965: 314).

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importance at different times, among other things according to the amount of contact they have had with modernization. Two types of reactions to tribally-identified elements in the incumbent coalition can occur. One is intertribal: if the incumbent coalition is dominated by a particular ethnic, a reaction from secondary or newcomer tribe(s) can be expected as they learn or discover modern skills and needs. The other possible reaction is extratribal and ties together ethnic and urban geopolitics: if identifiably tribal elements of any size dominate the incumbent coalition, challenges from detribalized and antitribalized urban elements can be expected. Independent reasons for a choice between these possible reactions are not evident, but, again, the coincidence of cleavages along other dimensions with tribal or detribalized elements can affect the reaction. Generationally, the native allies of the colonial rulers were already old at the end of the colonial period. Indeed, the nationalist crisis was the result of the colonial rulers’ inability to replace the old elite with a new one that they had been able to generate but not integrate. Of course, the nationalist crisis was not simply a crisis of evipolitics, but a good example of the reinforcing nature of several dimensions. However, the generational homogeneity of the challenging elites at the time of independence has meant that the positions created and then vacated by the colonial rulers were immediately occupied by the ready, blocked cohort of the nationalist elite. Thereafter, the society’s new annual production of elite candidates could only be absorbed by two means: new attrition and position vacancies. The first, however, has been rare, since the nationalist generation was still young at the time it came to power. In the government sector, it has been relatively easy to create new positions to swell the civil service, but states have soon discovered their budgetary limits. In other sectors-party, business, labor, and so on the creation of new positions has depended on economic development, which tends to be slow in absolute terms and nil-to-negative in relation to population growth. Thus, the generational backlog that society knew before independence has tended to repeat itself. Moreover, it has been aggravated by the tremendous expansion of education strongly demanded by newly independent societies, which adds a qualitative element to the quantitative backlog and increases frustration. In other words, evipolitically, elite succession in newly independent societies appears to be naturally (or unnaturally) cyclical and bunched (LeVine 1967: 80ff; Zartman 1978: 97–102, 1979: 85–91; Shapiro 1979; Nagle 1977). The notion of bunching suggests a reexamination of the notion of generation. Actually, generation should be conceived of as an age-experience cohort, formed of people who went through it together; their ages will cluster, but need not all be the same. Products of the same type of socializing experience, such cohorts tend to have similar expectations about political actions and political outcomes, among other things. As in years themselves, cutoff points are artificial, and yet such abstractions as the Vietnam Generation or the Class of ‘48, the Nationalist Generation or Prison Graduates, are meaningful realities. There have been too few studies comparing the attitudes of those who grew up together fighting for independence and were still young enough upon its attainment to fill the positions of power thereafter, with the attitudes of those (to mention only their immediate

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successors) who received their secondary and higher education in a national school system and then climbed up the national ladders of employment and authority (Ashford 1964; Makarius 1960; Entelis 1974).18 Those studies that do exist tend to show the older generation as politicians who see leadership deficiency as a major domestic problem and who, ironically, have little faith in democracy and the people’s voice; they see foreign problems in an East–West, Cold War context and look to gradual regional integration. The younger generation members appear as technicians who see mass underdevelopment as a major political problem but who, also ironically, have faith in democracy and the people and a low authoritarian score; foreign problems are seen in the North–South context and regional unity should be political. This rough combination of scattered studies would need to be verified more thoroughly to be accepted, but it does at least suggest that there are serious differences between the two cohorts, and that unusually Middle East elite generations are negatively socialized by growing up under the perceived failures of their elders. A major effort is needed to overcome the bunching tendency, and even if young leaders are coopted into the incumbent coalition, they may well, by that very fact, become suspect to the larger group of their generation who are outside political circles. They have two possible reactions: to be more establishment than the establishment because they made it, in effect joining the older generation, or to be more radical than the outs because they feel unhappy at being suspect in the eyes of their peers (the latter the reaction of the évolué elites themselves in regard to the masses during the nationalist protest movement) (Brown 1974: 354f; Quandt 1969; Shapiro pending). The choice of reactions depends on at least three factors: the number of peers in the backlog, the intensity of their resentment, and, again, the degree of reinforcement by other dimensional cleavages. Ideologically, the unanimity on the independence issue that accompanied the nationalist movement generally carried over into equal unanimity over the next issue of development. Not only has this unanimity been characteristic, but there has been remarkably little divergence over the ways of accomplishing it in the newly independent, developing countries. Compared to the many different approaches to development theoretically available, national socialism in slogan, with some accommodating flexibility in practice, seems to have carried the day rather easily. Its accomplishments have been less overwhelming. Out of the frustration of unfulfilled slogans and beliefs, ideological countercurrents begin to appear. The most notable one is a return to the initial issue of independence, to find in its incompleteness an explanation of the failures of development. After colonialism (the political enemy), neocolonialism (the economic enemy) and then dependency (the socioeconomic enemy), become the antagonististic forces (Ruf et al. 1976). Along with a return to the unfinished task of perfecting independence comes a 18

An excellent theoretical statement is found in Shapiro (1979). See also LeVine (1967) on Upper Volta, Niger, Dahomey, Senegal, and Central African Republic; Hopkins (1971) on Tanzania; Goodrich (1966) on Costa Rica and Panama; Flis-Zonabend (1968) on Senegal, and the insightful general work of LeVine (1973a, b).

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reevaluation of the development issue in terms of distribution instead of, or as well as, expansion. The fact that independence can never be completely won in an interdependent world of unequal states provides a built-in element of frustration, and the source of a future dynamic, just as the unattainable goal of sudden industrialization provided its own frustrations and dynamics. Later, the fact that distribution can never be equal in a society of human beings will cause a different ideological issue and dynamic. It is between the two poles of these two issues—expansion/distribution of development and emulation/isolation of independence—that the ideological shifts occur, propelled by the short-term inability to achieve any of these goals in its extreme. But when the issues are expressed in these dichotomies, it is obvious that what is involved is not a parochial choice of subjects, but, instead, specific cases of a universal spectrum involving the growth and allocation of material and cultural value systems, respectively, or of welfare and solidarity-values, to put it in a different way.19 The timing of the ideological split on these two issues is more complex than it might first appear.20 To begin with, it depends on the two factors involved—the degree of success of the development attempts and the degree of completeness of independence (that is, the amount of metropolitan influence remaining after sovereignty is attained). If both are low, the split may be expected to occur soon after independence: yet, in fact, this is not always the case. Furthermore, it is presently unclear how the two factors are to be weighed in combination; if one is high and the other low, which prevails? For the moment, the only apparent answer lies in a return to the notion of reinforcing cleavages. Socially, as described, the Great Coalition of independence is necessarily heterogeneous and likely to change. Two types of changes are logically predictable: those involving the elimination of uncomfortable partners and those involving the rise of potential new partners. The first, an often neglected subject, is important and generally involves three or more types of elites: revolutionary leaders, whose skills are no longer suitable for the tasks of the political elite; traditional elders, whose values are no longer suitable; and labor leaders, whose demands are no longer suitable (Allbert 1966). If these three groups are not to be physically eliminated from the coalition, they must agree to become subservient members of it, a conversion that generally involves a good deal of political, and even physical, maneuvering. In addition, the original liberal professional members that started the nationalist protest movement often leave politics, since their aspirations for equality are satisfied with independence and their skills in competitive debate and adversary

19

For some very different analyses using these concepts, see Feith (1962), Lloyd (1933–34), Berrea (1962). 20 The preferred indicator, the number and size of factions, seems to be very difficult to operationalize-to measure and to combine. Factions can be identified from political commentaries, a soft-data source, but the phenomenon is no more precise than the source. Also, it would be interesting o add a measure of ideological distance, if there is one. Content analysis might provide a better measure, but the generational problems are overwhelming and the conceptual problems unresolved (content analysis of what, at or over what period of time, and so on).

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proceedings are not deemed relevant to the political process. If their predominant place is taken by administrative and technical elite members, they bring a basic change in the nature and interests of the coalition. Rather than being the creature of ascendant social forces, it tends to represent itself and, hence, its own interests rather than constituent interests. Nevertheless, the governing coalition must also face the challenges of new demand-bearing groups. Their ascendance depends on some degree of development, which was previously noted to be lagging. It is perhaps more accurate to describe development in newly independent countries as partial or disjointed rather than as totally absent, and it is this disjunction that causes new, rising groups to be dissatisfied and, therefore, to become challengers. The strongest challenges, however, come when large or organized groups of the population have undergone a sudden change of fortunes (up as well as down), and, of course, the extreme challenge–the revolutionary situation–occurs when such groups have been twice shaken by improvement followed by sudden decline (the J-curve thesis) (Davies 1962; Gurr 1970: esp. pp. 52–56; Zartman et al. 1971). In sum, social change creates new demand-bearing groups; the more rapid and widespread the change, the greater the challenges to the governing elites. One such group is the commercial peasantry, brought from the traditional sector into the market economy and subject to the stresses and vagaries of both trade and agriculture. Although the growth of this sector of society and economy through agricultural development programs is likely to bring a new group into the polity, its challenge is increased if there has been merely promotion to precarity (preemption of farm trade by large landowners, unavailability of fair credit, and so on). Another group is local business, whose numbers and interests rise slowly as metropolitan business moves out, but whose concern for political influence is increased by its economic uncertainty during the early decades of development. Particularly if good fortunes bring growth and concentration of capital ownership, business increases both its power and its vulnerability (Alexander 1960; Wallerstein 1967; Rugh 1973; Dubbar/Nasr 1976; Issawi 1955; Khallaf/Schwayri 1966; Sayigh 1962; Moore 1980). Still another group is urban labor, with qualifications. Employed and unionized labor was part of the initial nationalist protest movement seeking equality; after independence, as frequently pointed out, it becomes a privileged sector of society, distinct from a growing mass of uprooted shantytown unemployed. But this position of security only obtains as long as organized labor becomes the vanguard of the lumpenproletariat, with a considerable body of troops behind it. Before this occurs, and lest it do, labor leaders have a successful claim on political participation, supported both by the economic importance of their followers in good times and their economic insecurity in bad. A narrower group is the military, whose organization, power, and sense of mission make it prone to undertake direct political action if it is too heavily or exclusively relied upon, or, on the contrary, if it is humiliated. The military is a special case, however, since it is the only group directly entrusted with the means of overthrowing the government.

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Finally, a broader category of a different nature that is conceptually problematic is the intellectual. Intellectuals, in the special sense used here, comprise the large numbers of people on many levels who consider themselves overeducated for present or available jobs. They may be unemployed, either because no job is offered or because no job is acceptable, or they may be employed but dissatisfied; the latter include civil servants and school teachers (Shils 1963; Coleman 1965: 562; Hoselitz 1966; Gouldner 1979). Without minimizing the value of the preceding breakdown, it is easier to point out the sources of challenge to the incumbent coalition than to identify when challenge will occur. Indeed, students of potential sources of dissatisfaction have often been so convinced by their analysis that they became bandwagon advocates of a supposed wave of the future, missing the fact that it is only conditional. One condition is that the potentially rising elites do in fact arise. The preceding list indicates where to look for new groups in developing countries, but it does not claim to predict that all will appear, or, more precisely, that the conditions giving rise to any particular group may obtain at a particular time in a particular country. In other words, a second city, a dominant tribe, an over-educated generation, a rural development program, or a Europeanized leader might well be absent, and, thus, the cause for a new challenge disappears. What is implied, however, is that all of these conditions are not likely to be absent. Another condition is that, as they arise, the new elite aspirants do run into some sort of blockage, rather than being absorbed into the incumbent elite coalition. If they are assimilated by the incumbent coalition as they rise to perform the responsive function of elites and before they ever get to the representative function, they can be socialized into membership in that coalition, and, if the absorptive capacity of the incumbents is great enough, the coalition will be little changed. The third is that, as they seek entry, the new elites are able to combine the demands of excluded groups along several dimensions at a time, to take advantage of reinforcing cleavages. These are likely to occur, however, only at periods of issue realignment and elite bunching, after longer stretches of incumbency by the same elites. These potentialities for elite challenges can help in the identification of compatibility clusters in a particular country and thus indicate places to look for new political strains. Such an examination can also be useful tactically to the incumbent coalition, which can weaken the strength of the challenge by coopting elements along any of the dimensions. Stability is fostered by weathering challenges, more so than by never having had any challenges to weather. The first cluster of challenges is essentially intra-elite and comprises leadership struggles for primacy in the victory parade or in the first independent government. There is likely to be an ideological issue, centering about the meaning of independence, and a generational image, based on the time and type of experience in the nationalist struggle, with social interests and geographical identities possibly involved as well. If the new elite shows the skill and will to overcome the challenge, it emerges strengthened, and all the more so if its victory sets in motion the tactics of cooption that will give the regime its dynamic stability. These tactics involve catching the aspirant elites in their responsive phase: separating demands from their bearers,

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treating the demand, and then reintegrating the bearer. Keeping the bearer quiet while his demand is being handled takes both skill and police powers and probably some other things, but it also means that there be resources to handle the demand itself. Such resources are initially available from the colonial inheritance. When the golden eggs of colonial development are used up, there is always a goose to kill, through nationalization of ownership and of personnel. Perhaps the closest thing to regular competitive elections is the periodic reorganization or “perpetual renewal of the party and its related organization” to meet current criticisms and incorporate new groups (Moore 1967: 111; also Frey 1965: 415 et passim). Although this notion may appear obvious and commonplace, it is important in what it excludes. It suggests that there is no single organizational structure appropriate for dynamic stability. To the contrary, it implies that defense of a given organization is less likely to further its maintenance than is renovative change. It also indicates, positively, that the formula of the moment must involve both the integration of groups and the aggregation of demands, the particular values for the unknowns in the formula to be filled in according to the groups and demands of the moment. Expansion means adding rather than replacing, producing gradual, incremental, cumulative change. In such types of change, a new member is socialized by the incumbents. The fewer the new members, the smaller the chances of their forming strong opposition groups with clear alternative options. All of these considerations, then, suggest that a dynamically stable cooptive system—by the very nature of the processes involved—is likely to maintain its essential characteristics and policies, its gravest challenges coming from within the coalition and being rather minor in their threats to its nature. On the other hand, there are also inherent consequences of the processes that suggest that a more serious cluster of challenges is likely in the future. Just as the anticolonial protest arose because of a newly modernized minority’s block-age from the promotion for which it was achieve mentally prepared, so a growing anti-establishmentarian protest mounts over the blockage of a much larger wave of modernized people from the jobs to which they have been taught to aspire. The blockage no longer stems from prior occupation by Europeans, but, because whatever the rate of economic growth and modernization, there is a foreseeable leveling off or saturation point where labor, business, and government employment will stop growing. The population, education, urbanization, and aspiration growth rates all outdistance the economic growth rate. Just as the modernized reform groups had to regain contact with the traditional mass as they entered the nationalist movement stage of the anti-colonial protest, so the new authoritative elite has to face a populist renewal in the future. No matter how open the recruitment, the new elite tends to become a class, coopting members, compounding position, status, and wealth, and living differently than its mass following. The more accentuated these tendencies, the more serious the likely reaction. It is ironic, but understandable, that it is the overproduction, not underproduction, of elite aspirants that causes the incumbent elite to become defensive, closed, and classlike.

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A Jacksonian influx (as is the Turkish ruralizing election) is the smoothest type of renewal, but it is a strain on the very nature of the cooptive system in which a group invites others to join, not replace it (Sherwood 1967: 65). Revolutionary overthrow or a Dantonian influx (as in Syria or Iraq) is least smooth, and it does not necessarily imply subsequent societal transformation and development. In between, a military coup (as in Egypt) tends to combine order and progress in varying degrees and to restructure political relations, either by policy or by reaction. The ideological base for these three types of populist renewal is distributive and isolationist; it also has a generational and social dimension, and probably, but perhaps only incidentally, a geopolitical dimension.

7.5

Analysis and Review

The preceding is hardly tight enough as yet to constitute a single theoretical model, but it is enough to provide a guide for the analysis and explanation of events and a review of literature, This will be undertaken in three parts: a survey of the rise of nationalist–modernist protest and the acquisition of sovereignty as a case of elite circulation, a survey of the effects of nationally-controlled modernization and development on elite circulation, and an indication of further research. The clearest example of elite circulation or of elites as a policy output is the rise of nationalist elites, which appeared as a result of colonial elite policies and as a reaction to colonial elites. Numerous studies have analyzed this process, although most of them carry their analysis only to the point of identifying historical periods, rather than developing analytical categories and theoretical relations among them. The country that went through all the stages of nationalist-modernist protest was Algeria, one of the rare cases of revolution in the third world.21 The sequence of events has been aptly captured by one of the best studies of elite circulation in terms similar to the model here presented. But Algeria’s stages were somewhat mixed up, largely because the experience of a large number of workers in France created a different set of demands and attitudes that contested the reform groups, bypassed the nationalist movement, and prepared early for the revolutionary force. Quandt (1969: 14) discerns “a discontinuous process of political socialization whereby each political generation was exposed to radically different experiences while at the same time reacting to … the failure of the preceding generation …. The result … meant that there was virtually no recruitment into an ongoing political process in which the ‘rules of the game’ were relatively well understood and in which the role of the politician was well defined.” Liberal and Radical Politicians— pure and mixed types of reformers—were generated by the mixed effects of colonial education and social promotion. The Liberals were involved in reform groups in the interwar period (notably the Federation of Elected Officials), until the shelving of the Blum-Violette Bill showed the futility of their efforts. Both types then turned to sporadic efforts to form a nationalist movement, despite repression by the colonial regime, interruption by the war, and the eventual enactment of reforms like

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Blum-Violette. The Algerian People’s Party (PPA), the Friends of the Manifesto and of Liberty (AML), and the Movement for the Triumph of Democratic Liberties (MTLD) all saw, by 1948, that the ultimate goal of independence could not be achieved by means short of the ultimate power of violence. The revolutionary force began with the Secret Organization (OS) of the MTLD and reached its successful expression in the National Liberation Army (ALN) of the National Liberation Front (FLN), led by the elite groups that Quandt calls Revolutionaries and Military. Yet the exceptional feature of Algeria is the way each stage or group was foreshadowed by a predecessor out of phase: the North African Star of the interwar (reform group) period had goals and attitudes of a nationalist movement, and the Setif revolt organized by its successor Algerian People’s Party (PPA) on V-E Day was a premature revolutionary force. In this light, it is perhaps less surprising that the real nationalist movement of Algeria was the FLN in the second half of the war and notably in the demonstration of December 11, 1961—a result, not a predecessor, of the revolutionary force. It takes little further discussion to show how these groups and stages were produced by positive and negative policies (development and blockage) on the part of the incumbent (colonial) elites and by the needs of the struggle growing out of the failure of the preceding phase. The reform group leaders were essentially those produced, often from Algerian middle class families, by the French educational system and then preventedfrom achieving the equality for which they had been trained. The reaction of the Radical Politicians was more violent because their lower social position required greater efforts at social promotional and, hence, greater disillusionment at rejection. The economic dislocations of the war produced marginal workers and ex-soldiers who were ready to become Revolutionaries, and the opportunities of military rank and higher education in the postwar period produced Military and Technicians. These three groups made up the revolutionary force, and then dominated the new independent elite (Zartman 1970, 1975, 1979; Chaliand 1977).

It is out of the experiences of Morocco and Tunisia that the notion of stages comes. In Tunisia, the Young Tunisians were a reform group that gave way to the Liberal Constitution (Destour) and Neo-Destour parties, two distinct parts of the nationalist movement, described as such by Brown in Micaund et al. (1964) and by Moore (1965) and, in more sociopsychological terms, by Memmi (1967). Tunisia never reached the revolutionary force as a full stage, the demonstration of coercive value of violence by the fellaga in Tunisia and the FLN in Algeria combined with the skillful political action of the Neo-Destour being enough to bring about independence. Brown and Memmi both write about the imitation stage, the Young Tunisians, but they do not make a careful distinction between initial individual efforts at imitation and subsequent group efforts at reform when imitation is unrequited. Memmi jumps to mass movement and violence, an ecological fallacy that ascribes individual reactions to groups, and Brown, less drastically, simply combines imitation and reform. But then, Memmi’s writing tends to refer more to attitudes and actions and Brown’s to historic periods; if Memmi’s analysis were refined through the notions of critical mass threshold or appropriate power and if Brown’s periods were related to groups or roles independent of chronology, fuller theory and better

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explanation could be developed. Nevertheless, some important comparisons and understandings are already evident from the analysis. Ideally, each of the first three stages should come in order and be allowed to mature before being succeeded by the next stage…. The whole process of transition is in danger if there is too great a departure from this ideal pattern. Thus, quiescence is frustrated, as in Morocco and Algeria, if there are too many local uprisings and if public security is not quickly and efficiently secured …. In the imitation-reform stage, the premature appearance of the Watani Party … in Egypt forced the moderates into the role of rather ineffective politicians before they could achieve an intellectual reconciliation between alien and indigenous cultures. This … stage was more nearly ideal in India, Sudan, Tunisia, and perhaps Lebanon and Syria…. In several countries, in the nationalist movement stage, ideological debate was postponed in favor of total involvement in the struggle for national independence; among these were Egypt under the Wafd, Morocco under the Istiqlal, and Pakistan… One might advance here the assertion that Tunisia has come as close as any colonized state to following the ideal path of development from static to dynamic society, which would explain its present acceptance of commitment to change (Moore 1965: 55). The same scenario found its parallels in Morocco, with some instructive differences in detail from Tunisia and, a fortiori, Algeria. The Moroccan Action Bloc of the interwar period was the prime reform group. After World War II, the Independence (Istiqlal) party was the nationalist movement, its urban Resistance and the rural Liberation Army (ALM) foreshadowing a revolutionary force stage just enough to make the political activity of the Istiqlal effective. The idea of stages is used by Halstead (1967: 5; 195f) in his description of the origins and rise of Moroccan nationalism (on suggestion, apparently, from Mehdi ben Barka). He calls his stages reformism and separatism, and never raises the problem of the revolutionary force because he stops in 1944. Halstead distinguishes roles, groups, and organizations only briefly, but he does emphasize the formation of (counter)elites as a policy output and, particularly, negatively as well as positively, as the result of educational programs. Zartman earlier referred to the stages of Moroccan nationalism and then used them as a background for the explanation of the political evolution after independence (1964, 1973: Chap. 26). Although it has been suggested that Morocco’s evolution has been less “ideal” than Tunisia’s, the right phenomenon may be identified for the wrong reasons. Rather than premature xenophobic resistance or overemphasis on the overriding independence issue, the breakdown of a commitment to progress and change in Morocco may come more from the inability of modernized elites to shake loose the traditionalist elites in the nationalist movement (until too late, in 1959) and from the related impact of a strong source of legitimacy, more traditionalist than modern, in the monarchy. Morocco’s traditional elites had undergone a split between collaborationists and reformists; Tunisia’s traditionalists were also split, but the reformists were worn out and secularized, whereas Algeria, in between, had a reformist element strong enough to contribute to, but not strong enough to dominate, the nationalist movement (Marais, de Montety, and Vatikiotis in Zartman 1973).

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There is no similar treatment of Syria except for a brief summary given by Berque (1957) and picked up by Seale (1965). There, the National Bloc is treated as a nationalist movement whose unity and drive was subsequently worn out by the failure of the 1936 independence treaty, the loss of the Alexandretta sanjaq, the wartime tug-of-war for independence, the rise of regional and personal factions, and, finally, the Palestine War. The rise and fall of successive elites is depicted, but not explained The same characteristic is evident in works on the Egyptian reformist and nationalist movements, although some of the most important and insightful works on Middle East thought and politics have been written on this period (Safran 1961; Hourani 1962; Khadduri 1970; Berque 1972). The schools of Muslim reformist thought, the Egyptian reform parties such as Watan and Umma, and the Wafd nationalist movement have frequently been shown to be successive results of the experiences of each preceding phase or school operating within a changing context and reacting to different allies and adversaries. But the relation of such intellectual and political movements to a changing social base of rising groups, demands, and elites has yet to be shown in depth. The real test of the proposed approach lies in its ability to explain and project events once the independence struggle or its functional equivalent has ended in victory and things have settled down to slower sociopolitical change that results from differential development. The longer the period of analysis, the easier it is to find the necessary events, data, and trends. Thus the most instructive cases can be expected to come from countries whose independence is not of recent date, including those that in the past have undergone consolidating revolutions that serve as watersheds in their development and as functional equivalents of independence in the colonial countries. Turkey is a fitting subject for an examination of elite circulation and has been particularly well treated from that point of view. The Young Turks, which served as a model for many other later reform groups in the Middle East, actually succeeded in coming to power (unlike most other nationalist reformers), but, even in success, gave rise to a stronger reaction, a secular modernizing nationalist movement embodied by the Ataturk and Inonu Eras. Thereafter, the multiparty period and the two military coups suggest a history that readily lends itself to compartmentalization. Payaslioglu sees in this evolution a series of Aristotelian cycles in which power is concentrated and then dispersed (1964: esp. p. 427). His dynamic element lies in the structure of power itself: power-holders, consolidating in order to defend their power, alienate an increasingly large opposition until a minimum winning coalition is in the opposition, which then takes over. But he never identifies the certain groups that demand changes or the one group that captures power, and he makes no distinction between the types and purposes of power concentration that distinguish each of the five cycles he sees in the past century. For such distinctions and a more evolutionary model, one must turn to other works. Frey has inductively developed a model from this history that focuses on types of elites and power structures (1965: 406–19, esp. p. 415). He breaks up the nationalist period into organizations of nationalist awareness and of nationalist struggle. Thereafter, with independence, comes the breakdown of the funnel phase

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and the breakup of the nationalist elite into Ardent Nationalists, oriented toward societal restructuring and a concentration of power, and Post-independence Conservatives, oriented toward social and political pluralism. Frey projects only the dominance of the first through the establishment of a tutelary regime that, by its policies of transformation, creates new social groups. While Frey indicates these policy areas—army, education, communications, health—he does not relate the next stage, the opening up of the tutelary system, to the resultant demand-bearing groups but rather to the political structure, through the creation of new power linkages and then organization, opportunity, and take-over by the opposition. He does however indicate that rough spots can occur in the passage from a tutelary to a democratic regime, when “the tutelary regime absorb[s] various elements in the expanding elite too slowly” and when there is no agreement on the proper place of potential sources of power, such as peasants and workers. The study shows that blockage not only causes demand-bearing groups to form, but also incites them to vindictiveness when they finally take over, a conclusion so evident as to pass unnoticed in the anticolonial reaction. The Rooses (1971) carry this model to further refinement through the use of role types, the Bureaucrats and the Politicians (with side discussions of the Military and Businessmen as well). As the increasingly technocratic tutelary regime developed the country, new skills, elite groups, client groups, interests, and policy options arose. Technocrats began to gravitate to semiautonomous and private enterprises and liberal professions. Eschewing a frozen system of nationalism, authoritarianism, and praetorianism, the elite opened up the tutelary system, creating a need and opportunity for Politicians. Fusion between party and bureaucracy broke down, and, instead of dominating government, the Bureaucrats were now told by the Politicians how to do things, even at the cost of efficiency and inflation. The Bureaucrats were too well socialized into their old roles to accept the new role. change; following the ruralizing election of 1950, they rebelled in common cause with the military technicians in the coup of 1960. The cycle was replayed a decade later. Such an analysis provides a richer interpretation by relating historic periods or stages to elite roles, or, more analytically, to both the supply (developmental output) and demand (developmental need or input) of elite skills. The elite circulation approach has also been well applied by van Dusen (in Tachau 1975b) to Syria, where a long period of postwar instability covered a clearcut shift of elites resulting from demands generated through aspects of development. Elites drawn from old urban families blocked a rising new village middle class, recently arrived from the countryside, from achieving further social promotion through higher education. Yet the older elite, which had become narrow, factious, and defensive about its positions during the protracted struggle for independence and its aftermath, was unable to generate effective successors from its midst. The aspirant elites found the higher education they sought in the only available opportunities: normal and military schools. Then, incited by the blockage and by the failure of the old elites (notably in regard to the Palestine defeat and the parliamentary ineffectiveness), they swept out the incumbents and their political system, using external allies when necessary. The result was a ruralizing series of

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coups, with highly distributive results achieved by bringing in a larger new elite with a much broader base than before. The potential size of the new elite made its internal relations much more competitive, however. Party and ideology were used to bridge the old fracture lines of geography and culture, but they provided their own fracture lines instead and brought increased intensity to political disputes. Although the 1950s showed the vulnerability of the parliamentary system to military coups, it took the 1960s to destroy the control of the old elites over both army and assembly and to replace them with the new aspirants. Typically, the elite circulation approach has been used in studying a country during a period of relatively rapid changes. During periods of relative elite stability, as in the two decades of military rule in Egypt, there are enormous changes in group and aspirant structures that are necessary to understanding the coming events of the last quarter of the century, and yet these changes have not been given much attention. The policy of Sadat is only understandable through an analysis of changes in his supporting elites, an analysis that remains to be done. The final example of elite studies in the Middle East comes from Israel, a country too often regarded as sui generis, to the neglect of extremely enlightening parallels and differences and, doubtless, to the ultimate misunderstanding of a society that is becoming more and more Middle Eastern. Israel has frequently been analyzed as a polity of generational elite circulation—Founders and Sons (Elon 1971), but no one has captured the dynamics of this movement as well as Shapiro (1969 pending; see, however, Seligman 1964; Torgovnik in Tachau 1975; Czudnowski 1972; Arian 1977, 1978; Guttman/Landau 1975). The political system was established by the generational cohort that comprised the second aliyah, who were born in Russia toward the end of the century, immigrated in the first decade of the 1900s, and operated in Palestine during the 1920s and 1930s. The success of their political operations and the pervasiveness of their ideology meant that succeeding aliyot and sabras alike were positively socialized in the political culture of their elders and dominated by them. Instead of crystallizing as independent generational cohorts with an active nucleus, “generational units,” they internalized admonishments not to rock the boat and they found their ambition in following rather than leading, notably through obedient integration into existing patterns and institutions. Their rebellious instincts as youths during a formative political age were diverted into military activity against an external enemy well past independence, disciplined under the continued political dominance of the yishuv (pre-independence) leadership. When an organizational manifestation of issue realignment occurred, in Rafi party in 1967, typically it took place under the leadership of the leading politician of the established elite turned rebel against his own generation, Ben Gurion, and the movement died for lack of effective younger leadership. Instead, the same younger generation came to power in the Labor government of 1974, now elite followers without their older generation leadership and without direction or cohesion. When the critical election occurred in 1977, the emergence of a number of competing third parties and the shift of voters to an opposition movement—all features associated with critical elections-brought the latter to power, but it was still a party dominated by the older generation, which

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internal ideology and external beleaguerment had allowed to dominate and to stifle normal generational succession through Israeli history.21 The shift in issues and attitudes and the weakness and division of leadership provide for a new generational reaction, but the necessary cohort may not yet be ready, simply not yet old enough, to assert a different pattern in Israeli politics.

7.6

Conclusion

It would doubtless be possible to find other works that could contribute to an understanding of the process of elite circulation in the Middle East, but enough examples have been mentioned to permit a summary at this point. The first part of this chapter concentrated on a number of salient aspects of the process. The study of elites as a policy output resulting from uneven development measures allows a fuller understanding of the process of circulation. The concept of the demand-bearing group and of situational needs and blockage provides the dynamic for this process. The notion of four dimensions, along with the ideas of reinforcing cleavages, permits an analysis of the threshold when a group turns critical, that is, political. The phenomenon of bunching, and the reasons for it, allows for an explanation of stages or generations that would otherwise only be dates and time periods. The second part of the chapter has reviewed some of the empirical work already done and inductive models drawn from it. One purpose of this review has been to show that work does exist that has utilized some of the notions mentioned here as associated with elite circulation and has established their correspondence with real events. All four of the major ideas of this presentation—elites as a developmental policy output, coalescence of demand-bearing groups through blockage, dimensions leading to reinforcing cleavages, and bunching through issue realignment— have cropped up in empirical case studies, even if they have not been combined in any one study or even fully developed as explicit instruments of analysis. Thus, although the reality of the analytic concepts has been supported, their use for analysis has been limited and indirect. A number of studies have used the device of historical stages, time periods dominated by a particular elite group or role and institution or organization. Few of them, however, have separated period from group and/or role ill order to discover relationships and to explain why a particular group or role was dominant in a particular period. Nor has there been much attention to the types of developmental policy that create particular types of elite aspirants, either as skills or as demand-bearing groups. Education is the source of 21

For the same idea applied to Turkey, see Ozbudun/Tachau (1975). There is a provocative model of stages of educational development in Harbison/Myers (1954: esp. pp. 38f, 57–95), but the dynamics of the passage from the one stage to another are not discussed, and the outcome before the millennium of full development is apocalyptic revolution or dictatorship. The same scenario, with the same outcome, is very well treated in Kautsky (1962, 1972).

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change most frequently used to explain different, types of elites in these studies, and culture (traditional vs. modern), a related matter, is also cited. An additional variable is power relationships and attitudes toward political and social structures but these do not explain why some groups rise rather than others. These tasks are not easy, but for that reason they demand attention. It is not surprising that the first section as well as the second section of this chapter has been less than explicit on the relation between development and the rise of new elite groups and roles. It is there that more work needs to be done. Yet even after more study of the policies that generate and that block new demands, groups, and elites, it is not likely that the dynamic of elite circulation in independent Middle East polities can be encompassed in a single-issue model such as the one used to analyze the struggle for independence. There are a number of reasons or this. For one, there is no conceivable issue that provides an overwhelming concern like the struggle for independence and for the control of one’s own destiny. Revolutionary challenges may provide a serious issue and one whose course is not unlike the nationalist protest model, but the challenge is not universal, as the independence challenge has been. A major point of the analysis has been that developmental change is country specific, so that a single-issue model would seem unlikely. Yet the purpose of conceptual analysis is to overcome the unique. The cited country studies and others suggest that the unique cases fall into at least three categories: overproduction of technicians who are blocked from access to the bureaucracy and form a demand-bearing group around the private sector; overproduction of educated individuals who are blocked from positions of authority and form a group in opposition to incumbent elite institutions and culture; overproduction of expectant semiurbanized ex-peasants, blocked from access to their expectations, who form a distributively oriented group. These categories are related and sometimes overlap, and they indicate political events evoked in a number of developmental studies. The demand-bearing group in formation is a sort of lumpen-bourgeoisie, a residue of the New Middle Class Man of the Middle East thesis (Halpern 1963, 1969; Sternber-Sarel 1969; Van Nieuwenhuijze 1965; Bill/Teiden 1974: Chap. 3; Hussein 1975), and the issue for elite circulation—no matter on which dimension it is viewed by the participants—concerns recurrent cycles of distribution and digestion. The expansion and subsequent problems of absorption of aspirant elites accounts for the issue realignment and bunching. Thus, the problem of uniqueness is a problem of detail and perspective. The particular cause for aspirant overproduction and blockage, in terms of a particular country’s differential development, is an empirical matter. It may bear resemblances to the situation in other countries, and will do so—in the terms indicated in this chapter—to a greater extent as the names of the variables become more abstract. The theoretical matter, however, which this chapter has attempted to establish, concerns the fact that, for whatever specific causes in a given country, bunching and blockage, elite production, and demand-bearing groups do occur.

References

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Halpern, Manfred 1969. “Egypt and the New Middle Class,” Comparative Studies in Society and History XI 97–108. Halstead, John 1967. The Origins and the Rise of Moroccan Nationalism (Harvard University Middle East Center). Harris, Christina 1964. Nationalism and Revolution in Egypt (Mouton). Harbeson, Frederick & Myers, Charles 1964. Education, Manpower and Economic Growth (McGraw-Hill). Highley, John, Field, G Lowell, & Grøholt, Knit 1971. Elite Structure and Ideology (Universitetsforlaget through Columbia University Press). Hodgkin, Thomas 1962. African Political Parties (Penguin). Holtzman, A 1963. The Townsend Movement (Bookman). Hopkins, Raymond 1971. Political Rolls in a New State (Yale University Press). Hoselitz, Bert 1966. “Investment in Education and Political Impact,” in James Coleman, ed., Educational and Political Development (Princeton University Press). Huntington, Samuel 1968. Political Order in Changing Societies (Cornell University Press). Kausky, John 1962. Political Change in Underdeveloped Countries (Wiley). Kausky, John 1972. Political Consequences of Modernization (Wiley). Kearns, Kevin 1963. “Perspectives on a New Capital,” Geographic Review LXIII 147–169. Kerstiens, Thom 1966. The New Elites in Asia and Africa (Praeger). Key, V O 1975. “A Theory of Critical Elections,” Journal of Politics XVII 1:1–72. Khadduri, Majid 1970. Political Trends in the Arab World (Johns Hopkins University Press). Khallaf, A & Schwayri, E 1966. “Family Firms ad Industrial Development,” Economic Development and Social Change XV 59–69. Lasswell, Harold 1936. Politics: Who Gets What When How (McGraw-Hill). Lasswell, Harold 1965. “The Comparative Study of Elites,” in Harld Lasswell & Daniel Lerner, eds., World Revolutionary Elites (MIT). LeVine, Victor 1967. Political Leadership in Africa (Hoover). Lipset, S M 1966. “Elections: Expression of Democratic Class Conflicts,” in Reinhoard Bendix & S M Lipset, eds., Class, Status and Party (Free Press). Lloyd, Peter 1966. New Elites in Tropical Africa (Oxford). Lowi, Theordore 1963. “The Case of Innovation in Party Systems,” American Political Science Review LVII 3:570–583. Makarius, Raul 1960. La Jeunesse intellectuelle d’Egypte de la deuxième guerre mondiale (Mouton). Mannheim, Karl 1952. “The Social Problems if Generations,” in Paul Kecskemeti, ed., Essays in the Sociology of Knowledge (Oxford). Mauhew, Bruce 1967. 1975. “Sociological Perspectives on the Structure of Elite Systems,” in Robert Slater et al., eds., Approaches to Elite Analysis (Mathematica). Mead, Margaret 1970. Culture and Commitment: A Study of the Generation Gap (Natural History Press). Maicud, Charles, Brown, L Carl, & Moore, Clement Henry 1964. The Politics of Development (Praeger). De Montety, Henri 1957. “Le developpement des classes moyennes en Tunisie,” in Developpement des Classes Moyennes dans les pays tropicaux et subtropicaux. Bruxelles, International Institute of Different Civilizations, reprinted in I William Zartman, ed., 1974 (Praeger). Nagle, J D 1977. System and Succession (University of Texas Press). Olson, Mancur 1968. The Theory of Collective Action (Schocken). Oualalou, Fathallah 1975. Le Tiers Monde et la troisième phase de la domination (Editions Magrébines). Özbudun, Ergun & Tachau, Frank 1975. “Social Change and Electoral Behaviorin Turkey,” International Journal of Middle East Studies VI 4:460–480. Palmore, Erdman 1975. The Honorable Ekders (Berbera).

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Chapter 8

Democracy and Islam: The Cultural Dialectic

Much of the world finds itself today at the crossroads of two historical political currents.1 They deal with the highest question of political life: How will individuals and societies decide their own future? Will it be by repeated and updated acts of choice in a rapidly evolving world or by a single referendum on faith in millennial verities? One of these currents is democracy; the other, political Islam or Islamism. It is unlikely that either current will win totally; more probably, the result will be a turbulent mixture of the two in varying proportions. The outcome, however, will have momentous consequences for the people involved and also for the rest of the world. The confrontation concerns two rising tides of attention, surging from their own sources, spreading through their own dynamics, and flowing together in many places throughout the world. They meet wherever governance is debated in the land of Islam (dar al-Islam), but they also meet in the streets of Paris, in the hidden house of Rushdie (1988), author of The Satanic Verses, and in the District Building in Washington, D.C., when it was taken over by the Hanafi sect in 1977. From one side, democracy, flowing from the West since classical Athens, has suddenly resurged as a popular demand and a political criterion in response to the failures of authoritarian rule in both the Second and Third Worlds. On the other side, Islamic revival and its extension as a political formula have also arisen, in reaction to the failures of modernization and secular socialism in developing countries. This is not to say that Islam is the successor to communism as a threat to the West, as some U.S. government spokespersons have suggested (Crossette 1992; Ignatius 1992). Islam as a personal religious belief has no necessary consequences for either domestic governance or foreign relations, despite the inherent unity of social and religious life in Islamic teaching; it is only when the religious beliefs about piety and correct behavior are promoted as the basis of the political system I William Zartman, “Democracy and Islam: The Cultural Dialectic,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 524:181–191. November 1992. Reprinted with permission.

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© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 I. W. Zartman, I William Zartman: A Pioneer in Conflict Management and Area Studies, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06079-4_8

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that they shape the practices of domestic governance and international relations (Piscatori 1983; Dawisha 1983). Even then, as previous articles in this volume have shown, regimes that call themselves Islamic may pursue their interests in cooperation with Western states, as governments in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Mauritania have done, whereas others also calling themselves Islamic may see themselves necessarily and primarily in conflict with the West, as governments in Iran and the Sudan have done. Moreover, in all of these states, opposition parties calling themselves Islamic have contested their own governments. Nonetheless, as currents of political philosophy, and so of practice, both Western democracy and political Islam are systems of thought and action with their own integrity, neither containing the precepts of the other. In reality, in the earthbound workings of politics and governance, the two sets of ideas and practices challenge and contaminate each other wherever they meet. How to be a democrat in an Islamic state? How to be an Islamist in a democratic state? How democratic can an Islamic state be? How Islamist can a democratic state be? All are real and important questions for sincere citizens not only in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, the Sudan, and Mauritania but also in France, Nigeria, England, India, the Russian Confederation, and the United States.

8.1

Islam: The Cultural Dialectic

Arab writers and Western analysts have long debated two poles of attraction for Muslim society in its search for a model for the kingdom of believers on earth. One is an Arabo-Islamic model of revealed values, calling for a return to religious inspiration to bring the kingdom of God to his followers. The other is a worldly model of materialist values, designed to bring modern success to the community of believers. To some, the first is seen as authentic but traditional, and hence outmoded; to others, the second is considered as modern but secularist and often foreign, and thus alien. This dichotomy represents not merely a clash of conceptions and of criteria for desirable conduct but the basis of a dynamic process of conflict and creation that acts as a dialectic. Out of this clash between thesis and antithesis came not simply a clear-cut victory but rather, in time, a synthesis of the two cultures into a political system that combined the material values of the state with religious values for the individual (Lapidus 1992). In time, however, the synthesis itself has come under attack, usually from a new antithesis in the form of a religious revival that castigates the incumbent political culture for its materialism and worldliness. The confrontation reopens, and is resolved in turn not by a clear defeat of one side but by a new synthesis combining elements of both models. The dynamic goes on. This dialectic was the basis of the famous analysis of the fourteenth-century Arab philosopher ibn Khaldun (1950, 1967), who saw the dynamic of history as a conflict between desert zealots and urban materialists. The rulers of Arab society became caught up in the corrupting material culture of their capitals, arousing the

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corrective zealotry of the hardy communities living on the desert fringes of the countries. They emerged from the wilds to conquer the cities and install austere government based on religious principles. But in time the urban life got to them and their rule became a synthesis of the two cultures. In a cyclical fashion, new zealot groups, bound together in their coarse life by a strong spirit of solidarity, again came over the mountains to clean out the urban fleshpots and, in turn, fall into them. In the coming of Western colonialism, the dialectic took on a new meaning. The materialistic thesis became the colonial society, which drew in imitators fascinated by Western material success but which offended the colonized society because of its foreign and secular worldliness. This time the antithesis came from abroad, through contact with Europe, producing reform governments in the Ottoman core— Tanzimat—and in Tunisia at the end of the nineteenth century. In the Arab world, the clash of values produced a notable synthesis of faith and reason in the works of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani at the same time. However, the corruption of this synthesis through association with reinforced colonial rule in World War I produced a new antithesis in the ideas of Hasan al-Banna and the organization he founded in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood. Throughout the depression and World War II, Arab nationalism and Islam combined to form a powerful message to be used against colonial rule. The most successful nationalist leaders, however, were those who could wield that message but could also speak the language of the colonizer and negotiate an agreement for independence to create a modern society based on both national and modern values. North African nationalist leaders such as Allal al-Fassi, the alim (“doctor of theology”) from Qarawiyin University in Fez who led the Moroccan Independence Party, or Habib Bourguiba, the French-trained lawyer from Monastir who founded the New Constitution Party and for thirty years was Tunisia’s first president, embodied the new synthesis of modern Western and Arabo-Muslim national values. In time, however, this synthesis, too, has come under attack from a new wave of corrective zealotry from the margins of modern society. President Anwar al-Sadat of Egypt, King Hassan II of Morocco, and, outside the Arab world, Shah Reza Pahlevi of Iran have drawn heavy attack for being too modern, materialistic, secular, tied to the West (Tozy 1992; Magnuson 1967). Their governments have been charged with corruption, impiety, and neglect of the national culture and heritage but also with disrupting traditional national society in the name of modernization without providing the promised benefits in compensation. Basic values have been destroyed, the city has corrupted the soul, but poverty is more pervasive than it ever was in traditional times, the wealth of the few is more ostentatiously flaunted, and yet the developed world surges ahead, mocking the house of Islam. This is the language of the new antithesis, turned against the former national synthesis of modernity and authenticity and carrying the banner of resurgent political Islam. These moments of confrontation and challenge to a former synthesis do not arrive by chance, and it is no accident that Islamism is on the rise at the end of the twentieth century. Such times occur when the current order is in difficulty and no longer a source of stability and satisfaction. When order, identity, and resources collapse, believers flock back to their religion and seek in it not just a means of

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salvation in the afterlife, in its normal personal role, but also an answer to unsatisfactory conditions in the earthly life. Previous instances in the collapse of regional orders were associated with the coming of colonialism at the turn of the century and then with its destruction in the aftermath of the world wars, both of them strong markers in the disruption of the twentieth-century world order. Steps in the colonization and decolonization of the Muslim world were disruptions in the sense of identity in the region; people literally no longer knew who they were in the clash between authentism and modernity (See Memmi 1967; Fanon 1967). But these moments of confrontation are not merely philosophical matters; they concern material conditions as well, and perhaps above all. When the economy is no longer able to fill the needs of its inhabitants, when the disruptions of modernization dismantle the peasant and traditional urban commercial economies, and when the state falls short in assuming the colonial promise of social services as well as general responsibility for welfare, believers tend to see the cause in divine retribution for the adoption of alien models and for the corrupt deviance of the rulers, and the corrective in a return to the straight path revealed in God’s word. The antithesis comes in the form of a religious utopia, which promises jobs and good government here and now, because its economic program “is in the Quran,” in the words of Islamist campaigners from Algeria and Tunisia to the Sudan and Iran. Because the response bears the stamp of religious legitimacy, it must succeed, again not in terms of bringing salvation in the hereafter—where it cannot be verified—but in terms of bringing successful governance in the temporal immediacy. If it does not succeed immediately, it is not because it is wrong but because it is thwarted by the incompletely eradicated forces of impiety. In the best dialectical terms, the antithesis does not seek a compromising synthesis; it seeks to win. What is required for a new synthesis, therefore, is a vigorous confrontation between the two forces, modernist and Islamist, and, eventually, a new figure with a following who can combine the best of the two into a nationalist-modernist program for society. That synthesis cannot come too early, or it weakens the force of the debate that is needed to reveal and purge the depths of corruption and irresponsibility in the modernist thesis and the shallowness of utopia and atavism that is in the religious antithesis. Only then can the scientific understanding of modernism and the mobilizing inspiration of nationalism be combined to produce a program of commitment and productivity that will meet the need for order, identity, and resources.

8.2

Democracy—The Consummation of Nationalism

There have been many stirring and insightful treatises on democracy, from which it is necessary to draw two apparently contradictory but defining elements into this discussion. On the one hand, democracy is a procedure. It is the provision of a choice of rulers, at regular intervals, from among contending candidates. It does not guarantee results at any particular time; it is not synonymous with good government

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in the short run. It is the way in which both good results and mistakes are produced, and the procedure cannot be annulled merely because of a momentary mistake. In the longer run, however, it is the only guarantee of accountability and responsibility by the governors, the only way of correcting mistakes, the only way both of getting the rascals out and reducing rascality while they are in. Democracy is the ability to choose and the ability to repent. On the other hand, democracy is not just procedure. It is government conducted by democrats, by people who live within the rules that provide for repeated choice and who believe that losing does not threaten their security, nor winning guarantee their privilege. While it does not guarantee good results at any one election, it is based on the deeper belief that only by open debate will the best alternative be brought to light and that open debate will—perhaps with a little lag time—produce the best alternatives. Perhaps the most difficult part of democracy lies in the surrounding attributes that allow for its success, attributes that comprise social preconditions such as literacy and urbanization but also include an adherence to such democratic ideals and values as those indicated previously. Literacy and urbanization have independent sources of development, but adherence to democratic values is hard to come by without experience in democracy, posing a chicken-and-egg dilemma. Colonialism tried to resolve this dilemma by giving a threefold training in democracy to its subjects. It taught colonial peoples about its own ideals of governance, in terms of parliamentary democracy, for example, or liberty, equality, and fraternity. It gave them something to emulate by showing how colonial governments were responsible to settler populations, a process from which the colonized peoples were excluded. Finally, it forced them to create democratic nationalist movements as the means to achieve national self-determination, since masses and then legitimacy were the only instruments of power that the colonial ruler did not monopolize, unlike arms, money, organization, and international support, for example. As a result, democracy, too, has come in waves across the world. Early waves came with the great revolutions—American and French—of the later eighteenth century, and again with the lesser revolutions—Paris Commune, Hungarian rebellion, Italian revolt, Frankfort assembly—of the mid-nineteenth century. More recent waves were brought by Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points and the emphasis on national self-determination as the outcome of World War I and then, as the result of colonial training, through the Atlantic Charter and the collapse of the colonial order after World War II. But colonial training in democratization was necessarily skewed and truncated. Nationalist movements were the embodiment of the mass democracy of Rousseau’s General Will, targeted against the colonial order. They were an exercise in national self-determination, taking government into their own hands and restoring it to the people, often using institutions that the colonizer had brought and left them. But the nationalist governments were so heavy with legitimacy and unity that they were unable to carry the democratic argument to the conclusion it required. They were unable to condone division, debate, parties, and repeated

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elections between competing candidates, and they were therefore unable to provide for successors to the father of the new emancipated countries. The democracy of the colonial succession remained a dead letter, a truncated exercise. Thus, at the beginning of the millennium, half a century or so after independence, there is a new wave of democracy sweeping the world, a renewed pressure for popular sovereignty that has a special meaning for developing polities and for the Muslim countries among them. It is the fulfillment of the logic and promise of the nationalist movement and the culmination of self-determination, in which government itself is determined on regular intervals by the people, and not merely the independence of the state determined in a one-time vote. The current wave of democracy, which began in the late 1980s, draws its major impetus from the collapse of the Communist system of social or totalitarian democracy in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (Talmon 1985) and from the culmination of the colonial liberation movement in the exhaustion of the apartheid system of hijacked democracy in South Africa. But it is in the Muslim world where it has a special impact, since it meets the historical current of Islamism, which is rising at the same time. In addition to its importance as the culmination of the nationalist movement, the current wave of democracy gains significance from two other aspects in the operation of the postcolonial state. One is the enormous expansion of the functions of the state, into areas of socioeconomic services and regulations that far exceed the scope of state activities in the precolonial or even colonial times. Typically, in the Third and especially the Muslim worlds, the state is the largest employer and the largest investor; nearly all university faculties are civil servants and all students live on state subsidies, expecting—and sometimes guaranteed—state jobs upon graduation. Basic food staples are subsidized to a low consumer price, and medical treatment, like education, is free or low-cost. But it is also a source of intrusive regulations, as a legislator of labor laws, currency controls, exit visas, curriculum reforms, and social norms. As a result, the state is an important prize for democratic—or any other—control and not just a source of privilege for a ruling few. Yet the other element in the struggle for the state is that in fact it has been viewed in the Arab world—and elsewhere in the Third World—as the hunting preserve of the few, alienated from the people, ruling not so much by coercion as by manipulation, and without the charismatic leaders who dominated Arab politics in the 1950s and 1960s. The decade of the 1980s saw significant outbursts of popular disapproval in most Arab countries, protesting not only shortfalls in goods and services provided by the government but a lack of trust and faith in the leaders themselves. Riots in 1981 and 1984 in Casablanca and 1990–91 in northern Morocco, in 1986 in Constantine and then 1988 throughout Algeria, in 1984 in Tunis, in 1986 in Cairo and other cities of Egypt, in 1989 in Amman, and in 1986 in the Great Mosque in Mecca and, of course, the revolution of 1979 in Iran are all strident and bloody instances of popular protest against the governors of the Muslim Middle East.

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Alienated rulers controlling a powerful state and confronting a sudden rise in the pressure for democracy as the consummation of nationalist self-determination have made for a most explosive combination. Unfortunately for a lasting commitment to democratic values, the situation has meant that democracy is not viewed merely as a healthy procedure but as a guarantee of the results that the previous system failed to produce. That is a tough challenge to throw in the face of a new system of government in which its practitioners have had little experience, at a time of falling foreign aid, unfavorable terms of trade, and shrinking and redirected investment. Democracy in the Middle East, and elsewhere in the Third World, is threatened with becoming yet another system of government that did not produce the expected results, because so much is expected of it. If the democratic resurgence threatens incumbent authoritarians in the Muslim world, the charismatic demagogue in turn threatens to deform democracy into xenophobic populism. But the most powerful form of this challenge is political Islam, which promises the restoration of morality, authenticity, and earthly success and the exclusion of corruption and error, backed by God’s word as a guide and as a guarantee.

8.3

Democracy and Islam

There is no inherent incompatibility between democracy and Islam. Like all scripture, the Quran can be interpreted to support many different types of political behavior and systems of government. It contains no direct support for democracy, the closest statement being an indication that “what is with God is better and more lasting for those … who [conduct] their affairs by mutual consultation [shura] (Qoran 42: 36, 38). As would be expected, its emphasis lies much more on the pious qualities expected of a ruler than on the way in which rulers should be chosen. As indicated at the outset, each of the two currents comes from different sources and addresses different issues. The conflict arises when the particular form of political Islam precludes the procedural essence of democracy, the repeated provision of debate and choice between a free range of options. When political Islam, in the name of cleaning out the stables of corruption and alienation, promises to install a system where only those who subscribe to the true path are allowed into the contest for power, then the incompatibility arises. When parties led by devoted leaders inspired by religious beliefs vie among others for a role in government, there is no incompatibility. But when the party arrogates for itself the mantle of the national religion, monopolizing its symbols and delegitimizing its opponents, open democratic debate and the guarantee of future free elections are hard to insure. Islamic parties and regimes are usually rather straightforward about their intentions, although not always to the Western press. Although the leaders of the Algerian Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) profess their devotion to democracy before Western journalists, they also tell local audiences that “democracy is heresy’’ and “all parties who subscribe to the Way can compete freely,” clear statements of

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incompatibility with democracy. It should be remembered that the position of democracy and that of political Islam on the matter of open debate are similar but different in an important way. Both maintain that truth will prevail in open debate, but democrats are proponents of the debate whereas Islamists are proponents of the Truth. More complex is the usual division of Islamic parties into a moderate, usually visible leadership and a radical militant wing, often underground, creating a situation where, as in any revolutionary movement, the moderate leadership is controlled and can eventually be replaced by the militants once its usefulness in achieving power is spent. Thus the compatibility of political Islam and democracy must be judged not only by public statements but also by an analysis of probable political dynamics. While the confrontation is going on, what can be done to create conditions for a functioning synthesis, so that democracy can be preserved in the presence of political Islam rather than being destroyed by it? One way, adopted by most Muslim countries, is through constitutional provisions declaring Islam to be the national religion but prohibiting Islamic parties, often along with ethnic and other religious parties. Many Muslim states’ constitutions have both provisions— including Algeria, where the FIS was authorized in 1989 despite its unconstitutionality! A similar method involves the use of a national charter of agreed principles to register a national consensus of values on which participation and competition can be based. This device has been used both in Egypt and in Tunisia, and in the latter case included an Islamist representative as a signatory but did not permit the legalization of the Islamist party. A second measure is the development of a credible opposition. The crisis in the current confrontations between a decrepit authoritarian regime and a new Islamist opposition arises from the abstention Front, left no party known and attractive enough to draw the votes. As a result, the FIS, mobilizing all the voters it could, won 47 percent of the votes cast but only 25 percent of the eligible voters. The crisis came from the fact that there was no party that could win majority support from the nation and, more specifically, that could even draw out the majority of the population to vote. In Tunisia and Egypt, strong government parties, even if tied to the old regime, handily overcame Islamist opposition, running as independents in Tunisia in 1989 and among several parties in Egypt in 1990 and 1991. But in both countries, third parties, try as they did, were too new, inexperienced, and unknown to present a serious challenge to the incumbents, and the old parties were hampered by ties to the previous regime. Yet, as the experience of Iran under the Shah shows, incumbents are in a poor position to help develop credible oppositions to their own regimes. A third measure is to use the technicalities of elections to encourage pluralism and limit the hold that an Islamist party could gain on the government apparatus. An electoral system of proportional representation gives seats to smaller parties and prevents an overemphasis of the majority. It often leads to coalition governments and less coherent policies, however. Majoritarian systems, either for single-member districts or for large-constituency lists, tend to focus on prominent alternatives, to the underrepresentation of small and regional parties. Establishment of a minimum

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percentage for inclusion, usually set between 5 and 8 percent, keeps tiny parties from producing many splinters and overvalued coalition partners. Parties may be required to show clientele or candidates in all regions or all voting districts, in order to establish their national character. These and other aspects of election laws can be used to limit extremist parties, encourage coalitions, eliminate splinters, and strengthen credible options. A fourth measure would be to delay political democracy until its preconditions are established or at least begun. Literacy levels and urban concentrations have been mentioned as social requisites, but other political correlates of democracy include a free and pluralistic press, an independent judiciary, autonomous associations including labor unions and public affairs discussion groups, and respect for civil liberties and human rights. The problem is that these conditions are as difficult to establish as free elections themselves and more difficult to maintain. Their existence does not guarantee their continuity, and their imperfection can be too easily used as a pretext to postpone the exercise of democracy that would help perpetuate them. Yet without these conditions, it is hard to maintain the democratic values that undergird free elections. The bundle of measures should go together, and it is important to begin wherever one can. A fifth measure would be to practice the forms of democracy whenever scheduled, let the most popular—including the Islamists—win, and let them learn democracy on the job. The lesson of many experiments with radical groups is that responsibility moderates, but that lesson is not absolute. Another lesson is that experiments in moderating revolutionary groups tend to take up to a generation, as the Iranian experience shows. Such experiments make for exciting stuff for social science analysts, but they are hard on the subject populations and disruptive for the world around them. The dialectical conflict within Islam and the confrontation of the two waves of political Islam and democracy also have their costs. Ultimately, it is the populations themselves, acting as masses or as political leaders, who will have to make the choice of which costs to bear.

References Crossette, Barbara 1992. “US Aide Calls Muslim Militants Big Concern in World,” New York Times, 1 Jan. Dawisha, Adeed, ed. 1983. Islam in Oreign Olicy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Fanon, Frantz 1967. Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press). ibn Khaldun, Abdurrahman 1950. An Arab Philosophy of History, ed. Charles Issawi (New York: Grove Press). ibn Khaldun, Abdurrahman 1967. The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, ed. Franz Rosenthal and N J Dawood (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Ignatius, David 1992. “Islam in the West’s Sights: The Wrong Crusade?,” Washington Post, 9 Mar. Magnuson, Douglas 1967. “Islamic Reform in Contemporary Tunisia,” in Albert Memmi ed., The Colonizer and the Colonized (Boston: Beacon Press). Piscatori, James, ed. 1983. Islam in Foreign Policy (New York: Cambridge University Press).

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Rushdie, Salman 1988. The Satanic Verses (New York: Viking). Talmon, J L 1985. The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (Boulder, CO: Westview Press). Tozy, Mohammed 1992. “Islam and the State in North Africa,” in I William Zartman and W Mark Habeeb, eds., Polity and Society in Contemporary North Africa (Boulder, CO: Westview Press).

Chapter 9

Dynamics and Constraints in Negotiating Internal Conflicts

As the dominant system of conflict and world order disintegrates, internal conflicts and their regional ramifications emerge as the primary challenge to international peace and security.1 Because of their inherent asymmetry, internal conflicts are condemned to escalate. Unlike the cold war system of conflict, they do not represent a cause and counter cause that sweep the world and lock it in a global struggle. Rather internal conflicts are endemic infections in the body politic that demand attention and intervention—undulating fevers, old wounds, and running sores that do not heal, resulting in neither victory nor defeat, with no common cause, and yet merely the aberrational outgrowths of normal political processes gone bad. In contrast to the kind of attention given to internal wars and rebellion during the cold war era (particularly in the 1960s) (SORO 1964; Eckstein 1964; Osanka 1962; Paret/Shy 1962; Grundy1971), the focus here is not on counterinsurgency or on the tactics of prevailing in conflict. The key to the new approach is a basic acknowledgement of the legitimacy of internal dissidence, seen as the result of the breakdown of normal politics. This does not mean that in internal conflicts the insurgents are assumed to be “right”; it only means that they are assumed to have a point and to represent legitimate grievances, even if they do not use legitimate means of pursuing them (Coser 1956). The new focus in the post-cold-war era is on resolving rather than combating internal conflict. Cold war studies of insurgency recognized the basic quality of asymmetry, captured in Henry Kissinger’s famous judgment about when guerrillas win and conventional armies lose. They did not focus on the counterbalancing element of commitment, seeing instead any commitment as merely a pathological aspect of communism, with which internal wars were associated. Nor did they see the internal dynamic of insurgency as a matter of rise and fall, with an influence on the possibilities for negotiations. Cold war studies of insurgency had their own set of stages of conflict, largely derived from the steps toward victory identified by I William Zartman, “The Last Mile,” in I William Zartman ed., Elusive Peace: Negotiating to End Civil Wars. Brookings 1995, 332–346. Reprinted by permission.

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Tse-tung (1963, 1954), Guevara (1961), and Giap (1961). Moreover, to both sides in the cold war (and hence to most scholars) insurgencies and counterinsurgency were not appropriate subjects for reconciliation and negotiation; rather, they were to be pursued to victory, for one side or the other. Stalemate as a solution was not to be desired and not to be pursued, nor was internal conflict thought of as something that could be traced back to its origins in the breakdown of normal politics. The studies in this book begin by underscoring the difficulty of bringing internal conflict to any successful conclusion for anyone (Zartman 1995). It is hard to crush the rebels. At best, internal conflicts are simply subsumed back into normal politics; they are carried out by other means within accepted rules of political interaction, but never resolved in the sense of eliminating the parties or the causes. Even when the rebels ‘‘win,’’ by achieving secession or overthrow of the government, many of the problems still remain, to reemerge at a later moment, as the conflicts in Chad, Angola, Mozambique, Colombia, Lebanon, and even South Africa suggest. As a result, negotiation rather than war appears to be the most appropriate means of managing internal conflict. Yet negotiation is not an easy policy to carry out. Another theme of the cases analyzed here is the difficulty of finding appropriate conditions favoring negotiation. Stalemate is precluded by asymmetry, valid spokespersons are weakened by the internal dynamics of the insurgency on the one hand and the government on the other, and solutions are characteristically either too little or too early in terms of the evolution of the conflict. Similarly, negotiation is troubled by the difficulty of finding appropriate settlements. Nearly half of the conflicts here studied have ostensibly achieved some sort of solution. The new political systems set up in South Africa, Mozambique, and Colombia seem to embody the most durable type of settlement (discussed below). The secession of Eritrea solves some problems and poses others. The Ta’if agreement on Lebanon, which can only be called putting the fox in charge of the henhouse, poses more problems than it solves. Sudanese in the 1990s wonder whether the adequate solution toward which they should work lies in one or two Sudans. In three other conflicts a different sort of solution seems likely: in the Philippines, the Basque country, and the remaining rebellions in Colombia the insurgencies are running out of steam, often alienating potential followers by their tactics of violence. To the extent that in all three cases a new political system has been established, the loss of support for the rebellion may be a mark of solution, but events in the Philippines point to its fragility. This study examines many of the major protracted internal wars of the times, but other equally unresolved conflicts could also have been included; the case histories here cannot clearly indicate the way to bring all such conflicts to an end. However, the analyses all focus, precisely or broadly, on thematic keys and insights that are appropriate to understanding the path to solutions in each particular case. Thus the lessons of the past, which bring out the obstacles to negotiation, can be turned into insights for the future. There is no magic, but some features stand out over others. Stalemate has been found to be as elusive as predicted. The lesson is straightforward; where both sides in a conflict perceived themselves to be in a stalemate that was painful to each of them and they saw a better alternative through negotiation (as

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in Sudan in 1972, Mozambique, South Africa, Colombia, and possibly Angola and Sri Lanka in the mid-1990s), they negotiated an agreement; and where the government (as in Spain, Sudan, and the Philippines) or the insurgency (as in Eritrea) felt it was winning, or where the pain of the stalemate was bearable or justified (as in Angola, Afghanistan, and Sri Lanka, and among the Colombian extremists), no settlement was negotiated. Stalemate was absent in cases where negotiations took place and then collapsed; in such cases parties often negotiated for other reasons, as in the Philippines, the Basque country, Afghanistan in the 1990s, and Eritrea. In some conflicts where stalemate did appear, as in Angola, Lebanon, and Sudan in the 1980s, it became a way of life that buried talks, not a deadlock that promoted them. Druckman and Green (1995) make it easier to conceive of the possibility of a stalemate conducive to negotiations when the stalemate is seen as a dynamic, compound concept that combines power with commitment (legitimacy). They find three situations favorable to negotiation: when the insurgents’ power and legitimacy are decreasing and the government’s legitimacy is increasing, when the reverse obtains, and when the legitimacy of both is stable but the insurgents’ power is increasing. In the first situation the insurgents are desperate and the government negotiates their surrender and integration by offering inducements to join the national team, as president and former guerrilla leader Hissene Habre did to the remaining guerrilla opposition throughout the 1980s in Chad (it did not prevent him from being overthrown by an alienated lieutenant in 1990) and as happened in the Philippines. In the second situation the government is on the ropes and the insurgency is on a roll, a situation leading to negotiations favorable to the rebellion, as happened in the case of the Eritreans and Ethiopians in 1989 with former President Carter (although the situation did not prevent the talks from breaking down), and as in Lebanon. The third situation is more promising; characteristic power asymmetry is being overcome but both parties are stalemated but strong and legitimate enough to come to an agreement satisfying to the minimal or reduced demands of both sides. The lesson reinforces other general findings: parties tend to negotiate in a dynamic situation of equality, when the underdog starts rising and the upper hand starts slipping (Zartman 1989). In asymmetrical warfare, it is the insurgency that is the underdog, but both sides must have legitimacy and strength to come to an agreement. It was under such conditions that the peace process got underway in Colombia under President Turbay, was reinvigorated under President Barco, and was brought closer to fruition under President Gaviria, although there were still some outliers to bring in. Under similar conditions, but with a slightly different twist, in South Africa it was the weakening not of government power per se but of its effective answers to the security and governance problem in general that led the government under de Klerk to turn to negotiation. In Mozambique, in yet another twist, both government and insurgency were low in legitimacy, but the government was slipping in power vis-a-vis the insurgency, thus producing a stalemate that was made to hurt for both sides by a drought. To turn stalemate into reconciliation requires a policy of recognition and dialogue. This means, first, that the insurgency has to be recognized as a legitimate

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actor-part of the problem and so part of the solution. Recognition of the rebels was the key to breaking the logjam in Mozambique and South Africa. It means, second, that government has to reaffirm dialogue and responsiveness as part of its normal business, not to be denied even to insurgents and to the populations they speak for, if not represent. Unconditional dialogue made solutions possible in South Africa and Colombia, and its absence long blocked a search for solutions in the Basque country and in Sri Lanka. A policy of recognition and dialogue is not easy to achieve, nor are its effects automatic. Syria turned the Ta’if agreement to its own dominant designs, right-wing death squads assassinated left-wing Colombian rebels who turned legitimate, and morbid jostling for a place at the negotiating table between African National Congress and Inkatha Freedom Party followers (with the connivance of security forces) held up and nearly derailed the South African dialogue before it started. But recognition and dialogue are the first steps toward reconciliation. Recognition and dialogue are simple principles with some very important fine print. The most significant concerns the relation between the conflict process and the reconciliation process, or between violence on one hand and recognition and dialogue on the other. The shift of the conflict from violent to political means does not happen in one move. After a long period marked by the absence of normal politics, there is suspicion of the newly promised effectiveness of those politics. There is the danger that reconciliation may be a crap; either the government or the rebellion might take advantage of the opportunity to rebuild its forces and to lure the other out into the open in ambush. Furthermore, violence is the only means the insurgents have to counter the power of government; without violence, the asymmetry is overwhelming, because government by definition retains the legitimate use of force. For the government, a two-handed policy is indicated: engaging in dialogue to find common ground for both sides’ reasonable demands, while combating the extremes. Unilateral disarmament by the government would be abdication from its duties, such as the protection of its citizens and the maintenance of law and order, and would be submission to the counterbalancing asymmetry of commitment. In South Africa, where internal conflict negotiations were among the most unprecedented and successful, the police and the judiciary never ceased to function, however badly, throughout the negotiations, sometimes with significant positive effect. In Colombia, where negotiations were also at least partially successful, the judiciary, police, and army continued to play important roles throughout the negotiations, and the battle for control of those forces was crucial, with the guerrillas intimidating the judiciary and antiguerrilla extremists infiltrating the police. The two hands of policy depend on each other for legitimacy and effectiveness: use of police powers is justified only when the state also shows itself open to dialogue, and dialogue is possible only as long as the state also maintains the means to defend itself. Cease-fire, therefore, is an asymmetrical profession of faith during asymmetrical conflict. Because a cease-fire removes the dynamic relationship between force and negotiation and the possibility of last-minute adjustments in power relations, it is

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more likely to conclude than to open negotiations. Temporary, unilateral, tacit, and informal cease-fires can be trial balloons that help negotiations get started and can even turn into longer term, more formal arrangements. However, to do so the conflict and the conflict resolution must be at such a point that the power relation between the two sides is no longer in doubt and force is no longer necessary to insure the support of both parties for a formal cease-fire. At that point refusal of a cease-fire is a sign of bad faith, but not before, as the analysis of the Basque conflict has shown. However, identification of that point is such a subjective matter that the signals are not always clear. Because the opening of direct talks can probably be considered a de-escalating step, a conflict event (such as an attack or arms delivery) during actual negotiations is almost certainly a negative signal, so a cease-fire represents a positive commitment. In Angola a cease-fire came only at the close of negotiations between the ruling MPLA and UNITA. (One must still be careful to discriminate between central control and local initiative in such cases, where part of the job of negotiations may be to protect an accommodating central organization from local challenges, as well as from poor communications.) A cease-fire is helpful as a prelude to negotiations, to create trust and initiate the process of commitment, but should not be a necessary precondition, and governments should not play into the hands of extremists by telling them that an incident would cause talks to collapse. Commitment is a source of the insurgents’ strength; the challenge is to turn commitment from solidarity making to problem solving and reconciliation. Because commitment can get in the way of these goals, it must be harnessed and put to work in outcomes that engage the representative responsibility of the insurgents in a new role involving participation, legitimation and allocation. The genius of the South African and Colombian solutions was to engage the former rebels in pursuit of their goals openly in a new political system. “Normalization” was the keyword in Barco’s round of the peace process in Colombia, meaning that insurgents could join the political process if they would stop fighting and government would stop fighting if the insurgents joined the political process. The rebels’ commitment is to a dream of full power in the future, however unattainable. In order to harness their commitment to solutions that manage conflict, insurgents must be given some power over their own affairs in the present and a stake in a new political system or new regime. The return to normal politics—a politics that handles grievances and demands—should be the basis of a new, inclusive polity that brings together those who feel deprived and discriminated against and those who have felt part of the old political system, now to share in power and benefits. The solution for regionalist conflicts must incorporate a high degree of regional autonomy and self-government; that for centralist conflicts, a high degree of representation and coalition. Characteristically, protracted internal conflict has gone on too long for the rebels to be satisfied merely with substantive responses to their initial grievances. The rebels no longer trust the government to provide the answers; they demand procedural involvement in a new system. Insurgents are understandably wary of government’s empty promises, especially—as is so often the case—when a solution ending a previous round of the conflict has been sabotaged. Aborted

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experiments in regional autonomy in Sri Lanka and Sudan, in federation in Ethiopia, in power sharing in Angola, and in ethnic groups’ management of their “own affairs” in South Africa permanently soured the prospects for such solutions in those countries. Because such formulas could have been salient answers to the conflicts in those countries, an important set of options has thus been rendered unavailable. Of even more significance, many internal conflicts have broken out because an old pact that provided a previous solution either broke down or became outmoded by changing events. Sometimes a putative solution is abandoned: in Sudan, the 1972 Addis Ababa agreement was sabotaged by its author after it replaced the 1955 agreement, which was unsatisfactory to the South; in Sri Lanka, previous attempts to give the Tamils some self-rule in 1958 and 1969 were abandoned by the government; and in Ethiopia, the federation of 1952 was annulled by the emperor a decade later. In Angola, it was the UNITA rebels who rejected the electoral solution negotiated in 1990, after they lost the elections held in 1992. Sometimes a previous solution that worked for the same or different parties becomes outmoded by a new balance of forces. In Lebanon, the 1943 pact on governance was satisfactory to the parties at the time, but thirty years later its one-to-one parliamentary ratio, which had earlier given Christians a 6:5 advantage over the Muslims, was no longer an accurate reflection of the country’s demographic proportions, given the high Muslim birthrate; in addition, the Cairo Agreement governing the Palestinian presence in Lebanon had been broken by Palestinian military and political activity. In Colombia, the National Front that ended thirty years of La Violencia in 1953 was a pact between rival factions of the political elite that solved the conflict of the moment, but because that pact excluded new social forces it set the stage for the internal conflict of the 1980s. Thus pacts are broken (usually by government) and pacts outmoded sour the atmosphere, reduce trust, and eliminate possible solutions. Insurgents must be assured of getting a real role in a new political system, with guarantees protecting that role, so that the agreement becomes not just the end of the war but the beginning of a new partnership that does not let the old neglect and discrimination happen again. Irrevocable, iron-clad guarantees are difficult to produce, as the federated Eritreans and Sudanese, the decentralized Tamils, and both black and white parties in Zimbabwe can attest, and they ultimately depend on goodwill and proper functioning of the political system. Examples of new political arrangements that have worked are to be found elsewhere than in the cases studied in this book, although one might consider fifteen years of Basque autonomy in Spain and thirty years of National Front rule in Colombia and National Pact rule in Lebanon to be records as stable as one can find in the modern world. Where new political arrangements have worked it was because the formerly deprived groups still retained the potential for serious disruption if the new political system were set aside, and the government (unlike the Ethiopian emperor, the Sudanese Arabs, and the Singhalese) was wise enough to realize it. The conditions for acceptable power sharing, in the phrase of the Philippine case study, are not preordained. Discovering these conditions is a process, and the final satisfactory formula is in part a result of a fair and constructive dialogue that builds confidence as an answer to specific needs. During negotiations a stepped process

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and short-term incentives can help to lead the parties toward final agreement on a new system, as was the practice over the four years of negotiation in South Africa. As the discussions on Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, and Colombia indicate, the process moves toward success when it shifts elections from being the mechanism to award a victory denied on the battlefield to being the means to admit all parties to legitimate and ongoing participation in the future political system. Again, the purpose is to break up the bilateral confrontation inherent in the conflict, but in such a way as to preserve the interests and access of the insurgent movement. Elections convey participation, legitimation, and allocation, the three elements necessary to the settlement of internal conflicts. The purpose of negotiation is to construct an encompassing political system among a majority who can agree, isolating those who cannot. The parties do this by bringing together mainstream demands from each side into a coherent formula, and then bringing in as many outliers and extreme groups as possible by bargaining on the details. It is permissible for the growing central coalition to leave out the spoilers, but is important for the centralists not to make spoilers by leaving out potential participants. Agreement with the rebellion is not achieved by coopting its irresolute edges, dealing with a negotiator who speaks only for the willing fringe closest to the government will not produce agreements that will be obeyed and end the rebellion. Solutions negotiated with moderate leaders must provide real benefits for the rebels—benefits at least as great as those that would have been negotiated with a more radical leader. Yet the leader of a moderate solution will have a much harder time delivering followers’ adherence to an agreement, without which the agreement is pointless. Governments sometimes confuse payoffs to the rebellion’s representatives with payoffs to the rebellion; only in the rarer cases where there is an established patron-client structure and there are strong vertical divisions within the rebellion are such partial solutions conceivable. Leadership and followership are prized political goods, so there will be serious infighting among the insurgents to capture the position of valid spokesperson for the rebellion during times of impending negotiation. This is neither a sign of immature instability nor the work of government agents, but a natural consequence of the struggle and a requisite as happened in the internal settlement in Rhodesia; it means reaching deep into the rebellion with real concessions in order to carry the bulk of its followers into an agreement. The spokesperson or ‘‘spokesgroup’’ must represent the mainstream of each side if it is to produce a winning coalition. for negotiation. Although negotiations require mainstream leaders, mainstream leaders may not be able to negotiate. In principle, negotiations are most difficult as long as a leadership struggle is going on, because an opponent can always target a leader with claims of softness implied by negotiation, as happened in Ethiopia in the 1970s, Angola in the 1980s, and in South Africa in the late 1980s and even the 1990s. Building a mainstream agreement also means entering into the complicated game, for each side, of helping the leader of the other side maintain domestic support for a joint agreement. In South Africa, de Klerk had to suggest negotiating alternatives and deliver messages that were attractive enough to the African National Congress rank-and-file to buttress the position of Mandela, while at the

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same time maintaining his own majority within the National Party; Mandela had to assure that same National Party majority so that it remained behind de Klerk, but do so without losing his own support within the ANC. Only by reaching deep into the other side can each party hope to resolve the conflict, thus isolating extremes too small to perpetuate the rebellion, and possibly drawing some of the extremes into the majoritarian settlement. This has been the successful policy in Colombia; but in Sri Lanka the inability to dismantle the extremists, who were resupplied by a new generation of radicals, has been the mark of failure. Parties on the extremes seek to delegitimize agreement-building and upset the negotiations, either by trying to maintain the integrity of their extreme positions or by trying to discredit or eliminate the negotiating middle, usually by terrorist violence. Opponents of negotiation try to return the conflict to its dyadic nature, polarizing the sides; proponents of negotiation try to carve out a coalition in the middle. Extremists often find an ally in the government. Typically, government policy is to combat the insurgency, enhancing its unity by treating it as a monolith. Extremist leaders can raise commitment to total goals if even lesser demands face rejection by governments. Ethiopian government policies toward Eritreans, Sudanese government policies toward the South, P. W. Botha’s policies toward the black majority in South Africa, among many others, made no effort to come to terms with the rebellions by meeting them part way. Any such move is treated as being soft on insurgency (in Ethiopia, ‘‘softness’’ was the reason for the assassination of every leader of the revolution before Mengistu Haile Mariam). The position of the extremists and spoilers is attractive in the long run only to the extent that the government is unresponsive to the underlying grievances and needs of the rebellion; the major tactic of the extremists is to provoke the government into hardening its position, thus reinforcing the appeal of the extremes. This is the dynamic that underlay the victory of the secessionist solution in Eritrea and the wrenching debate over solutions among the southern Sudanese, and it underlies the tactics of the Basque and Tamil extremists. The discussion above assumes that at least one of the parties seeks to end the internal conflict through negotiation, and wants to entice the other into dialogue. Frequently this is not the case. In the end, progress in negotiation often depends on the presence of an external mediator. Although it is true that countries where most progress has occurred—South Africa and Colombia—have done it on their own, in the absence of any mediation, in all of the other cases examined except the Philippines mediation has already been attempted, and no progress appears to be likely without it. The failure of the experiments in those cases points to missing attributes of mediators and mediation, not to the inappropriateness of mediation itself. Mediators must be important (“powerful”), multiple, and coordinated to succeed. Mediation must involve the highest external patrons of the parties, for reasons related as much to commitment as to power. In relation to power, the mediators have to insure that neither side is able to bolt the discussions and find ready material for renewed combat; the stalemate, such as it may be, must be enforced. In relation to commitment, mediators are needed to reassure the parties of their legitimacy and

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of their future role in a new political system. Mediators have to assure parties of their continued existence under an agreement, against a tendency—notable in third world experience—to turn a power majority into a power monopoly. No undefeated party in an internal rebellion will agree to commit certain suicide in a reconciliation. Sometimes third parties can play an important role by defining legitimate outcomes, without actually becoming involved in the negotiations. The limits of reality can be marked by international declarations, which are most important for keeping internal conflict internal so that a new political system can be created. For example, a joint U.S.–Soviet declaration supporting the territorial integrity and political independence of Ethiopia and indicating that secession was not an option, combined with a reminder that sovereignty was a responsibility and not license, might have helped negotiations for Eritrean autonomy in the 1980s (Deng 1993). For Sudan, a similar joint declaration by the Organization of African Unity and the Arab League might be a useful, if more unwieldy, mechanism. In South Africa in 1994, the statement by an international mediation team that postponement of elections was not an option narrowed the choices for Buthelezi and eventually helped bring him to an agreement before the elections. Earlier, international consensus on the need for irreversible progress toward political equality before sanctions were lifted kept the pressure on the process in South Africa and underscored the goal. Such positions are not simply a priori predilections. The crucial ingredients of effective international declarations are their publicly binding nature and their sponsorship by potential supporters of the secessionist party. Moves to lower expectations are even more effective when accompanied by measures to limit real alternatives. Thus as negotiations move to the fore, an agreement among arms suppliers to both parties to suspend support can be very helpful. Previous moves toward negotiations with the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front in Ethiopia in 1980–81, with UNITA and with the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola in 1989–90, with Renamo in Mozambique in 1984, and with various Lebanese groups throughout the 1980s were all derailed largely because external support for the war alternative was readily available. Mediators must be able to change the mode of conflict and move it from violence to politics, rather than just enabling it to continue at a less costly level. Parties come to love their conflicts and use them as a justification for other policies; they tend to look for measures that make the stalemate bearable and the conflict continuable without demanding any of the compromises or reorientations necessary for resolution—which was the trap in the Namibian and Mozambican negotiations (Zartman 1989). Mediators must keep up momentum, lest negotiations dissolve into the uncertain status quo that characterizes much internal rebellion, or break down into the recrimination that opens every meeting. Because internal rebellions are based on internal ‘‘family’’ quarrels, recriminations are a natural part of making sure the other side understands the depth of hurt, before turning to resolution. It is important for the parties not to be sidetracked by insults and incidents. Both are a natural part of the process and should not be seized on as a pretense for breaking off a reconciliation process. Often mediators must be present at all stages of the process

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to witness and testify to agreements; they must also ensure that agreements are executed and timetables are obeyed. Although these are important counsels for mediators, none fully accounts for the breakdown of mediation in the cases studied in this book. Mediators were used in Ethiopia (where former U.S. president Carter mediated in 1989); Sudan (where the World Council of Churches and All-African Council of Churches, backed by the assistant secretary general of the Organization of African Unity and the emperor of Ethiopia, mediated successfully in 1972, but the Action Council of Heads of State and Government and the Inter-Governmental Authority on Drought and Development mediated unsuccessfully in 1989 and in 1993–94, respectively); Sri Lanka (where India mediated in 1986–88); Angola (Mobutu of Zaire in 1990, Portugal in 1991); Spain (Algeria in 1989); Afghanistan (Pakistan in 1992–93); and Lebanon (Syria in 1986–90). All of the mediators made some progress but they all failed, essentially for two successive reasons. First, in each case, the moment was not ripe. In none of the cases did the parties feel themselves up against the wall, with only one exit through reconciliation. The absent condition—the ripe moment—is in part objective, in part subjective. Objectively, in the cases studied the military situation was such that the conflicting parties could continue the struggle, and even if the current phase was difficult for one side or the other, they could hang on in hope of a better turn of events. Subjectively, the conflicts had polarized to the point where the leaders in power could not see the situation as desperate, but rather saw it as worthy of their high commitment. This was true not only of the rebel leaders—militia militants in Lebanon, Renamo bandits in Mozambique, Islamic extremists in Afghanistan, Tamil Tiger fanatics in Sri Lanka, ideological revolutionaries of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement, ETA plotters in Spain, peasant revolutionaries in the Philippines, FARC and ELN radicals in Colombia—but also of government leaders, among them the Islamic extremists in Sudan, heads of tribal factions in Afghanistan, and leftover Stalinists in Ethiopia and Angola. Polarization breeds polarization, because moderates are at risk when a conflict falls into the hands of the extremists. Conditions for negotiation did not obtain because both legitimate government and asymmetrical insurgents were weak. Yet there must be a way out of polarization. Situations where both parties are weak contain some of the elements of a hurting stalemate. Mediators are not simply hired hands of fate, passing by to pick the plums at the ripe moment. If mediators were only the midwives of propitiousness, they would be unnecessary, or at most epiphenomenal, and the parties could discover a way out all by themselves. In the cases studied something was missing in the mediators themselves; they were unable to transform the moment and overcome the obstacles to conciliation. The second reason for failure of the mediators was that among the many incidentals that the mediators lacked, the most important was patronage as a source of leverage over the parties. More than resources for post-reconciliation assistance or even arms to keep the parties in or out of the fight, the mediators lacked importance, prestige, weight, and a relationship with the parties that allowed them to guide the parties into agreement and deliver the parties’ compliance when an agreement had

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been made. In Sri Lanka, Spain, Eritrea, and Angola, a partial mediator—one with special ties to one side—failed because it was unable to deliver the side to which it was partial Maintenance or improvement of a close and ongoing relationship is the most important motivation for the acceptance of mediation, and that relationship has a greater chance than other elements of being used productively to favor results (Touval 1993; Touval/Zartman 1989; Saunders 1991). Someone is needed who can hold the coat of commitment for the parties when they enter into the chambers of conciliation and can bestow the blessings of legitimacy on the agreement when they come out. Even prestigious individuals such as former presidents Jimmy Carter of the United States and Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and the Action Council of Heads of State and Government were not enough. Mediators must have an official ongoing relationship with the parties that is both material and ideological—a relationship that holds enough future promise that its denial could be used as a threat to keep the negotiating parties in line. In the cases studied incumbent presidents such as Arap Moi of Kenya and Mobutu of Zaire did not have enough integrity of their own, or enough patronage over the parties, to fill the mediator’s role. Case studies suggest that only close cooperation between the United States and Russia would work in such conflicts as those in Ethiopia and Angola. In other conflicts an equivalent patron may not even be identifiable. The ultimate irony is that in cases where a proximate patron was available, the patron became so embroiled in the conflict as to become a party and hence part of the problem, even if against its will as happened with India in Sri Lanka, or according to its policy as with Syria in Lebanon. Riding on that relationship, the mediator is in the best position to face its ultimate challenge—to turn the perception of losing into a perception of winning for parties opting for a second-best solution. The mediator must use its skills to get the parties to see that unattainable perfection is not worth the commitment, and that a partial solution that leaves both parties alive and able to pursue their own relations politically and productively is really a positive outcome, worthy of dedicated representatives of both the governors and the aggrieved.

References Coser, Lewis A 1956. The Functions of Social Conflict (Free Press) Deng, Francis 1993. Protecting the Dispossessed: A Challenge to the International Community (Brookings) Eckstein, Harry 1964. Internal War: Problems and Approaches (Free Press of Glencoe) Giap, Nguyen Vo 1961. People’s War, People’s Anny: The Viet Cong Insurrection Manual for Underdeveloped Countries (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House) Grundy, Kenneth 1971. Guerrilla Struggle in Africa: An Analysis and Preview (Grossman) Guevera, Che 1961. Guerrilla Warfare (Monthly Review Press) Osanka, Franklin 1962. Modern Guerrilla Waif are: Fighting Communist Guerrilla Movements, I 941–1961 (Free Press of Glencoe)

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Paret, Pater & Shy, John W 1962. Guerrillas in the 1960 s (Praeger) Saunders, Harold H 1991. The Other Walls: The Arab-Israeli Peace Process in a Global Prospective, 2d ed. (Princeton University Press) SORO 1964. Counterinsurgency, in 3 vols. Special Operations Research Office (American University) Tse-tung, Mao 1963. Selected Military Writings (Foreign Language Press) Tse-tung, Mao 1954. Selected Works (Lawrence and Wishart), especially vol. 1, On the Rectification of Incorrect Ideas in the Party, and vol. 2, On Protracted War Touval, Saadia 1993. “Gaining Entry to Mediation in Communal Strife,” in Manus I. Midlarsky, ed., The Internationalization of Communal Strife (Routledge) Touval, Saadia & Zartman, I. William 1989. ‘‘Mediation in International Conflicts,” in Kenneth Kresse!, Dean G. Pruitt, and others, eds., Mediation Research: The Process and Effectiveness of Third-Party Intervention (Jossey-Bass) Zartman, I William & Berman, Maureen 1982. The Practical Negotiator (Yale University Press) Zartman, I William 1989. Ripe for Resolution: Conflict and Intervention in Africa (Oxford University Press) Zartman, I William, ed. 1995. Elusive Peace: Negotiating to End Civil War (Brookings) [in this collection] Zartman, I William & Touval, Saadia 2001. “Mediation after the Cold War,” in Chester Crocker, Fen Olson Hampson and Pamela Aall, eds., Leashing the Dogs of War (USIP)

Chapter 10

Mutually Enticing Opportunities and Durable Settlements

There is much debate these days about the reasons for the durability of some negotiated settlements and not others. It is generally noted that negotiated settlements are not the most likely outcomes of internal wars (the most frequent kind of wars at the moment), one-sided victory being more common, and that even negotiated settlements are not very durable (Collier 2003). Current studies indicate that external guarantors make such settlements last, since parties are loathed to disarm and return to peaceful politics lest the opponent not do so and take advantage of their weakness before full reconciliation has taken hold (Hampson 1996, Walter 2001). But that explanation leaves the conflict or its resolution in the hands of an outside agent, a secondary actor, and begs the question why the parties are not on their own road to reconciliation after their negotiated settlement. A growing literature also looks at incentives and implementation and emphasizes their importance as another reason why settlements succeed or fail (Hampson 1996; Stedman et al. 2002). Procedural and substantive grievances tend to have been downplayed or not even measured in many explanations of durability (Bueno de Mesquita/Lalman 1992; Mason et al. 1999; Werner 1999; Walter 2002; Collier 2003). This study proposes a different explanation, not replacing the others but equally consistent with the facts: In order to be durable, negotiated agreements in civil wars have to contain a resolving formula for the conflict and a project for future cooperation and not merely focus on a cessation of hostilities—in other words, in terms that have been used elsewhere, they have to seek a Mutually Enticing Opportunity (MEO) (Ohlson 1998; Zartman 2000) and produce Forward––rather than Backward––Looking Outcomes (Zartman/Kremenyuk 2004). Although Werner (1999) looked at settlement terms as a source of durability, she found the evidence ambiguous. This study shows that negotiations lead to a durable settlement when they build a process leading to normal politics (Thuderoz 2002; Davis 2005). To

Presented to the American Political Science Association annual meeting in 2004. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 I. W. Zartman, I William Zartman: A Pioneer in Conflict Management and Area Studies, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06079-4_10

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avoid a tautological explanation—agreements are durable when they are durable— this explanation looks into the negotiation process itself, between initiation and implementation, for the reasons for success and failure (PIN; Pillar 1983; Wagner 1998). It will be found, in preliminary research, that the terms of a resolving formula are generally present from the beginning of the negotiations but it constitutes a MEO only when it addresses the post-agreement interests of the parties, beyond resolution of the conflict; the cessation of hostilities generally comes only once the search for a MEO has been exhausted. The analysis then proceeds into an examination of why intuitively evident resolving formulas do not reach agreement. The paper constitutes a project brief rather than full-scale research results.

10.1

Terms of Analysis

The analysis begins with the familiar ripeness theory, which explains the opportunity to begin negotiations by the perceived existence of a Mutually Hurting Stalemate and a Way Out as necessary, even if not sufficient, conditions for the initiation of negotiations (Zartman 1989, 2000; Crocker et al. 1999; Ali/Matthews 1999a, b). Parties are pushed into considering negotiation as a way to end their conflict by the unbearable costs involved in the present or evolving situation and the perceived impossibility of escalating themselves out of this stalemate at acceptable costs. They must maintain this perception once negotiations have begun in order to stay committed, and they may well continue their combat during negotiations to keep them on track, improve their positions for the final settlement, or exact the last reprisals before disarmament. Practitioners and students of conflict management would like to think that there could be a more positive prelude to negotiation, and may even point to some few cases of negotiations, mediated or direct, which seemed to open or come to closure without the push of a mutually hurting stalemate but through the pull of an attractive outcome. But the mechanisms are still unclear, in part because the cases are so few. As in other ripe moments, these occasions provided an opportunity for improvement, but from a tiring rather than a painful deadlock (Mitchell 1995: 3; Zartman 1995). In some views, the attraction lies in a possibility either of winning (paradoxically, a shared perception) more cheaply than by conflict of sharing power that did not exist before (Bueno de Mesquita/Lalman 1992; Mitchell 1995: 7; Mason et al. 1999). In other views, enticement comes in the form of a new ingredient provided by a persistent mediator, and that new ingredient is the chance for improved relations with the mediating third party itself (Touval/Zartman 1985; Saunders 1991). In other instances, the opportunity for a settlement grows more attractive because the issue of the conflict becomes depassé, no longer justifying bad relations with the other party or the mediator. Such openings might be termed Mutually Enticing Opportunities (MEO), but despite a name of their own, they are all examples of various forms of a MHS that pushes the parties to seek a way out,

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rather than an alternative effect. Few examples of a true MEO effect to explain the initiation of negotiation have been found in reality. But Mutually Enticing Opportunity is important in the broader negotiation process and has its place in extending ripeness theory into the agreement and post-agreement phases. As indicated, ripeness theory refers to the decision to negotiate; it is not self-implementing and does not guarantee results. At most it can be extended into the negotiations themselves by recognizing that the perception of ripeness has to continue during the process if the parties are not to reevaluate their positions and drop out, in the revived hopes of being able to find a unilateral solution through escalation. But negotiations completed under the shadow—or the pressure—of a MHS alone are likely to be unstable and unlikely to lead to a more enduring settlement; they will represent only an attempt to cut the costs of conflict, get the bug off the back of the parties, arrive at an agreeing formula for a cease-fire, and then stop, unmotivated to move on to a search for resolution, to get the bear off the parties’ backs. The agreement is likely to break down as soon as one or both parties think they can break the stalemate, as the 1973–75 evolution of the situation in Vietnam, among others, illustrates. A negative shadow can begin the process, but not provide for the change of calculations and mentalities to reconciliation. As Ohlson (1998) and Pruitt (1997, with Olczak 1995) have pointed out, that is the function of the MEO. While MHS is the necessary if insufficient condition for negotiations to begin, during the process the negotiators must provide the prospects for a more attractive future to pull themselves out of their negotiations into an agreement to end the conflict. The push factor has to be replaced by a pull factor, in the form of a formula for resolution and a prospect of transformation that the negotiating parties design during negotiations. Here the substantive aspect of negotiation in analysis and practice pulls ahead of the procedural approach: The Way Out takes over from the Hurting Stalemate. The seeds of the pull factor begin with the Way Out that the parties vaguely perceive as part of the initial ripeness, but this general sense of possibility needs to be developed and fleshed out to be the vehicle for an agreement. When a MEO is not developed in the negotiations, they remain truncated and unstable, even if the parties reach a conflict management agreement to suspend violence, as in the 1984 Lusaka agreement in southern Africa or the 1994 Karabagh cease-fire (Zartman 1989; Mooradian/Druckman 1999). Thus, the perception of a Mutually Enticing Opportunity is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the continuation of negotiations beyond simple agreement to a successful conclusion of the conflict. It is useful to spell out the negotiation process before developing the conceptual components. It is generally accepted that after their pre-negotiation or diagnosis phase, negotiations proceed to elaborate a formula and its details—a common understanding of the conflict/problem and its solution, a common sense of justice, and/or a set of terms of trade (Zartman 1978; Zartman/Berman 1982; Hopmann 1996). The formula can take one of 2 forms: a minimal agreeing formula to end or lessen hostilities, or a resolving formula to address the conflict itself (with much grey area in the real world between the two types). An agreeing formula is a conflict

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management measure, the minimum that the parties can agree, a cease-fire to end or suspend the violence, but not a resolution of the conflict. A resolving formula is a conflict resolution agreement, dealing with the issues of the conflict, an enticing opportunity that the parties perceive as a way out of their problem. There can be several potentially resolving formulas (just as negotiation is made up of a number of competing formulas in general), each objectively identifiable as a fair solution; only one of them, at any moment, constitutes a MEO attractive enough to the parties interests to pull them into an ongoing process of eliminating the causes and resurgence of the conflict. Although MEO might be considered “just another name” for an adopted resolving formula, the name emphasizes the pull factor and its components so necessary to completing negotiations, in contrast to the push effect necessary to starting them. Like the MHS, the MEO is a figment of perception, a subjective appreciation of objective elements, but unlike the MHS, it is an invention of the parties (and their mediator) internal to the negotiation process, not a result of an objective external situation. It must be produced by the parties, using their analysis of the conflict and its causes, their appreciation of their interests and needs, and their creativity in crafting a mutually attractive solution. It resolves the conflict, but among the several formulas for agreement that may do so, it is perceived to contain elements that continue to carry the resolution process into the future. A negotiated end to a conflict contains forward-looking provisions to deal with the basic dispute, with unresolved leftovers of the conflict and its possible reemergence, and with new relations of interdependence between the conflicting parties. With a resolving formula that is seen as an MEO by the parties, the possibility of durability exists, or at least is maximized. Three elements constitute the terms of trade involved in a resolving formula— violence and two types of demands. The rebels make demands, procedural and substantive, and they supply armed conflict, the insertion of violence into the country’s politics; in their negotiations, they trade-off the abstention from violence against the obtention of satisfactions to their two types of demands. Violence is the only money of exchange that they have, and its cessation is the major demand of the government side. The government may have additional lesser demands, ranging from the rebels’ recognition of government primacy to simple disappearance of the rebels, but these are generally ancillary to the demand for the end of violence. The demand side of the rebellion has its procedural and substantive aspects, procedural because the rebels no longer trust the procedures of government and substantive because they are moved to rebellion by substantive grievances. Parties demand procedural solutions when they have lost faith in someone else’s ability to make the necessary substantive corrections; that is, they demand a share—possibly even a total “share”—in governing power when they no longer trust others to use power to deal with their particular needs. Negotiations themselves are the first step in this power-sharing, for they grant recognition to the rebel party and give it voice and legitimacy. But there is a substantive side to the rebels’ demands as well. Grievances began the conflict, and while it is too late for the resolution of grievances alone to end it,

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there must be attention to them in the resolving formula for it to constitute a MEO. It is not enough to leave the resolution of issue to the procedural mechanisms of power-sharing; the problems need to be addressed in their substance. It is impossible to make generalizations about the ways of handling such problems, since they are idiosyncratic to the individual conflicts. Often, however, they too relate back to equal or compensatory treatment of identity groups in society that the rebels represent, whether these groups be ethnic, religious, national, or class (Arnson/Zartman 2005). This need in turn reinforces the need for continued recognition of the rebels after the conflict is over and their involvement in the procedures of power. Thus, a resolving formula involves a trade-off between the rebels’ violence and the government’s concessions to their procedural and substantive demands. The details of the agreement, that is, how much violence is needed to buy how many concessions, are obviously as idiosyncratic and manipulable an equation as any bargain about prices. It is however unlikely that the rebels renounce their supply of violence, laying down their arms, without gaining any concessions in return. Equally variable is the balance between procedural and substantive demands. At one extreme is total government accession to procedural demands, making substantive concessions unnecessary and leaving grievances to be handled by the new rulers, to the elimination of the current government; at the other extreme would be concentration on grievances but leaving no share in power for the rebels. Both are unlikely to constitute a resolving formula in negotiations to end internal violent conflict Whether a particular resolving formula is enticing to the parties or not is for them to perceive and decide; the best an external analyst or practitioner can say is whether the formula fits the past and future extensions of the conflict, that is, whether the parties “should” see their interest in taking it, but not whether they will. A resolving formula is the objectively necessary, if insufficient, condition for durable agreements; subjectively, the parties need to see it as such for it to constitute an opportunity that will pull them out of the conflict and into new, positive relations. While external parties can do much to create a resolving formula and bring the parties to accept it, the durability of the outcome is ultimately in the hands of the parties themselves, as it should be. But there are some guidelines for evaluating how much any particular resolving formula will be seen as an enticing opportunity. In judging the attractiveness of any posited formula, or in proposing one, conflicting parties compare the value of the proposed solution to two other images: their own needs and interests, and the value of the status quo [their security point or reservation price (Raiffa et al. 2002)]. The first relates to the way the parties define their conflict, their goals and interests in it, and their expectations of an attainable solution, now or later. These elements form a composite package, rigid on the outside but malleable in its components. The core elements are the parties’ needs and interests, less manipulable than their definition of the conflict and their estimations of attainable solution. When parties can tailor their goals and estimations to fit attainable objectives, while maintaining their sense of their needs and interests, a MEO can be possible.

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The second is the payoff from continued conflict, either as active violence, as a hurting but bearable stalemate, or simply as a nonsolution, often in the form of a soft, stable, self-serving stalemate (S5 Situation). Unless a nonsolution is actually painful, it may constitute a viable situation that leaves to future open, creates no pressure for a search for a solution, and requires no risky decision. The decision to seize a negotiating opportunity and turn it into a search for a solution depends not merely on a judgment of how well that or any solution meets the parties’ needs and interests or objectively resolves the conflict, but how its uncertainty compares with the better known value of the status quo. Thus, the value of the status quo can serve as an effective pressure point for mediators. Spoilers, on the other hand, are those for whom nothing except winning is better than the status quo, and whose only demand is power, with no program for handling substantive grievances. These calculations will be determinant in deciding whether any resolving formula will or can constitute a MEO, the key to durability. Thus an MEO is a resolving formula that is seen by the parties as meeting their needs better than the status quo. This is an unavoidably soft, judgmental and conclusionary definition, like many definitions in social science [the standard behavioral definition of power—the ability to move another party in an intended direction (Tawney 1952; Simon 1952; Dahl 1957; Thibaut/Kelley 1959)—is also conclusionary, and tautological to boot]. Its value lies, not in its predictability, but in the fact that identifies the necessary elements that explain the adoption of a MEO and lead the negotiator and mediator to the necessary elements to achieve in negotiation. The analytical question then becomes: How are MEOs achieved? How is the search for a resolving formula conducted, where do their ingredients come from, when do they appear in the negotiating process? What is the relation between an agreeing formula for a cease-fire and a resolving formula for a solution to the conflict? How are the parties kept on track to a solution, how is the perception of a MHS itself maintained throughout the negotiations? What turns conflicting positions into joint formulas for agreement? How does a particular resolving formula become an enticing opportunity for the parties? For these questions, one must get inside the negotiation processes. Some propositions can be essayed as a guide to data gathering: 1. The elements of a resolving formula and MEO are [not] present at the beginning of the negotiations [or and need to be discovered and invented during the process]. 2. Cease-fires are [not] the first step toward a resolving formula [or only follow when the elements of resolution are in place]. 3. A durable agreement in internal conflict can [not] be made simply on the basis of an agreeing formula for a cease-fire to establish a viable status quo, leaving a resolving formula till sometime later on [or and need a resolving formula attractive to the parties as the basis for their future problem-solving relationship].

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4. A resolving formula appears as a MEO if it (a) combines the perceived needs and interests of both parties and (b) is better at that than the status quo. 5. As long as parties holding out for total victory (spoilers) can do so, they will, even if driven into hiding; they can [not] only be handled by being flushed out of their redoubt or eliminated [or but by having their demands met]. 6. The creation of a bargaining zone can [not] be the result of an enticing resolving formula [or and must precede the elaboration of a potential MEO]. 7. The most prevalent MEO for internal conflicts is [not] a procedural formula, and elections are preferable to power-sharing [or but a substantive formula for handling grievances]. 8. The substantive part of rebel demands become easier [harder] to meet in a resolving formula as the conflict goes on or and require new elements for resolution]. 9. The procedural part of rebel demands can [not] be neglected if the substantive part is addressed in the resolving formula [or and is of equal or greater importance]. 10. The substantive part of rebel demands can [not] be neglected if the procedural part is addressed in the resolving formula [or and is of equal or greater importance]. 11. Concessions are [not] usually sufficient to produce a MEO [or compensation and construction {reframing} is required].

10.2

Cases for Analysis

The first distinction that must be made within the negotiation process is between those negotiations where a potentially resolving formula is sought and found but it does not attract the parties, and those where a formula is found that is effective in moving the conflict toward resolution, an MEO. The focus here is on the process of searching and finding, or formulating, not simply on whether the adopted formula is “successful” or not. The analysis seeks to find out what was involved in the parties’ finding a Mutually Enticing Opportunity that stuck.1 MEOs seem to be harder to find in interstate than in intrastate conflicts. Counting cease-fires among several pairs of combatants as one instance, Fortna (2004) using COW international war data for the 1946–97 half-century shows 24 cease-fires of which only ten lasted and only two (the Bangladeshi independence war in 1971 and the Yom Kippur War between Egypt and Israel in 1973) could by any stretch of imagination be called resolving formulas; few of the others made any attempt to look for a resolving formula. For the currently more frequent form of conflict, 1

By the same token, in the diagnosis-formula-detail understanding of the negotiation process, we are not interested here in the way in which the details were negotiated, important though that phase may be.

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internal wars, the picture is somewhat different. Nearly two-thirds of Walter’s (2002) 72 cases of internal conflict produced a signed agreement, of which slightly morer than half proved durable. In about half the dozen cases in the present study, attempts at finding a MEO have been successful; Sudan (for a decade), Mozambique, Macedonia, El Salvador. Costa Rica, and Liberia can be counted as durable settlements, with a dubious case in Lebanon where the war was ended by external imposition, not by reforms for resolution. Sierra Leone and Angola have proven durable by eliminating the rebel leaders rather than by engaging them through an MEO. Only in the case of Karabagh has a cease-fire alone proven durable, perhaps because it is more international than internal. However, even the “successful” (durable) cases usually involved a number of “unsuccessful” stabs at a MEO. In this preliminary survey, a dozen cases of negotiations in internal conflict have been chosen randomly among successes and failures, but it will take more intensive research into accounts of the negotiation process to verify some sources and sequences.2 The inventory shows, however, that it is hard to reduce the cases and instances to statistical indications, at least without having laid out the basis for the final categorization so that the individual components can be reviewed. Nearly all of the “internal” conflicts have international dimensions, but the basic conflict was over internal governance, either of a regionalist or centralist nature (Zartman 1995). 1. In Angola, 4 rounds of negotiations produced 4 cease-fires, only the last of which has held (Rothchild/Hartzell 1995; Hampson 1996; Hare 1999, 2000). The first, at Gbadolite in 1989, involved vague attempts at a resolving formula, but subsequent rounds focused on crafting a formula involving elections, DDRRR, and a unified army that could constitute a MEO. It was the assassination of the spoiler rebel leader Jonas Savimbi that enabled the formula to be resolving. All rounds were mediated by a succession of agencies. The first round focused on a formula involving integration of the opposing forces in favor of the government, followed by multiparty elections. The second round in 1991 at Bicesse left the outcome to the results of a winner-take-almost-all election within a competing multiparty system. The third round in 1994 at Lusaka returned to the spirit of the first, with much more attention to components of the agreement, but it did not appear enticing to the spoiler; it was not better than the status quo and did not meet his needs and interests. 2002 negotiations only worked to fine-tune the 1994 arrangements. Essentially the ideas of elections and disarmament were on the table from the beginning, with the cease-fire as an adjunct, although the way to accommodate both sides was embodied in two different formulas. In sum, the general components of a resolving formula was available from the beginning but did not constitute a MEO because there was never a MHS and the rebel spoiler insisted on unalloyed winning. The conflict ended only when the

2

Other cases, including Rwanda and Nepal, will be added.

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spoiler was removed, allowing a cease-fire to hold and a new political system to be installed. 2. In Mozambique, 3 rounds of negotiations, the last, in 1990–92 involving more than 20 sessions, gradually developed a resolving formula, with a cease-fire provided only at the end (Msabaha 1995; Jett 200x; Saul 1999; Bartoli 1999; Ajello 1999). The first round, in 1984, in the Pretoria talks following the Nkomati Agreement between South Africa and Mozambique, had no resolving formula and ended inconclusively; the second round in Nairobi in 1989, laid the bases for a MEO in a series of principles on open multiparty competition and reconciliation among equal, legitimate parties, principles which were then carefully dressed and detailed in the two-year third round. All rounds were mediated, and the entire period was covered by a search for appropriate mediators. An MHS, which was absent in 1984, began to appear at the end of the decade, leading the parties to seek out a formula with which both could live in the absence of unilateral victories. It met their needs and interests better than the status quo. Another problem that retarded agreement was the need to build a purposeful, coherent organization on the part of the ReNaMo rebels. As these elements evolved the parties accepted, warily, to be led by the mediators into a MEO, to which they contributed the major elements. In sum, the resolving formula was present in prospect in the positions of the conflicting parties, which were gradually brought stereoptically into focus under the pressure of a MHS and the alternative attraction of a MEO to impossible unilateral winning. 3. In Macedonia, after an initial conflict prevention initiative, the UN Preventive Deployment Force (UNPREDEP) in 1993–1999, one round of negotiations in 2001 began with an early cease-fire and its immediate collapse and then turned to a reformulation of a sociopolitical contract, which, when defined by the parties, then produced a cease-fire that held (ICG 2001; IWPR 2001; Rempell 2004; Hattayer 2004). A rapid MHS produce the negotiations and intense mediation led them to fruition. As in Cyprus and El Salvador, the conflict arose because of rising dissatisfaction over the country’s original formula for governance, but unlike those cases the conditions in the Balkan neighborhood brought the conflict in Macedonia to a head quickly and just as quickly mobilized international pressure for a solution. International pressures and inducements during the negotiations were important elements in keeping the parties on track. The ability to raise fire was the means of the demandeur rebellion to overcome its asymmetry going into negotiations, but the internationally imposed limits on that ability kept the asymmetry from tipping to the other side, and so produced the MHS. The rebellion’s limited aims made a resolving formula possible but its threat to expand its aims as well as its means made the resolving formula necessary. In sum, the search for a new sociopolitical formula for the country, which had been put aside by the previous understanding at the time of independence, involved terms already on the table and produced a MEO under the combined pressures of the conflict by the internal communities and for its resolution by the international community mediators.

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4. In El Salvador (Bagley/Tokatlian 1987; Roett/Smyth 1987; deSoto 1999; Hampson 1996; Call 2002), following mediatory attempts by the Contadora Group since 1983 and its Esquipulas Declaration in 1987, the UN began more than two years of negotiations in 1989 to craft a multifaceted resolving formula that would provide a MEO for the 2 sides. Negotiations followed the installation of a MHS following the inconclusive rebel assault of San Salvador at the end of 1989. Although the initial government call for talks also asked for a cease-fire, it was not agreed on until the end of the negotiations, when the entire resolving formula had been decided on. The MHS convinced the parties they could not attain their maximum objectives, and the mediator helped them decide upon measures that would combine their minimum objectives into a MEO. The elements of the resolving formula were present from the earliest Contadora efforts but it took the UN mediation to bring the parties together to coordinate their interests. The result was nothing less than a new political system, surrounded by enough guarantees and mechanisms for the parties to have faith in it as a viable alternative to their costly combat. In sum, the attempt to begin with a cease-fire was rejected in favor of a painstaking search for a resolving formula under skilful mediation, once the parties became convinced that their unilateral goals were unattainable and their interests could be protected in a joint agreement. 5. In Costa Rica, two months of mediation defused a civil war in 1948 before an ultimate battle over the capital and restored integrity to a constitutional process; cease-fire, instituted at the beginning of the process and tossed aside, was reinstituted just before the final resolving formula was completed (Bell 1971; Sanchez 2004; Tocks 2004). The war continued throughout the negotiations, and escalated in its international dimensions; in the end, the fraudulently elected government surrendered but under negotiated conditions that preserved it as a political actor. Although both the sides and the issues behind the electoral disputes were compound and unclear, the conflict did involve the restoration of political rules that would allow a political reflection of social change, from oligarchies to interest-based parties. Thus, the resolving formula, involving merely a calendar for transition back to the legitimate electoral results, covered deeper but unexpressed elements in the agreement. The international escalation, involving Nicaraguan invasion and US threatened military involvement, as well as the uncertainties (except for casualties) around a battle over the capital, produce a perception akin to a MHS in prospect. In sum, the resolving formula that constituted a MEO for the parties was clear from the beginning, only its scheduling details to be worked out, and the cease-fire was clearly an adjunct to the resolution of the conflict. 6. In Liberia, 14 peace agreements were signed by various parties, almost all providing for cease-fires and a resolving formula composed of power-sharing and elections (Zartman 2005; Mutwol 2009; Dunn 1999; Adebajo 2002). All rounds were mediated, but the formula—essentially the same as adopted at the end—was imposed by the nature of the conflict over presidential succession. Again, as in Angola, the parties did not perceive a MHS until the end but rather continually

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expected to win more by continuing the conflict (the status quo) than by rallying to the formula. Not only the combats but also the number of parties escalated throughout the conflict, making power-sharing more and more complex. Mediation in Liberia was weak and biased in various directions, without the mediator being able to deliver the party toward which it was biased; it was unable to convince the parties—by diplomacy or by force—of the impossibility of a unilateral solution nor oblige them to stick to negotiations until they could create an effective MEO, and so they constantly broke their cease-fires upon leaving the room. In this, the most consistent spoiler was Charles Taylor, who started the conflict and stuck to it till the end until he saw the elections as a more effective way of winning. Negotiations were repeated attempts at tailoring the formula to the exigencies of the moment regarding disarmament (Taylor refusing to disarm to the West African intervention force, ECOMOG) and interim authority (Taylor insisting on being in charge and other warlords wanting to be involved). In sum, the final resolving formula was available from the beginning but it did not cover all the parties of the moment or assure the strongest among them of ultimate victory, and so did not constitute a MEO until the end. 7. In Lebanon, 5 rounds of negotiation produced the same MEO at the end that they started with, with cease-fires as part of the resolving formula (Nasr et al. 1991; Deeb/Deeb 1995; Zahar 2002; Zartman 2005). All 5 rounds were mediated, and the resolving formula was a vehicle for meeting demands and ending the conflict, rather than a goal toward which to work; since the parties did not find themselves in a MHS at the same time and each one hoped for a victory on its own terms under peace was imposed on all from outside by the mediator-occupier, the power-sharing formula did not serve as an effective MEO. Cease-fire, in the 1983–84 Geneva-Lausanne conferences, was negotiated along with the resolving formula. The formula evolved directly from the parties’ grievances but met initial opposition from the old-line incumbents and then later opposition from the young radicals. In addition, the Palestinian presence introduced a foreign element in the internal conflict that became the subject of the 1983 Lebanese-Israeli agreement, elbowing the power-sharing formula off the table, as the power-sharing formula had done to the Palestinian issue in the earlier and later negotiations. A formula for at least managing the Palestinian issue, negotiated at Cairo in 1969, was not adequate for the issue, which the 1982 Israeli invasion then settled by fait accompli rather than negotiation. In sum, an objective MEO was on the table almost as soon as the conflict broke out, but the parties’ interests were too strongly involved in the conflict to find the formula enticing. Poor mediation tactics until the last round neither pressed the multilateral formula nor closed off unilateral alternatives until the last round. The conflict has been repressed and managed by foreign occupation, but not resolved. 8. In Sri Lanka, 8 rounds of negotiations involved only 3 cease-fires (in 1985, 1995 and 2001) but focused from the beginning on a search for a MEO, since the conflict was political long before it became violent and subject to fire and cease-fire (Wriggins 1995; daSilva 2001; Bose 2002). Between 1958 and l984, the key to a resolving formulas was seen to be decentralization of varying scope and degree; as

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the conflict sharpened, the MEO shifted to autonomy in varying degrees, to the point of quasi-independence. Thus, the subject of a resolving formula was posed from the beginning, and it chased the conflict in search of an appropriate fit as the violence escalated, carrying the demands—and opposition to them—with it. In most of the negotiations, decentralization/autonomy was on the agenda between the various Tamil representatives and the government; in the negotiations of the 1980s (1983–84, 1985–87) the item was placed on the agenda by the Indian mediator and in the negotiation of the 2000s by the Norwegian mediator. The decentralization/autonomy formulas never went far enough to satisfy the demands of the Tamil Tigers after their formation in the late 1970s, and the Tamil negotiators—whether the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) until the mid-1980s or the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) after 1985) continually had to look over their shoulders to make sure that their radical elements were following them in their search for a middle ground with the government. Similarly, the government was always looking to make sure it did not outstep its support from the Buddhist zealots. The bargaining zones of the two extremist wings simply did not overlap, and successive governments attempts to find a resolving formula supported by much of its side were refused by the rebels, who then renewed their insurgency. In sum, Sri Lankan negotiations immediately and repeatedly took up the search for a MEO, but just as repeatedly—either directly or with mediation—failed to find a resolving formula to bridge the parties’ demands. Current negotiations in the 2000s, mediated by Norway, have produced cease-fires and a renewed search for a resolving formula of autonomy, the LTTE having ostensibly dropped its demand for independence, as yet unsuccessful. 9. In Sudan, 7 major rounds of negotiation (not counting partial rounds with a limited number of parties and attempts at mediation) involved 2 cease-fires as part of the process of crafting a resolving agreement and one, under Carter in 1989, that was simply an agreeing formula (Assefa 1987; Wai 1981; Deng 1995, 199x; Ali/ Mathews 1999a, b). From the beginning, in the Juba Conference of 1947 before independence, the Southern proposal for a resolving formula of federation was on the table; brushed aside by the Arab majority in the rush to independence, it returned to the table in the 1965 Round Table and was the basis for the MEO that produced the Addis Ababa Agreement mediated by the All-African Council of Churches in 1972. It returned as the main subject at Koka Dam in 1986 and again in the Declaration of Principles in 1994 and the 4-part agreement process of the 2000s, mediated by IGAD; in these rounds, however, resolution needed to include a restoration of personal equality for Southerners through the revocation of the shari’a as the personal code of the country. The shift to a serious search for a resolving formula in 1972 was produced by a MHS and was led to a conclusion by a combination of small group meetings, adroit chairing, timely intervention with personal assurances and split-the-difference ideas by mediators of last resort, and a juncture of political interest on both sides that made moderating compromises toward a joint settlement more important than intransigence on initial positions. While the same procedural elements were present in varying degree in the subsequent rounds, the MHS and the shared political

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interest in an agreement only gradually appeared under pressure from the mediator in the 2000s. Just as agreement began to develop, an adjunct conflict in Darfur in the west has threatened to derail the process. In sum, when the Sudanese parties took up the proposal for a resolving formula in the form of autonomy/federation, they were able to craft an appropriate MEO. The betrayal of this formula by both sides and the escalation of the issues through the imposition of the shari’a made a new MEO more difficult to formulate, as positions were hardened at the same time as the agenda broadened. 10. In Cyprus, a dozen rounds of internal negotiations, plus external attempts and negotiations among the guarantor states and within the UN, have continually been on the search for a resolving formula, but the interests of both sides never fully overlapped until 2008, when the agreement was then defeated at the polls (Hampson 1996; Richarte de Bailliencourt 1999, 2005). The first attempt at a resolving formula—the London–Zurich agreement of 1959, and the Constitution of 1960—satisfied the guarantor state (UK, Greece, Turkey) but has never proven satisfactory for the two Cypriot communities; the next 45 years were spent by both sides’ attempts to subvert the 1960 formula and reinvent a new one. None of these attempts provided a MEO for the parties, and in 1964, 1967 and 1974 all that was sought was a cease-fire and its monitoring, with no attempt to move from an agreeing to a resolving formula. The explanations for this situation can come in alternative forms. There never was a common bargaining zone; while an objective resolving formula—federation —was conceivable, the status quo—that is, the current form of the conflict—was always preferred by both sides to the terms of a settlement being offered; and if the currently proposed formula was altered somewhat to fit one side’s interests, it moved away by the same amount from satisfying the other side. In addition, the conditions on the Island changed dramatically several times, altering the interests and so the demands of the parties, and complicating the basic issue of the conflict, the relations between the two communities. Independence was mixed with communal relations in the first round; to that issue was added relations between the guarantor neighbors, then taking a new form in 1974 with the Turkish occupation of the North; in the 2000s the new issue of EU membership for Cyprus (and also for Turkey) was added to the previous layers of issues. The changing issues changed the requirements for a resolving formula. In sum, there never was a MHS since each party perceived either the status quo or its unilateral attempts to change it as preferable to a joint formula. In times of crisis, negotiations focused on a cease-fire, the only outcome the parties could agree on; the rest of the time, the parties, usually under pressure from mediators, valiantly tried to invent new twists on a formula for one-state-two-communities. Like the MHS, none of these ever constituted a MEO. 11. In Sierra Leone, 3 rounds of negotiations were occasioned by rebel strength, scarcely a MHS, and produced cease-fires along with jerry-built formulas for a revised political system that put the fox in charge of the chicken coop; it was only when the international community’s various agents stopped mediating and contained the rebels militarily that the fire could eventually be ceased and the new

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political system restored (Nuamah/Zartman 2004; Mutwol 2004; Adebajo 2002; Hirsch 2001). The weak formulas were present from the first mediation at Abidjan in 1996, trying to combine the democratic rules of the government with the rapacious interests of the rebels of the Revolutionary United Force (RUF) by giving them amnesty and a place among the legitimate political parties. It was repeated in Conakry the next year, and again in Lome in 1999, where power-sharing was added to the package. The RUF was right in suspecting that free electoral competition was no guarantee of its coming to power (even though its appeal was based on a recognition of real grievances) and so grabbed at power-sharing, which it then abused and reneged, as the perpetual spoiler. In sum, cease-fire was only tenable as the result of the entry of the rebels into the political order, something that the mediators tried to formulate in the various agreements but something that was beyond the nature of both the rebels and the legitimate political order. Curiously, the putative resolving formula gave the rebels enough rope to show their true nature and hang themselves on it. 12. In Karabagh, not counting the many changes in status, sometimes involving political tractations and negotiations before independence, Karabagh3 became the subject of many competing mediatings after independence in 1991, one of which led to a cease-fire in 1994 following a MHS (Maresca1996; Mooradian/Druckman 1999). Consideration of “a compromise solution for the ultimate political status… was put aside…because it was so delicate that discussion of it would have made serious negotiation of a ceasefire more difficult,” but when the cease-fire occurred in May 1994, the urgency of looking for a resolving formula faded and the opportunity was dropped (Maresca 1996: 489–90). Objectively, autonomy was a potential resolving formula midway between the parties’ position, but it had been worn out by previous experiences under the USSR; subjectively, the parties’ positions never created a bargaining zone. Once the pressure of the conflict had been removed by the agreeing formula for a cease-fire, the status quo—while not comfortable to the Azeri side—was preferable for both to any conditions to which the other side could agree. In sum, the agreeing formula responded to the MHS and parties’ positions never allowed a search for a MEO. Faced with tough prospects, the mediators too lost interest. Conflict management removed the pressure for conflict resolution.

10.3

Analysis and Results

How do negotiators—conflicting parties and mediators—find a resolving formula that is enticing to the parties and lasts?

3

The local spelling is preferred to the Russian orthography, no longer relevant.

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The cases show that the elements of a resolving formula that eventually also becomes a MEO are present from the beginning of the negotiations, “proposed” by the nature of the conflict itself and the demands of the rebellion (Prop. 1). This in no way diminishes the skill and perseverance required by the negotiators, and in their absence by the mediators, to put the elements into an attractive form with appropriate details. But it does mean that the raw material is present for the shaping from the outset. Finding a resolving formula is an exercise in problem-solving, which involves filling all the holes in the problem rather than enunciating a simple idea and leaving its elaboration to the implementation phase. To constitute a full resolving formula that in turn becomes a MEO, the agreement must meet both procedural and substantive demands, in exchange for an end to violence (Props. 9 and 10). The reason why violence is so high is that it has a lot to buy. Violence is not only a money of exchange, however; it is also a measure of strength of the parties, in the absence of other measures. This is why the initiating MHS is so important, for it establishes the equality of the parties that is so helpful to negotiations. The cases show that most frequent feature in resolving formulas concerns future procedural political mechanisms for determining parties’ strength, as a replacement for combat as a test of strength. Three such mechanisms are prominent: elections, power-sharing and power-dividing (autonomy, federalism, etc.). Elections carry the higher risk and delay, and demand a high degree of confidence in the mechanism and trust in the fairness of the outcome. Executive power-sharing gives immediate payoffs, to be verified later with elections, and is the most prevalent procedural mechanism in MEOs (Prop. 7). Legislative power-sharing (constitutional provisions for reserved seats, weighted majorities, vetoes, etc.) are longer term and less risky, but may have finite limits. Both mechanisms are conflict management solutions, not resolving the conflict but turning it from violent to political means of pursuit. As a result, there is a built-in impediment to the cooperation that full resolution would require: Power-sharing means backstabbing and governmental paralysis; power division carries the hidden threat of the outright secession that it was supposed to prevent; and elections mean wariness, if not distrust, of the mechanism and a tendency to confuse results with procedures with as a test of freeness and fairness. The power-sharing institutions of Lebanon produced a collapsed state; different forms of autonomy in Macedonia and Sudan are not trusted by the government; and Savimbi, among others, do not consider the elections free and fair unless he won. All three methods provide continuing existence for the rebels. Plenty of literature has underscored the rebels’ need for standing (as well as the government’s difficulty in according it), to the point where it might be thought that standing is enough (Zartman 1995: 10, 339). Rebels need the recognition that negotiation brings, but they also need iron-clad assurances of continuing existence and recognition once the combat is terminated. Formulas that dissolve the rebels into the current political and military structures deny the basic need of the rebels and are nonstarters. Before the conflict, the grievances were disembodied issues; afterward, they are incarnate in a rebel organization that has fought hard for recognition.

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The vulnerability gap between cease-fire and full integration into the power structures of the state, when rebel disarmament leaves them open to attacks from the government forces, has been identified as a crucial moment in peace agreement implementation requiring external guarantors to fill the gap (Walter 2001). Resolving formulas can also help fill this gap by incorporating immediate power-sharing and power-dividing in their provisions, so that the rebels are already placed in positions of authority, particularly over the newly integrated armed forces. Obviously it is difficult to distinguish between guarantees of future involvement and return to past combat, since both are assured by continuing existence of rebel forces. But it is, after all, the possibility of revived combat that keeps the implementation process on track, just as it was the presence of armed rebellion that brought the conflict to negotiation in the first place. It is the potential for renewed hostilities that keeps the MHS current and the peace process honest. Power-sharing, however, means sharing power, not monopolizing it. Parties, government or rebellion, that demand total power are most likely playing a spoiler role and are not open to compromise (Stedman 2000, 2003; Zahar 2003). Total victory is a matter for war, not negotiation, and a spoiler is a party who confuses the two (Prop. 5). Procedural aspects of the rebels’ demands, however, are not all the rebellion is about; if they are, the rebels (or rebel leader) is also headed for a spoiler role, looking for Time at the Tough rather than a reform of the political system. Time at the Trough and loot-seeking are greed-based rebellions and need different strategies for handling than need- or creed-based rebellion (Berdal/Malone 2000; Ballentine/Sherman 2003; Collier 2003; Arnson/Zartman 2005). Resolving formulas have to provide ways of dealing with substantive problems as well, as the other part of the problem-solving side of the formula. Despite the fact that grievances vary from case to case, several features are suggested by the cases. One is that grievances accumulate as the conflict goes on, quite the opposite of the frequent claim that the conflict simplifies and clarifies the options (Prop. 8). As the parties escalate their combat, they compound grievances and add new layers of problems to be resolved, making resolution more and more difficult and complex. The shari’a issue in Sudan, Turkish army occupation and settler implantation in Cyprus, and language enclaves in Macedonia and Sri Lanka all appeared and became salient as the conflict worsened without resolution. The methods of violence themselves make atrocities, reprisals and resentment a further grievance not present to require and resist reconciliation and resolution at the beginning, as the longstanding conflicts in Sri Lanka, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Angola and Mozambique show. Another feature is that full structural solutions are necessitated by a long conflict, whereas more manageable and specific grievances would have sufficed earlier (Prop. 9). Economic restructuring, state rebuilding, aid packages, and complex DDRRR programs became necessary parts of a MEO in the long-running conflict cases cited. While specific grievances lie at the root of the conflict, they are no

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longer sufficient basis for resolution once the conflict has turned violent. Not only are procedural remedies required; so also are broad structural substantive measures (Prop. 10). The other side of the terms of trade that compose a resolving formula is constituted by the violence of the rebellion itself. Resolving formulas without exception involve the cession of hostilities in exchange for a role in power and resolution of grievances. Hostilities are the only money rebellions have, and they are not going to give it up until they have bought the concessions they need. It is obvious therefore that cease-fires will not be granted on mere faith, and will be part of the concluding elements of the bargain (Prop. 2). Temporary and unilateral truces may be offered in the process, to show the other side how pleasant peace can be, but it is usually necessary to return to combat a few times to keep the process moving, to show how compelling war can be (Prop. 3). In this lies a significant difference from interstate conflicts. Violence is the life of the rebellion, whereas states in conflict have an existence—and a legitimate existence—independent of the conflict. States can makes truces without endangering their existence; rebellions are more vulnerable. But so are the governments they fight; for a state to make a cease-fire with its internal rebellion would be to grant it recognition and legitimacy without receiving anything in exchange, since the cease-fire is only a temporary suspension of its term of trade. Thus, arrival at an enticing and resolving formula depends on keeping alive the supply side of the rebels’ terms of trade—the conflict violence—until the demand side is firmly in place. The rebels’ supply side is already limited by the characteristic MHS; if they were not stalemated they would simply continue the war, ultimately to the point of eliminating the government side, as they threatened to do in Costa Rica in 1948 and as they have done in Angola, Liberia, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka and Lebanon. The current literature on uncertainty in decisions to use violence thus fits directly into ripeness theory. The rebels’ challenge is to keep the element of violence alive throughout the negotiations in sufficient quantity to buy the required concessions on the demand side. As in any bargaining problem, the agreement is determined by the intersection of supply and demand, so the supply of at least potential violence must be raised to cover the demands or the demands must be lowered to correspond to the available threats of violence. It is therefore most likely that the rebels brandish a little violence from time to time, to keep their “supply side” credible. For the most part, however, the supply of violence is latent and contingent (as is the other side’s supply of concessions, as in any negotiation, until the deal is closed), as a threat to be used if negotiations break down (Schelling 1960). Therefore negotiations, and especially mediation, work on both sides of the equation, keeping the supply of violence under control and seeking to tailor demands to meet the amount of concessions acceptable to the other side. As in any negotiation, there is no telling where the lines will cross; parties and mediators alike make their estimates of the firmness and softness of demands and supplies on either

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side (Bueno de Mesquita/Lalman 1992; Mason et al. 1999; Raiffa et al. 2002). If the mediators can show how continued or renewed violence would lose a party international respect and support, the violence can be kept at the threat level in case of failure rather than at the actual level during negotiations. If parties start out with already less than total demands as initial positions—total replacement of the government, total disbanding of the rebels, secession and independence, total state unity and integration—it is easier to effectuate further softening than if demands are absolute, as the Macedonian and South African cases illustrate (Stedman 2000). The preexistence of bargaining zones is not a requirement for negotiations, as the cases show; the job of negotiators is to create a zone of agreement when none exists, and then to draw the parties within the zone to a resolving and enticing outcome. This challenge is generally beyond the grasp of mere bargaining or concessionconvergence behavior, zero-sum reductions of demands on a single item until a mid-point agreement is reached. Of the three type of negotiation, it takes at least compensation, the introduction of additional items of trade, and construction, the reframing of issues to meet both sides’ needs, to produce the positive-sum outcome that constitutes a MEO (Prop. 11). As usual, in line with prospect theory (Farnham 1994), threats of losses work better than inducements, as the cases unfortunately show. Where development was part of the original formula, even though unattained, it may be used as an enticing prospect since dropping it would mean a loss, but in general aid packages and other inducements come into the negotiations only in adjunct with negative pressures and are not as widely used or effective as sanctions (including their threat). The tension between the effectiveness of implied losses and the need for positive compensations and constructions to produce a MEO underscores the narrow field of play open to those who would prepare an attractive resolving formula, and deserves further investigation. If the ingredients of a resolving formula and a MEO and the process by which they are obtained are identified, why were they not achieved in cases of failure. The present cases show both internal and external reasons that are evident only when the process itself is examined. Inside the failed process, (1) the rebels (and sometimes the governments) were spoilers, interested only in winning but unable to escalate to victory. But the government could not escalate to victory either, until the end when it eliminated the spoiler leader and made a negotiated settlement possible. The classic illustrations are Savimbi in Angola and Foday Sankoh and his lieutenants in Sierra Leone. (2) Spoilers or not, in failed negotiations, parties preferred the status quo to any resolving formula, even when an objectively good and fair one was offered. For them, the status quo of conflict was always preferable to the terms offered or conceivable, and the stalemate in which they found themselves was a S5 situation, without any pain that they could not absorb. No MHS was present to bring the parties to negotiations or, once in negotiations, to give a full consideration to the formulas offered. In Angola, Mozambique, Sudan, El Salvador, Lebanon, Macedonia and Costa Rica, comfort in the status quo led one or both parties to reject the formula that they eventually accepted to end the conflict; in most—

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perhaps all—cases this perception was not one of eventual victory but simply the ability to endure continuing conflict in preference to the terms offered. Even before they could get to the delicate details, objectively good and fair formulas for resolution, such as federation/autonomy in Cyprus (offered in 2004), Karabagh (mooted on occasion), Sudan (tried in 1973–83) and Sri Lanka (negotiated in 2003), and institutional reforms in Lebanon (discussed since 1975), were rejected by the parties in favor of continued conflict that did not hurt the leadership too badly (although it hurt the population mightily). In addition, in many of these cases, external support kept the status quo alive, enabling the holdouts to continue the conflict and not feel the pain in doing so. (3) An entirely different element that prevented perception of a resolving formula, let alone a MEO, was the absence of a coherent organization with a sense of goals and an ability to achieve consensus and make decisions about them within the parties. This problem took several related forms. In some cases, a party was merely a congeries of bandits and marauders with no clear idea of their political goals and no central organization to pursue them. Mozambique and Macedonia present good cases: ReNaMo’s party congress, not possible before 1990, and the FLN’s 4 Points and Privzen Declaration (actually mediated by the US) were crucial to their ability actually to negotiate at all. In Liberia, Lebanon, Sudan and Sierra Leone, the closer negotiations got to an agreement, the more they posed a challenge to individual leaders to break away from the main group, form their own organizations, and sprint to capture a piece of the goal on their own. Similarly, the government in Costa Rica, Sri Lanka and Lebanon was often so weak and fractioned that it could not perceive and seize an enticing opportunity. Finally, external to the parties, (4) the mediation efforts were often insufficient. Mediators lacked persistence, were satisfied (and exhausted) with superficial agreements and merely agreeing formulas, neglected substantive demands and failed to pursue procedural details, and were loath to provide incentives and sanctions to keep the parties on track, make the status quo uncomfortable and the temptation to return to violence unattractive. Cyprus, Lebanon, Liberia and Sudan until 2001 were examples of flabby mediation, compared with the firm efforts expended in Angola, Macedonia, Mozambique and El Salvador. MEOs make for durable agreements because they resolve problems and start parties on the road of cooperation. The elements of resolving formulas and enticing opportunities are generally present at the beginning of negotiations, although they need tinkering and tailoring, and persistence and pressure, to constitute a final agreement. They provide substantive as well as procedural elements to meet the parties’ needs, interests and demands, but they also need to be supported by external incentives to stay on track and external constraints not to stray off track in comparison with the status quo of the conflict. These are process elements that are visible only through an examination of the course of interaction between the parties and among the parties and mediators. How to achieve desired results is the crucial element in an explanation of success and durability, both for analysts and for practitioners.

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Walter, Barbara 2001. Committing to Peace; The Successful Settlement of Civil Wars (Princeton University Press). Wagner, Lynn 1998. Problem-Solving and Convergent Bargaining: An Analysis of Negotiation Processes and their Outcomes (Nijhoff). Werner, Suzanne 1999. “The Precarious nature of Peace: Resolving the Issues, Enforcing Settlement, and Renegotiating,” American Journal of Political Science XXXXIII 3. Wriggins, Howard 1995. “Sri Lanka: Negotiations in a Secessionist Conflict,” in Zartman 1995. Zahar, Marie Joëlle 2002. “Peace by Unconventional Means: Lebanon’s Ta’if Agreement,” in Stedman, Rothchild & Cousens 2002. Zahar, Marie Joëlle 2003. “Reframing the Spoiler Debate in Peace Processes,” in John Darby & Roger Mac Ginty, eds., Contemporary Peacemaking (Palgrave). Zartman, I William, ed. 1978. The Negotiation Process (SAGE). Zartman, I William & Berman, Maureen 1982. The Practical Negotiator (Yale University Press). Zartman, I William 1989. Ripe for Resolution (Oxford). Zartman, I William, ed. 1995. Elusive Peace: Negotiating an End to Civil Wars (Brookings) [in this collection]. Zartman, I William 2000. “Ripeness: The Hurting Stalemate and Beyond,” in Stern & Druckman, eds., International Conflict Resolution after the Cold War (National Academy Press). Zartman, I William & Kremenyuk, Victor, eds. 2004. Peace vs Justice: Negotiating Backwardand Forward-Looking Outcomes (Rowman & Littlefield). Zartman, I William 2005. Cowardly Lions: Missed Opportunities for Preventing State Collapse and Deadly Conflict (Lynne Rienner).

Chapter 11

Negotiating with Terrorists and the Tactical Question I. William Zartman and Tanya Alfredson

A constant question hanging over governments involved in internal conflicts is whether/when to negotiate with the rebels, generally termed terrorists.1 Frequently, the rebels seek negotiations, if only to set the terms of takeover, but the government is faced with the classic dilemma: negotiation may bring an end to the conflict but it legitimizes the rebel movement and acknowledges the movement’s role as spokesman for a part of the government’s population.2 But governments frequently, if not inevitably, evolve in their views of the rebels as a negotiating partner.3 Once the conflict has moved from a political to a violent stage, they label the rebels as terrorists and refuse to negotiate, but as the conflict progresses further they tend to change their classification about the whole rebel movement or part of it. The interesting subject of inquiry, then, is reasons behind a government’s decision to negotiate with its terrorists and the impact of that decision (i.e. the effectiveness of that reasoning) on them. When does the government that previously saw its rebels as illegitimate perpetrators of violence now decide to negotiate with soma or all of them, and with what effect? While focusing on the subject of negotiating with terrorists, this analysis does not delve into the type of terrorist4 or spoiler5 the rebels may be or how founded the government’s opinion of them may be. For convenience, to be able to get on with I William Zartman and Tanya Alfredson, “Negotiating with Terrorists and the Tactical Question,” in Rafael Reuveny and William R Thompson, ed., Coping with Terrorism. State University of New York Press 2010, 247–283. Reprinted with Permission. 2 A quick count indicates that 21 of the 26 cases of negotiation in civil wars between 1900 and 1989 (including negotiated surrender and unstable negotiations) in Stephen J Stedman, Peacemaking in Civil War (Lynne Rienner 1991), pp. 6–7, were instances where governments negotiated with former terrorists. 3 I William Zartman, ed, Negotiating with Terrorists, special issue of International Negotiation VIII 3 (2003). 4 Stephen J Stedman, “The Spoiler Problem,” in Paul Stern and Daniel Druckman, eds, International Conflict Resolution after the Cold War (National Academies 2001). 5 I William Zartman, Elusive Peace: Negotiations to End Civil Wars (Brookings 1995). 1

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 I. W. Zartman, I William Zartman: A Pioneer in Conflict Management and Area Studies, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06079-4_11

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the analysis, violent rebels are termed terrorists, as indeed they often are and as the government may also term them. The question remains, Why/when does a government decide to negotiate with terrorists and with what effect?

11.1

Questions

The question of negotiating with terrorists is a dual decision that begins as a simple 4
4 matrix or tree: party A’s decision to negotiate or not facing party B’s decision to negotiate or not.

Don't Negotiate GOVERNMENT Negotiate

Don't Negotiate t=s ) + r=r

REBELS ½Some Negotiate ½ q=q 

Negotiate p=p

½

s=t

q=q



But that is too simple to be real or interesting. The question here also has to do with the impact of the decision, that is, internal dynamics of the other side. At the beginning of the violent conflict, the government will probably have considered the rebels to be not worthy of negotiation because of their violent tactics, classifying them as spoilers and calling them terrorists; it will also refuse negotiations and call the rebels terrorists because of their contested legitimacy, since to negotiate is to accredit them as valid spokesmen for the group they claim to represent. There are plenty of evolutions possible from this initial situation, but in most cases the government will finally reverse itself and decide to negotiate. In some cases or under some conditions, the government moves from Don’t Negotiate as the rebel group splits into a spectrum of factions and the government negotiates with Some of them. The question addressed here, restated, is, why and when does the government decide to negotiate with one or more rebel factions, and what are the implications of that decision for the rebels? At this point the decision panels become more complex and more interesting. Both side sides are confronted with ‘the Tactical Question (TQ), a major concept in social action on which very little has been written (Zartman 1970, 2008). TQ is one of the major, unexplored distinctions in social movements and political interaction. Political groups and social movements are continually faced with the question whether to seek to prevail by cooperative or combative measures, the issue so well illustrated some time ago by Aesop in his story of the contest between the sun and the wind seeking to make a man remove his coat. Sociopolitical movements coalesce and fracture on the Tactical Question. It defines the Rubicon as social movements move from the petition to the consolidation phase,6 and it becomes the

See an instance noted earlier, in Zartman, “Revolution and Development,” fn 13, in this volume.

6

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dividing issue when such movements get bogged down in prolonged contestation. Thus, rebel movements can be assumed to always contain a spectrum of TQ positions, even if the extremes or the middle may not be filled at any given moment. In terms of the present inquiry, this means an array of positions on whether to use violence (terrorism) or not and whether to negotiate or not, correspondingly. There are many possible dynamics in the rebels’ decision. The main organization may be split internally on the Question, for purely tactical reasons or for personal reasons of one faction seeking to achieve benefits for themselves from political engagement with the government. The rebel movement may have moderated, the seekers of political solutions having won out over the violence advocates. Or it may be faced with competition from the outside from new organizations espousing either the negotiating option or the violent option, arising from TQ dissatisfaction with the main organization’s progress to date. Or it may split as the end of its efforts appear within reach and parts of the government tire of violence, fear a radical takeover, or reach for peace now rather than later. On the government side, the spectrum in parties is assumed to be less relevant but the same spectrum exists on decision options. Are the rebels illegitimate terrorists (and so Don’t Negotiate), are they legitimate partners with whom to seek a new political outcome (Negotiate), or are there factions within the rebels side who are legitimate or tactical partners (Some Negotiations)? Whereas the rebels’ decision is likely to be taken in the light of the factions’ views of the proper way of achieving their own goals, government’s decision involves not only that same issue but also tactical consideration of the effect of that decision in turn on the rebel movement. Thus, the government has its own Tactical Question in the choice between negotiating with the moderates and negotiating with the extremists, the terrorist, and in any case, the opponent must decide how to treat the terrorists/ extremist even if it decides to negotiate only with moderates.7 In other words, as has not been fully explored as yet, the decision to negotiate with terrorists is not merely a decision whether or not to negotiate but also a decision with whom to negotiate. The decision can be based on various calculations. An offer to negotiate can contribute to strengthening the rebels’ political faction and moderating the movement’s position. It can also split the organization, provoking one faction to negotiate and making the other a spoiler. It can also respond to a new organization, either by seeking a political settlement with a new group of moderates or by making common cause with the rebel organization against a more radical competitor. But it can also seek to prevent the rebels from playing an effective spoiler’s role and make the settlement comprehensive by bringing the radicals into the political settlement. Although the Tactical Question is basic to the decision to negotiate, ethical questions are involved as well. Why should terrorists be rewarded for their terror by 7

The new cabinet was as follows: MRND (9), MDR (4), PL (3), PSD (3), PDC (1). [Prunier (1995) p. 145]. It is still unclear whether its creation was a technique to distract the multiparty movement by playing into multiparty-ism, a 2-track policy on the part of Habyarimana, or an authentic rift between MRND extremists and Habyarimana? For details, see Prunier (1995) pp. 128–129, 161; Bruce Jones (2001), 63.

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being included in the distribution of benefits from a settlement? Why should new spoiler groups be encouraged to break away from the main movement, with benefits to buy them into the agreement? Why should extremists and terrorists hold up an otherwise conclusive agreement for a new political system, simply to cater to their spoiler demands? But, on the other hand, why should not those who are part of the problem be necessarily part of the solution? Not simply moral dilemmas, these are aspects that make the Tactical Questions a big cloud that casts its shadow over the negotiation decisions.

11.2

Negotiations

Although the question is simple, it covers a number of different situations in reality, some complicated by the additional presence of a third party, the mediator. At one extreme, after initial refusal to listen to the grievances of a (sub)nationalist group, the government bands the movement terrorist when it turns violent, but then negotiates with it nonetheless to reach a political settlement. This is the story of anticolonialist rebellions, such as Algeria (1954–62), Tunisia (1954–56) and Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, but also of South Africa, Quebec and Israel, where the legitimacy—and even the existence—of the nationalist group was initially denied and the group proclaimed terrorist, only to be the partner in negotiations at a later time. The decision to negotiate may cover most of the other side but not its extremist/terrorist wing, in the dual expectation that bringing the extremists into the negotiations would make an agreement impossible and that the extremists would not be capable of upsetting the agreement reached by the rest. This is what happened—successfully—in Algeria in 1960–62, Tunisia in 1954–57 and Israel, examined here, where the “ex-terrorists” then joined their new government partner to defeat the extremists. It also happened—but unsuccessfully—in Rwanda during the Arusha negotiations in 1992–93, examined here, although the sides were in a sense reversed: it was the factionalized government side that contained extremist/ terrorist groups that were excluded by common accord of the Hutu government side, the Tutsi rebel side, and also the international mediators, and that then returned to overthrow the peace process. Sometimes the process is repeated several times, with the government negotiating with formerly labeled terrorists, who prove not to be a conclusive partner for the government, who then negotiate with the more radical group of terrorists, and so on. This is the case of Kosovo and of Macedonia, examined here, but on a more extended timeline and intensity of violence also the case of Sri Lanka, again and again; a further example may be provided by Israel’s experience first with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and then with Hamas, examined here. At the other extreme is a peace process open to all parties, where it was the terrorist factions one by one who signed on. Such has been the experience in neighboring Burundi, as all the factions from both ethnic categories joined the

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process, down to the last holdout (which in addition came into existence belatedly to buy additional benefits from its spoiler position). This quick reference to a number of cases points to answers why governments tend to make the decision to negotiate with “terrorists” at some point down the road. But this list also shows that there is no typical pattern or even patterns. The government decision to negotiate with “ex”-terrorists is based on its own TQ estimates of the chances of reaching an acceptable agreement but is also inevitably tied up with the tactical attempt to try to encourage TQ splits in the rebel movement and to try to isolate the “real” terrorists/extremists. At the same time, the rebels’ decision and their hawk/dove split is a reflection of its own Tactical Question, which in turn hangs on various estimates of three elements: (1) the chances of reaching (2) an acceptable proportion of the goal in (3) an acceptable amount of time. These are too many variables to put into a matrix or correlate through a questionnaire. This complexity is important to an understanding of the decisions taken. Some recent attempts to address the problem (Kydd & Walter 2002, Bueno de Mesquita 2004, Gabbay 2005) have focused on interesting elements in the decision but to the exclusion of others, and most notably the basic question whether the expected agreement or Zone of Possible Agreement (ZOPA) is itself likely to be acceptable. An examination of a few cases should provide a fuller understanding of the reasons behind a decision to negotiate with proclaimed terrorists.

11.3

Cases

11.3.1 Rwanda 1993 At the time of their signing in August of 1993, the Arusha Accords had won waves of approval from international observers who saw in the Arusha process a model for conflict mediation. Seven months and three days later, all hopes imploded when the extremist Hutu leadership excluded from the agreement launched a genocidal attack on the Tutsi population and targeted butcherings of moderate Hutu leaders and their families. There were three competing tensions on the TQ at the heart of the Arusha process—a violent struggle between rebel Tutsi leaders of the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) and the successive governments of Rwanda embroiled in a war since 1990 over the rights of Tutsi refugees to return to Rwanda from Uganda, a political contest between the government and a growing pool of agitators who clamored for political inclusion and the creation of a multiparty system, and a multiple rift or spectrum within the Hutu government side over the existential question of how much power can be shared with the non-Hutu. Leadership from two extremist Hutu parties—the Mouvement Révolutionnaire National pour le Développement (MRND), President Justin Habyarimana’s party, whose position in the planned Broad-Based Transition Government (BBTG) was to

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be drastically diminished, and the Coalition pour la Défense de la République (CDR) which the Arusha agreement excluded outright—were implicated as terrorists in the subsequent genocide. The akazu (radical inner clique) was the spring at the source of the CDR and MRND radicals. Launched in March of 1992, the CDR was the akazu/MRND response to the proliferation of opposition parties under incipient multipartyism. At its helm were radical racist leaders, including Mme Agathe Habyarimana and Théoneste Bagasora who was able to cling to his position in the military, became a delegate to the talks at Arusha, and ultimately proved to be one of the chief architects of the genocide. With respect to the RPF and the Rwandese Tutsi, CDR leadership had brandished a radically intolerant, racist ideology quite openly, from the war’s inception. In the brutal aftermath of the genocide some observers have asked whether the decision outlined at Arusha to exclude the CDR from the BBTG was a fateful misjudgment. The CDR and the radical element of the MRND were as much a product of the ideological divisions concerning domestic multiparty power-sharing as of ideological schisms over the Tutsi/RPF question. The Habyarimana government began by refusing to acknowledge the grievances of its opponents (both its domestic political contenders and the Tutsi refugees), calling the latter “terrorists.” As pressure to deal with both populations mounted, Habyarimana moved to placate his domestic opponents (and their international supporters) with token gestures toward multipartyism––perhaps in an effort to avert international attention, perhaps in an effort to co-opt domestic forces on the RPF issue. The coalition government of the MRND with the “United Opposition” (composed of the Mouvement Démocratique Républicain (MDR), the Parti Socialiste Démocratique (PSD), Parti Libéral (PL), and the Parti démocratique constitutionnel (PDC) was convened on 5 April with a mandate to begin formal peace talks with the RPF at Arusha; the CDR formally objected to the peace talks mandate and was not included in the new coalition government.8 When a cease-fire agreement was signed between the government and the RPF on 5 July, the hardline MRND ministers boycotted cabinet meetings, accusing Habyarimana of ‘selling out’ to the opposition in order to keep his own place as president and organizing demonstrations in support of its position.9 A commitment signed on 18 July by the RFP and the government to form a multiparty transition government (BBTG) that would give seats to the RPF triggered immediate street protests organized by the CDR and the MRND.10 Demonstrators clamored for a new, more “broadly based” cabinet that would consult CDR membership and respect their positions. Massacres at the hands of

8

Prunier (1995) p. 161. Note: the CDR/MRND? Also issued a formal rejection of the 19 February 1991 Dar-es-Salaam cease-fire agreement between the GoR and the RPF. 10 August 22 of 1992. Note: the CDR would shortly denounce those responsible for the arrests of MRND(D) members involved in the killings as traitors. See Prunier (1995) pp. 162–164. 9

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MRND extremists occurred in Kibuye within days11 and MRND leaders charged that the new government under Prime Minister Nsengiyareme (MDR) was failing in its obligation to represent all parties. Although CDR representatives were included in the formal government delegation to the Arusha talks, which officially began in August of 1992, neither the CDR nor the hard-line members of the MRND had formally accepted the process. At first, in early November and throughout the month, President Habyarimana came out in support of the CDR in its bid for inclusion in the BBTG, charging the Arusha delegation with exceeding its mandate, and demanding that the unofficial opposition parties (including the CDR) be allowed to meet with the official opposition (MDR, PL, PSD). From the outset, the U.S. and others had advocated inclusion of the CDR in the peace process based on the theory that it was safer to work with the enemy than to exclude him. In addition, World Bank/IMF structural adjustment programs introduced in 1990 required Habyarimana to cut social services and give in to the demands of donors to advance multipartyism.12 Ultimately, the assessment that international actors should not be seen as the primary explanatory factor behind the choices of the parties is probably correct. Whether Habyarimana’s position was motivated by allegiance to the CDR, by fear of further marginalizing by the CDR, or by a desire to simply stall the process is not clear.13 Perhaps, he was pursuing a two-track strategy throughout the peace process by working with the peace process through his affiliation with the MRND (a signatory to the Arusha Accords) while also working outside of the political system through the CDR.14 But if Habyarimana sought to keep all of his options open, both he and the Opposition ultimately lost control of both processes. During the power-sharing talks held during the fifth meeting at Arusha (22 November–22 December), the RPF flatly refused to allow the CDR to take a place in a coalition government,15 and Habyarimana gave way on this point in December.16 By the end of the month, the momentum was already there to signify to the CDR that it had no option other than detachment from the political process. The final protocol signed at the end of the meeting left the MRND with 5 out of 21 ministries in the BBTG and 11 out of 59 seats in the Transitional National

Andersen, Regine. “How Multilateral Development Assistance Triggered the Conflict in Rwanda.” Third World Quarterly 21.3 (2000, June) . p. 4. 12 Stettenheim, Joel. “The Arusha Accords and the Failure of International Intervention in Rwanda.” In Words Over War: Mediation and Arbitration to Prevent Deadly Conflict. Greenberg, Melanie C., John H. Barton, and Margaret E. McGuinness, eds. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1999. 13 Hilsum, Lindsey. “Settling Scores.” Africa Report May/June 1994: 13. 14 Jones, Bruce (2001) p. 81. 15 Jones, Bruce (2001) p. 80–83. 16 See 9 January 1993. “Joint Communiqué issued at the End of the Third Round of the Political Negotiations on Power-Sharing between the Government of the Republic of Rwanda and the Rwandese Patriotic Front, held in Arusha, From 24 November 1992 to 9 January 1993”. Arusha, Tanzania. 11

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Assembly (TNA), and formalized the decision to isolate the CDR by denying its participation in either the government or parliament. A condolence seat in parliament awarded on 9 January 1993 was rejected by the CDR.17 Within days, the CDR and the MRND led demonstrations over the CDR’s exclusion. Violence followed, with a massacre of more than 300 Tutsi in the Ruhengeri and Gisenyi provinces in late January.18 The CDR, initially supporting Habyarimana, emerged as a formal opposition party in 1993.19 By then its opposition had already turned into the most radical kind. Several observers have faulted the RPF for challenging the resilience of a negotiated peace through its excessive inflexibility and through its insistence upon demands that turned Arusha into a “victor’s deal.”20 The RPF intransigence is explained in part by historical and current mistrust of Hutu radicalism including reports by RPF radio on 25 October 1992 of “persistent rumors” of a Hutu plan to massacre civilians indiscriminately.21 However numerous accounts also attest to the fact that the RPF simply proved itself more capable in pressing its demands. Its leaders approached the talks with clear and detailed demands, they surpassed the opposing party both in terms of negotiation skill and moral high ground in the eyes of the international facilitators. Above all they were unified, whereas the government delegation was in a constant state of acrimony and internal division. Moreover, by late December 1992–January of 1993 when the power-sharing agreement was finally crafted, and even more so after the February 8 offensive a short time later (bringing the RPF a huge military victory) the RPF had shown it had the muscle to impose its demands.22 Unlike the CDR and the RPF, the opposition parties had a decision-making process that is better characterized as that of a gambler rather than a principled actor. Many opposition members proved to be less committed to strong positions on the RPF question than to winning at the domestic numbers game, casting in bets with those parties who seemed most likely to secure their own place at the winners table of the internal power struggle. Though it had gained access to the multiparty system, the United Opposition ultimately subverted power sharing in principle. On numerous occasions throughout the negotiations, the coalition delegates to the talks conducted themselves in open disregard to the position of the Habyarimana government. Foreign Minister Ngulinzira initialed the agreement at the 7–8 September 1992 meeting at Arusha on power sharing, unification and political cooperation 17

Jones, Bruce (2001) p. 81–82. Prunier (1995) p. 154. (does this mean they got seats in government in late 1993?) 19 Stettenheim (1999) and Jones (“Roots, Resolutions and Reaction” 10) deal as an RPF “victors deal”. 20 Prunier (1995) p. 168. 21 Stettenheim, Joel. “The Arusha Accords and the Failure of International Intervention in Rwanda.” In Words Over War: Mediation and Arbitration to Prevent Deadly Conflict. Greenberg, Melanie C., John H. Barton, and Margaret E. McGuinness, eds. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1999. 22 Jones, Bruce (2001) p. 80. 18

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without the support of Habyarimana.23 When talks broke down following the CDR massacres in January 1993 and a devastating siege by the RFP in late February 1993, coalition partners met with the RFP in Bujumbura without the support of either Habyarimana or indeed their own ranks to restart negotiations. While it is true that even without such efforts by the old opposition the peace process may have been permanently stalled, the failure to attend to their own constituency made the coalition parties vulnerable to internal divisions and made them ultimately loose control of the peace as well. Break-away factions of the old opposition parties24 met with the “Common Front” of the MRND(D), CDR, 7 minor opposition groups, and the 4 new “Power Parties” (Power-MDR, Power-PL, Power-PSD and Power-PNC), meeting under Habyarimana and called with blessings from France. The meeting concluded with a resolution condemning the delegates in the capital, the RFP and the division between the Prime Minister and the President.25 The power-sharing agreement of January 1993, in combination with the military unification plan signed at the final meeting in Arusha in August giving the RPF forces 50% of the rank and file and 40% of the officers in the revised armed forces, has been criticized for leaving the CDR and hard-line MRND with an unworkable solution that pushed them forward to genocide. But for the majority of actors involved, the decision to sideline the CDR appears to have been taken prior to the onset of the Arusha talks. Unless the party could stomach a radical shift in demands, its exclusion had already largely been determined. The CDR also appeared to be locked into it own exclusion. Though it continued to lobby for its inclusion in a future government from this point on, some observers note that its dedication to altering the diplomatic course from this point forward suddenly seemed diminished. Perhaps these efforts were an indicator of the CDR’s willingness to try an alternative course to violence but by this point in time it is more probable that the CDR was only stalling. Even if the CDR had been willing to participate it is quite likely that its aims and TQ position would always be irreconcilable.26 The question of whether the CDR was includable or excludable may never be answerable. When the decision is taken to isolate terrorists, the parties taking the decision must have an idea that it is possible to do so, but when the decision is taken to include them, the other parties must be able to bring the terrorists with them and

23

The MDR would later split over the refusal by Faustin Twagiramungu (MDR) to step down. See Prunier (1995) p. 113. 24 Note: Another example: Stettenheim (p. 231) says the June 24, 1993 agreement signed (on division of military) by Ngulinzira was rejected by Habyarimana and Ngulinzira was recalled but Ngulinzira refused and the negotiations continued. Jones (p. 81) said N took the agreement back to Haby who rejected it and sent N back to Arusha were a final deal was worked out (even more in favor of the RPF). 25 Moreover, any sincere effort to participate would also have been fruitless without a concerted program to ‘sell’ the decision to cooperate to the CDR’s own membership. 26 I William Zartman, Cowardly Lions: Missed Opportunities to Prevent Deadly Conflict and State Collapse.

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to carry through with their agreement even if the terrorist defects and not be forced to defect along with it. Jones has argued that there was never any indication that the akazu was ever willing to consider a negotiated settlement with the RPF; it had answered its TQ and would have defected in as well as out of the Arusha Agreements. Whether it would have played along in signing the agreement and then (a faction of it, at least) defect, or simply defect from the beginning, making an agreement impossible, is hard to postdict. What is certain is that those who bought into the agreement did nothing or were not able to contain the CDR (ex-FAR and Interahamwe) terror after the agreement was signed.

11.3.2 Kosovo 1989–1999 The tactical choices of four key players concerning the use of violence and the policy of exclusion of other groups roughly defined five phases in the conflict between Kosovo Albanians (Kosovar) and government of Yugoslavia between 1989 and 1999. Though the government of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) under Slobodan Milosevic, the Kosovar Democratic League (LDK) under Ibrahim Rugova, the Kosovar Liberation Army (KLA) rebel leaders, and the NATO/Contact Group nations each refused to deal with what was viewed as an extremist opponent at various points in the conflict, in each case this strategy served different goals, ideologies and tactical considerations. As the conflict evolved, relations shifted from (1) Western favor for the LDK but Milosovic’s refusal to negotiate with both LDK and KLA as terrorists, to (2) Western support in early 1998 for a dialogue between the Milosevic government and the LDK that excluded the KLA and concentrated on confidence-building measures between the two parties, to (3) Western and Kosovar attempts in mid-1998 to create a unified KLA/ LDK team, to (4) an effort to forge a set of bilateral agreements between the Milosevic government and western intermediaries in October of 1998, to finally (5) a Western ultimatum to Milosevic in early 1999 to either submit to a compromise arrangement that included both the LDK and the KLA or else face a NATO aerial campaign (which he did in the end, in reverse order). Not until 1999 was the KLA brought into direct talks with the FRY. Moreover, although US sources were in contact with the (sometimes elusive) KLA leadership from the summer of 1998, at no time prior to the Rambouillet process were such talks designed to end in any formal contractual arrangement with the KLA.27 The refusal by the KLA to enter into discussions with Milosevic throughout the fall of 1998 mimicked the reality of the group’s exclusion from the process, and reflected the KLA’s lack of trust both in Milosevic willingness to enter into earnest

27

Walters, Fortna.

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compromise and in the commitment of the international mediators to fill in the security vacuum that would result from a proposed KLA disarmament.28 1989–97. The separatist LDK party formed around a principle of passive resistance after the autonomous status of Kosovo was revoked in 1989, a Tactical choice in favor of nonviolence. In 1992 Kosovo Albanians voted (in an illegal election sponsored by the LDK) to declare Kosova a newly independent Republic with Rugova as its head. For the remainder of the decade Rugova worked to elaborate a parallel system of government in the hope that the unofficial Kosovo government would someday be rewarded with defacto authority—in fact, a hopeful formula for an agreement. By 1997 ongoing human rights abuses and an unemployment rate of 70% among Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians continued to provide evidence of Milosevic’s imperviousness to passive resistance and rejection of the formula. When the 1995 Dayton peace accords that brought some redress to the Muslim military struggle against Serbs in Bosnia failed to reward the peaceful struggles of Kosovo Albanians, the KLA emerged, now premised on the conviction for the TQ that independence for Kosovo could not be won without violence. At the outset of the conflict the FRY refused to deal with any element of the Kosovar separatist movement. Kosovo had powerful historical significance for many Serbs who believed the land was the cradle of the Serbian nation; Milosevic had used Serbian nationalist sentiment over the issue in order to secure his own rise to power. As such, throughout most of the 1990s both the pacifist LDK (whose activities were largely tolerated by the government of Yugoslavia) and the guerrilla KLA movement (whose presence between its formation in the mid-1990s and 1998 was scarcely visible) were classified as terrorist by the FRY.29 Yugoslav military superiority was buttressed by the public assertion that the question of Kosovo was strictly a matter of internal concern. The aim of exclusion was not to foster a situation conducive to productive compromise, but to escape the responsibility to compromise. January–May 1998. The first half of 1998 marked the first positional shift. Under external pressure, Milosevic abandoned the classification of the LDK as a terrorist group and professed his willingness to explore talks with Rugova, but stood by his refusal to accept the KLA into the process. In January 1998, the Contact Group had begun to increase diplomatic pressure for a solution to the Kosovo problem “between the status quo and independence.” In a strategy designed to induce a TQ division in the Kosovo resistance movement, the FRY combined its official overtures towards the LDK with a series of violent operations against the KLA. In late February and early March the Serbian army launched a series of offensives against KLA strongholds in Qirez and Likosane and the Drenica Valley that claimed the lives of nearly 90 ethnic Albanian civilians. Such brutality evoked outrage among international observers. The Contact Group nations immediately stepped up their demands for progress. Milosevic responded by sending an

28

Between 1996 and 1998 the KLA claimed responsibility for no more than a dozen deaths. March 14, 1998, ‘The Kosovo Cauldron’ The Economist, U.S. edition pp. 53–54.

29

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(unsolicited) delegation to meet with Rugova in Kosovo on 12 March but also insisted that Rugova denounce the KLA, abandon the LDK demand for foreign mediation, and also drop his insistence on acceptance of independence as a precondition for negotiations. These conditions challenged Rugova to countermand the positions of his own party only weeks before scheduled elections when more radical political leaders such as Adem Demaci (then LDK) and Bujar Bukoshi were waiting in the wings. More importantly, Milosevic’s conditions, posed only days after the attacks in Drenica, challenged Rugova to risk assassination by the KLA.30 Despite such setbacks and thanks in large part to an intensive effort by U.S. Balkans envoy Richard Holbrooke, Milosevic and Rugova met two months later on 15 May and concluded an agreement to begin talks to discuss formal negotiations.31 But within ten days, the Serbs launched a major counter-offensive against the KLA in Decani, resolving the TQ for the Kosovar. Rugova called an immediate halt to the fledgling talks32 and KLA activity blossomed into full-scale guerilla war33 with many local LDK leaders taking up arms to command village units of the KLA resistance.34 June 1998–August 1998. Milosevic continued to exclude the KLA as a divide and defeat (rather than a divide and deal) strategy, and the army made massive incursions into the Drenica region that set tens of thousands of Kosovars in flight. By late July, the resulting humanitarian crisis, combined with Milosevic’s denial of official involvement, set a new stage of the conflict in motion. Such events convinced the U.S. to reclassify the KLA from a “terrorist group” to a potential compromise partner and to launch an active campaign to bring the LDK and KLA into a new unified Kosovo delegation. As one negotiator noted, “it was obvious to everyone that it was not confidence building measures that we needed but deep political changes on the ground and for that, we needed the KLA.” By the fall of 1998 members of the Contact Group, who had once sided with the Yugoslav

30 Note: At Milosevic’s insistence, Rugova dropped his demand that foreign intermediaries be present as a condition for the talks. Though this concession left Rugova somewhat diminished in the eyes of both the LDK and the KLA, in practical terms the deal was somewhat of a compromise position for both leaders who agreed that while he would not be allowed in the discussion room, U.S. envoy Chris Hill would be standing by throughout the meeting in the room next door. The KLA had joined the LDK in its request for foreign mediation to the conflict and therefore cannot be said to have maintained an ideological resistance to compromise even at this stage. 31 Frontline: War in Europe. Interview with Richard Holbrooke. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/ frontline/shows/kosovo/interviews. 32 Judah, Tim. Kosovo: War and Revenge. New Haven Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000. (p. 157). 33 Hedges, Chris. “Kosovo’s Next Masters?” Foreign Affairs 78.3 (1999): p. 29. These sentiments were echoed by three KLA fundraisers: Bardhyl Mahmuti, Jashar Shalihu and Bilall Sherifi, in an interview given in Jonathan Landay, “Inside a Rebellion: Banking on War” Christian Science Monitor, April 15, 1998 p. 1. 34 August 18, 1998. “Politician laments failure to unite Kosovo Albanians”. BBC Summary of World Broadcasts. [Source: ‘Bajku’, Pristina, in Albanian 14 August 1998].

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government in denouncing the KLA as a terrorist organization, had come to view Milosevic as bearing direct responsibility for the KLA’s rise from obscurity. August 1998–October Agreement. The framework shifted again in mid-August when quite unexpectedly the LDK abandoned the effort to build a coalition government and announced a reformulation of the Kosovar negotiating team to the exclusion of the KLA, while the US turned to crafting an agreement with Milosovic instead, to restrain him without Kosovar involvement. The resulting Milosevic-Holbrooke agreement, signed on 13 October, affirmed Milsovic’s commitment to comply with the demands set forth under UNSCR 1199 for an immediate cease-fire, the withdrawal of forces from Kosovo, the return of Albanian refugees, and a commitment to accept a Kosovo verification mission (KVM). Though the agreement called on all parties to cease hostilities, neither the Rugova government nor the KLA were parties to the arrangement and as such, neither were bound legally to observe it. The cause of the breakdown in attempts to create a unified Kosovo delegation in August, and the explanation for the decision to pursue a unilateral agreement with Milosevic are less than clear. Opposition leader Mehmet Hajrizi has claimed that the Kosovar had been on the brink of agreeing on a coalition government to include the KLA when the Rugova government suddenly rescinded its cooperation and formed a smaller negotiating group.35 If the goals of the two factions were the same, differences remained on the TQ. On 15 August LDK negotiator Fehmi Agani claimed that although his delegation “never set the independence of Kosovo as an imperative or rather as a condition for negotiations, … that does not mean that we should give up our right to try and prove why an independent Kosovo is possible…. we include independence for Kosovo as one of the possible solutions and will work towards it.”36 The KLA may have been unwilling to compromise in its demand that talks be held on the condition of independence, but KLA concerns also appear to have rested upon questions of process. After Agani proposed that the Serbs and Kosovar meet with U.S. envoy Christopher Hill to set an agenda and establish a timetable for new talks,37 Demaci, as KLA political representative, announced that the KLA would not accept an offer to negotiate with the Serb regime until the Serbian regime “shows it is serious about negotiating,” by stopping all military offensives and withdrawing its police and military units from the province.38 Others have expressed the view that the deal fell apart simply because Rugova was

August 17, 1998 “Ethnic Albanian official says atmosphere still not conducive to talks’. BBC Summary of World Broadcasts. [Source: Radio Montenegro, Podgorica, in Serbo-Croat 1330 GMT 15 August 1998]. 36 August 17, 1998. “Ethnic Albanian official says atmosphere still not conducive to talks’. BBC Summary of World Broadcasts. [Source: Radio Montenegro, Podgorica, in Serbo-Croat 1330 GMT 15 August 1998]. 37 August 17, 1998. “No peace talks until Belgrade stops offensive, say Kosovo leaders”. Deutsche Presse-Agentur. BC Cycle 15:58 Central European Time. 38 August 17, 1998. “No peace talks until Belgrade stops offensive, say Kosovo leaders”. Deutsche Presse-Agentur. BC Cycle 15:58 Central European Time. August 18, 1998. “Politician laments 35

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opposed to sharing power with anyone, including moderate opposition leaders as well as the KLA. After the Serbian onslaught had driven the number of refugees and internally displaced persons into the hundreds of thousands, however, the Rugova government may have felt it would be better able to appeal to Milosevic to curtail Serb offensives if the KLA was side-lined, given its own position of weakness. Whatever the reasoning, two days after the Kosovo government abandoned the effort to form a Kosovo coalition, Demaci indicated that any talks held by Rugova without the KLA were ‘meaningless’.39 Instead, as a consequence of its exclusion, the KLA continued to affirm its commitment to a militant agenda and issued a statement on 17 October that the organization would punish anyone who signed an agreement that obstructed the goal of independence.40 Yet by placing the protection of Kosovo citizens, the KLA, and even of the international verification force in the hands of the Serb police force,41 the Holbrooke-Milosevic agreement did just that. Within little more than a week the KLA, not a signatory of the agreement, moved into the territories vacated by withdrawing Serbian forces and clashes ensued. Milosevic felt betrayed by the western allies; in consequence, he began plans for a massive counteroffensive, Operation Horseshoe.42 From that point forward a number of officials have commented that the wind appeared to have gone out of the sails of the peace process. Given the warnings, why would the international community try to strike a deal with Milosevic to the exclusion of both the KLA and the LDK? In the months following the breakdown of the October agreement a Western diplomat commented on the inability of the west to prevent KLA encroachments following the October agreement by saying “we don’t have leverage on the KLA.”43 Internal sources suggest that the primary reason for the choice to exclude the KLA stemmed more from the belief that the KLA was too small to matter combined with the limited commitment than on hand among the Contact partners, than from any ideological aversion to negotiating with terrorists per se. The United States had not been opposed to dealing with the KLA in principle; it had been doing so formally since the summer months (and informally since the spring).44 By September Hill had failure to unite Kosovo Albanians”. BBC Summary of World Broadcasts. [Source: ‘Bajku’, Pristina, in Albanian 14 August 1998]. 39 October 17, 1998. “Kosovo Liberation Army wants a voice in peace talks.” Cable News Network (CNN). Saturday 7:00 PM ET. Note: the KLA also offered to provide the unarmed verification teams protection from the Serbs. 40 DoD News Briefing: Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense. Presented by Captain Mike Doubleday, DASD (PA). October 29, 1998, 1:30 p.m. 41 Daalder, Ivo H., and Michael E. O’Hanlon. Winning Ugly: NATO’s War to Save Kosovo. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2000 p. 58. 42 O’Connor, Mike. “Kosovo Rebels Gain Ground under NATO Threat,” The New York Times, December 4, 1998, p. A3. 43 Interviews with participants. DoD News Briefing: Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense. Presented by Captain Mike Doubleday, DASD (PA). October 29, 1998, 1:30 p.m. 44 DoD News Briefing: Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense. Presented by Captain Mike Doubleday, DASD (PA). October 29, 1998, 1:30 p.m.

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established a reliable conduit to and from the KLA authority. Through these contacts State Department officials felt they had received assurances of tacit support for the plan by the KLA (though it was understood that the KLA would not take this position publicly) so that efforts to urge compliance by the rebel group continued in direct talks between Ambassador Hill and the KLA.45 One senior state department official has explained that by August 1998, the view at the State Department was that the popularity of the KLA had reached its nadir and as such that the KLA would not have the capacity to mount a meaningful offensive once Serbian withdrawal was achieved. But this appears to be contradicted by the steady growth in the size of the KLA throughout this period as well as by the fact that there was at least an informal effort in place to obtain KLA a buy-in. The best explanation for Western decision-making comes from the underlying motives and goals of international parties. Daadler and O’Hanlan have argued that the goal of the Holbrooke-Milosevic agreement was to resolve the immediate humanitarian crisis as 300,000 Kosovar Albanian refugees were threatened by exposure to the approaching winter. Though the West may have underestimated real support for the KLA in Kosovo, Western leaders chose to deal with Milosevic to the exclusion of the Albanian parties (and against expressed concerns by the KLA) because the deal was never about crafting a long-term political compromise to resolve the underlying causes of the conflict. Security Council Resolution 1199 (the framework for the Milosevic-Holbrooke agreement) called on both parties to cease hostilities. Pushed into compliance by the threat of NATO airstrikes, Milosevic viewed the potential for KLA forces to exploit the Serbian withdrawal as his primary concern as the withdrawal agreement was being fashioned. But rather than bring the KLA in to deal directly with Milosevic, western diplomats reassured Milosevic that Serbian compliance would ‘put the onus on the KLA’ to act appropriately, and even suggested that NATO and KVM forces could be used to ensure that they did.46 January 1999. An attack by Serbian forces on Racak that left 45 ethnic Albanians dead on 15 January 1999 despite the presence of international observers, in the words of Veton Surroi (who would later sit on the Kosovo delegation at Rambouillet), “shattered the credibility of the [October] cease-fire agreement and showed how fragile and inadequate the international intervention in Kosovo really was. Racak dramatized that OSCE verifiers could not protect anyone. They could observe a crime but not prevent it.”47 Racak galvanized the international community around the goal of resolving the conflict and overcame the last reluctance to negotiate—and force Milosovic to negotiate—with both Kosovar factions. This meant finally bringing into practice what the U.S. had already realized in the

45 Daalder, Ivo H., and Michael E. O’Hanlon. Winning Ugly: NATO’s War to Save Kosovo. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2000 pp. 57–58. 46 Kurt Schork, “Province of Doom”, The New Republic, February 22, 1999. p. 22. 47 Daalder, Ivo H., and Michael E. O’Hanlon. Winning Ugly: NATO’s War to Save Kosovo. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2000 p. 65.

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summer of 1998, that a durable solution could only be achieved through the inclusion of all of the relevant parties. The failure of the October agreement also pressed home the need to obtain a KLA buy-in in order to neutralize concerns that KLA forces would exploit a NATO threat to attack Serbia by provoking Serbian authorities. That buy-in was enforced by making the threat of air strikes against Serbia conditional on moderation by the KLA and an acceptance of ‘non-negotiable principles’ outlined in a draft accord by the Kosovo Albanian delegation. Some sources conjecture that the talks at Rambouillet were devised under the western misapprehension that if Milosevic could be threatened into obedience, the Kosovar would willingly follow.48 In fact, Rambouillet offered several things to the Kosovar absent from the October agreement, not the least of which was the fact of inclusion. Not only were the Kosovar to be part of the deal-making process, the Kosovar Albanian delegation at Rambouillet was itself to be inclusive, comprising representatives of the KLA in addition to the Rugova government. Though Demaci would step down as political representative for the KLA in early March over his insistence that the accords at Rambouillet cement a commitment to call a popular referendum on independence in three years instead of the pledge “to determine a mechanism for a final settlement… on the basis of the will of the people and the opinions of relevant authorities”, ultimately the provisions laid down at Rambouillet addressed Kosovo Albanian security concerns. That fact, combined with external pressure, may have been instrumental in the decision of the remaining KLA delegation to accept the accord, overcoming the refusal to negotiate with groups that, in the process, had become more, not less, “terrorist.”49 From the very beginning (and today), the Western strategy was hampered by a difficulty in identifying an acceptable outcome and by the absence of overlap (ZOPA) between the two sides positions. At the outset of the crisis, the decision of the Western allies to exclude the KLA stemmed in part from an aversion to seeing an independent status for Kosovo as an endpoint to the crisis. Over time, however, Western strategies would shift in response to changing conditions on the ground. Those strategic choices sought to satisfy a number of competing considerations, including sensitivity to being seen as adopting ethical means and degrees of involvement in the crisis. Throughout the second phase of the crisis (first half of 1998) the allied decision-making framework also suffered from a lack of commitment to the problem of Kosovo, as well as from the logistical challenge of working with uncertain information about the strength of the parties in the region. This combination of limited commitment and uncertain information may have helped to create an environment in which informational gaps were filled in with 48 Daalder, Ivo H., and Michael E. O’Hanlon. Winning Ugly: NATO’s War to Save Kosovo. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2000. pp. 73–74 49 We are grateful for the research assistance of Ben Rempell, “Shooting the Passengers: Changes in Power and Formula in the Macedonian Ohrid Negotiations,” (SAIS, 14 May 2004) and Christopher Hattayer, “The Ohrid Framework Negotiations,” (SAIS, 2 July 2004) in preparing this case.

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assumptions that would help to justify a policy of limited engagement, moving from rejection to negotiation with the “terrorists” as they grew stronger and hence more unavoidable, and from a desire to work with the government to an identification of Milosevic as the problem, not the solution.

11.3.3 Macedonia 2001–2003 The second Macedonian crisis came a decade after the first that accompanied the country’s secession from Yugoslavia in 1991, and was largely an overflow of the Kosovo crisis of 1998–99 next door.50 The formula for the 1991 agreement, involving entrance into the EU (European Union) in exchange for reliance on the democratic process for satisfaction of ethnic grievances, had begun to wear thin toward the end of the decade, resulting in the defeat of the socialist coalition by the nationalist parties at the polls. Ethnic Albanians began to pose the Tactical Question, lose faith in the democratic process, and look to stronger measures to make their cause heard. In the 1998 elections, the government led by the Social Democratic Alliance (SDSM) was replaced by a coalition of a rightwing nationalist party, the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization-Democratic Party of Macedonian Unity (VMRO-DPMNE), the moderate Democratic Party of Albanians (DPA), and the small Liberal Party (LP). Another Albanian party, the Party for Democratic Prosperity (PDP), formerly part of the socialist coalition, lost ground over the decade, and then in 2001 lost members to the newly formed National Democratic Party (NDP), with ties to the Kosovar militants in Serbia. The same year as the elections (but with no relation), the UN Preventive Deployment Force (UNPREDEP) that had been in place since independence was terminated by a Chinese veto. Although it allegedly had been forming over the previous year, the National Liberation Army (NLA)51 came to the surface on 23 January 2001 when it claimed responsibility (in Communiqué 4) for an attack on a village near the Kosovo border. The NATO Secretary-General labeled the group “a bunch of thugs,” the EU representative declared that “it would be a mistake to negotiate with terrorists in this particular case,” and the government sent its army (ARM) and border police against it.52

50

Or in Albanian UCK, the same initials as the Kosovo Liberation Army in Kosovo. Quotes from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Balkan Report 5, no. 84 (18 Dec 2001); Timothy Garton Ash, “Is There a Good Terrorist?” New York Review of Books (29 Nov 2001); and Robert Hislope, “Between a bad Peace and a good War,” Ethnic and Racial Studies XXVI 1:133 (Jan. 2003). Even the International Crisis Group wrote, “The PDP should trying to get a seat at the table for the NLA,” The Macedonian Question: Reform or Rebellion, Balkans Report 109 (5 April 2001), 16. 52 ICG, Macedonia: The Last Chance for Peace, Balkans Report 113, (20 June 2001), 8, 14. 51

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The goals of the NLA were not clear, and its command as well as its troops was not unified (much as in the case of the KLA in Kosovo three years earlier). While the previous situation had been designed to deal with the rights and aspirations of Macedonian Albanians within a democratic process, militants’ goals tended toward federalization. However, government unity was also shaky, and parties were positioning themselves for a possible election campaign. Under enormous pressure from the EU, NATO and OSCE since late March, all the above-mentioned parties joined in a government of national unity on 13 May and declared a ceasefire in order to bring in the PDP, whereupon still-recalcitrant PDP members broke away to form the NDP. However, the “parties are not natural bedfellows,” officials from the two ethnic categories did not speak to each other, and the government did not function.53 The first negotiations were within rather than between the “sides.” Robert Frowick, Special Envoy of the Chairman-in-Office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), launched a 3-phase process that began with the ceasefire and was to be followed by substantive confidence-building measures and then institution of control mechanisms to integrate some NLA leaders into public life. But first, the ethnic Albanians needed to unify and clarify their goals, for which DPA and PDP leaders met secretly with NLA leaders in Prizren on 22 May. The Prizren Document accomplished its purpose and allowed the party leaders to speak in the name of the ethnic Albanians including the NLA. However a press leak destroyed the process and brought out denunciations from the VMRO-DPMNE president and prime minister (covering their own plans to break the cease-fire) and adamant opposition from the EU; NATO pressed for negotiations, while the US remained coy on its support for Frowick and negotiations involving the NLA. The Prizren agreement established the parameters of a Way Out (WO), one of the elements of ripeness, by indicating its concerns and eliminating a territorial demand, with the more specific notions of a mutually acceptable formula to be worked out in the negotiations. Thereafter, the international mediators focused their attention on the government, parts of which returned to violence, since the NLA and ethnic Albanian parties generally retained their perception of ripeness. The other element of ripeness, mutually hurting stalemate (MHS), began to develop throughout the NLA actions and ARM reactions, more slowly on the government side than on the ethnic Albanian side after Prizren.54 Although it continued to be tested throughout the negotiations, the MHS can be said to have been perceived by both in June, when the NLA occupied Aracinovo, on the edge of Skopje, on 6 June, and the ARM attempted to dislodge it on 22 June and failed, leaving NATO to negotiate a mutual disengagement. As early as late June NATO representatives and NATO forces in Kosovo (KFOR) arranged a separation of NLA and ARM forces at Aricinovo near Skopje, and on 24–26 July renegotiated a cease-fire from 3 weeks earlier with NLA

Rempell; Hattayer; Iso Ruso, “From Army to Party,” Beyond Ohrid, Institute for War and Peace Reporting, 2003, 29–30. 54 ICG, Macedonia: Still Sliding, Balkans Briefing Paper, 27 July 2001, 4, 5, 7. 53

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leaders.55 Interparty negotiations can be said to have begun on 13 June with the president’s meeting with international mediators and his announcement of a vague 5-point plan. They were conducted by the VMRO-DPMNE president and prime minister and SDSM former prime minister, for the ethnic Macedonians, and by the DPA and PDP leaders for the ethnic Albania side, leading to the Ohrid Agreement of 8 August, signed on 13 August; the process followed much the same path as laid out by Frowick. Thereupon, NATO and NLA representative began direct negotiations on NLA disarmament, reached on 14 August. Thus, negotiations took place after May with the “terrorist” NLA both directly and indirectly. They took place directly, simply, when they had to, that is, when a directly military situation required immediate contact outside the political framework, as in Aricinovo or as on post-agreement disarmament. They did not take place “when they did not have to” any longer, that is, once the Prizren agreement brought the ethnic Albanian parties and rebels onto one track on their goals and representation; the question of direct negotiations with the “terrorists” was circumvented. There does not appear to have been any tactical consideration on the part of the mediators (let alone the government) to isolate extremists through negotiation with the mainstream terrorists. To the contrary, the mediators (and government) worked to get the entire ethnic Albanian side, as well as the entire ethnic Macedonian side, into the agreement. Nor was there any effort to test the authority of Arben Xhaferi and Imer Imeri, the DPA and PDP leaders, or Ali Ahmeti, political leader of the NLA. Their efforts were to reach a substantive formula that would keep both sides in the agreement. Just before the Ohrid agreement was signed, the NLA began to split (a common TQ reaction as agreement approaches) and on the week of the agreement the worst outbreak of violence occurred, claimed by a new Albanian National Army (ANA/ AKSH).56 The extremist move, however, was not enough to upset the agreement.

11.3.4 Palestine 1993 The Oslo process represents a watershed in the Middle East peace process as the first time the Israeli government entered into direct discussions with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Though the choice was indeed historic, the decision made by the Rabin government to deal with the PLO was predicated on several more fundamental conceptual shifts that brought the Tactical Question into a context more amenable to inclusion. However, the PLO with its core group al-Fatah was not the only Palestinian organization branded terrorist. Other, more extreme wings of the Palestinian nationalist movement outside the PLO such as Abu Nidal’s group, George Habash’s People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFPL), and

55

ICG, Macedonia: War on Hold, Briefing Paper, 15 Aug 2001 2–3. Abu Mazen (M. Abbas), Corbin p. 25.

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Hamas were and have remained on the list or terrorists. While most are small and dependent on external support, Hamas is large and growing. When the UNSC resolution 242 formalized the formula for the Middle East Peace Process as a trade-off of territory for security, in 1967, the PLO ascribed to the “3 Nos of Khartoum”—no recognition, no negotiations, no peace. The PLO or parts of it began to seek a way to enter into a dialogue with Israel starting in 1977, when Abu Mazen led a successful movement within the Organization to seek constructive engagement with “democratic forces” in Israel.57 Before the end of the Cold War and after the first intifada, the PLO formally signaled its acceptance of the state of Israel in two documents presented at the November 1988 meeting of the Palestinian National Council (PNC) in Algiers. The first was a political communiqué in which the PNC declared its commitment to reaching a comprehensive settlement with Israel “within the framework of the UN Charter and relevant Security Council Resolutions,” accepting UNSC Resolution 242 as an implicit recognition of the State of Israel. The second document was the “Palestinian Proclamation of Independence” which claimed independence “under the provisions of international law including General Assembly Resolution 181(II) of 1947,” which called for the partition of the British Mandate into two States, Israel and Palestine. These documents were followed in December by an explicit statement by Chairman Yasir Arafat recognizing the State of Israel and condemning all forms of terrorism made at the General Assembly meeting of the UN in Geneva (because the US would not let Arafat, as a “terrorist,” into New York). Immediately following his address, the US announced the opening of a dialogue with the PLO. But the PLO was still not admitted into the Madrid Conference three years later; Israel’s involvement in the Madrid talks was conditioned on the exclusion of the PLO and of Palestinians from East Jerusalem and the Diaspora from the process. The rationale was that “permitting a resident of East Jerusalem to participate would amount to an Israeli concession on the status of Israel’s capital.58 By extension the decision to exclude the PLO and the Diaspora was a tactical choice designed to deny the legitimacy of these group’s demands. Premier Yitzhaq Rabin’s rejection of a request by Abu Mazen to open a channel of communication with the PLO through Egypt as late as October of 1992 indicates that the PLO’s shift on the TQ and its related readiness to deal did not serve as a defining factor in the Israeli decision-making process on the TQ of whether to engage with the PLO.59

57

Markovsky p. 14. Corbin 26. Abu Mazen (M. Abbas) also reports that the PLO established contact with Ariel Sharon and was in the process of opening up a secret channel when Sharon severed the link after rumors of a connection began to circulate in the press (Abu Mazen). Similarly Corbin (p. 19) recounts prior efforts by Norway to put Arafat and Israel in direct contact in April 1983 through a meeting between Palestinian moderate Dr. Issam Sartawi and members of the Israeli Labor party, that ended when Sartawi was assassinated by the extremists (Abu Nidal’s group). In 1987 Norway embarked on a bridge-building program that included funding Palestinian medical and humanitarian projects and a study by Larsen. 59 M? 58

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Israel’s refusal to deal with and recognize the PLO prior to the opening of the Oslo channel was rooted in several factors including mistrust of Palestinian aims, preoccupation with national security concerns, opposition to giving in to acts of terror, and a lack of confidence in the ability or will of the PLO leadership to deliver peace. The refusal to deal with the PLO reflected a dominant ideological commitment to realizing the dream of a Greater Israel, particularly on the part of the Likud party, and a lack of urgency in the Israeli mindset concerning the need to resolve the crisis.60 In the late 1980s and the early 1990s a combination of internal and external events brought a new sense of urgency and planted the seeds for a perceptual shift in the way some segments of the Israeli public began to assess the conflict. The decision to engage the PLO in constructive dialogue was a tactical choice made by the Rabin government consistent with a set of reframed goals suited to this new context. Jane Corbin has argued that the most important force behind the Oslo process was “the rise to prominence and political influence” of figures on both sides of the conflict who believed in the necessity of coexistence.61 These figures include Norwegian facilitator Terje Larsen, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, and PLO Finance Minister Abu Ala (Ahmed Qorei). Such efforts would scarcely have gained visibility if those at the apex of the concentrated decision-making structures of the Israeli government under Rabin and of the PLO under Arafat had not created or been compelled to create a space for them to explore their vision. Before the first intifada the Likud government maintained that Israel could address its external conflicts with its Arab neighbors independently of Israel’s domestic concerns. Likud viewed Palestinian nationalism in the West Bank as an instrument of the PLO that had no organic basis. The party went further in maintaining that the majority of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories preferred to be under Israeli rule. The spontaneity and depth of Palestinian participation in the 1987 intifada revealed such views to be grossly at odds with reality.62 In later years Uri Savir, one of the chief negotiators for Israel at Oslo, would argue that the 1987 uprising and the heavy-handed Israeli response to it presented a pivotal moment in the Israeli consciousness, triggering a rising tide of domestic opposition to the Israeli occupation.63 Externally, the evaporation of Soviet influence and the rise of religious fundamentalism in the Middle East following the fall of the Berlin wall created a new dimension of interest in the region. Savir has suggested that Israel’s decision to pursue an agreement with the PLO was a reaction to the PLO’s new willingness to negotiate with Israel as a result of systemic changes arising at the end of the

60

Corbin p. 15. Markovsky p. 8. 62 Corbin p. 79. 63 Savir, p. 5. 61

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Cold War.64 In Iran poverty provided a growing base of young men for whom the call to violence rang with appeal.65 Secretary of State James Baker, in an address to The American Israel Public Affairs Committee in May 1989, counseled Israel to abandon its dreams of a Greater Israel and to accept its need to relinquish control over portions of the Occupied Territories.66 The message was soon followed by an announcement that Israel would need to halt its expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories as a condition for continuance of US government financial aid and loan guarantees. The new domestic economic conditions created by American policy helped to galvanize a perceptual shift among segments of the Israeli population and set the Palestinian problem, for the first time, on a timetable defined by pressing domestic economic concerns. In the words of Markovsky, “Israel was moving away from some of its pioneering ideological moorings and becoming a more middle-class society”.67 Rabin’s first major departure from preceding Israeli policy concerning the Palestinians was not his choice to deal with the PLO but his reframing of the Palestinian problem to incorporate domestic economic realities and regional security concerns. In his May 1992 election campaign the Labour Party leader directed his appeal to Israel’s Jewish working class who were feeling the impact of cutbacks in US loans and economic assistance. The cost of ignoring the problem had grown for Israel creating a new sense of urgency and a willingness to re-prioritize Israeli interests. Rabin triumphed over Shamir’s incumbent Likud government on a promise to bring peace within a year.68 The new Prime Minister further distanced himself from his predecessors early in his term by expressing a willingness to differentiate between strategic and political settlement communities in the occupied territories, his adoption of certain conciliatory terminology and his public expression of willingness to negotiate autonomy (territory for security, renamed “peace through security”).69 With the vision of the end game reframed, the question became one of how to achieve the best possible outcome for Israel inside a newly accepted set of realities. In the past, Israel’s strategy had excluded the PLO for the purpose of de-legitimization. Such an approach was consistent with the existence of an opponent which stood on a platform that denied the right of the nation to exist, hence the hard-fought battle over the Palestinian National Charter. Another explanation for the Israeli decision to deal with the PLO emphasizes the importance of Israeli assessments of Arafat’s capacity to providing security. Joel Singer has stressed Abu Alaa’s role during the Oslo process in vouching for

64

Savir, p. 4. May 1989 address by Secretary of State James Baker to the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee in Markovsky, p. 10. 66 Markovsky, p. 84. 67 Corbin, p. 19. 68 Corbin p. 54. 69 Singer in an interview with Markovsky, p. 53. 65

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Arafat’s ability and will to end terrorism against Israel.70 The interpretation offered by Markovsky suggests that the Israeli team’s faith in Arafat’s capabilities were pivotal to their government’s decision to deal with him. Markovsky writes, “the Israelis took [the remarks of Abu Ala] at face value, and Rabin became fond of saying that the PLO would be able to handle Hamas because it would not be hampered by civil liberties constraints,” even though Rabin had information indicating that Arafat’s power in this area was not boundless. Hamas leaders vowed to continue violence against the Israeli army and Jewish settlers after a peace agreement, and in March a PLO spokesmen stated that Arafat’s agreement to a cease-fire would not apply to the intifada or attacks by rejectionist groups like Hamas over whom the PLO had no control.71 In fact, circumstances suggest that the moment chosen by Israel to make a deal with Arafat was one in which the PLO chairman’s capability to deliver his population was at its weakest. The shift towards acceptance of some level of separation from parts of the occupied territories came at a time when Israel’s bargaining position against Arafat was presented with a new level of opportunity. The end of the Cold War cast Arafat, with his historic ties to the region, in a somewhat anachronistic light. The PLO chairman’s standing was shaken when much of the Arab world reacted with condemnation to his pledge of support for Saddam Hussein following the Iraqi annexation of Kuwait. The well of contributions from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait that had accounted for half of the PLO’s financial resources suddenly ran dry. The ensuing financial crises further eroded the strength of the PLO leadership, forcing the organization to restrict many of the activities that had been essential to its popular base. The Oslo talks gained official Israeli attention after exploratory efforts demonstrated that the PLO would be more pliable than the official Palestinian delegation in Washington.72 In pursuing a deal with the PLO at the moment when Arafat’s vulnerabilities were at their height the Rabin government seemed poised to capitalize on a historic opportunity to wrangle concessions from the PLO chairman, perhaps at the price of a reduction in security guarantees. As Arafat’s power and influence waned, Israel—and the PLO—anxiously noted the strength of the more militant Hamas movement wax. An alternative dimension of the problem was (as elements in the left of Rabin’s government came to realize) that Arafat’s declining influence began to make him vulnerable to the temptation to try to reclaim his lost stature by adopting a harder line more consistent with that of Hamas. The PLO felt it had to cast its support behind Hamas by blocking Washington negotiations in protest of Rabin’s expulsion of 415 Hamas militants in December 1992.73 With Arafat under fire for the

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Markovsky pp. 53–54. Corbin, p. 76. Also Abu Ala complied (on instruction from Tunis) with Savir’s request to unlink the question of Jerusalem from the West Bank and Gaza (Corbin, p. 83). 72 Corbin, p. 36. 73 Corbin, p. 148. 71

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Jerusalem concession and for severing welfare payments to 50,000 Palestinian families due to the PLO’s financial difficulties, Rabin—and perhaps Arafat—realized that the PLO might not be around much longer to deal with and a new leadership might be worse.74 Israel’s dealings with the PLO as part of the Oslo Process were sandwiched between the two offensive maneuvers against extremist Hamas (the mass deportations in December 1992) and Operation Accountability against Hezbollah guerillas in Lebanon in July,75 serving to use the TQ to drive a wedge between the PLO and the extremist factions and to actually strengthen the PLO as a reward for its negotiability and its abandonment of terrorism. Over the course of Rabin’s first term in office pressure mounted to deliver on his campaign pledge to bring peace. With the Madrid/Washington talks going nowhere the Israeli government explored other options for making a deal.76 When Syrian demands proved unworkable and a withdrawal from the Golan Heights came to be considered both strategically and politically riskier than a prospective deal with the PLO, Rabin decided to open negotiations at Oslo.77 On the other hand, Israel may have had hopes of using talks with the PLO as a means to secure a ‘peace dividend’ with its Arab neighbors. During a meeting with Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Peres shortly before the conclusion of the Oslo Accords stressed the idea that a US commitment to push regional states to reconcile with Israel would be vital to the success of the Oslo process.78 The opportunity to deal with the PLO presented Israel with a number of potential opportunities. If a deal could be made, the payoff would be a reduction in PLO sponsored terrorism and a boost to Israel’s standing in Arab world. Israel’s risk in entering into a partnership with the PLO was that the partnership would not work, but that risk was somewhat mitigated by the provisions of the Accords which passed responsibility for controlling radical elements to the PLO.79 From whatever angle, such benefits could be within reach only through negotiations with the PLO to make it a former terrorist and to isolate those who continued to practice terrorism.

11.4

Decisions and Lessons

The lessons that can be drawn from this brief survey are highly tentative, merely hypotheses supported enough by a few cases not to be thrown out but scarcely firm conclusions. Such support, however, warrants further investigation, because of the

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Markovsky, p. 91. Savir p. 5, Corbin p. 17, 54, 156; Markovsky p. 64. 76 Rabin in an Interview with Markovsky October 1993, Markovsky p. 115. 77 Markovsky p. 75. 78 Markovsky p. 57. 79 I William Zartman, “Beyond the Hurting Stalemate,” in Paul Stern and Daniel Druckman, Conflict Resolution in the Post Cold War Era (National Academies Press 2000). 75

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importance of the question. Why do governments, mediators and others who brand their opponents as terrorists end up negotiating with them? The first answer is, Because and when they have to, i.e. when they have to end violence and establish an agreement and need the involvement of the terrorists to do so. When NATO had to negotiate with the Macedonian NLA, to reestablish a cease-fire or organize a disarmament, it overcame its objections and rose to the occasion; it did not, however, negotiate directly with the NLA to produce the Ohrid agreement. When the Kosovar KLA proved itself necessary to the final settlement, whether as a partner or as a bait for Milosovic’s participation, the US began the difficult job of locating a valid spokesman and talking to them. When a sufficient agreement could be achieved with the moderates but without the terrorists, mediators and opponents tried to do so, but when such efforts fail governments may turn to negotiation with extremist factions. Both the KLA and the NLA had to prove their indispensability to an agreement to be included; the RPF and the government of Rwanda thought the CDR dispensable and excluded it, despite mediator pressure to the contrary. When Rabin negotiated with the PLO, it was because he saw it as the only way to deliver on his electoral promise to bring peace within the year, Syria having proven obdurate and the Washington/Madrid talks without the PLO sterile. Sometimes it takes a change in the government to admit the necessity of negotiating with terrorists toward a resolving agreement. When the government is too publicly committed to exclusion, it may need to change its incumbents in order to change its position, even if the previous government would have liked to end the conflict through negotiation. Rwanda shifted its position and began to negotiate with RPF rebels under the coalition government in the summer of 1992 not because a sea-change in thinking had occurred within the old guard concerning the proper tactical treatment of the RPF, but because once the coalition government came into being, ultimate decision-making power passed out of Habyarimana’s hands and out of the hands of the old guard. Israel in Oslo provides another example among the cases discussed, but so does France in regard to Tunisia and Algeria, among others. However, governments may turn to negotiation when public support for a ‘hard’ stance against the terrorist camp weakens. A perceptual shift concerning the nature of the conflict or a reframing of the conflict against competing concerns may allow negotiations to take place. The first Intifada convinced many Israeli citizens that Palestinian nationalism was in fact real. Shifting economic, geopolitical and regional security concerns brought about by the ending of the Cold War forced many Israelis to view the domestic conflict within a broader context. The severity of the government’s crackdown also helped to feed a domestic peace movement in Israel. Battle fatigue among the Israeli public helped to bring Rabin to power in 1991 under a pledge to bring peace to the region within a year. Sometimes, however, it may take a back channel or a secret venue to make negotiation possible, when channels can be opened to explore talks away from public scrutiny, so that the government can claim detachment from the process if negotiations fail. The facilitators behind the Oslo process created a safe avenue for both parties to open discussions without having to modify their positions publicly, which would have

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made them open to charges of inconsistency or weakness ahead of a negotiated solution. A second answer, a sharper form of the first, is, When there is a mutually hurting stalemate. In the first answer, governments and mediators negotiated when they had to because it was useful; in the second answer, they negotiated with both sides were stymied and suffering if they did not negotiate. As in any ripe situation,80 both parties have to be unable to escalate their way out of a painful situation, perceive the possibility of a Way Out, and have valid spokesmen for their negotiations. In Kosovo and Macedonia, the parties finally realized they were cornered, although it took a while in Kosovo; in Rwanda, they did not, with horrible results. In the Middle East, Israel and the PLO were painfully stalemated, not in Palestine but in Washington, and needed a way to meet their own campaign pledges and to face the common external enemy, Hamas, the “real” terrorist.81 Yet, in reality, the stalemate-induced reconsideration of the TQ is usually not unanimous and frequently depends on some elements sticking to the violence option. It is important to remind, even occasionally show, the other side that violence is still possible as a means to define the stalemate. Hamas and its violence, KLA, possibly even CDR all reminded the sides that they were stuck in a mutually hurting stalemate and better look for a way out that did not involve slipping back to the violent answer to the TQ. The trap in this situation, of cause, is not to let the violent holdovers become effective spoilers who can destroy the whole agreement. The killer of Rabin as well as the akuzu show how small and large agents can destroy peaceful movement. A third answer is, when unity of goals is achieved among the various rebel groups, moderate and radical. Unity, almost by definition, pulls the terrorists away from their extreme stands, although governments tend to fear that it will radicalize the moderates (a logical possibility) and legitimize the goals of the terrorists. However, the slim record presented here shows that unity made negotiation possible, as in Macedonia and Kosovo, and that the absence of unity merely set up the extremists to conduct their terror, as in Rwanda. The key to the Macedonian Albanians’ negotiations with the government was their unity, so that moderates could speak for all, after Prizren. The mediators again worked for unity among the Kosovar, even if they switched the focus of their strategies to Milosovic on occasion; getting the latter on board at Rambouillet depended on Kosovar unity as a negotiating partner. The jury is still out in Palestine; Oslo was a tactic to steal victory from Hamas and was unsustainable, but the tactic of the PLO under Abbas is to seek unity with Hamas in order to curb terrorism and gain legitimacy for broader goals.

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Dean G Pruitt, ed., The Oslo Negotiations, special issue of International Negotiation, II 2 (1997). I William Zartman, “Analyzing Intractibility,” in Chester Crocker, P\Ren Osler Hampson and Pamela Aall, eds, Grasping the Nettle (Washington: USIP, 2005); I William Zartman, “Process Explanations,” in G O Faure and Franz Cede, eds., Explaining Negotiation Failures (Laxenburg: IIASA, 2006).

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A major impediment to the mediators’ strategy of unite-and-resolve is the mediators’ own unclarity of an acceptable outcome, including its sense of the popular legitimacy locally, regionally or globally of the rebels’ demands as opposed to the resistance capabilities on the government side. Whereas Macedonia was a case of a single salient solution, Kosovo was a case of a two-solution problem; objectively, there is no stable intermediate solution as in Macedonia.82 Rwanda is a curious intermediate case: There was a single salient solution—a multiparty government, as provided at Arusha—but it was not stable, given the terrorists’ unshakable option for another salient solution, ethnic cleansing and political takeover. For the mediator or opponent to press for the necessary factional coalescence, there must be a single salient acceptable solution for both sides to agree to. Indeed, governments may also turn to negotiation with extremist factions when it is the extremists who can bring an agreement, when the government feels that extremist leaders have the capacity to enforce a negotiated peace among their ranks, or when the ensuing agreement will shift responsibility for future security failures onto extremist leaders without opening its own population to excessive security risks. The futility of the Washington Process in absence of the PLO demonstrated to everyone that a deal could not be made without them. The details of the Oslo accord made the PLO responsible for keeping the peace when an agreement was signed, even though it failed to provide it with the capacity to do so. Governments may turn to negotiation when they see negotiation with one extremist faction as a way for creating a split between that faction and other extremist groups. However, complex strategic calculations, such as divide-and-defeat or exclude-and-split, do not fare well. Sophisticated tactics such as testing a leader’s control by exclusion do not hold up in most cases. Even Israel’s test of Arafat’s ability to control terrorism seems to be straightforward, and indeed Rabin sought to pull Arafat into a peace agreement as an ally against Hamas, a strategy that his successor, Benyamin Netanyahu, could not conceive of.83 Tactical use of exclusion may backfire. Instead of placating or splitting opposition forces (if this was indeed the goal), the effects of Habyarimana’s gestures were the reverse. Domestic opposition groups used the token gains they had achieved to push in unison for real multipartyism while factional tensions grew instead on the side of the government. Pressure continued to build on Habyarimana to follow through on his pledges, and to chose between his own presidency and the position of his traditional power base. To retain his presidency Habyarimana accepted a coalition government and the tactical choice of the coalition to engage the RPF in peace talks. Instead, exclusion becomes a self-proving hypothesis: One cannot negotiate with a faction because they are terrorists, and so they become real terrorist because they 82

Kydd & Walter 2002 and Bueno de Mesquita 2004 to the contrary, We are grateful for the research assistance of Ben Rempell, “Shooting the Passengers: Changes in Power and Formula in the Macedonian Ohrid Negotiations,” (SAIS, 14 May 2004) and Christopher Hattayer, “The Ohrid Framework Negotiations,” (SAIS, 2 July 2004) in preparing this case. 83

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are excluded. The Kosovar KLA is a case in point. The mediator never sought to follow a tactic of split and isolate, although Milosovic did, with unrewarding results. In the process, the moderates are left unable to deliver on a deal because the excluded faction is able to upset the deal. The Rwandan CDR is a case in point. While not all excluded factions are strong enough to be effective as spoilers, they will be cast as spoilers if excluded. This preliminary study based on four cases, however, can in no way answer the conundrum, were the terrorists radical enough to warrant exclusion, as posited in Rwanda, or were they radicalized—turned into terrorists—because of exclusion, as suggested in Kosovo? Government failure to recognize the legitimacy of grievances that have been pursued peacefully among members of its population may sharpen the TQ debate and fuel the emergence of extremist factions. In Kosovo the Contract Group Nations forced Milosevic to negotiate with the KLA movement when it had become evident that KLA participation was essential to the success of an agreement. But KLA influence was not due to its military capacity alone. The KLA leadership by and large shared the goals, if not the means, of the pacifist LDK party as well as the aspirations held by the majority of Kosovar. Once a potential spoiler is identified—one who has not shifted his views of the TQ as the other parties have, tactical choices must include plans for dealing with the eventuality that a spoiler spoils. Though the choice to exclude the CDR was logical from the perspective of the assessment that the CDR was not includable, exclusion as a tactic is itself illogical in the absence of a second assessment as to whether the party that is deemed to be beyond inclusion is also excludable. Here the coalition partners either failed to make the necessary calculations as to what was needed to ensure the CDR could be excluded, or else calculated incorrectly. At the same time, governments should also be aware of the potential for spoilers within their own ranks. It was the old guard that was sidelined when the first coalition government was formed. Once Arusha began, ongoing extremist rhetoric by CDR spokesmen convinced the coalition and the RPF that the CDR could never accept a power sharing arrangement with the RPF. In other words the coalition concluded, somewhat ironically, that though the original terrorists, the RPF terrorists, would be capable of making a deal, the ex-government terrorists would not. The fifth conclusion, also related to the previous ones, is When the mediators lead the way. The mediators’ presence and activity was absolutely crucial. The various mediators were always more ready to open negotiators—cautiously—with the accused terrorists and urged the governments to do so, often preparing the way with their own mediation, conditions, and actions. But the mediators were not simply soft on terrorists: They worked on the extremists to fulfill the conditions helpful to their being accepted as negotiation partners. When they did not, the government held firm on a policy of exclusion. It was the mediators who produced unity in Macedonia and Kosovo, by helping to provide security to assuage the rebel groups’ fears that their government opponents would not abide by a negotiated commitment; the US tried for Rwandan (Hutu) unity but was unable to achieve it. Governments may also turn to negotiation when international pressures build to move toward an agreeing (though not necessarily resolving) formula, giving in to

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the pressures only in form. When the Cold War ended, Israel came under pressure from Washington as well as its regional neighbors to show that it was making progress toward a negotiated solution; Israel attended Madrid only to meet Washington’s demand to be there, not to negotiate. Thus, Governments may even accept to negotiate not to resolve the conflict at all but rather to stall the process until a time when it will be able to press for its demands more unilaterally—as may have been the case with the Milosevic-Holbrooke agreement. The final answer is the most tentative: When the terrorists revise their goals or their nature. It is tentative because it is not clear how much revision is necessary or whether inclusion or the possibility of inclusion triggers revision or revision triggers the decision to include. Macedonian Albanians at Prizren made plain their willingness to accept a democratic solution, dropping a geographic solution as a threatened goal; but Kosovar Albanians were quite imprecise about their softening of the demand for an immediate promise of independence. The akazu retained their opposition to ethnic or party power-sharing, justifying the exclusion to which they were subjected. In the still-open case of Palestine, the PLO clearly changed its goals, less clearly changed its methods, but became fully committed to the negotiations and their results; Hamas accepted the constraints of democratic elections but has not renounced its zero-sum goals. But the conditions of negotiation— compromise, persuasion, positive-sum outcomes—and of democracy—legitimacy of all parties, need to appeal widely, acceptance of popular judgment—themselves impose limitations on terrorists that can mark the beginning of the socialization process toward inclusion. The answers seems to be that moderation is a process, not a status; a party seeking a solution must be able to see indication of a change in goals or nature in the terrorists that it feels can be encouraged by engaging the terrorists in negotiations. There must be some empirical indication of change to lead to negotiation and some analytical indication that negotiation will intensify the change. Initially, the erstwhile terrorist is unlikely to change its ends, only its means, but engagement in negotiation and the new situation it produces can gradually produce deeper changes. But it is still a chicken-and-egg process, until more research is done, and even then may ultimately be a matter of political or diplomatic “feel.”

Chapter 12

Analyzing Intractability

The prior question shadowing an analysis of intractability is whether it is a permanent condition of “true intractability” or whether it itself is conditional, dependent on some other characteristic that can be manipulated. In part, to pose the question is to answer it, since “true intractability” would mean that the subject area would always be in conflict, a condition that exists nowhere (despite some “primordial” claims).1 Nonetheless, some conditions of intractability may be longer-lasting and less manipulable than others. This chapter discusses a set of contextual characteristics associated with the mediation process plus a structural or geographic characteristic as well. None of these elements is absolute, but then neither is the characterization of intractability. There are a number of different kinds of intractability, and as long as a single airtight category is not established, a single airtight causal fit is unlikely. Since the first is improbable if not impossible, as the introductory chapter discusses, the absence of the second is pardonable in the present chapter. The following discussion will proceed inductively from the cases examined in the book, to establish two different types of characteristics that can be tested deductively in any other cases and, if sustained, can be used to help design appropriate policies to overcome intractability. First, five internal characteristics of intractability as a process will be discussed, and then three external characteristics of the context of intractability will be analyzed, both as a background for actions to be taken to break its hold on conflict.

1

I William Zartman, Analyzing Intractability,” in Chester A Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall, eds., Grasping the nettle (United States In statute of Peace 2005), pp. 47–64. Reprinted with permission. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 I. W. Zartman, I William Zartman: A Pioneer in Conflict Management and Area Studies, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06079-4_12

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Process

Five internal characteristics combine to identify intractable conflicts. They are protracted time, identity denigration, conflict profitability, conflict unripeness, and solution polarization. These are not causal elements for the conflict’s initiation but rather processual features that develop as the conflict continues and serve to develop and reinforce its intractability. They may be considered causal elements in the conflict’s intractability, but they are more appropriately considered as definitional elements that help make understandable the challenge and complexity of intractability (Mandel/Clarke 1982). As such, it is important that they be seen as obstructing characteristics that any effort to overcome intractability must face and that make this particular type of conflict so difficult to overcome. In addition, the significant feature of all these characteristics is their evolving and self-reinforcing nature. Even as identified, they are not static; they grow, in both degree and nature, extending and defending themselves, so that efforts to overcome them must penetrate several layers and deal with their protective dynamics. Protraction is a definitional characteristic of intractable conflict and it is self-reinforcing. Intractability feeds on intractability and grows with the feeding. As alluded to in the previous paragraphs, a skilled observer might point out ahead of time that a particular conflict has all the earmarks of something that will turn intractable over time, given a chance, but a conflict is not really intractable until it has gone on for a while and resisted attempts to render it tractable. It is impossible to give a fixed-time threshold to protraction, and even if one were possible, it would not help, since many of the cases examined in this book, while undeniably protracted, are not likely to attract agreement on how long they have actually lasted. All depends on when they were considered to have begun. But did the Sudanese conflict begin in 1983 (latest round) or 1956 (independence) or 1898 (colonization), the Balkan conflict in 1990 (Yugoslav collapse) or 1587 (battle of Kosovo), Angola in 1974 (independence) or 1960 (nationalist revolt) or 1665 (colonization), Colombia 1964 (FARC) or 1958 (National Front), Eurasia 1991 (end of the USSR) or 1917 (beginning of the USSR), Cyprus 1974 (Turkish invasion) or 1960 (independence), Korea 1953 (end of Korean War) or 1945 (partition), or Palestine 1947 (partition) or ca. 1800 B.C. (birth of Ishmael and Isaac?). Only the Kashmir conflict seems to have an agreed starting point with independence in 1947. The importance of protraction, however, lies not in its numerical duration but in that duration’s effect. Duration sets up an increasing number of hurdles in the course of the conflict that add to the problems of treating (etymologically, “tracting”) them. Conflicts are folded into the history and mythology of the parties, an ideological explanation for national efforts and problems, and so parties become reliant on them and are loath to part with them (Rosoux 2000). They become institutionalized by the parties, as Louis Kriesberg notes in the following chapter, the subjects of perverse routines for carrying out the conflict economically, stretching from alliances and resolutions to hotlines and border regimes. They become the subjects of sunk costs, the vehicles of entrapment, which blind the

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parties to possible cooperation and solution (Meerts 2005). As a result, parties become insulated against the perception of stalemate and the costs attached to it. Instead, they look for opportunities to escalate the conflict to possible advantage (transitive escalation) and at the same time become vulnerable to internal and external dynamics of the conflict to escalate on its own, by accident or incident (intransitive escalation) (Smoke 1977; Zartman 2005). In so doing, they turn old scars into new wounds, reaffirming history with new proofs and transforming momentary incidents into primordial hostility. In turn, the conflict develops a reputation for intractability, so the mediators do not want to touch it. Examples of this rolling degeneration can be found in all the conflicts treated here, as well as those not included. The Arab-Israeli conflict has become part of the justifying mythology of both sides, identifying the undifferentiated enemy and explaining delays in national economic development, as have the conflicts of the Balkans and Sudan. Routines for conducting daily affairs across the lines of conflict in these cases manage its permanence in the most efficient way possible and prevent the parties from feeling the pain of the deadlock that governs their daily lives; proposals in Cyprus, Korea, and Palestine for communication and interaction across the dividing lines seek to remove the inconveniences of the conflict without resolving the conflict itself or dissolving the parties to it. Instead, the conflicting parties in Angola, Colombia, Israel, and Sudan look for momentary changes in the conflict and its context to seize an offensive or initiative that will tip the balance of forces in their favor, and thereby escalate the conflict to a new level of intractability. And so, as U.S. under-secretary of state Lawrence Eagleburger, an expert on Yugoslavia, observed, “There is no rationality at all about ethnic conflict. It is gut; it is hatred; it’s not for any common set of values or purposes; it just goes on. And that kind of warfare is most difficult to bring to a halt” (quoted in Bert 1997: 102), and so the United States avoided any positive role in the Yugoslav conflict for five wasted years. Similar gaps in potential mediators’ attentions have marked the other conflicts studied in this book, reinforcing their characteristic protraction. Identities in intractable conflicts are not only polarized but are actually dependent on the denigration of the Other. Normally, there is nothing conflictual about identity: I can be me without my troubling or being troubled by your being you (Deng et al. 1996). Conflict can arise when identities become polarized, with no room for grayness or mixture in between: You are either one of us or against us. The polarized conflict moves toward intractability when identities become zerosum and one identity actually depends on demeaning and demonizing the other: Being myself requires me to put you down and deny your full identity as a human being. The examples are many and varied in the cases studied. Northern Sudanese feel required by their Muslim calling to denigrate the kafirs of the South and commonly refer to them as abid (slaves); Northern Irish Protestants feel a need to parade in Catholic neighborhoods to recall centuries-old victories over the Catholics, and vice versa; North and South Koreans justify their separate identities by the need to protect themselves against the aggressive inferiority of each other; the two lines of descendants from Abraham/Ibrahim, disputing all aspects of their common heritage down to the spelling of their common ancestor’s name, proclaim their separate

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superiorities, hold each other in disdain, and justify their beleaguered existence through the threat from the Other. And so it goes. Zero-sum identities are not the end of the problem, however. Because the identity of the party is threatened, the conflict takes on existential dimensions: it is a fight for life, for the survival of the party itself. Existential conflict can command enormous commitment and sacrifice from the parties and thus justify any pain and cost that the conflict entails. It plays back on the identity itself, turning it into a beleaguered self-awareness, and its object into an endangered species for which endangerment becomes part of the identity itself. Further ramifications include the formation of a grudge culture, in which people revel in being threatened, and the incorporation of conspiracy thinking, in which the/an enemy becomes the cause of all evil, often through fantastic machinations. Southern Sudanese, Bosniaks and Serbs, Chechens, Turkish Cypriots, Kashmiris, and Israelis and Palestinians often see their struggle as a fight for the continued existence of the nation, against an enemy bent on their elimination. As a result, compromise as a path to resolution becomes impossible, a half-step to suicide; the only position to take is to insist on total victory on one’s own side, thus reinforcing the opponent’s view of the conflict as existential. Profitability is a commonplace—someone profits in any conflict—and so is an oft-forgotten characteristic of lasting conflict, as attention focuses much more on the costs and losses, the pain and suffering, that unresolved conflict brings to the losers. Much research has been carried out lately attributing the feasibility—a synonym for duration—of conflict to “mobilizable” resources such as diamonds, drugs, and timber, as in Serbia, Angola, Colombia, and Chechnya. Initially sought by rebel groups to keep their struggle alive, resources give rise to a dependency that is habit forming and become the end rather than the means of the conflict (Collier 2000; Collier/Hoeffler 2002). On the other side of the conflict, governments value resources—especially oil—because they enable uncompromising pursuit of the conflict, as in Angola, Georgia, and Sudan among the present cases. Both sides’ calculations are relevant to the sustainability of intractable conflicts, and are little explored, counterintuitive, and obstructive of efforts at resolution. While the ability to bear the costs of conflict is basic to its duration, that ability is highly elastic, particularly under conditions of high commitment. States always have other ways to use fungible resources. But when the leaders of the conflict themselves get hooked on their resources, attention to initial grievances and underlying causes as a path to resolution becomes irrelevant. In any kind of continuing situation, however, profit-taking and parasitic industries are bound to arise. Most direct are the arms suppliers, and also the military charged with conducting the conflict and thereby winning an important role in the home country’s politics. But the military is not the only political actor to profit from conflict: political leaders come to power and make their reputations on their pursuit of the enemy and their defense of the homeland, leaving little room for doves (or even owls) in the hawks’ nest, Gaafar Mohamed Nimeiri and Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, and John Garang in Sudan, Slobodan Milosevic and Franjo Tudjman in Yugoslavia, Robert Kocharian in Armenia, Igor Smirnov in Transnistria, Jonas

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Savimbi and José Eduardo dos Santos in Angola, and Rauf Denktaş in Cyprus were only the more prominent politicians who made their careers on keeping their conflicts intractable, with profits from the venture that were not only political. Since war, like peace, makes money, profitability lurks somewhere in every intractable conflict, obscuring resolvable grievances for principal actors. Ripeness as a pressure toward negotiation tends to be absent in intractable conflict. Instead of a mutually hurting stalemate pushing the parties into a search for solutions, there is only a stable, soft, self-serving stalemate (S5) that is preferable to any attainable solutions and the uncertainties of a search for them (Zartman 1996). A S5 situation is generally bearable to the parties, both in the absolute and relative to any likely solution on the table at the moment (except one’s own, currently unattainable). It leaves each of the parties in control of some portion of the territory and population, able to claim that it has not been defeated, which is a victory of sorts. Because of other characteristics, such as zero-sum identity, the existential nature of the conflict, duration, and entrapment, a soft stalemate in a low-level conflict, even when punctuated by occasional blips of violence, avoids the worst, controls losses (gains are seen as impossible), and protects existence and identity— a prospect theorist’s dream (Farnham 1994). If there is ever any pressure to look for alternatives to conflict, it is one-sided instead of operating on both parties, and so one of the parties has every interest in pursuing the conflict while the other suffers; frequently the situation is reversed in a future change of fortunes. In many cases, a simultaneous sense of stalemate has not occurred to both parties, and in others even one-sided stalemate has not taken place. Sudan is a particularly good example of one-sided blockage that never hits both parties at the same time (Deng/Morrison 2000); Angola, Cyprus and Kashmir are others. North Korea has manipulated crises to avoid and rationalize its own stalemates and throw the monkey on another party’s back—South Korea, Japan, and the United States (Sigal 1998). A mutually hurting stalemate led to a cease-fire agreement in Karabagh in 1994 without resolving the basic issue (Mooradian/Druckman 1999); ripeness was also present and pressing for the Oslo negotiations, but the ensuing agreement failed in the implementation and both parties’ subsequent actions convinced the other that pain was a sign of commitment and a proof of the other’s unreliability (Pruitt 1997). The predominance of a S5 situation instead of ripe moments in intractable conflicts means that there is no pressure on the parties to come to a resolution of the conflict on their own or even to listen to mediators. At most, there may be motivation to manage the conflict, that is, to reduce the conflict to a less costly level without touching the basic issues and underlying causes, as in the Karabagh case. But reducing the cost also reduces the pressure for a settlement, and so further contributes to intractability. Indeed, since conflict management measures tend to carry with them the promise of conflict resolution at a later moment, when that next step is not taken, the conflict flares up again, heightened by feelings of betrayal and faithlessness, hardening the parties against sensitivity to ripeness and again contributing to the conflict’s intractability. Thus, like the other characteristics, the

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absence of ripeness in intractable conflicts contains a compounding element that reinforces and exacerbates its effects. Solutions in intractable conflicts also tend to be polarized. Whereas many conflicts are pulled toward one salient solution but experience difficulties in the process of getting there, intractables are generally characterized by the competing pulls of two salient solutions, posing an extreme Prisoners’ Dilemma (PDG) or collaboration problem, where non-cooperation, though mutually hurtful, is the outcome logically preferred to unilateral attempts at cooperation (Hasenclever et al. 1997: 46–48). Each side wants its solution in its entirety and can accept neither the Other’s nor even a combination of or a compromise between the two. The characteristic of existential, zero-sum identities hardens the parties’ demands for their competing solutions. When faced with one salient solution, a mediator is useful in finding ways of getting to it, overcoming distrust, providing step-by-step pathways, formulating combinations and compromises, and working out details. The mediator’s role is much more difficult and less clear, however, when confronted with a collaboration problem, in which there may in fact be no room and role for mediation at all. The Balkans, Eurasia, Karabagh, and Kashmir are all cases of competing solutions: the territory and its people go to one side or the other, and solutions are unacceptable to the loser. There is of course a salient solution in Kashmir in the form of the Line of Control that divides the area, but it does not have the strong justifications that underlie the two competing claims. Perhaps autonomous status could be considered an intermediate solution for Karabagh, but it is such a weak solution that it cannot stand up against the two salient solutions in the conflict. The Balkans presented a cascading succession of competing salient solutions, beginning with federal versus republics’ sovereignty and passing through various expressions of national versus state self-determination, the same polarized situation found in the Russian Near Abroad. Colombia may also be a case of two salient solutions, although it is not clear what the rebels’ solution is. In some cases there even was once a single salient solution, but it has been exhausted or delegitimized by previous misuse or failure. When a peace process focusing on a single salient solution breaks down, the people tend to feel betrayed and abused and cry out for blood, falling back on their own demands convinced that the other party is simply incapable of making peace, as in Colombia, Israel, and Palestine in 2002–03. Angola, Palestine, and Sudan illustrate the situation in which a former single salient solution was removed by misuse. Elections in Angola were rejected by the loser, Jonas Savimbi; the Oslo process toward the obvious two-state solution was delegitimized by Israeli delays and Palestinian reticence; and federation in Sudan was undermined by both President Jaafar Nimeiri and the South. Korea alone appears to be a case of a single salient solution of unification and no way to get there, in which the parties prefer the status quo (Choi 2001). It could be argued that any conflict begins with opposing solutions or notions of justice and that conflict resolution is merely a matter of finding a middle ground or an agreed sense of justice through the process of negotiation (Zartman 1999). What then distinguishes this situation from an intractable conflict? The answer returns to

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the distinction between nonexistent “true intractability” and conditional intractability. Although all conflicts tend to begin with a number of competing solutions, many soon move to an acceptable solution through a process of direct or mediated negotiation (or outright victory of one side). When they do not, they take on a characteristic of intractability. If a single salient solution emerges and attracts the conflicting parties’ attention, the condition of intractability recedes; if the parties cling to their competing solutions, it remains. The Middle East conflict illustrates this condition. Until United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 establishing the conditions for a Middle East settlement was enunciated in 1967, the conflict was intractable. The identification of a single salient solution, embodied in the formula “Security for territory,” and then its acceptance as the basis for Israeli withdrawals from Sinai and Golan in 1974–1975, moved the conflict away from intractability, and the peace treaties with Egypt and later Jordan ensued. The Syrian problem remains intractable, despite the formula. The negotiation of a modified formula at Oslo in 1993 moved the core conflict between Israel and Palestine away from intractability, but the breakdown of the Oslo process restored its intractability. That there are benchmark dates and events in this process but no absolute thresholds should not trouble even orderly minds accustomed to dealing in human relations. Together, these five characteristics—protraction, identity, profitability, ripeness, and solutions—are generally shared by intractable conflicts and go far to explain the difficulty of bringing them under control. While the characteristics are independent of one another, they also tend to reinforce one another, which in itself is an additional characteristic of intractability, making it hard to pry them apart and deal with them one by one. This interlocked, exacerbating dynamic is clearly expressed in the Cypriot reactions to the collapse of the European Union plan in March 2003: “I expected it to end like this, and I think things are going to be worse now in terms of cementing the final partition of the island [Greek Cypriot]…. I wish the Annan plan had never been introduced. It gave us hope, a hope which is obviously now a false one. As a Turkish Cypriot, I now wonder what our future will be, what my children’s future will be.… Many younger people want change, and many younger people Turkish Cypriots] are planning to leave the island.” (New York Times, 12 March 2003). As the characteristics show, intractability is a dynamic, self-reinforcing condition, digging an ever-deepening hole for itself and feeding itself like a vortex.

12.2

Geopolitics

One frequently mentioned characteristic has not been mentioned here—the contextual nature of intractability. It was long thought that lesser intractabilities were held in place by the biggest one of all, the East-West conflict of the Cold War. The end of the Great Intractable carried with it others as well—Cambodia, the Central American insurgencies, Mozambique, Germany, and Yemen, among others. Still

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others remained, intractable in their own right. Yet it would be hasty to dismiss the role of external actors and context. Whether in the global bipolar configuration or within some other geopolitical context, intractability is affected by its location. This characteristic is of a different nature than the preceding five because it is structural and external to the conflict rather than internal and process related. Three aspects of context are significant—embeddedness, bias, and buffering. None of them appear to be as universal as the internal characteristics, but they are still powerful influences in many cases. Many of the intractable cases are prolonged and made more difficult to resolve because they are embedded in a multilayered set of relationships. Left to their own devices, the parties might be able to find a solution in their own interests, but they have been hindered by the need to resolve several layers of the same conflict at once. All of the characteristics already noted—long history, zero-sum identities, conflict profitability, 4-S stalemates, polarized solutions—are heightened by the fact that the parties engage more distant patrons or supporters further away from the conflict as well. Parties are not puppets and patrons are not just string pullers; the relationship runs in both directions, but that is what complicates the conflict and its management. Patrons have their own interests in addition to those covering their involvement in the conflict; these interests probably favor management of the conflict and may even favor its settlement, independent of the interests of the parties themselves, but patron interests may also favor conflict continuation when the parties directly involved are tired and would like to settle if left to their own devices (Zartman 1992). Many of the examples are obvious. They begin with the Bosnian Serbs and Croats, shunted aside by Slobodan Milosevic and Franjo Tudjman under pressure from Charles Redman and Richard Holbrooke. They continue with Glafcos Clerides and especially Rauf Denktaş, players on the Greek and Turkish scenes as well as among Greek and Turkish Cypriots, with the conflict the key piece in Greek-Turkish relations. In Kashmir, the mujahideen are the tail that wags the Pakistani dog whereas the ruling Abdullah family, father and sons, were rather Indian agents; in between, Kashmiri nationalists are their own men, but the conflict is nonetheless the key piece in Pakistani-Indian relations, too. The second external or contextual characteristic concerns the biased relations of potential conflict managers to the intractable conflicts. Mediators with policies and interests that favor one of the conflicting parties tend to be hampered, both operationally and ideologically, in their efforts to bring the conflict to an end. Instead of being able to help the parties out of the conflict, the potential mediator sees its national interest in supporting one side and in assuring its continuing security or even victory, rather than in finding compromises. In many intractable conflicts, bias, however justified, has tended to affect the leading mediator, who then blocks the way for others who play the same role, possibly more effectively. In such cases, the parties are not going to get any real help out of their conflict, even though the mediator’s preferences may be very soundly grounded in interest and values. The United States, as the principal mediator on the world scene, has had its friends in the conflicts in Afghanistan, Angola, Colombia, Kashmir, Korea, and the

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Middle East, and its enemies (if not its friends) in Bosnia and Sudan. Mediation is not thereby impossible, as efforts in some of these cases have shown, but it does become much more delicate and difficult. The mediator is not required to be unbiased, but if it does have favorites it is expected to deliver their acceptance of the agreement (Touval/Zartman 2001), a requirement that can pose as much of an obstacle as evenhanded mediation itself. Most of the cases examined in this book also share a special form of embedded relations—a buffer status between major blocs, powers, or civilizations. Ideally, a buffer state is a neutral area with its own personality, contested by both sides but left alone as long as the other side does not claim it—the null possession status. The alternative is either partition between the two sides or domination by one of them. Some cases have long histories as buffers or contested areas; these include vestiges of a past rivalry or encroachments of one side on another that carry the buffer into foreign territory. In some cases the notion of the buffer is only one interpretation of the situation or even an element of the conflict itself, but in all cases it provides enough insight into the conflict to be sustainable. Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Sudan are classical cases of buffer states between large civilizational areas—Afghanistan the site of the Great Game between Russia and (British) India (Kipling 1896; Ahrari 1996), Kashmir between the Muslim and Hindu worlds, and Sudan between black and Arab Africa (Deng 1995). Korea is a double buffer, historically between China and Japan, synthesizing a vigorous civilization of its own out of elements from both neighbors and more recently being split between the free and communist worlds; like other split nations such as Germany, Vietnam, and Yemen (Choi 2000), Korea remains the site of intractable conflict only as long as the split is maintained. Of these cases, Afghanistan is the only true buffer, a neutral territory with its own identity between large forces—no longer just Russia and British India but Turkey, Pakistan and Iran, and behind them Russia and the United States, the British heir. Most other cases are buffers split between the forces they are supposed to buffer. Kashmir, Korea, and Cyprus (if an island can be a buffer) would also be examples of a true buffer if they were not divided into two parts. So would Sudan if John Garang’s dream of a single Sudanese civilization were realized instead of two nations (still) in the same state. Bosnia, too, was historically conceived as a buffer and may again become one if its state unity finally overcomes its national divisions. But in both bistate nations and binational states, it is the effort to either divide the buffer or take it over by one side or the other that causes the conflict and makes it intractable. The other cases are variations on the theme of differing magnitudes. Karabagh is a hostage in a smaller civilizational clash, between Christian Armenians and Muslim Azeris. Angola is an ethnically divided nation, between assimilados and indigenous peoples, as well as a victim of the Great Intractable and of a charismatic spoiler. Only Colombia represents a new and different type, not a buffer in any sense but simply a state dying of cancer, a chilling harbinger of catastrophes to come.

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These three structural characteristics—embeddedness, bias, and buffering—tend to be less dynamic than the processual ones, and they lack the latters’ self-reinforcing, exacerbating nature. In that sense, they may be easier to overcome or even turn into an advantage in managing intractable conflict.

12.3

Policy

There are answers to all of these eight characteristics; none is absolute. Answers may be more or less difficult to apply, but the advantage of identifying the characteristics is that they point to specific policies and tactics for resolving intractability. Thus, a special diplomacy is indeed required for intractables, not always distinct from normal diplomacy in all its details but special in its combination of policies and tactics. That combination is important, since optimally intractability needs to be countered on all its characteristics, lest on untended remain to revive the others. Dealing with intractability is not an incidental exercise; it requires sustained, coordinated effort. The other glaring lesson is the need for early action, before the exacerbating characteristics become operative. As in so many instances, vigilance, early awareness, and normal diplomacy need to be deployed if more costly, more encumbering, more difficult efforts to manage conflicts turned intractable are to be avoided (Zartman pending). Early efforts are the best answer to protraction, and efforts at any stage are always early in the course of a conflict untended. The best answer to entrapment is not to sink costs in yet another attempt to escalate out of the conflict that digs in deeper instead. The more fresh wounds and confirming incidents can be avoided, the more the self-reinforcing nature of protraction can be weakened, or at least prevented from further strengthening. The best time to interrupt protraction is a moment when the objective conditions of ripeness appear and can be used by interested third parties to cultivate the subjective perceptions of a mutually hurting stalemate and a way out, discussed later. This is what Chester Crocker did in 1987 after seven years of minding and ripening the Namibian-Angolan standoff, what Alvaro de Soto did in 1990 after tending the El Salvador civil war for four years and in 2002–03 after working in Cyprus for two years, and what Ibrahim Gambari was appointed by UN secretary-general Kofi Annan to do in 2002–03 after waiting out the post–Lusaka Protocol period since signature in 1994 (Crocker et al. 1999). Ripeness is a matter of perception and thus of persuasion. As the theory indicates, subjective perception is helped by objective evidence, but it is the former that is crucial. Mediators have an important role to play in capitalizing on the parties’ perception of ripeness, but they also have a crucial role to play in enhancing that perception if it does not appear on its own (Zartman 2000). Elements in such persuasion include convincing the parties that a mutually hurting stalemate exists in reality or looms in the future as the projection of the current course of conflict, or that a 4-S stalemate is neither soft nor stable nor satisfactory in comparison to the benefits that could be obtained from a settlement.

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Zero-sum identity is perhaps the most difficult to deal with because it is a broad popular perception rather than an elite matter, and thus more difficult to manipulate. Zero-sum identity underwrites competing solutions and makes single salient solutions hard to emerge. It also clouds the parties’ perceptions of a hurting stalemate, since it provides the righteous cause that thrives on pain. Thus, dealing with identity conflict requires enlightened leadership that is able to portray a better future for its people than dogged adherence to uncompromising notions of the self and finds greater satisfaction in material accomplishments and betterment. This is the basis for inducements from the mediator and the international community as part of a settlement, to divert attentions from identity fixations and turn them to the improvement of welfare. The identification of a single salient solution is crucial to any effort at resolution. Unless the two opposing solutions are not mutually exclusive and can be combined to produce a positive-sum outcome, dual competing solutions provide a mutually blocking situation and often lead to simply projecting the preferred outcome, however unattainable now, into the infinite future. The merging of two competing solutions into one was seen in the Namibia-Angola negotiations, but the projection of the integral solution into the future when even half a loaf is not considered attainable is now seen in the Palestinians’ reversion to total claims under Hamas after the failure of Oslo. Identifying and legitimizing the salience of a single solution is a matter of persuasion, like all diplomacy, but it is good to identify it as a prime target of focus. It can also be reinforced by repetition and legitimization by international organizations and nongovernmental fora. Buffer state status is one such salient solution, as discussed below. The current focus on profitability, particularly through blood diamonds and drugs, has led to measures of control through the United Nations in regard to Angola and Sierra Leone, for example, or national measures of control such as by the United States in regard to Colombian drugs and Sudanese oil. However, there is no possibility of eliminating the characteristic; the most important policy advice is to be aware of it and to try to control its relevant form in particular cases. The structural characteristics lend themselves more directly to policy applications, by their nature. Bias can be combined with effective mediation, but it requires an enlightened understanding by the mediator as a background to its skillful exercise of persuasion on the parties. There are times when keeping one’s ally in the game is the most a third party can do, and so doing weakens any possibility of mediation. But there are other times in the same conflict when such support can be turned to the advantage of mediation, when helping the parties out of a costly conflict can be portrayed as the best way to protect one’s ally’s interests, and when the possibility of delivering one’s ally to an agreement satisfactory to both sides is the key to protecting the mediator’s relations and interests with both parties. The mediator may be able to formulate the terms of an agreement that protects the interests of the party it favors while providing enough benefits for the other side to gain its acceptance. Alternatively, the mediator may find its own interest in an evenhanded agreement, despite its own biases, in order to keep or restore good relations with both parties. Nonetheless, these ways out of the mediator’s dilemma

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are not easy recipes for playing one side and the middle at the same time. But the mediator itself must be persuaded of this possibility before it can help the parties out of their conflict. Historically, buffering has been a useful concept, and the elimination of a buffer state tends to have serious consequences, as moments in the histories of Cambodia, Moldova, Poland, and others have shown. The most successful buffer states are those that are allowed to develop their own culture and integrity and are left to perform their buffering functions undisturbed. The histories of Afghanistan, Cambodia, Chad, Cyprus, and Korea, among others, show that external meddling is deleterious to healthy buffering, but the histories of Mauritania, Nepal, and Sudan show that buffer states do not always perform well even when left alone. In general, as a policy recommendation, either splitting a buffer state between the two sides or taking it over by one of them tends to prolong conflict rather than reducing it, even if respecting buffer states does not always assure that they will buffer well. Embeddedness can constitute and opportunity as well as an obstacle to the resolution of intractables. One of Crocker’s lessons, applied to the southwest African dispute, was to separate the external dimension from the internal dimension of the conflict (Crocker 1992), an insightful tactic that has been found pertinent elsewhere as well. Whatever the judgment one holds on the degree of concessions at Camp David in 1979, separation of the Israeli-Egyptian dimension from the larger Arab- (including Palestinian-) Israeli context made the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty possible. Attempts have been made to deal with Cyprus directly, disconnected from Greek-Turkish relations, or to deal with Cyprus by first improving Greek-Turkish relations, although it is the accession of Cyprus, in part or in whole, to the European Union that put the greatest pressure on both levels of the conflict for a solution. Separation of the Angolan conflict from its Cold War and even southern African context made the 1992 Bicesse and 1994 Lusaka agreements possible, even if the core conflict itself proved stronger than their implementation. Embedded conflicts face the challenge of double triangulation, whereby the host country of a neighbor’s insurgency finds support for the insurgency in its interest in its relations with the home country, until the time when hosting begins to hurt it and then its interest turns to reconciliation with its neighbor at the expense of the insurgency, a challenge repeatedly faced by Sudan’s neighbors, particularly Ethiopia and Uganda (Zartman 1996). But embeddedness may be also construed as the key required for the solution of a conflict as complex and prolonged as intractables. The rejected mediation in Cyprus suggests the importance of using a larger project or relationship such as would have been provided by European Union accession for only a united island as the bait and guarantor of a stable, long-term solution in the same way as European unification formed the context for the elimination of the intractable Franco-German dispute (Rosoux 2001). Similarly, the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 and the Conference (now Organization) on Security and Cooperation in Europe (C/OSCE) provided the nest for the solution of the intractable Cold War. The multilateral arrangements provided in the Madrid peace process were designed to provide a network of relationships to enmesh the search for an Israeli-Palestinian solution. It

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is striking that none of the other intractables furnish any examples of such attempts. Conflicts as big as intractables require a big solution. Short of a solution, the best approach to intractables may well be one of management rather than resolution, for all the traps that conflict management contains, already noted. Management preserves the conflict for resolution another day, at a more propitious time, and may be able to forestall the self-reinforcing effects of some of the characteristics. After all, freezing is better and less painful than boiling.

References Ahari, M E 1996. The New Great game in Muslim Central Asia, McNair Paper 47 (Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University). Bert, Wayne 1997. The Reluctant Superpower: United States’ Policy in Bosnia 1991–95 (St Martin’s). Choi, Sukyong 2001. “Divided States: Reunifying without Conquest.” in I William Zartman, ed., Preventive Negotiation (Rowman and Littlefield). Collier, Paul 2000. “Rebellion as a Quasi-Criminal Activity.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 44 4:839–853. Collier, Paul & Hoeffler, Anke 2002. “On the Edge of Civil War in Africa.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 46 1:13–28. Crocker, Chester A 1992. High Noon in Southern Africa (Norton). Crocker, Chester A, Hampson, Fen Osler & Aall, Pamela, eds. 1999. Herding Cats: Multiparty Mediation in a Complex World (Washington, D.C.: US Institute of Peace). Deng, Francis 1995. War of Visions (Brookings Institution). Deng, Francis & Morrison, Stephen 2000. Task Force Report on Sudan (Center for Strategic and International Studies). Deng, Francis et al. 1996. Sovereignty as Responsibility (Brookings Institution). Farnham, Barbara, ed. 1994. Avoiding Losses/ Taking Risks (University of Michigan Press). Hasenclever, Andreas, Mayer, Peter & Rittberger, Volker 1997. Theories of International Regimes (Cambridge University Press). Kipling, Rudyard, 1896. Kim. Mandel, Robert & Clarke, Sarah 1982. “Intractability and International Bargaining,” paper presented to the annual meeting of the International Studies Association. Meerts, Paul 2005. “Entrapment and Escalation,” in I William Zartman & Guy Olivier Faure, eds., Escalation and Negotiation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Mooradian, Moorad & Druckman, Daniel 1999. “Hurting Stalemate or Mediation? The Conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, 1990–95.” Journal of Peace Research 36 6:709–727. New York Times. 2003. “Cypriots Unsurprised as 4th Peace Deal Fails.” March 12, A8. Pruitt, Dean G, ed. 1997. “Lessons Learned from the Middle East Peace Process.” Special Issue of International Negotiation 2, no. 2. Rosoux, Valerie 2000. Les usages de la mémoire dans les relations internationales (Bruylant). Sigal, Leon 1998. Disarming Strangers (Princeton University Press). Smoke, Richard 1977. War (Harvard University Press). Touval, Saadia & Zartman, I William 2001. “International Mediation in the Post–Cold War Era.” in Chester A. Crocker, Fen Hampson, & Pamela Aall, eds., Turbulent Peace: The Challenges of Managing International Conflict, 427–443 (United States Institute of Peace Press). Zartman, I William 1992. “Internationalization of Communal Strife,” in Manus Midlarsky, ed., The Internationalization of Communal Strife (Routledge).

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Zartman, I William 1999. “Justice in Negotiation,” in Peter Berton, Hiroshi Kimura & I William Zartman, eds., International Negotiation: Actors, Structure/Process, Values (St Martin’s Press). Zartman, I William 2000. “Ripeness: The Hurting Stalemate and Beyond.” in Paul Stern & Daniel Druckman, eds., International Conflict Resolution after the Cold War (National Academy). Zartman, I William 2005. “The Dynamics of Escalation,” in I William Zartman & Guy Olivier Faure, eds., Escalation and Negotiation (Cambridge University Press, 2005). Zartman, I William ed. 1996. Elusive Peace: Negotiating to End Civil War (Brookings Institution) [in this collection]. Zartman, I William ed. 2001. “Negotiating Internal Conflict: Incentives and Intractability.” Special issue of International Negotiation 6, no. 3.

Chapter 13

The State of Collapse

In the world after the Cold War, not only has the bipolar interstate system of world order dissolved, but in many places the state itself has collapsed.1 State collapse is a deeper phenomenon than mere rebellion, coup or riot. It refers to a situation where the structure, authority (legitimate power), law and political order have fallen apart and must be reconstituted in some form, old or new. On the other hand, it is not necessarily anarchy. Nor is it simply a byproduct of the rise of ethnic nationalism; it is the collapse of old orders, notably the state, that brings about the retreat to ethnic nationalism as the residual, viable identity, and not the reverse. Indeed, one hypothesis to be pursued is that when the state collapses, order and power (but not always legitimacy) falls down to local groups or is up for grabs. These ups and downs of power then vie with central attempts to reconstitute authority. For a period, the state itself as a legitimate, functioning order is gone. The phenomenon is historic and worldwide (Yaffee/Cowgill 1985; Tainter 1988), but nowhere are there more examples than in contemporary Africa. The African state is a new state, successor to a colonial, non-sovereign creation, and this newness at sovereignty, coupled with colonialist claims of African unreadiness for independence, led to early skepticism about its viability. Against all predictions, so surprisingly that it had to be explained (Jackson/Rosberg 1986), the African state persisted. It overrode lustier proclamations of continental and regional unity, formed a dominant bloc in the UN and other world fora, and imposed itself on its citizens’ lives. But here and there, it collapsed. That collapse, as seen in the modern state phenomenon in Africa and elsewhere, is different from the historical phenomenon associated with giant civilizations of the past, and in its difference throws some light on its own nature. Current state collapse in the Third World but even in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe is not a matter of civilizational decay. Society carries on, in ways to be discussed below, I William Zartman, “Posing the Problem of State Collapse” and “Putting Things Back Together” in I William Zartman, ed., Collapsed States; The Disintegration and Restoration of legitimate Authority, pp 1–14 and 267–274. Lynne Rienner 1995. Reprinted with permission.

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and while ideology, regime and order change, it is hard to claim that a civilization has been destroyed. Nor is the process merely an organic characteristic of growth and decay, a life cycle in the rise and fall of nations or “a continuous aspect in the life of human societies and not an anomalous response to some sort of irregular or periodic stress.” (Eisenstadt 1967, 1969, 1988: 236). State collapse, as a current phenomenon, is much more specific, narrow, and identifiable, a political cause and effect with social and economic implications, and one that indeed represents a significant anomaly. Indeed, discussion of the problem is based on an assumption characteristic of the current era, that territory and population is expected to be divided into political jurisdictions that determine, however unevenly, the order and authority within their confines. Rather than pose the nature of that phenomenon and then proceed to examine its occurrence deductively against a logical construct, this study of state collapse will reverse the procedure and develop an initial analysis inductively from a brief empirical review. It will then return to individual case studies to apply and expand the original analysis, leading to policy relevant conclusions about the restoration of legitimate authority. This path has been chosen in order to make the most of Africa’s experience. Our purpose here is not merely to learn about Africa an exercise of current interest to a small audience, but to learn from Africa a project of much wider importance. Even in its misfortunes and malfunctions, Africa has much to teach the world.

13.1

State Collapse in Africa

It might be said that contemporary African history began in state collapse, in the famous events associated with the collapse of the colonial state in Congo (for a time Zaire), but it is more remarkable that Congo was an isolated exception to the otherwise successful transfer of authority from colonial to independent rule throughout the continent (Callaghy 1984, 1987; Young 1984). In the Congo in 1960, the state that collapsed was the colonial state, marked by the refusal of state institutions (army, executives, local governments and populations) to recognize each other’s authority. While these characteristics reappear in independent state collapse in the following decades, the Congo case is of greater relevance for its lessons about state reconstitution. An international intervention to restore law and order, a strongman installed with foreign connivance—these were the means of restoring the state and the elements in its gradual collapse again two or three decades later. State collapse in independent Africa is not a phenomenon of colonial withdrawal, but a condition of nationalist, second- or later-generation regimes ruling over established, if minimally-functioning, states. The phenomenon occurred in several waves. One came toward the end of the second decade of independence, when regimes that had replaced the original nationalist generation were overthrown, carrying the whole state structure with them into a vacuum. In Chad in 1980–1982,

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state collapse resulted from a factional civil war among the guerrilla victors over the previous regime, and the destruction of all of the branches of central government executive, legislative, judiciary, and bureaucracy. In Uganda in 1979–1981, it came about after Idi Amin Dada had concentrated all power in his own delegitimizing hands and then fallen to a coalition of oppositions, leaving a power vacuum. In Ghana under the Third Republic of Hilla Liman (1979–1981) between the two interventions of Flt. Lt Jerry Rawlings, where collapse was less total than in the previous cases, the center nonetheless lost its control over the countryside and its ability to perform government functions even in the capital as opposition became more organized than the state and coercion and corruption replaced government (Chazan 1983). In all of these cases, an established but poorly functioning regime had been replaced by a military regime that concentrated power but was unable to exercise it effectively or legitimately, making the state contract and implode. But the characteristics and tenure of the various governments differed widely. The second round came another decade later and continued to extend into the 1990s and into new cases. One study (Nellie 1993) characterized half the African states as being in serious (12)—Algeria, South Africa, Sudan, Cameroun, Madagascar, Malawi, Kenya, Djibouti, Nigeria, Niger, Togo, Mali—or maximum (8)—Angola, Mozambique, Rwanda, Burundi, Congo, Ethiopia, Chad, Sierra Leone—danger of collapse, if not already gone. Their condition is not too different from the earlier cases: The authoritarian successors of the nationalist generation were overthrown by a new successor regime that could destroy but not replace, and government functioning and legitimacy receded (Arnson/Zartman 2005). In Somalia after 1990, Siad Barre so concentrated power in the hands of his clan that the whole country rose against him, using their own clans as their organizing base and delegitimizing both the idea and the practice of central state government. In Liberia after 1990, Samuel Doe’s concentration of power in his hands for the benefit of his ethnic group alienated the rest of the country in support of Charles Taylor’s rebellion, but international intervention and other groups arose to grasp for power as it fell from Doe to Taylor after 15 separate negotiations (Mutwol 2009). Beyond these two cases of clear collapse are others or similar characteristics. In Ethiopia, after 1990, the 30-year Eritrean rebellion, first against the Emperor and after 1974 against the Marxist military regime that overthrew him, finally overcame the military with the aid of other ethnic rebellions, but was unable to combine ethnic self-determination with effective central government. In this case, the state retracted in effectiveness and legitimacy but state collapse was not as complete as in Somalia and Liberia. In Angola and Mozambique, on the other hand, the postcolonial state was contested by a regional rebellion since independence in 1974. A truce was finally negotiated for Angola in 1991 between the Peoples Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) government and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), but the resulting election was rejected by UNITA and civil war continued until the UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi was killed. A truce was finally negotiated for Mozambique in 1992 between the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FreLiMo) government and the Mozambican National Resistance Movement (ReNaMo) and elections occurred. In neither case did central

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government disappear. but its exercise and legitimacy were severely restricted throughout the countryside and its effectiveness limited even in its own territory. The pattern here is different from the previous cases. The wave of the 1990s was spent but other cases loomed with certainty on the horizon. In Sudan, in a situation similar to Angola, Mozambique and Ethiopia, the southern rebellion that raged between 1955 and 1972 reemerged after 1982 and was only brought under control with a Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005, to be followed by total collapse of the South, once it became independent in 2011; as the rebellion became broader, moving from Southern regionalism to national revolution, the government became more restricted in its identity and response, moving from national assertion to Islamist repression and alienating many regions of the country. The writ of the government does not run nationwide, and collapse at the center is possible. In both Rwanda and Burundi, agreements to democratize the political system in late 1993 ran up against traditional, coincident ethnic and class animosities and turned the countries into bloodbaths into 1994, sweeping away the order and authority of the state. That authority was restored by a stern government armed with public memories of past events (as in Algeria). In Zaire (Congo), in a pattern similar to that of the 1980s wave. Mobutu Sese Seko, the answer of the 1960s, found himself isolated, alienated and, moreover, broke. A popular uprising gave rise to a Mobutu redux without the charisma, Joseph Kabila, who clung to power by letting his country slip back into chaos. Again, the greatest barrier to anarchy, as in Rwanda and Algeria, was the restraining memory of the bloody disorders of three decades before. But the state, as a national authority, collapsed. Two other cases that may well avoid total state collapse have enlightening similarities. In South Africa, against all precedent and predictions, negotiations between the majority led by the African National Congress (ANC) and the apartheid government of the National Party (NP) arrived at an agreement for power-sharing over a five-year transition period, averting the bloodbath that both sides’ leadership feared. South Africa overcame the dilemma of a government, trying to maintain law and order as it negotiated its own replacement in the face of its own illegitimacy, and an opposition, hoping to maintain law and order over its followers while delegitimizing the government. After a dramatic and iconic start under Nelson Mandela, the government slipped into corruption and authoritarianism. State collapse is a rising threat: South Africa, it is said, has not yet had its revolution. In Algeria, a reputedly strong state sudden showed its clay feet in the massive popular riots and intra-government dissention of 1988. Struggling to keep ahead of its own collapse, it has not been able to make and carry out decisions since then and has resorted to a state of emergency to hold off the popular authoritarianism of an Islamist opposition’s electoral victory. The state remained in place but paralyzed. [A quarter of a century later, two of Nellier’s first group ([South] Sudan and Mali) and five of the second (Rwanda, Burundi, Congo, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, plus Central African Republic and Liberia) had undergone state collapse in some form. While Afghanistan in the post-Soviet period is a case of state collapse outside of Africa, few other cases outside Africa stand out as clearly]

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State Collapse in Africa

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Behind these instances lie broader questions. In looking at the causes and characteristics of state collapse, what separates the phenomenon from conflicts and changes that occur without destroying the state? What are preemptive measures appropriate to meet the causes—how can state collapse be recognized on the horizon and prevented? What are effective remedies for such characteristics—how can collapsed states be put back together?

13.2

The Concept of State Collapse

Why do states collapse? Because they can no longer perform the functions required for them to pass as states. A seminal work on political change opened with a chapter entitled, “Political Order and Political Decay,” touched lightly on the challenge toward the end of the chapter: “Most societies, …, suffer a loss of political community and decay of political institutions during the most intense phase of modernization. This decay in political institutions has been neglected or overlooked in much of the literature on modernization …. Who, …, has advanced such a theory of political decay or a model of a corrupt political order which might be useful in analyzing the political process of the countries usually called ‘developing’? (Huntington 1968: 86). The search for such a model or theory must begin with an understanding of the nature of the object under decay or collapse. A state is the authoritative political institution that is sovereign over a recognized territory (Dawisha/Zartman 1988: 7). This definition focuses on three functions: the state as the sovereign authority, the accepted source of identity and the arena of politics, the state as an institution and therefore a tangible organization of decision-making and an intangible symbol of identity, and the state as the security guarantor for a populated territory. Because these many functions are so intertwined, it becomes difficult to perform them separately; a weakening of one function drags down others with it. It also becomes difficult to establish an absolute threshold of collapse. Collapse means that the basic functions of the state, as analyzed in various theories of the state, are no longer performed. As the decision-making center of government, the state is paralyzed and inoperative; laws are not made, order is not preserved, and societal cohesion is not enhanced (Badie/Birnbaum 1983). As a symbol of identity, it has lost its power of conferring a name on its people and a meaning to their social action (Dyson 1980; Migdal 1988). As a territory, it is no longer assured security and supply by a central sovereign organization (Poggi 1978). As the authoritative political institution, it has lost its legitimacy, which is therefore up for grabs, and so has lost its right to command and conduct public affairs (Weber 1958; Ferrero 1942). As a system of socio-economic organization, its functional balance of inputs and outputs is destroyed; it no longer receives supports from nor exercises controls over its people, and it no longer is even the target of demands because its people know that it is incapable of providing supplies. No

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longer functioning, with neither traditional nor charismatic nor institutional sources of legitimacy, it has lost the right to rule. Does this pervasive incapacity occur because the state itself collapses as the authoritative political institution or because society beneath it has become incapable of providing the supports and demands it needs? Civil society, used here to designate the social, economic and political groupings that structure the demographic tissue, is distinct and independent of the state but potentially under its control, performing demand and support functions in order to influence, legitimize, and/or replace the state (cf Gramsci 1967; Hegel l952; Kean 1988). Although the current debate over state-society relations has produced useful insights into the two overlapping parts of the polity, it is an exercise in occurrence of collapse. Indeed, state collapse is conceptually significant because it shows the necessary imbrication of the two components, whose degeneration necessarily entails the debilitation of the other. State collapse is the breakdown of good governance, law and order; the state, as a decision-making, executing and enforcing institution, can no longer take and implement its decisions. State collapse is also the breakdown of social coherence on an extended level; society, as the generator of institutions of cohesion and maintenance, can no longer create, aggregate and articulate the supports and demands which are the foundations of the state (Hyden/Bratton 1992). In between the two, the links and overlaps of state and society fall away. The normal politics of demands and responses atrophies, the political processes for popular legitimization are discarded or prostituted, politics and economics are localized, and the center becomes peripheral to the workings of society. A more specific version of the causal question is, Did the state fall apart because it was the wrong institution, not an appropriately African state? Various ways of answering the question seem to turn up negative. On one hand, no common theme or characteristic runs through the cases of collapse which would indicate that collapse was the result either of the same malfunction in the state or of particularly badly adapted Western institutions. While parliaments, parties and bureaucracies in Africa seem to have difficulties in living up to Montesquieu’s, Madison’s or Weber’s standards, these shortcomings do not seem to be the key to collapse, nor do these institutions function any better in non-collapsing states in Africa. Nonetheless, it can be said that the poor performance of their functions—representation, interest articulation, output efficiency—are broad causes of state collapse, whether performed by the ‘proper’ institution by Western practices or by some surrogate more suited to local African conditions. It can also be affirmed, perhaps axiomatically, there is no typical “African state,” especially adapted to African circumstances or specifically derived from a pre-colonial proto-institution, but rather a set of functions which need to be performed for the coherence and the effectiveness of the polity, anywhere. Similarly, another intuitive version of the causal question might be, Did the state collapse because it had turned into an evil or tyrannical institution, in which the necessary balance between coercive and rewarding functions was disrupted in favor of the former? As the longstanding debate over the state as a social contract has

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The Concept of State Collapse

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brought out, individuals in society trade in their freedom for security and constraints in creating a state. When the state overplays its control functions, it loses the willing allegiance and legitimizing support of its population. This is the hard state, often confused with the strong state, and the events of the early 1990s—the collapse of ideologized tyranny in the Soviet Union and of constitutionalized racism in South Africa—would support the hypothesis that authoritarianism is the cause of state collapse and that tyranny in the end will destroy not only its own hard state but also its oppressed society. The only cloud on this silver-lined conclusion would be that society too pays the price of tyranny, since it is the tyrant’s destruction of the institutions of civil society that make his own destruction a matter of collapse rather than simple replacement. Comforting though the positive aspects of this conclusion might be, they are not the whole story. While the cases of Idi Amin in Uganda, Mengistu Haile Mirianin Ethiopia, Samuel Doe in Liberia, Siad Barre in Somalia, and Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire bear out the origins of collapse in tyranny, many other cases are not that clearcut. In Chad, and the perhaps partial cases of Ghana, Mozambique, Algeria and South Africa, the regime was indeed so bad that people rose up against it, yet—as in the previous group of cases—were unable to fully fill the vacuum. But it was bad in its unwillingness—institutionalized in South Africa—to meet the needs of its people, in the managerial incapacity of the center to care for the periphery. These cases were instances of neglect, corruption and incompetence, with the tyrannical aspects of the regime adopted to repress the resulting dissatisfaction. The state pulled into itself and imploded, a black hole of power. These two categories—the extreme and the not so clear-cut—are not as distinct from each other as might first appear. What holds them together, however, is not the basic maleficence of the state as a cause of collapse, but, paradoxically, the effectiveness of the state before its collapse, through repression and neglect, in destroying the regulative and regenerative capacities of society. Hard or soft, evil or merely incapable, the collapsing state contracts, isolates itself, retreats, sapping the vital functions of society as well as it implodes. State collapse involves the breakdown not only of the governmental superstructure but also of the societal infrastructure as well. The important question then becomes, How do states collapse? The pattern is remarkably similar across the cases. Its most striking characteristic is that it is not a shortterm phenomenon or crisis without early warnings, nor a matter of simply a coup or a riot. State collapse is a longterm degenerative disease but also one whose outcome is not inevitable; cure and remission are possible. The whole process may be likened to an object tumbling down a staircase—or the movie version of a car falling slowly down a cliff—landing and teetering on each step it hits, then either regaining its balance and coming to rest, or losing its balance again and slowly bouncing down to the next step, to repeat the exercise. Many states recover their balance and return to more or less normal functions, but the states that reach the bottom of the stairs are the cases of collapse. Collapse, then, is an extreme case of governance problems or excessive burdens on governing capacity, a matter of

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degree but not a difference in nature from the normal difficulties of meeting demands and exercising authority (Yoffee/Cowgill l988: 259–266). In more detail, this means that a governing regime—often ruled by the independence generation of civilians—after being in power for a long time wears out its ability to satisfy the demands of various groups in society. Resources dry up, either for exogenous reasons or through internal waste and corruption (selective misallocation). Social and ethnic demand-bearing groups feel neglected and alienated, causing an atmosphere of dissatisfaction and opposition, which in turn draws increased exclusion, repression and use of police and military to keep order. With nobody to watch the watchmen, the military moves in to take over, tired of repressing its fellow citizens for a corrupt government, and some military regimes are able to reverse a downward spiral. When they do not, a new government is no better at generating resources, stabilizing allocations, and productively channeling the opposition groups than was its predecessor and so it relies even more on control and coercion. This inability may take a short or a long time to become apparent but it should be no surprise—no military is attuned to responding to the demands of public groups, nor used to raising the resources that it is accustomed to consume, nor open to free and fir elections to judge its performance and chose its successors. When its inadequacies become unsustainably apparent and the regime falls, it brings down with it the power that it concentrated in its hands. The regime collapses into a vacuum that it has created by repressing the demand-bearing groups of civil society. What distinguishes this scenario from other instances of government change is the inability of civil society to rebound to fill positions, restore faith support governance, and rally round the successor. The maimed pieces into which the contracting regime has cut civil society do not come back together under a common identity, working together, sharing resources. The whole cannot be reassembled and instead the components of society oppose the center and fend for themselves on the local level. Organization, participation, security, production and allocation fall into the hands of those who will fight for it—warlords, political entrepreneurs and gang leaders, often using the ethnic principle as a source of identity, followers, and control in the absence of anything else. There are variations on the scenario, usually occurring at the beginning or the end of the military reaction. The military takeover may come not from the army but from a armed rebellion against the government. A clear victory usually provides central control and reinvigorating leadership, at least for a while, as the scenario indicates. But often the rebellion becomes bogged down on the way to the capital, falling prey to the same type of divisions that are splintering society. Full collapse is averted and a weak government hangs on, its authority gone and its de facto power limited to the capital. As in the case of full collapse, government retracts and the countryside is left on its own, organizing its own life by or against the rebellion and the remnant state. In general, relations between the state and the local institutions were already tenuous or exploitative in the period immediately preceding state collapse.

13.2

The Concept of State Collapse

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State collapse is marked by the loss of control over political and economic space. The two effects work in opposite directions. Neighboring states encroach on the collapsing state’s sovereignty by involving themselves in its politics directly and by hosting dissident movements who play politics from neighboring sanctuaries. As a result, the political space—the territory where politics is played—of the collapsing state is broader than its boundaries (Zartman 1999). On the other hand, its economic space retracts, in two ways. The informal economic tends to take over, overshading the formal economy in its transactions and escaping the control of the state. At the same time, parts of the national territory become lost to neighboring economies, often using the neighbor’s currency and tying in to neighboring regions’ trade. Neighboring currencies were in use in Chad in 1980, in Ethiopia in the late 1980s, and in Zaire in the 1990s, among others. Reconstructing the state means, among others, constructing national politics in the national territory and restoring national economic flows throughout the territory. What is notable in these scenarios is the absence of clear turning points, warning signals, thresholds, or pressure points. The momentary respites (the stairtreads) are often evident, but the elements of the next round of fall (the risers—or ‘fallers’) are unclear. To blur the image, the slippery slope, the descending spiral, and the downward trend are the marks of state collapse, rather than deadlines and triggers. The toad is not marked with ripe moments and clear, appropriate responses. Incumbents have a tendency to view slippery slopes as merely grades on the normally bumpy terrains of politics, making it difficult to focus their attention on the gravity of the problem until it too late and difficult to prescribe measures. Nonetheless, the slippery slope has some notable characteristics near the bottom and these do serve as ultimate warnings. Once they are identified, the question then becomes: Can anything be done about the situation if it is simply too late? Five of these ultimate signposts are identifiable, even though it is not clear whether they are in the right order or not (or whether there is an order at all). (1) Power devolve to the peripheries when (because) the center fights among itself. Those in central power are too busy defending themselves against attacks from their colleagues to hold onto the reins if power over the countryside. Local authority is up for grabs and local power grabbers—future warlords—grab it. (2) Power withers at the center by default because central government loses its power base. It no longer pays attention to the needs off its social roots and they withdraw their support. The center instead relies on its innermost trusted circles: this may be an ethnic or regional group, or a functional group such as an army officers’ clique. Attention to the needs and demands of the smaller group diverts allocations from the broader social sources of support. (3) Government malfunctions by avoiding necessary but difficult choices. Such measures mount in urgency and difficulty as a result, facing the state with a governing crisis. Decisional avoidance can take place either because of institutional incoherence, in which the mechanisms of government are inadequate to their challenges, or because of political flabbiness, in which the politicians themselves are incapable of biting the bullet. The effect is the same.

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(4) The incumbents practice only defensive politics, fending off challenges and reducing threats, concentrating on procedural rather than substantive measures. Such measures include both repression and concession, both taken to get the opposition off their back. What is absent is a political agenda for participation and programs. Elections are postponed, platforms are absent. (5) Probably the ultimate danger sign is when the center loses control over its own state agents, who begin to operate on their own account. Officials exact payments for their own pockets, and law and order is consistently broken by the agents of law and order, the police and army units becoming gangs and brigands. The antidote to these ultimate signs of collapse is simply to reverse them. But it is obvious that their very nature makes reversal extremely difficult; the process at this point nearly needs to run its course before a new structure of law and order or legitimate authority can be reconstructed.

13.3

Putting Things Back Together

We study how states collapse in order to learn how to put them back together, for the record of actual reconstructions is thin. The only clear cases before the end of the Cold War are those from 1960 and the late 1970s, and their lessons are as enlightening in the negative as in the positive. The response to colonial state collapse in Congo was the installation of a strongman with foreign backing, which created the problem of Zaire in the 1990s. A similar answer in Chad led to the strongman’s replacement by the end of his decade in power, as an overreliance on coercion and distant foreign support alienated both domestic forces and the traditional foreign patron, France. Ghana and Uganda have shown the importance of a strongman, foreign support, and economic resurrection. In none of the cases of the late 1970s was direct UN or foreign state intervention a significant factor, and if the reconstructing regimes all tried to gain popular support, only in Ghana was there an opportunity for multiparty democracy to function, over a decade after the strongman took over power (Boahen 1994). The cases of the 1980s and 1990s only underscore the importance of the question of how to reconstruct, and the cases after 2000—Somalia, Central Africa, South Sudan, Mali, and Libya, with Congo lurking in the wings for a repeat performance —provided even more deadly and dramatic need for state-rebuilding from zero and even lower. In the search for answers, it is first necessary to reaffirm that reconstruction of the sovereign state is necessary. While the 1990s have seen a revived debate over the concept of sovereignty, formerly considered absolute and indivisible and now perceived to be weak and porous, that discussion also takes place in an era when more is expected from the state than ever before. Such universal expectations cannot be met by a weakened institution. State functions cannot be left to even a

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Putting Things Back Together

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well-functioning society, any more than society can abdicate its activities to the state. Sovereignty needs to be reasserted as a responsibility, and not either a cover for tyranny or a relic of a world order past. The state needs to be restored and its sovereignty needs to be reinstated as the criterion for accountability, short of which its government is not legitimate. It should also be emphasized that, while statehood needs to be reconstituted in the modern age, it may in some unusual cases be achieved only by changing its dimensions. As the case of Ethiopia and Sudan have shown (at least for the moment), along with more numerous cases in the former Soviet Union and its satellites, the restoration of the state to health may require the amputation of an infected member (‘infected’ in the sense of suffering from a reaction and inflammation against the state’s control), although the examples do not speak well for the health of either the amputee or the remaining body. But the case for reshaping the restored state has to be made, in each instance, rather than assumed, and some hard questions must be asked about both the viability of the severed member and the popular basis of support for its continued separate existence. Independence is still the highest political value available to a community; it is not to be asserted lightly nor claimed without struggle and sacrifice. Indeed, except for these two cases, there is not a case for which a change in boundaries or secession of a territory is a necessary condition for state restitution. Moreover, even in those cases where secession has been posed as a possibility— Somalia, Zaire, South Africa. Mali, Cameroun, Senegal—the potentially seceding members are likely to be worse off and the remaining core no better off as a result of the amputation. Just as state collapse is not just a matter of coups and riots, it is also not a result of foreign conquest or an instance of periodic reconfiguration of political space (Eisenstadt 1988: 236). Both its cause and remedy relate to socio-political structures within a given sovereign territory and people and not to the shape of the state itself. It is better to reaffirm the validity of the existing unit and make it work, using it as a framework for adequate attention to the concerns of its citizens and the responsibilities of sovereignty, rather than experimenting with smaller units, possibly more homogeneous but less broadly based and less stable. The logic of secession works against seceding states, threatening an infinite regress of self-determination. In general, restoration of stateness is dependent on reaffirmation of the pre-collapse state. In addition, the cases, in their positive lessons from the 1980s and negative lessons from the 1990s, strongly underline the notion that the state can never be reinstituted without a concomitant effort to rebuild civil society and to integrate the workings of the two. Much more analysis needs to be done to indicate the mechanisms of societal reconstruction, but it is already clear that a twofold process is underway during state collapse. On one hand, it has been noted from the outset that state collapse is possible in part because the last incumbent destroyed much of the support and structure normally found in civil society, to the point where society could not rebound to fill the vacuum created by the collapse of the incumbent regime.

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On the other hand, the cases recall a less recognized phenomenon, that civil society continues to exist—indeed, even thrive—under state collapse, its inability to fill the national vacuum paralleled by its vigor in local operations. Authority structures around elders, traditional conflict management procedures, active trading networks, and inventive community operations grow up to fill local vacuums, keeping low to avoid the constraining embrace of the dying state. As a result, there is more raw material from which to reconstruct civil society than there is to rebuild the state. Society’s need is above all for political space in which to expand, free of interference, whereas the state has immediate needs for structures within which to function and often requires a foreign intervenor to provide some temporary structures and functions in the interim until the state can perform them on its own. Thus the reconstruction challenges are different, and state rebuilding needs both to foster and to use societal reconstruction. The following synthesis attempts to gather together the experience of the few successful cases, the needs of the cases still in collapse, and the lessons of a process of collapse played in reverse to detect crucial moments and ingredients. Needless to say, it does not purport to constitute a blueprint for restitution. The terrain is too different in each case for any one roadmap to apply, and all the answers are not in yet. Nonetheless, the following discussion can be useful as a basis for immediate practice and further inquiry. It focuses on the three fundamental elements of power, participation, and resources, and closes with a consideration of foreign roles. Power structures must be reconstituted, from the bottom up. This means that some temporary but effective agent at the top is needed to provide a provisional framework within which a structure of institutions can gradually be erected to allow the state to return to the center of social and political organization in civil society (Khadiagala 1993). Only in this way can the loss of confidence in central authority to perform its functions (which is so characteristic of state collapse) be restored. This was to be the role of Sawyer in Liberia, the UN (under Sahnoun) or the US (under Oakley) in Somalia, the Transitional Executive in South Africa, the High Council of State in Algeria and much later in Tunisia, and the High Council of the Republic in Zaire, with highly divergent results. But these efforts require a difficult choice to be made. Either the rebellion’s leaders and local warlords can be brought together, under the theory that the source of the problem must be the source of the solution, foxes will act responsibly in hencoops if given responsibility, and the people with the mind and means to break security must be given the legitimacy to make security. Or new elites can be helped to emerge from the closets, representing the leaders of a civil society including teachers, labor leaders, elders, religious figures, and civil servants, the best of the ruled called on to replace the worst of the rulers. If warlords are allowed to form the new state, they assure the return of the old system which brought about its own collapse, as Taylor in Liberia, Aideed and Mahdi in Somalia, Savimbi and Dos Santos in Angola, and the Kabilas in Zaire indicate. Mechanisms are needed to keep their power under control, to prevent them from bolting or vetoing, and to allow—indeed, force—in new elements. If civil leaders are given

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power, they need the means to exercise their authority. Mechanisms are needed to give them that power and authority. At best, both types of leadership need to be brought together in reconstituting the state. It is better to bring in the local power-holders rather than close them out, lest they make new reconstruction more difficult. At the same time, local civic leadership usually finds room to assert itself, limiting the power of the warlords if given a chance. Instances as different as Somalia and South Africa provide examples. The experience of several African polities in setting up national conventions of civil leaders to prepare the way for democracy is a striking example (Lancaster 1993; Boulaga l993), but the convention needs to be institutionalized as a proto-parliament (as in Somaliland and, badly, in Zaire) and retained in the new structures of government as a counterweight to the executive. Such structures form the basis for healthy checks and balances in the system. Legitimacy must be restored early, through constructive participation and freely expressed support from society. This will necessarily be appointive and cooptive in the early stages, until the structures for institutionalized participation are in place. It is necessary to provide a large, informally representative forum, and if the contenders for power do not do so, an external force to guarantee security and free expression during the legitimization process may be required. A large, pluralistic national convention, composed of many political and professional figures and organizations, needs to establish transitional institutions and prepare a constitution as the normative and legal foundations of the political order (Khadiagala 1993). A national covenant to set up new rules of the game and engage the new players to respect each other should be an early step toward institutionalization and the precondition to any elections (Ottaway 1993). A particular problem that combines the needs of power and legitimacy lies in the need—or at least the desire—to build the state around a new type of leadership rather than simply restoring an old order. It does little good to bring peace if it is only to maintain the same type of government that brought about the collapse of the state in the first place. Aideed or Ali Mahdi in Somalia, Taylor in Liberia, Obote in Uganda, Savimbi in Angola, and a series of potential alternatives in Zaire and Algeria all promised to restore the same type of system that caused the problem in the first place, with only a change in the name of the president. To provide a legitimate state reconstruction, a new political system is needed, often requiring new leaders who were not trained under the old system—and therefore are short of experience in governing. That requirement makes reconstruction a larger challenge than even the already daunting job of restoration, and often involves thanking the pretender for completing the removal of the tyrant but excluding him from the succession. Such an effort requires delicate cooperation between external intervenors and civil society. It is more important that the functions of democracy as a legitimizer through participation be fulfilled than that the procedures of a national election or alternation be strictly followed, at least in the early years. Societies need a state before they can hold electoral contests to decide who will run it, and they need some experience in working together before moving on to the next stage of democratic alternance. The

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vacuum of collapse, with devolving local organization, is not a good spawning ground for national political parties. Local groups need time and experience to develop into national parties. When elections do come, the dilemma to avoid is between a plebiscite for those already in power and a bitter electoral conflict between factions seeking to get there. When electoral competition becomes part of legitimization, it should be to decide the proportions of a national unity government, not to declare a winner-takes(c)all outcome. National unity governments and power-sharing arrangements harness all factions with responsibility and foster the notion that electoral losers still have a stake in the government. They do have drawbacks: They weaken a major attribute of democracy, competitive accountability, but in exchange they condition the expectation—basic to democratic legitimization—that losers in electoral contests remain alive to run again next time. They also open the exercise of government to the pursuit of the conflict within—rather than for—state offices, perpetuating distrust and killing cooperation, but in exchange they do start conflicting parties in the direction of thinking politics rather than war. Resources need to be made available for reconstruction. It is hard to overcome the problems of neglect and misallocation that lay at the root of the state’s collapse without some resources for the new state to manage. Two state roles in regard to resources must be restored, as Foltz (1995) notes in regard to Chad—state capacity to extract resources and state ability to allocate resources. The two of course are connected: The inability of states to extract resources from their populations deprived them of resources to distribute; populations got nothing (except interference and repression) from their governments and so gave nothing to them. This kind of vicious circle is hard to reverse. States need some emergency pump-priming to get the machine started, reward compliance and regain confidence, and so restore their extractive capabilities. Yet, as in the case of power, there is a dilemma inherent in reversing the cycle. The new resources, which can only come from external sources, can only be a stopgap or a pump-primer. Otherwise the new state will fall into the habit of external reliance, wrecking its own legitimacy and making itself dependent and vulnerable, or else it will become a reverse tax farmer, living off a percentage of the resources to be distributed and preventing them from reaching society. External assistance is useful, indeed necessary, in all three areas—power, participation, and resources. In the cases of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, external intervention in the process of collapse and reconstruction came in many forms— armed UN intervention in Congo in 1960–196l and 1980 onward, American assistance in installing Mobutu in 1965 and French in removing Bokassa; French and American support in Chad around 1982, the World Bank insistence on structural readjustment in Ghana, Tanzanian troops to topple the tyrant in Uganda in 1979, American and other states’ mediation and UN monitoring in Angola and Mozambique, American and UN intervention in Somalia in 1992–1993, ECOMOG in Liberia after 1991, even a brief US mediation in Ethiopia in 1992. Some of these interventions were simply the last push in completing state collapse, but others— particularly in the 1990s—are important to the reconstruction process. In setting up

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Putting Things Back Together

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new political structures, a catalyst is necessary, either to turn the warlords from fighting each other to cooperating, or to protect the civilian leaders as they seek to emerge. In providing new economic resources, a new infusion is needed, both to start the machine producing and to win loyalties in the initial stage. Lessons can be drawn from each experience, on what to do and what to avoid, but their general theme points to the need to combine a willingness to stay long enough with the willingness to leave in time. External intervention should be available as long as it must but should leave as soon as it can. Foreign intervention may be needed to perform the functions of the state under collapse, but only until local forces can take over the business of putting the state back together. The rare attempts to deal with this subject (Helman/Ratner 1992; Colborne 1993; Ben Yahmed 1993) have revived the notion of a UN trusteeship or its variants. Such solutions err in the arrogant presumption that only the West can govern and in the ignorant fallacy that a 150-member bureaucracy that cannot pay for its emergency interventions is suited for exercising or supervising colonial-like rule. Unlike the world of a century ago, no state at the end of the twentieth century has an interest in establishing a new colonial rule, and an international condominium is precisely the sort of training in irresponsibility that developing nations do not need. In the end, it takes conscious efforts of leadership to put a state back together, leadership that can only be indigenous, whatever the usefulness of foreign support. At the same time, leadership alone cannot replace or even accelerate processes that must take place gradually, through repeated efforts, overcoming repeated challenges. The process of reconstructing the state is slow and uncertain, made of many interacting elements to which leadership must give direction. Power, participation, and resources are the ingredients behind this leadership process; unfortunately, there is no order of priority among them to prescribe. Elementary security must be restored, most basically through ceasefire; national reconciliation must be begun, through informal negotiations and institutionalizing fora; resources must be secured and mobilized, through foreign stopgap support and restored domestic taxing capacity. All this must be done at once and at the same time, and the steps kept apace of each other as the process moves along. It must also be done with an end in view, as a process that combines order, legitimacy and authority with policy, production and extraction, rather than a series of discrete steps taken over-step at a time. In addition, it must be done looking backwards as well as forwards, preparing the introduction of mechanisms that will prevent the new efforts from falling back into the vacuum from which they emerged, victims of the same disabilities that caused the collapse of its predecessors. Finally, it must be done with a keen sense of indigenous orders, customs and ways of doing things, which are the strongest allies of reconstruction efforts but can also be their undoing. Even with all these guidelines in mind, state restoration is an uphill challenge, not an automatic process. The power of the vacuum can consume even the best efforts to fill it, particularly when the impatience of the tending world insists on quick fixes. It takes time to restitute a state.

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References Anderson, Hilary 1992. Mozambique, A War Against the People (St Martin’s) Ben Yahmed, Bechir 1993. “Images,” Jeune Afrique 1666 1:10 (10 December) Boulaga, F Eboussi 1993. Les conférences nationales en Afrique noire (Karthala) Badie, Bertrtand & Birnbaum, Pierre 1983. The Sociology of the State (University of Chicago Press) Bert, Wayne 1997. The Reluctant Superpower: United States? Policy in Bosnia 1991–95 (St Martin’s) Chazan, Naomi 1983. An Anatomy of Ghanaian Politics (Westview) Choi, Sukyong 2001. “Divided States: Reunifying without Conquest.?” in Zartman, ed., Preventive Negotiation Colbourne, Desmond 1993. “Recolonizing Africa: The Right to Intervene?” South Africa International XXIII 8:162–163 (April) Collier, Paul 2000. “Rebellion as a Quasi-Criminal Activity,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 44 4:839–853 Collier, Paul & Hoeffler, Anke 2002. “On the Edge of Civil War in Africa.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 46 1:13–28 Crocker, Chester A 1992. High Noon in Southern Africa (Norton) Crocker, Chester A, Hampson, Fen Osler & Aall, Pamela, eds. 1999. Herding Cats: Multiparty Mediation in a Complex World (Washington, D.C.: US Institute of Peace) Dawisha, Adeed & Zartman, I William, eds. 1988. Beyond Coercion: The Durability of the Arab State (Croom Helm) Deng, Francis 1995. War of Visions (Brookings Institution) Deng, Francis & Morrison, Stephen 2000. Task Force Report on Sudan? (Center for Strategic and International Studies) Deng, Francis, et al. 1996. Sovereignty as Responsibility (Brookings Institution) Dyson, Kenneth 1980. The State Tradition in Western Europe (Martin Robertson) Ferguson, William 1991. A Complicated War: The Harnessing of Mozambique Foltz, William 1987. “Chad’s Third Republic,” CSIS Africa Notes 77 (30 October) Gersony, Robert 1988. Summary of Mozambican Refugee Accounts of Principally Conflict-Related Experiences in Mozambique (Department of State) Hanlon, Joseph 1984. Mozambique, the Revolution Under Fire (London: Zed) Hanlon, Joseph 1986. Beggar Your Neighbour–Apartheid Power in Southern Africa (James Currey) Eisenstadt, S N 1988 “Beyond Collapse,” in Yoffee & Cowgill 1988 Eisenstadt, S N 1967. Decline of Empires (Prentice Hall) Eisenstadt, S N 1969. Political Systems of Empires (Free Press) Farnham, Barbara, ed. 1994. Avoiding Losses/Taking Risks (University of Michigan Press) Hasenclever, Andreas, Mayer, Peter & Rittberger, Volker 1997. Theories of International Regimes (Cambridge University Press) Helman, Gerald & Ratner, Steven 1992. “Saving Failed States,” Foeign Affairs IXC 3–20 (winter) Hyden, Goren & Bratton, Michael, eds. 1992. Governance and Politics in Africa (Lynne Rienner) Huntington, Samuel 1968, Political Order in Changing Societies (Yale University Press) Jackson, Robert & Rosberg, Carl 1986. “Why Africa’s Weak States Persist,” in Atul Kohli, ed., The State and Development in the Third World (Princeton University Press) Khadiagala, Gilbert 1993. “Uganda’s Domestic and Regional Security since the 1970s,” Journal of Modern African Studies XXXI 2:231–255 (June) Kipling, Rudyard 1896. Kim Lancaster, Carol l993. National Conferences and Political Renewal in Sub-Saharan Africa (World Bank) Mandel, Robert & Clarke, Sarah 1982. “Intractability and International Bargaining,” paper presented to the annual meeting of the International Studies Association

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Mooradian, Moorad & Druckman, Daniel 1999. “Hurting Stalemate or Mediation? The Conf lict over Nagorno-Karabakh, 1990–95,” Journal of Peace Research 36 6:709–727 Migdal, Joel 1988. Strong Societies and Weak States (Princeton University Press) Mutwol, Julius 2009. Peace Agreements and Civil Wars in Africa (Cambria) Nellie, John 1993. “States in Danger,” mimeo New York Times. 2003. “Cypriots Unsurprised as 4th Peace Deal Fails.” March 12, A8 Ottaway, Marina 1993. “Should Elections be the Criterion of Democratization in Africa,” CSIS Africa Notes 145 (February) Poggi, Gianfranco 1978. The Development of the Modern State (Stanford, Ca: Stanford University Press) Pruitt, Dean G, ed. 1997. “Lessons Learned from the Middle East Peace Process.?” Special Issue of International Negotiation 2, no. 2 Rosoux, Valerie 2000. Les usages de la mémoire dans les relations internationales (Bruylant) Sigal, Leon 1998. Disarming Strangers (Princeton University Press) Smoke, Richard 1977 War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) Tainter, J A 1988. The Collapse of Complex Societies (Cambridge University Press) Touval, Saadia & Zartman, I William 2001. “International Mediation in the Post-Cold War Era.” in Chester A. Crocker, Fen Hampson & Pamela Aall, eds., Turbulent Peace: The Challenges of Managing International Conflict (United States Institute of Peace Press) Yaffee, N & Cowgill, W eds. l985. The Collapse of Ancient States and Civilizations (University of Arizona Press) Zartman, I William 1992. “Internationalization of Communal Strife,” in Manus Midlarsky, ed., The Internationalization of Communal Strife (Routledge) Zartman, I William 1999. “Justice in Negotiation,” in Peter Berton, Hiroshi Kimura & I William Zartman, eds., International Negotiation: Actors, Structure/Process, Values (St Martin’s Press) Zartman, I William 2000. “Ripeness: The Hurting Stalemate and Beyond.” in Paul Stern & Daniel Druckman, eds., International Conflict Resolution after the Cold War (National Academy Press) Zartman, I William 2004. “The Dynamics of Escalation,” in I William Zartman & Guy Olivier Faure, eds., Escalation and Negotiation (International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis) Zartman, I William ed. 1996. Elusive Peace: Negotiating to End Civil War (Brookings Institution) [in this collection] Zartman, I William ed. 2001. Negotiating Internal Conflict: Incentives and Intractability. Special issue of International Negotiation 6, no. 3

Chapter 14

Challenges of Prevention and Resolution

Intrastate conflicts are the characteristic of current world affairs. The controls of the Cold War have been removed without replacement but the fuel (arms, troops, money, ideology) that Cold War protagonists often offered to local conflicts is still available from less manageable sources.1 The rising phenomenon of state collapse creates a vacuum that sucks in neighbors’ involvement. Inter-state conflicts also occur, on their own and as a result of intrastate spillover, and may well return to their former prominence as regional leaders fight out issues of rank and relations among each other. The responsibility and capability for dealing with these conflicts remains a matter of state policy, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. New agencies and powers for the United Nations or regional organizations, including ready peace-keeping forces, are not near eventualities. Private agencies have a growing role, not all of it helpful, and at best prepare and support state action. States, responsibly governed and supportively interacting—i.e. practicing “normal politics” and “normal diplomacy,” are the prime agents for producing responsive policies to incipient conflicts. When they fail, other states need to consider preventive diplomacy and conflict management—the topic that the December 1998 conference at Ditchley was tasked with debating. This summary incorporates the main elements of the discussions, with the points woven into a thematic organization.

I William Zartman, “Preventive Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution: Report on a Ditchley Foundation Conference.” Ditchley Park, Oxfordshire, Ditchley Foundation, 1998. Reprinted with permission.

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© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 I. W. Zartman, I William Zartman: A Pioneer in Conflict Management and Area Studies, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06079-4_14

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Excuses and Responses

There is no doubt that effective preventive diplomacy and conflict management for conflicts not prevented are frequently practiced and are viewed as a good thing. Yet instances of egregious conflict are allowed to slip through the cracks in prevention and arrive at the point where they challenge management. Six reasons for this failure are often advanced, but each has an appropriate response if conflict resolution is to be achieved. 1. It is hard to see a conflict coming so as to take action in time. Conference participants emphasized that early warning abounds. Even if the future date of a crisis may not be able to be identified beforehand, there is plenty of information publicly available about impending conflict situations and even about likely crisis points (except in the UN Secretariat, which is woefully bereft of intelligence and early warning facilities). The real problem is rather one of sorting out likely crises from simply dangerous situations. Rather than hiding behind the problem, it is important to work at it, to improve techniques for identifying turning points and opportunities for positive intervention. We do not abandon hurricane warnings simply because they do not always produce hurricanes. Furthermore, an appropriate response to the uncertainty of early warning is contingency planning. Military preparedness emphasizes contingency plans; diplomatic readiness can equally benefit from forward-looking scenarios. If moments of opportunity are not immediately available, third parties can position themselves—indicate availability, identify goals and values, open communications —in preparation. 2. Resolution by third parties is not feasible, since only parties can manage their conflicts. While it is understood that third parties cannot remove the underlying causes and perceptions of conflict, they can undertake and encourage measures to set the conflicting parties’ relations onto a new course. Parties in conflict need help; they tend to be too absorbed in their conflict to be able to see and adopt positive-sum exit measures. The historic record shows that discovering and navigating the path between conflict and resolution usually requires the services of a third-party pilot. On the way, specific measures can be taken to reduce the chances of escalation and crisis; if conflict is the work of political entrepreneurs working a dangerous context, measures can be envisaged to reduce combustible situations and isolate the pyromaniacs. 3. There is no political will for involvement in other peoples’ conflicts in the post-Cold-War world. While it is undeniable that the disappearance of Cold War interests has removed the strategic pressure for engagement in conflict management, the cost of late action and lost opportunities, the pressure of public opinion, and the vigilance of a responsible press can redefine the terms of

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political will. US polls show that the public will support conflict management intervention abroad if the government articulates a clear strategy and defines its aims. The media and the electorate have a role to play in demanding this type of leadership. Key Atlantic partners have been badly burned by their experiences in intervention—the French in Rwanda, the Americans in Somalia (curiously, even more so than in Vietnam). Events in Congo/Zaire left both countries confused, and the lack of leverage over Slobodan Milosovic, Sani Abacha, Saddam Hussein, Laurent Kabila, Binyamin Netanyahu, and others left the “remaining superpower” even more perplexed in international affairs. Next to the people of these countries, political will has been the greatest casualty of the situation. Faced with intractable conflicts and spoilers, Western leaders become risk averse, unable to take on the problems of rethinking the mission of the military, evaluating the intelligence, mobilizing the resources, and springing into action that prevention and management require. What makes states willing to take risks for prevention? No doubt a mixture of calculations—a certainty of impending danger and an interest in reducing it, a sense of moral obligation and international legitimacy, an awareness of future opportunity costs, and a belief in an ability to do the job. The decision to act is caught in a number of commonplace phrases—“it can’t go on like this,” “handle it now or it will come back to haunt us,” “this time they’ve gone too far,” “we can’t let this happen,” “act before it’s too late” or “while we still have a chance.” Thus, the decision rests on feelings of future vs present certainties—the certainty of impending disaster and the certainty of present effectiveness—tied together by a moral and interest obligation to act. Lack of will is a state of mind, but it is also a calculation. Press and public need to work on the first, analysts and activists on the second. 4. Preventive diplomacy and conflict management is intervention in the internal affairs of sovereign states and so is none of our business. While there are enormous problems in tossing aside time-honored doctrines of protective sovereignty, such doctrines are becoming more and more eroded or outmoded, as previous UN Secretary-General Boutros Ghali has indicated. The Pinochet affair illustrates a growing international law concept of universal jurisdiction; there is increasing attention being paid to the notion of sovereignty as responsibility, under which sovereign states are held responsible for the wellbeing of their citizens or else other sovereign states are responsible for assistance in the matter. States large and small (e.g. US, China, India, Iraq, Algeria, Israel, Singapore, Malaysia, etc.) still assert their immunity to internal interference, but global (UN) and regional organizations can make such intervention more legitimate. As UN Secretary-General Annan noted at Ditchley, “Each of us as an individual has to take his or her share of responsibility.”

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5. Preventive diplomacy doesn’t work because the tools are all flawed. While the means of stopping internal or interstate wars are not always easy or even effective, the findings are more often false negatives than real evidence. The historical record shows, not that sanctions do not work, for example, but that leaky sanctions do not work, shifting the policy debate from sanctions to ways of making sure that sanctions are observed. To make prevention and management effective, the focus of analysis needs to be turned from “what” to “when” and “how?” Often a key to effectiveness is a matter of timing, where both knowledge of appropriate opportunities and the operational ability to seize them remain uncertain. In both prevention and management, the window of opportunity is frequently very narrow and situations do not come in standard types and sizes, another reason for contingency planning and careful positioning. 6. Since prevention and management involve other people’s problems, there are no resources in time and money to devote to them. While Western governments cannot handle a large number of external crises at the same time, the financial resource question should be examined in comparison to the costs of handling the problem later, when it is worse, more costly, more difficult to handle, and more disruptive to our own schedules. “Future opportunity cost” is a concept that needs to be taken into account. The drain on attention can be attenuated by delegating preparation and follow-through to lower levels. Finally, willingness to engage militarily does not have to be the measure of commitment; much effective action can be taken short of military involvement, and the reluctance to commit troops can be used as an incentive to effective action short of force. French assistance in mediating the Malian Tuareg and SenegalMauritanian conflicts did not involve major financial or military commitments; Norwegian mediation of the Palestine-Israeli principles involved few resources (but some concentrated skills); even the multinational peacekeeping force in Macedonia is a low-cost activity.

14.2

Skills and Processes

What measures then can be taken, and how and when can they be properly used? How can we best think about preventing and managing conflict? Rather than thinking of a toolbox, it is important to bring the tools together around different approach and instead think of skills. A number of different approach present themselves. A. Think collaboration. No single agent is likely to be adequate to the complex task of helping others with their conflicts. Interventions, norm setting, and pressures (sticks) are more effective when issued collectively, and most effective when issued by an institutionalized group of which the conflicting party/ies is/are a member, such as a regional organization. Multiple agents should be

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conceived of as elements in a layered process, always keeping in mind the mediator of next resort. Beyond unilateral action, NGO assistance, state coalitions, regional organizations, and finally the UN Secretariat and Security Council comprise the layers. The 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement to end (for the while) the Sudanese war was achieved through layered mediation, using in turn the All-African Council of Churches, then the OAU Secretariat, then the Emperor. When an institutionalized group does not exist, constituting a Friends group can provide a useful device for providing pressure and mobilizing knowledge for conflict resolution. The necessary involvement of others entails more transaction costs in attention, communications, and coordination, to be sure. But in a number of instances—Cyprus, Ethiopia-Eritrea, Congo, among others—coordinated action and regional involvement are the necessary elements to a solution, and in others—Cambodia, Mozambique, Bosnia, among others—coordination and collaboration were key to the progress made. Beyond resources for intervention is the need for resources for legitimization, where regional attention and consensus is required. Where regional organizations exist, mechanisms for management and shared norms and principles for conduct are potentially available. OSCE, OAS and ECOWAS, and ASEAN are examples; it is not surprising that the Wars of the Zairean Succession in Africa or the Wars of the Yugoslav Succession have taken place in areas not claimed by a functioning sub-regional organization. Where they exist, regional organizations provide an additional layer between the conflict and the UN, but in the many areas of the world where they are absent or ineffective—East, South and Central Asia, Middle East, central Africa, Balkans—the UNSC is the only institutionalized collectivity available, and is strained. Where regional organizations and political alliances provide an intermediate layer, their relation to the world organization needs clarifying: need for UNSC authorization can produce delays and inaction (as in Kosovo and Congo-B) but lone ranging runs against global consensus and legitimacy. NGOs and “track two diplomacy” are rapidly growing as useful adjuncts to government action, and can often prepare the way for official engagement. They include humanitarian agencies, advocacy groups, mediation agencies, reconciliation training projects, and democracy promotion, among others. While such NGOs have advantages such as flexibility, information and resources, they are not a substitute for official action. There are real limits to the privatization of public affairs. Mercenaries and private security forces represent a dangerous abdication of responsible state activity, and usually go hand in hand with privatization of official offices and revenues (contract supply and training for government forces appears to be on the acceptable side of a thin line). In general, in political, economic or military matters, private involvement is acceptable as long as it is well coordinated with official attentions and does not undermine the authority of the state, whose absence is often the cause of internal conflict.

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B. Think firebreaks to conflict. These can be substantive—ways of preventing discrimination, repression, constitutional abrogation—or procedural—breathing spells to break the momentum of conflict. Firebreaks include general standards (such as human right requirements for membership or casus fœderis triggers for collective action in regional organizations) and principled assurances (such as confirmation to Congo, Sudan, or Iraq of international insistence of territorial integrity), as well as Specific measures could include (a) a report like Freedom House on ethnic discrimination and power concentration in ethnically divided states, (b) a provision for the UN to be custodian of constitutions, as it is of treaties, so that a breach would require a response, and (c) an OAU designation of a coming year as the Year of Boundary Demarcation, so that states could mark (and if/where necessary renegotiate) boundaries while they are cold, and provide for permeability. C. Think both sticks and carrots. Prevention and management involves measures to make the present course more unpleasant (sticks) and the future alternative more attractive (carrots). Often functional equivalents—alternative courses to the same goal that do not provoke conflict)—can also be helpful. Sanctions and other sticks are often adopted because of a need “to do something” (e.g. after Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests), when a need to engage in dialogue could be more productive. But economic incentives and other carrots to prevent conflict are unlikely to be effective if the root causes (no pun intended) of the conflict are not addressed. A mutually hurting stalemate (MHS) uses the conflict itself to provide sticks to develop a perception of ripeness and push the parties toward resolution, but more thinking is needed about the less well developed concept of mutually enticing opportunities (MEO) that pull parties out of conflict: The opportunity for Israel and the PLO to improve relations with the mediator by coming to Madrid in 1991 may be an example. D. Think inside/outside handshake. Preventive and management measures cannot work by imposition, without cooperation from the parties involved. If parties to the conflict themselves are not immediately convinced of the need for avoidance or ending of their conflict, regional or internal allies need to be enlisted. More broadly, prevention and management is not just the job of the Atlantic partners, practiced on the conflicted Third World; it needs to bring Third World leaders into its values and up to speed in its practices, even if leadership can be expected to come ultimately from the Atlantic partners. Third World mediators to date have sometimes proven to be skilled in conflict diplomacy (in regard to El Salvador, South Africa, Malian Tuareg, etc.), but at other times have been deficient as mediators (in regard to Liberia, Congo, Angola, Mozambique, Sri Lanka, Lebanon, Iraq, Chiapas, etc.). Socialization in prevention and management would not only improve skills, but also build a base of legitimacy and partnership for others’ efforts. Discussions, such as Ditchley Conferences, should include some members of conflict areas, so that the we-they gap is minimized and they are made part of us.

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E. Think Early Awareness and Early Action, not just Early Warning. Early Awareness involves a readiness to receive and hear rather than just file the warnings, an emphasis on thinking ahead rather than just putting out fires, and an ability to get the warning to the right agent to be able to identify apt, legitimate and credible responses. The media have an important role to play in preparing Early Awareness, by focusing on early warning signs such as human rights violations and by highlighting instances and benefits of conflict prevention. As it is, their intense but fleeting attentions (phase one of the CNN/ BBC Effect) may turn on the viewer and galvanize crisis response, but phase two is frequently viewer saturation—“turn off the tube/telly”. While there may be some advantage to be gained from later intervention at a mature moment, when the conflict has first had a chance to work itself out, when options have clarified, and when pressure for settlement is greatest, usually clear signals and substantial engagement are needed early on, before parties’ positions have hardened and while escape from a dangerous course is still possible. Such early engagement against Cedras in Haiti or against Milosovic in Yugoslavia would have been more effective and economical, both for the intervenor and for the conflicted populations. Early Action involves the formulation of contingency plans and scenarios instead of single strikes, the identification of goals and purposes to be achieved and not just “successful missions,” the exercise of leadership and coalitionbuilding rather than lone ranging, the calculation of appropriate timing, and the implementation of mechanisms for future management, continuing attention, and follow-through rather than letting the issue drop once it is “solved.” Of these multiple criteria of successful policy, two stand out: Many operations, including peace-keeping exercises, do not come with a clear purpose to be accomplished, a committed goal where one can declare the job done; and, conversely, Many operations come as a response to the initial trigger but do not contain a commitment to remain engaged throughout the subsequent phases required to make the initial action effective. A good guideline is: “Stay as long as you must, leave as soon as you can,” but it needs tailoring to each situation. F. Think principles and regimes. Every conflict prevented or managed contributes to building precedents and principles for dealing with future cases; by the same token, specific interventions and solutions should be principled actions rooted in broader norms and values, taking advantage of previous precedents and principles. This is particularly important in the post-Cold-War era, where standards are uncertain and the end-point of the transition still unidentified. Standards created by the UN have a high level of legitimacy and are widely sellable. Regional organizations can perform the same function for their members, thus giving them a sense of ownership over their norms; however, regional norms should not conflict with UN-established standards. Consensual norms can then serve as the basis of conflict resolution through the International Court of Justice or regional judicial mechanisms, as well as through the diplomacy of global and regional organizations. The availability of appropriate

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legal machinery is an important factor in preventing and managing conflict, just as the establishment of consensual standards and regimes helps channel conflict and identify solutions. Thus, reaffirmation of the OAU and AU uti possidetis norm for Africa, “no conquest” for Israel and Russia, “no unification by force” for China, “no independence” for Taiwan are all international standards that limit the conflicts in question and provide international behavioral standards, even if not a direct solution. Similarly, the new Law of the Sea, the World Trade Organization rules, and the Test Ban and the Non-Proliferation Treaties, among many others, are instances of regime-building that go far to prevent conflict and to provide management mechanisms when it does occur. Many other areas—boundaries, human rights, small arms traffic, among others—are good subjects for similar treatment. A full array of tools and tactics, however, does not end the debate. Use of the various measures and strategies is not always obvious and easy; opportunities have been missed in the past for good reasons as well as bad. The whole approach of prevention and management, rather than a simple military-type engagement of good vs bad against a clear enemy in order to win, involves tensions, trade-offs and dilemmas. Even on the conceptual level, it is often necessary to reconcile irreconcilable goods, rather than even pick a “least worst” alternative. Such contradictions include justice vs reconciliation, where punishment may keep a conflict alive but forgiveness ignores just deserts; “first, do no harm,” where inaction is safe but allows greater harm to occur; early versus late intervention, where early is uncertain but late allows prolonged casualties; or sovereignty as responsibility, where sovereignty is protection from bullies but universal responsibility is internal interference. The debate needs to continue in order to refine the alternatives and narrow the contradictions. Justice and reconciliation are two elements necessary to settlement. Justice means that those responsible for humanitarian crimes and criminal policies must be punished, lest the wounds of the past continue to fester; reconciliation means forgiveness of those crimes, letting bygones be bygones. In the absolute each eliminates the other. If justice is insisted on as part of a settlement, if may prevent parties at risk from signing; if not, parties may take it into their own hands. Attempts can be made to square the contradiction, for example, by encouraging reconciliation, following atonement, among the general populace, while reserving justice for the leaders; or, alternatively, by providing safe haven in exchange for early retirement for key leaders; or by establishing post-settlement commissions to handle property claims; among others. “Do no harm” is a wise maxim to remember, but like any absolute, it is relative in human conditions. Any intervention has its risks and some damage is likely; it has to be weighed against the harm already taking place, and should really be “Do no net harm.” Otherwise, no-harm becomes a counsel for inaction. But the injunctions rightly warn against demonstrative displays of disapproval which have no relation to a positive goal and make no contribution to changing the situation for

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the better. Policy evaluations need to consider the effects of failure as well as success, and look at the longterm as well as immediate consequences of intervention. Early intervention and prevention is always better, and is the mark of “normal politics” and “normal diplomacy,” as they are frequently practiced. Happily, Rwanda and Cambodia are unusual cases; Abachas and Mobutus do die (under whatever circumstances); and preemptive diplomacy to bring independence to Namibia, stability to Macedonia, food to drought-stricken southeast Africa, and Law to the Sea does succeed. Yet once the preventive barrier has been crossed, conflicts may have to ripen a good deal before options can be clarified and reduced, events can build pressure for settlement, and closure can appear to be the best alternative. Missed early opportunities must not be taken as a cause for despair, and unripe situations as an excuse for inaction. Conflict situations need monitoring for action, since, early or late, opportunities are often brief but attentions to them need to be sustained. Sovereignty as protection and sovereignty as responsibility are two dangerous doctrines, each with great value to counterbalance their defects. The first, the conceptual basis of the international system for the past three and a half centuries, is designed to allow a country to rule itself and to protect small states from bullies. But it also allows rulers to mismanage their affairs and slaughter their citizens if they wish. The second, newly advanced, is designed to hold rulers accountable for their treatment of their citizens and to help them, invited or uninvited, in meeting their obligations. But it can also be misused to subject the weak to the wishes of the strong and the few to those who can mobilize the many. Preventive diplomacy needs to invoke the second while respecting the first. Intervention becomes necessary in egregious cases but the ultimate rights of people to be themselves, rule themselves, and establish their own systems of accountability need to be protected.

Chapter 15

Memories Between War and Peace

I want to talk of peace and war, Of building paths between the two, First measuring the blood and gore That mark raw wounds and open sores And justifying a search for more, Rendering old hatreds fresh and new.1 I have to feel the wounds of war By known neighbors or unknown soldiers dealt, That leave us seeking who and why, Groping the holes in our midst or side, Needing time for the blood to dry Before new trusting can be felt. I have to hear the reasons for war That run beneath the call for arms— The strident speech, the roll of drums, That tell us whence the danger comes And why we sacrifice the sums And sons to keep us safe from harm. I have to face the outcome of war That never justifies its aims, Leaving us settling for less,

I William Zartman, “Justice, Regrets and Revenge,” in Serge Jaumin and Éric Remacle, eds., Mémoire de guerre et construction de la paix. Bruxeles: Peter Lang. Reprinted with permission.

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Wondering who got us in this mess, Yet unrelieved when they confess Or urge revenge to cover loss. I want to talk of war and peace, Of building paths between the two, Knowing these things aren’t wished away, That victims want closure in their day, That justice must have its word to say, Before we can rebuild anew. II La guerre a un sens, du moins elle en a deux, Et quoi qu’on en pense, on est pris entre deux feux. On tord nos esprits; déroutés, corps et âmes Sont déchirés entre feux et flammes. Dans l’étau des vérités, entre contrainte et stress, Un objet comprimé résiste et se dresse Pour affirmer son droit de choisir son chemin Et d’exprimer sa foi pour chercher son destin. Les guerres ne sont guère justes, mais parfois nécessaires Face aux crises, aux dictateurs, aux génocidaires. Mais la paix peut cacher l’injustice. Donc quoi faire quand choisir déhumanise? On doit tenir en méfiance l’argument emballé Pour ficeler ce que’on pense, car tout emballage est suspect. Mais ce constat rend sceptic envers tout, Un cynicisme à tout prix, lui aussi néfaste sans doute. La citoyenneté alerte confronte raisons et évidence Avec valeurs comme guide critique et le débat en conséquence. Le trajet pour arriver au bon port en bon temps Suit la boussole mais louvoie au gré des vents.

Part III

I. William Zartman Essays on Governance

Chapter 16

Systems of World Order

It is enough to read the news these days to realize that the earth is without form and void, and darkness is upon the face of the deep (Genesis 1:2).1 The bipolar ideological and power order has dissolved and recongeled, dropping its ideological wraps and reappearing as a bare power confrontation; its ideal replacement based on the notion of the equality of states is only a legal myth.1 The cold war order had its own myths and meaning, imparted to it by the reality of power, both within the blocs and between them. These blocs have collapsed, one in victory, the other in defeat, and their collapse has even dissolved the blocless group of states, robbing nonalignment—along with alignment—of both its rationale and its victory. As an unexpected consequence, the collapse of globalism has carried down with it the structures and discipline of regionalism, sweeping away the previous debate between the two levels of relations. Not only is the bipolar system of world order gone, but its characteristic forms of power are also now outmoded. During the cold war, the superpowers kept in form by training against each other, conducting isotonic exercises. In the process, if their power was insufficient to make things happen, it could at least make things not happen, so that preemption and deterrence became the primary policies of the cold war protagonists. But now that the opposition has been vanquished, current power has shown itself to be of a form inappropriate for its new tasks. Large standing armies and their armaments have gone to pot and to pieces, while smaller guerrilla forces have run wild, in Bosnia, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Somalia, Philippines, Nigeria, Syria, Yemen, Rwanda, and Burundi; the list is down from the end of the previous millennium, however, when Croatia, Armenia, Georgia, Cambodia, Colombia, Peru, Angola, Mozambique, Liberia and Sierra Leone were part of the list. The powerful West, winner in the long cold war against communism I William Zartman, “In Search of the New Word Order,” in Han Sung-Joo, ed., The New International System (Seoul: Ilmin International Relations Institute, 1996) and “The Quest for Order in World Politics,” in I William Zartman, ed., Imbalance of Power (Lynne Rienner 2009). Reprinted by permission.

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and in the short hot war against Saddam Hussein, is incapable of consummating either victory. The great powers of Europe are powerless to overcome secessions that threaten their nationhood within themselves or to achieve their self-proclaimed goal of effective union among themselves. The Arab states, once enthusiastically bent on successive types of unity within (dar al-islam) and war against the outside (dar alharb), are now torn in the “Muslim religious war” within the community (umma). The countries of Africa, hoping to find their strength in unity, are torn instead into “rotten zones” by ethnic, religious and thuggish predators (Deng/Zartman 1991; Deng et al. 1996). There were greater capabilities against these plagues during the cold war, which was criticized for blocking the same goals, than there are today. Currently, power is found only in resistance and rebellion, not in achievement and control. The collapse of world order has also brought about the evaporation of mythologies and meanings. Not only are ideologies worn out and bereft of their miraculous powers, but even the images which give context and connotation to events have lost their ability to organize. Where before, conspiracy theories of an ideological or cultural type clearly told people who their friends and enemies were, they have now lost not only that assurance but also the certainty that there are reliable friends and constant enemies at all. Long accustomed to interpreting world events as a function of the forces that threaten them—communism, capitalism, both —people no longer have a standard for judging the world around them. Similarly, the nature of the state as the highest form of political organization is undergoing tremendous changes, proving permeable to transnational penetration, undermined by interlinking domestic forces, and overridden by international regimes and organizations. The concept of sovereignty has been called into question by the secretaries-general of the United Nations themselves (Boutros Ghali 1995; Annan 2002). But at the same time the riddled state is expected to regulate more aspects of human activity than ever before in the history of humanity, while maintaining stability for its system of states against state and non-state destabilizers. Extreme forms of authoritarian order, as in the Arab autocracies and religious theocracies, give way to institutionalized participation that is unable to preserve order. Some states end up with such a high degree of concentrated power that they implode, consuming the collapsed state and its fragments in their disorder (Zartman 1995a, b). In beliefs as in structures, the end of ideological confrontation has meant a loss of faith in the values of even the victor in the cold war. For a fleeting moment in the early 1990s, competitive pluralism was the wave of the political and economic future. But its realization has been slow and spotty, and clear-thinking pragmatists have come to realize that, whatever their benefits, there are high costs, inappropriate contexts, debatable practices, uncertain results, painful consequences, and uncomfortable connotations associated with democracy and free enterprise. Since there are no clear values and causes, nothing is worth dying for, and so the formerly

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firm commitment of states to foreign policy goals pales before the firmer dedication of militant nationalist and extremist groups. Indeed, the only galvanizing occasion appears to be humanitarian disasters and genocide, people killing each other in large number regardless of the cause, and the world is tiring of even that as a mobilizing event. Any expectation of a new world order to replace the old is premature. When a structure falls down, it takes a while for the dust to settle, the rubble to be cleared, and the foundations to be dug for a replacement. There is, of course, no reason— other than the curiosity of academics and others craving for orderliness—why there has to be an unambiguously identifiable system of world order at all. All transitions are somewhat disorderly, and history has sometimes seen long periods of weak or confused world order patterns (Rosecranz 1963). Realists analyze the world system as anarchy, that is, without order, and it may be only an intellectual construct to find any regular patterns within its unstructured relations (Waltz 1979). Certainly the phase, “new world order,” has dropped from the salience it had only a few decades ago, having been the undeveloped property in the United States of a previous administration. But three characteristics make the current absence of world order a matter of disquieting insecurity. One is the sharpness of the previous order which has just disappeared. As we emerge from the cold war space ship, where everything had its place and life was ordered and without surprises, and set foot upon the face of the new moon, there are suddenly no rules, no patterns, no expectations, only surprises. It is the contrast that makes the new situation all the more unsettling. Some even begin to miss the comfortable order of the cold war and project a new one simply to have a sense of orientation. The second reason for discomfort over the absence of order is the presence of many crisscrossing contenders vying for succession as a system for both structure and meaning. The result is uncertainty and confusion, an inability to know the nature of the players and the intent of the plays in the new situations and to devise policies to deal with them. It is not clear who the enemy or what the cause is in the conflicts in the Philippines, Somalia, Rwanda, Nigeria, Guatemala, Palestine, Iran, Syria, Beijing, or Mexico City, since the parties are on different sides according to the world order images invoked. Unsettled and unsettling is the shape of the successor world we ordered. [Finally, for the first time, against this strong trend, a new danger of global interstate war has suddenly burst the inchoate order, much like World War I for rising rivalries but with nuclear implications (Tuchman 1962), but also as a trade battle with deep economic implications. The danger has moved from contained regional conflicts to old and new great powers in world-wide confrontation, where local conflicts are suede arenas.].

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Concept of Order

The build-up and breakdown of order are the basic subjects of political analysis, but they are particularly topical at the beginning of the third millennium AD. The old millennium has crashed in disorder. The search for order is the sign of our times. Conflict is not necessarily chaos, any more than is disorder the opposite of any particular form of order. Order appears in many, often ostensibly opposite, forms: conflict and cooperation, war and peace, liberty and security, oppression and justice, symmetry and asymmetry, and indeed in many of the concepts and values found in the other chapters in this collection. Moreover, order is what permits inquiry and analysis in any discipline, as it turns data into knowledge; science looks for regularities or orders in events, so that theory serves “to bring order and meaning to a mass of phenomena which without it would remain disconnected and unintelligible.” (Morgenthau 1960). Thus, inquiry into the concept of order needs to begin with a search for taxonomies of order, in order to address both analytical questions of cause and relationship, and normative questions of purpose and preference. It is useful, therefore, to turn to the concept of order itself, its meaning and its types, in order then to proceed with an analysis of current issues involving order at the edge of the millennium, and finally to address the question of universality within the concept and its issue applications. Unlike many other concepts of political (and other social) science, “the concept of order” and its meaning do not divide the discipline into great definitional debates. “Order,” wrote Parsons, Shills and colleagues, “—peaceful coexistence under conditions of scarcity—is one of the very first of the functions imperatives of social systems.” (Parsons/Shils 1951: 180; Krasner 1983) apparently initially justified his inquiry into regimes as “related to the most fundamental concern of social theory: how is order established, maintained and destroyed,” although the most fundamental concern disappeared in the final version, except in Susan Strange’s (1983: 345) recounting to question it. Order implies a relationship among items based on some principle (Bull 1977: 2; Hoffmann 1965: 2). It often carries a suggestion of or is even used synonymously with harmony or stability, according to Augustine (1950: XIX xii 249), using a hopeful religious aspiration, as in “a good disposition of discrepant parts, each in its fittest place,” or to Mother, using a common family injunction, as in “Johnny, go put some order in your room”. There is therefore, almost unavoidably, a value attached to order, as something the study of politics seeks to discern and the practice of politics seeks to achieve. Ivorian President Felix Houphouet-Boigny quoted Goethe to say, with some inaccuracy, “I prefer injustice to disorder: One can die of disorder, one does not die of injustice,” (Zolberg 1966: 42) and after his death his country proved the point. In its broadest sense, then, order is all understanding, or at least all political understanding, and politics is the search for order. For all its precision, that is too broad a notion to handle, but it at least indicates that the interesting question is less “Whether order?” than “What/Which order?” “Whence order?” and “What is the relation between order and other concepts or values that are equally crucial,

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universal and timely to our age, such as power, stability, and others?” It also indicates that the great debate in political science over order is more nearly normative, over appropriate order and appropriate tools and approaches to study order (and therefore to debate the prior question). A determination of what orders are currently available and salient leads to several overlapping categorizations, based on principles of process and structure (Aristotle 1993; Young 1983: 98–101; Lewin et al. 1939; Dahl 1950). The discussion begins with two large conceptions of order related to cultural visions grossly characterized as West and East. Another typology of political orders is based on the structures and process contained in decision-making mechanisms, which are limited in number: authoritative, commanded from the top of a hierarchical structure, whether executive or judicial (Linz 1975); coalitional, composed of subgroups of shifting size in which the largest or strongest part decides for the whole, the most common forms of which are international organizational and democratic; (O’Donnell/Schmitter 1986) negotiated, composed of formally equal subgroups operating under the unanimity or unit veto rule; and inherent or spontaneous, run by the hidden hand of some external agency or inner force such as the market (Hayek 1984: 307–309). A third examines the relation between order and other salient values of the era such as change, justice, legitimacy and power. The latter is then expanded into a consideration of systems of world order seen as institutional structures, both formal and informal, including unipolarity, multipolarity, formal and informal institutional, a new bipolarity, and collaborative. There is some overlap among categorizations; authoritative orders are necessarily composed of unequals but the other three process orders can operate with either type with different consequences, and all expressed in different institutional structures (Aristotle; Aron 1965: 44–45; Kant 1960). The world order system is composed of state units whose domestic orders are relevant to the shape of the global whole. It may be reassuring, or at least hopeful, that democracies do not fight each other, but other systems do and democracies fight them too, as just one example of the intrastate-interstate linkage.

16.2

The Universality of Order

It is hard to imagine that any of these concerns could be limited to a particular cultural area of the globalized world or would be a worry of only a Western mind. Order itself is universal even though its forms are several. There may be (or have been) a Confucian order in China, an Islamic order in Iran, an Enarquic order in France, or a monarchial order in Morocco, but the concept of order is common to them all and their peculiar characteristics can also be found here and there around the globe. It is hard to compare, analyze or even talk of them, or to combine them in a global system, without using common concepts of order (Badie 1987). Nonetheless, the point of view of political culture would aver that particular conceptions of order dominate the ethos and practice of large world areas, based on

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current political systems, historical traditions, predominant religions, and regional configurations. From this point of view (admittedly generalized and perhaps caricatured), Asia—both East or Confucian and Western or Arabo-Muslim—can be said to favor a centralized hierarchical political order, as contrasted with the Judeo-Christian Atlantic West which is characterized by a pluralized competitive order. China and Egypt would be typical of the first, the United States and Europe of the second (Sen 1999). The Confucian system dominant in China (and reinforced by the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology) regards hierarchy as superior to competition as an ordering principle, and enlightened authoritarian command as its form of decision-making (Dreyer 1995; Pye 1988; Lieberthal 1995; Johnston 1996; Pomerantz 2000). A deeply inbred fear of social chaos (luan) preconditions the Chinese preference for a strong central authority. A strong government is also perceived to be better able to deliver public goods. Its political geography has long been seen in terms of concentric circles, based on the pivotal Middle Kingdom, and indeed the vast country of China has one time zone. Values are in service of the collective and emphasize communal harmony. Foreigners are held separate, socialization into dominant cultural patterns is the main function of education, and political participation is through the single party. Negotiation becomes difficult to practice, and instructive discourse is preferred (Faure 2000; Pye 1992). Yet on the interstate level, competition is vigorously engaged, state sovereignty strongly defended, and regional autonomy actively asserted, yielding a non-hierarchial and anti-hegemonic worldview. Despite very different sources, Arabo-Muslim political culture has remarkably similar characteristics, as seen in Egypt and most other Arab countries. The authoritarian system center about the leader (za’im) is predominant, the single party or at least the dominant party runs the political system, and democracy—not to be confused with consultation (shura)—has a hard time taking hold (Badie 1987). If the Arab world is broken up into separate states, the Arab nation and the single Islamic community (umma) are idealized and mythologized, and the classical language of the Quran is the standard of civilization and the word of the God (al-Lah). Egypt is the Mother of the Earth (masr umm al-duniya), even if some other Arab states would claim at least paternity. Out of this culture comes the most important current version of the balance of power, a corporate sectarian protest movement that seeks to stop the globalizing world and get off, to return to its own imposed view of orthodoxy. Its non-state form reflects the non-state form of globalization and its hydra-formed organization responds to the hegemonic structure of the world order system. Yet it is also an anti-pluralizing movement, attacking corrupt Muslim governments in the name of Sunni atavism and a return to a Golden Age. Although in both East and West Asia pluralism is bound to exist, it is conditioned and contained with the centralized authoritarian order. In Africa, this world is upside down: the widespread view of order is communitarian, collective, acephalic. The basic component of community provides a distinctive normative construct and socio-political condition as a base for practical methods of handling conflict and restoring order (Zartman 2000, 2017). Pre-modern African life and hence its conflict management techniques were posited on the

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existence of a kinship community that defined social relations. A person’s existence was conceived of in terms of the community: I am because we are (umuntu ngumuntu mgabantu in Nguni [South Africa]). The syllogism is encapsulated in the Bantu term of ubuntu, “that one can be a person only through others. It is only in the spirit of ubuntu, with its emphasis of working together, that problems can be solved.” (Masina 2000: 170–171; Mbagwu 2015: 59), or kanye ndu wi for the Buems (Fred-Mensa 2000). Community can come in many sizes contained in the notion of an extended family—from a small, genealogically related group to a tribe or nation—but one where beliefs/values and kinship relations are shared. The primary evolutionary answer regarding reasons for cooperative solidarity is found in kinship (Hamilton 1964), providing a special kind of altruism in which benefit does not incur to the individual directly but through the group. The senior figures, family councils, decisions, integration, exclusion, confidence-building and all the other measures which seem so exemplary only have meaning, legitimacy and effectiveness within a given kinship community. “Kinship manages conflict” and provides order (Lundy/ Adjei 2015: 4). Kinship relations can be imagined and mythologized to provide a credible reference to legitimize behavior. In strict genealogical terms African kinship provides only imagined communities, since real ancestry is from long ago (Anderson 1983); the original ancestor is far enough away and his descendants intermarried enough to be only mythologically related. But that only reinforces the cognitive element that legitimizes the order. In contrast, the Atlantic West is characterized by competitive pluralism, multiparty democracy, a multicultural stew in the melting pot, and many time zones (Jones 1987; Pomeranz 2000). The United States is no more united than its federalism will allow, and European unity takes place only by preserving its multistate system. Where pluralism has to be contained, it is through binary logic, Manichaean conceptualization between good and bad, black and white, and legal confrontation. France invented and the United States applied the separation of powers within government, and this pluralism has been paralleled historically by the richness of American associational life in civil society (deTocqueville 1850). Even where the European monarchial tradition has left a shadow of centralism, it has been eaten away at the edges throughout history by the English barons, the German states, Italian (even including papal) tolerance for ambiguity, and French republicanism. This is a negotiated polity par excellence, combined with the elections and coalitions of democracy. Little wonder that the balance of power practice and theory came out of this type of state system. These vignettes can be either dismissed as caricatures or endlessly debated and diagnosed as clashing civilizations, as can no doubt the whole area of political (or any other) culture (Huntington 1968). Yet there is a lot of literature and discussion behind the general picture of the three cultures that the vignettes present, and they represent a certain consensus about different notions of order in different parts of the world, even in their abbreviated form. From this point of view, it can be argued that there is a dominant pattern of expectations and discourse about appropriate orders

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in various parts of the world, whatever the exceptions and blurred edges that might exist. The overriding point, of course, is that these images reflect a common notion of the meaning of order and of the forms it can take, even if elements in that universal typology find different supporting examples from different regions, and that these different views of the same elephant combine into a single system of world order, larger than the sum of its diverse parts, in which they must find a role, whatever they do at home. In response to the original questions, different regions may answer differently over which order is preferable but they enter into the debate on the basis of a common understanding of the orders possible and practiced among massive human collectivities on this earth.

16.3

Orders as a Process

Scholarship paces events, as it should (despite the claims of external interference through this relationship): After all, there is more interest and scholarship these days on state failure or democratization than on revolution or monarchy. “Transformations of political discourse in the West have been a function of changing conceptualizations of threat to the existence of political order…” (Pasquino 1993; Nomos 1993). Thus, after the collapse of communism and under international anarchy, totalitarian order is not at the top of the current agenda for research and debate (Linz 1975), whereas the other three forms of order seen as decision mechanisms (i.e. both structures and their processes)—democratic coalitions, oligarchic negotiation, and inherent, automatic orders—have produced new analysis and concerns (Carr 1949: 218; Dahl 1955: 47; Arrow 1974: 69; Zartman 1978). Order through coalition has received new emphasis in current concerns about the process of democratization and the evidence that previously nondemocratic orders of governance lack the coalitional fluidity necessary for their immediate transformation into democratic orders (Huntington 1996; O’Donnell/Schmitter 1986). Balance becomes the source of order; a statesman “must perpetuate order, which he can do by keeping the multitudinous aggressions of men in balance against each other,” Barzun (1946: 208; Orieux 1970: 249, 295, 396) maintains, echoing Bagehot and Talleyrand. Yet even in established democratic orders, ascriptive components such as ethnicity and gender pose similar problems of voter rigidity (deTocqueville 1850; Mill 1947). The result is that democracy is no longer analysed with the primary focus on the individual voter, as in earlier studies, but on aggregated votes. Analysts have repeatedly and variously noted that the presumed egalitarian status necessary for free choice by individual voters is negated by the inegalitarian status of the ascriptive blocs to which they belong and also by status effects on attitudes, participation and choice, bringing a reexamination of the new relevance of classical solutions to both aspects of the rigidity problem, ranging from

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proportional representation to gerrymandering (Adorno 1950; Lipset 1960; Dahl 1993; Guinier 1994). The rigidity problem has led to other avenues of analysis. The issue of preconditions to democracy is being re-examined. Either socio-economic development to higher levels of literacy and productivity or economic reform to pluralist economic competition is claimed by some to be a necessary antecedent to competitive political pluralism. Passage from an authoritarian to a democratic order is found to require a negotiated transition of elite pacts if it is to avoid a replication of the authoritarian bloc in new conditions (Linz/Stepan 1996; Rose 1998; O’Donnell/ Schmitter 1986; Zartman 1991). Ethnic voting blocs must be broken by crosscutting, interest-aggregating parties if they are to avoid becoming permanent ethnic majorities, yet political parties tend to become vehicles for ethnic voting blocs. As scholars come to the conclusion that there is no best form of democratic constitution, research on democratization devolves into the “puzzle phase” (Kuhn 1962) as its focus is drawn to transitional institutional structures, voting regulations and practices, transparency guarantees, and post-electoral implementation. The flaws of simple majoritarian systems are receiving greater emphasis as democracy, at its best, comes to be seen as a coalition process in which all have a share in power (Lijphart 1977; Horowitz 1985, 1991). In the legislative area, coalition voting has been subject to sophisticated statistical and game-theoretical analysis carrying coalition theory to its most developed point, although circumscribed by the conditions of the legislative arena (Shapley 1962; Banzhaf 1975; Brams/Affonso 1976). In international politics, order based on the coalition process has a more established position. The basic mechanism involving a flexible coalition of status quo states against a rising hegemon, known as the balance of power or more recently balance of threat, is still central to international relations theory, although the concept of power has evolved, as discussed below. If half a century of bipolarity took some of the flexibility out of coalition behavior, both within and among the blocs, two decades of post-bipolar uncertainties have not produced the anti-hegemonic coalition against the remaining superpower that the theory might have predicted, probably because the hegemon’s political yoke is easy, its economic burden is lightened by a lot of free riding, and its values are widely shared, as Brown (2009) insightfully indicates. In the process, the opposite coalition behaviors of bandwagoning and balking have also come to light as a attractive alternatives, particularly for small states (Walt). Another new extension has been the analysis of regime building and multilateral diplomacy, theoretically quite different from the generally assumed bilateral character of negotiation, as a matter of managing complexity through coalition. Although basic coalition theory dates from an earlier era, these new uses of the concept have broken out from the simpler assumptions of that theory and require further theoretical expansion and then testing. Negotiated orders have been the subject of an enormous burst of attention and analysis in the last decades of the previous millennium. Negotiation has been characterized as involving “an initial disorder—the dispute—and an endeavor to reach an order–the settlement.” (Gulliver 1979: 21). It has long been thought that negotiation is applicable only to the uninstitutionalized order of international

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relations, leaving coalition and authority and their variants as the contending systems of order for domestic politics. If there are signal dates in the real world for a new focus on negotiation, they come from the Sixties—between 1962 in international relations when the Cuban Missile Crisis turned superpower military confrontation to diplomatic bargaining and 1968 in domestic relations when youth around the world refusing authority sought to negotiate new realities. This was also the time of seminal works that launched the analysis of a form of order different from the others—neither commanded nor divided but based on unanimity between/ among formally equal parties about a constructed outcome (Schelling 1960; Ikle 1964; Walton/McKersie 1965). The new attention has opened an entirely new area of analysis untouched in previous accounts that dealt only with outcomes—bills, treaties, institutions, states, constitutions—while ignoring the way in which they were achieved. New signal dates came half a century later in 2015 with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPoA) on nuclear proliferation in Iran and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, and the agreement with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolutionarias de Colombia (FARC) a year later, although for all their real significance they operated on established paradigms of negotiation and do not contain any new challenges for analysis, and all three were contested a few years after their signature. Negotiated orders have a participatory ownership shared with voted orders but without the necessary losers, and the negotiated order’s threefold choice (accept, reject, continue) allows for a positive-sum creativity that the twofold choice of voting and the ‘no-choice’ acceptance of authority do not provide (Ikle 1964). On the other hand, negotiation requires recognition of the parties’ legitimacy, an ability to accept half a loaf, and a tolerance of ambiguity in decisions that some situations do not permit. Without the tools of negotiation analysis, it would not be possible to investigate many aspects of world and domestic order such as international regimes, labor-management relations, peacemaking and -keeping, business deals, and preparation of legislation; yet it is significant that these very issue-areas are the ones where much remains to be done and learned about negotiation (Casper/Taylor 1994; Moravcsik 1994; Smith 1996; Mansbridge/Martin 2016). Thus negotiation can be treated as both a dependent and an independent variable in the search for order. Two questions dominate: “What is the order inherent in or leading to negotiation?” and “What kind of order does negotiation produce?” Negotiation processes follow one of three patterns (or a mix of them): concession/ convergence distributive bargaining, producing zero-sum (“win/lose”) outcomes; compensating exchange or trading, producing positive-sum (“win/win”) outcomes; or formula/detail reframing construction also producing positive-sum (“win/win”) outcomes. There is a high process-outcome correlation, but the determinants of the initial choice are not yet clear (Walton/McKersie 1965; Axelrod 1970, 1984; Zartman 1978; Wagner 2008; Hopmann 1996; Odell 2003). Between the three, compensating exchanges and integrating bargaining produce more stable outcomes since distributive bargaining contains an incentive for later rejection by the losing party. Compared to other types of order, institutionalized negotiation orders such as consensus legislation, international regimes, civil society groups, pacted transitions,

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and institutional amendments, among others, tend to be more creative, more flexible, and more able to handle change (Strauss 1980; Keohane/Nye 1989; Young 1983; O’Donnell/Schmitter 1986; Vandewalle 1996). Recent work has reinforced the conclusion that elected orders confirm legitimacy but only as a prerequisite, and that the real work of satisfying crosscutting majorities and minorities through effective governance is produced by negotiations among the elected parties and their appointed agents (Kumar 1998). Most recently, spurred by approaches in other sciences, a new type of order has begun to receive attention, the spontaneous or inherent order or the political equivalent of the market (Schelling 1965: Chap. 4; Hayek 1973; Kaplan). International political analysts have long claimed the balance of power mechanism to be an automatic pattern into which states’ actions fall, although uncertainty remains as to whether it is indeed an automatic effect or a voluntary policy coalition (including a balancer) (Morgenthau 1948; Waltz 1954). Social scientists and philosophers have long sought an elegant explanation for order in the form of a natural, self-maintaining equilibrium, but in the postwar era, they have asserted but then disclaimed the homeostatic tendencies of social systems. Rational choice analysis carries something of an inherent order mechanism under its innocent assumption of rationality, not surprising since rational choice is putatively the political equivalent of market economics, realist theory is less convincing in the same claim in international politics (Waltz 1979: 88–93; Olson 1965; Bates 1983). However, the proposal of the political system (state or international system) as the equivalent of the market, larger than the sum of the parts of rational political actors, does not provide the same convincing insights1 and has already been co-opted and worn out (if not discredited) by last century’s emphasis on raison d’état, Staatsmacht, and eventually the totalitarian state, and the post–World War II recurrent emphasis on world reformist missions. The millennial search continues for a political order that has its own regularities and mechanisms and can be subjected to scientific theory and analysis, independent of the vagaries of human choice. In all three forms of order as a decision-making process—coalition, negotiation, the political ‘market’—the potential is still underdeveloped. Coalition theory has not kept up with its application; negotiation theory is still a matter of many different views of the elephant; and theorists are still searching for the political equivalent of the market. Whether in domestic legislation or diplomatic mandate, coalitions are best subject to theoretical analysis when their components qualify as constituted units with well-determined interests and positions. But when their interests are inchoate and their existence itself the subject of political action, as is most usually the case, even the best analysis becomes inductive or ad hoc. Similarly, negotiation analysis has long been based on an assumption of established positions, bottom lines, and concession/convergence behavior, conditions that allow elegant theory but which omit most of the negotiation process and conceive it in unrealistic terms. The political ‘market’ too can only be a process. Important conceptualization of a political system as a mechanism with explicable and foreseeable consequences,

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developed in the 1950s and 1960s, has been put on the shelf for the moment, ready for retrieval in response to new questions and new bursts of inspiration (Easton 1965).

16.4

Contemporary Concerns

In the absence of renewed debates about the concept of order itself, many related issues remain to be worked out. Some of these issues have to do with putative opposites, such as the relation between order and change, order and justice, or order and process, already discussed; whereas others deal with supposed synonyms, such as order and legitimacy, or order and law, or order and power. None is new (what is, in political theory?) but all are of particular concern for the state of world order at the turn of the millennium. The relation between order and change is a continuing concern that the end of the Cold War order has thrown into new prominence. Order is not the opposite of change: There is orderly change and the change of orders, as in patterns (or anatomies) of revolution, stages of development, measures of transition, and amendment of constitutions (Apter 1971: 19–21). Thus, the eternal question regarding the relationship between order and change takes on two meanings: the scientist looks for regularities in new clusters of events, the practitioner (including the victim) looks for orderly—that is, if not nonviolent, at least predictable—change. New subjects of attention for interpretative scholarship on change and order for the beginning of the millennium include state collapse (Eisenstadt 1966; Huntington 1968; Zartman 1995a, b), interstate systemic transformation (Gilpin 1981; Doran 1991; Knutsen 1997), and transitions from one type of internal order to another (Huntington 1991; O’Donnell/Schmitter 1986; Casper/Taylor). In international politics, the inability of realist theory to explain, let alone predict, the collapse of the bipolar system and the avenues of its succession has raised penetrating questions about its theoretical power and defensive answers about its constrained applicability (Mearsheimer 1990; Deudney/Ikenberry 1991; Dallin 1992; Gaddis 1993; Kratochwil 1993; Lebow 1994; Kolodziej 1997). In the now merging areas of interstate and intrastate conflict, the search for non-violent change has led to the new field of conflict management, resolution and transformation, in order to investigate patterns of conflict and ways of channeling violent conflicts into political interaction (Pillar 1983; Zartman 1995a, b). Indeed, government itself is conflict management, providing an orderly process of change and mechanism for handling conflict among legitimate demands (and resources) and controlling its potential escalation into violence (Przeworski; Zartman 1996). The hegemonic order, like past systems of world order, finds itself torn between selective goals of regime change and regime support against change. Justice is not necessarily order, anymore than is peace or mercy, In some extensive run, orders are likely to be overtaken by the struggle for justice if they do not already achieve it (Goethe and Houphouet-Boigny notwithstanding), but since

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the bases of justice themselves change over time, today’s just order may be tomorrow’s cause for revolt (Bull 1977). International politics has looked for order in justice and justice in order on different occasions. Justice is the subject of a discussion of its own, analyzing the most recent periodic burst of scholarship devoted to the definition of a just order that can stand up to the inevitable changes in criteria (Rawls 1971; Barry 1989; Elster 1992; Zartman et al. 1996; Albin 2001). For all the travesties that it perpetrated on humanity, communism began as a search for a just order, but order soon became its own criterion, overriding justice, both in its domestic politics and in its regional systems. In the case of fundamentalist religious—most strongly Islamist—orders as justice cited as the motivating factor in the imposition of an authoritarian system, with the same inherent deformation as already seen under communism (Moussalli 1998; Al-Nai’im 1987). Since the defeat of world communism and the confrontation with Islamic fundamentalism, democracy has been frequently touted as the way of a just order, although the question plagues the current confrontation as it did the earlier one: Where is justice if the democratic order produces an anti-democratic system? Order and legitimacy are distinct terms, so that “legitimate order” is not a redundancy, any more than the might that makes order makes that order right. Legitimacy, defined as “the right to rule,” (Lasswell/Kaplan 1950: 133) can only refer to domestic political orders, where rule occurs and where the question asks whether the reigning domestic order is indeed legitimate and how legitimacy is determined (Beetham 1991). There is still no answer, despite some sophisticated polling techniques and rational choice analyses, usually only practicable in more or less legitimate orders (Rogowski 1974). Nor are the two elements independent of each other: Order contributes to its own legitimacy, as legitimacy contributes to order. As with many concepts, there is a world of research and definition remaining to be worked out about basic building blocks. In the anarchical international order, legitimacy needs a new definition to be researchable, perhaps referring instead to the order’s right to exist, if not directly to the concept of legitimacy itself. In the absence of a direct determination, more applicable in domestic politics, investigations relating to legitimacy in an international order necessarily involve questions about the process of its establishment, about the allocation of its benefits, and about the balance of benefits and responsibilities (von Haldenwant 1999). As with justice, the question is not raised about the legitimacy of the hegemonic order but rather about the uses to which that hegemony is put. The relation between order and law is also a subject of current debate. In the late 1960s, “law and order” became the designation of the right, the forces against change. For Weber (1958: 91), “The political element consists, above all, in the task of maintaining” law and ‘order’ in the country, hence maintaining the existing power relations.” In domestic relations, law is roughly synonymous with order, despite the ideological appropriations of the phrase, but the heated debate is over how much of public and private life needs to be ordered by law. While the provision of private socio-economic security from the cradle to the grave has been somewhat reduced in many countries, legal regulation of everything from abortion

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to zebra fish is viewed by many as overly intrusive and sparks a conservative call for “less government.” The answer for many is found in Locke’s assertion of civil society as an order without authority, with the players capable of regulating their own affairs without invoking Hobbes’ Leviathan, but the relation between the two —the subsidiarity question—is unclear: Is law needed to regulate what civil society does not, or is civil society needed to regulate what law does not? Yet civil society is an increasingly important subject of inquiry particularly in regard to the developing countries (Wallerstein 195x; Norton 1995, 1996, 2005; Bratton), where the problem is an alternative not to intrusive government but to lame or privatized government.1 In international politics, where there is practically no government at all (Rosenau/Czempiel 1992), the same question is the basis of the dispute between the realists and the liberals over whether the international order is anarchic and to what extent state ‘behaviors’ are constrained by regimes, that is, by soft law, institutions or “principles, norms, rules and procedures.” (Krasner 1983; Hasenclever et al. 1997; Spector/Zartman 2003) The debate is partially definitional, although the liberal school is better equipped to explain cooperation than its opponent, which is more attuned to conflict (see Cooperation in this collection). The two also split over law’s application in the current asymmetric world order: Are the hegemonic law enforcers subject to the same laws, however soft, as the rest of the international community?

16.5

Order and Power

The relationship between order and power also raises important boundary questions. For all its definitional uncertainties, power is the central concept of political science and also the cause of order, whether acting in coalition, negotiation or more automatic dynamics, and whether distributed or structured equally (symmetrically) and unequally (asymmetrically). “Politics for us means striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power, either among states or among groups within states,” avers Weber (1958: 78) circularly. Power provides the structure for world order, as order is the structure for power. As the experience of Genesis 2 recalls, even the perfect model of new creation is hard to preserve; its components have a mind of their own and turn plans for perfection awry. Nonetheless, contenders for the succession to formlessness tend to appear, inchoately, some on their own and others sponsored by the architects of the collapse. It is in the debris of the collapse of the past that indicators of contending structures may be found to reflect current power and impart meaning to world events. At least seven potential world orders are vying for recognition as the world slides into the new millennium. Each has some significant features; none is yet salient enough to provide the dominant structure that the cold war (or before it, the colonial system) was able to impose (Puchala/Hopkins 1983). Unlike those periods,

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history is currently made of the struggle between, not within, potential orders. The dynamics of the current transitional era are found in the conflict among the various world orders for survival and dominance, or more precisely among the beneficiaries of the various world order for the survival and dominance of the model that favors them. The first model is unipolar, the result of the collapse of one side of the former bipolar world. Victor in the struggle, the United States is still the largest national economy and nuclear power, the leading coordinator and the ultimate enforcer (“the world’s policeman”) in international affairs (Gilpin 1981; Keohane 1984). It still is a necessary if insufficient element in conflict management and cooperation, and such recent and important agreements such as the Law of the Sea, the General Agreements on Trade and Tariffs and Trade in Services, the selection of a UN or NATO secretary general, the Middle East Peace Process and the Iranian settlement cannot be accomplished without American participation and approval. Polarity can be exercized lightly; it need not have the heavy hand of hegemon. The US is only primus inter pares and a contested primus at that, challenged by other economic, nuclear, or diplomatic powers independently pursuing their own goals, and it no longer has the heart and mind to exercise hegemonic power as it did during the last collapse in world order systems after World War II. That may make its leadership more palatable when exercized, since it has manifestly so little inclination to dominate. But it also makes the unipolar order hard to discern, since the US is scarcely running a well-directed and well-coordinated alliance of its peers for the conduct or reduction of conflicts. The second contender is therefore a multipolar system, classically regulated by the centuries-old mechanism of the balance of power, a pattern of action whereby the rise of a potential hegemon triggers other states into an alliance to balance it until the hegemonic threat wanes (Waltz 1843: 1979; Walt 1987). The world of the new millennium is indeed characterized by a number of great powers or power centers whose leading role is even institutionalized in the annual G-7 or -8 meetings and (with a different but overlapping membership) in the UN Security Council. Balance of power theory would predict that the US position as the apparent hegemon after the collapse of the Soviet Union would lead other powers, notably European states and China, to seek greater autonomy of action and to combine their efforts (particularly among European states) to limit American initiatives. Yet balancing power is not a dominant characteristic of the world today, current international interaction is a far cry from security alliances, and the very weakness of model I (unipolar hegemony) makes model II (multipolar balance) equally weak as the key to systemic dynamics. The multipolar system is in as much disorder as the unipolar one. European and Asian powers are unable either to coalesce against the leading power or to act in autonomous concert, so that collective defense alliances—the prime instrument of the balance of power—are of little use in the 2010s. Rather there is an open season on asserting new hegemonies (China) and old ones (Russia) and reviving old wars of religion (and power) (Sunnis vs. Shi’a). Perhaps most curiously, the defeated superpower has neither entered into the ranks of other middle-level powers as a democratic state nor disappeared from multipolar

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interactions as a dismembered entity; it has returned to its former role as prime antagonist, flexing muscles but deologlocally naked. The third contending system of world order is the world institution designed to overcome the ill effects of the first two classic systems, the United Nations. Freed of its cold war paralysis, the UN is often seen as the potential new world government, prepared to handle security problems around the globe as the real “world’s policeman.” It has been given a role in almost all the issues of the 1990s and 2000s, from agenda-setting for positive initiatives to direct and disinterested management of conflicts, until refrozen by Russian and Chinese votes against any action. Its day has yet to come. However, the UN is still primarily a place, not a thing. It has little capability and economy as a corporate actor and is above all a collection of states who decide and enable for their own purposes, not according to a sense of collective order and responsibility. It is no more than an instrument to be used (including for blame) when it suits the common or complementary interests of a critical number of members. Even when those interests do call for a world order role, the UN has no independent source of financing for its operations. Whatever elements of decision and initiative the UN may have, its operations in the new millennium have quickly run up against the limits on members’ contributions—political, military, and financial, reflecting limitations not only on their commitment but also on their view of an appropriate role for the organization. The successive versions of the Agenda for Peace by the UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali (1995) and of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) by his successors Kofi Annan (2002) and Ban Ki-Moon (2014) have shown both a coherent vision of appropriate UN roles and activities and the need to shrink that vision to fit the weak commitment of the players. So a fourth model of world order presents itself as a more accurate reflection of international organization, an ad hoc world legislative forum of sovereign states (Rivlin et al. 1990; Zartman 1994a, b, c; Sjöstedt et al. 1994; Hampson 1995).1 Whether operating in the UN itself or in the increasingly broad and intrusive global conferences which it authorizes, such as UNCLOS (the third UN Conference on the Law of the Sea between 1973 and 1982 (Sebenius 1984; Friedheim 1992)), or the World Trade Organization (Sjöstedt 1994) or the UNCED system (on UNCED, Sjöstedt 1993; Sjöstedt et al. 1994), or the nuclear non-proliferations system (Melamud et al. 2014), or the climate control system, states large and small are in almost continuous overlapping sessions of parliamentary diplomacy (Rusk 1955). More than any previous era, they set standards and make rules and policy on a wide variety of matters, operating through shifting coalitions, as in a concert system or a national legislature, and impinging on systems of national legislation. But this system has no structure, no coordination, no dominant power configuration, no means of enforcement, no identity or belief system. It has a potentiality for comprehensiveness but the various pieces of activity are still unconnected and unharmonized, and many of its regimes have hit dead end (Kremenyuk 2002; Chasek 1994). It is a form of activity, not yet a system of world order. In struggling to keep its head above reality, in returning to refining conferences and

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implementing protocols, in enlisting a newly formed army of non-governmental organizations in support of its efforts (and then in opposition to counterattacks by other NGOs), this system shows greater vitality than its inchoate nature would suggest. But it is only beginning, and it needs a restart, not likely given the international mood of the 2010s. Quite the opposite is a fifth contending model, the remaining of a divided North-South (or West-East) world (Feinberg/Boylan 1991). This is a perceived world order, structure of power-clad identity and beliefs. With the Second (communist) World gone, the First (developed West) and Third (underdeveloped South) World are left alone to face each other. To some interpreters, this system also has a structure, primarily economic, topped by the leading countries of the world capitalist system operating through the international financial institutions (World Bank and Monetary Fund) and exploiting the underdeveloped Third World base (Wallerstein 1979; Laidi 1989). Some Western and Southern representatives even join in picturing the North-South—or more specifically West-East—conflict as World War IV after the end of World (cold) War III; this is particularly true when the East is identified with political Islam, giving it a perceived ideological coherence (Piscatori 1986). In reality, however, both the economic and the ideological versions are a caricature of reality (as all ideologies are), reflecting some characteristics of current international relations but highly exaggerated in their internal coherence or their Manichaean polarity. The East/South is deeply penetrated by the North/West, its values more or less influenced by its opponent’s, its wealth as its poverty dependent on the global economy. For all the negative experiences of many Third World countries in economic underdevelopment, the world is not poised on the edge of a global Spartacus revolt. Indeed, underclass societies are more likely to revolt against themselves, reducing the demand on scarce resources by Malthusian massacres rather than by turning against the better-endowed North. A looser alternative, model VI, continues to structure the world on the universal values of the cold war—democracy, human rights, market economy—without attributing ideological coherence to the “other” side (Singer/Wildavsky 1993). Converting societal values into foreign policy goals, it moves on to structure the world into “dos” and “do nots,” recreating a loose bipolarity and launching a gentle crusade. It seeks to turn a world now finally safe for democracy, human rights, and free enterprise into a world of those values. This is the ultimate world order of organizing beliefs, with no specifically related power structures other than those of the states qualified by these values (or their opposite, a world of sovereignty as responsibility to protect their populations, with the help of others if necessary (R2P) (Deng et al. 1995)). The Marxist notion that rich, capitalist states do go to war against each other has been supplanted by the Kantian notion, supported by contrived and limited data, that democracies do not go to war against each other (and if they do they are not democracies), thus providing a predictedly peaceful order to go with the winning belief system. Yet beliefs and values alone do not constitute a system of world order; unless power structures are motivated and mobilized in the

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service of cognitive system, the order is philosophical rather than political. As such, it is a cognitive and purposive device, meaning but not yet action. This review is obviously and necessarily inconclusive, It carries no criteria for judging the ‘best’ order, despite some claims and vigorous debates. Nor does it contain predictions for the emergence of order out of the current transitional disorder. In fact, transition may be a misleading term, since it implies going ‘from-to’ (transition), although one certain thing is that there will be an identifiable outcome. Rather, like the Road to Emmaus, the value lies in the discussion and in the consideration of its components and consequences.

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Chapter 17

Justice in Decision-Making

Conflict is the basis of politics, and politics is the pursuit and management of conflict (Zartman 1997).1 Conflict is an essential and inevitable element in human interaction. Conflict between positions is the basis of democratic debate and the open society holds that truth appears only when conflicting positions are fully confronted publicly. When this debate is not allowed, stronger forms of conflict appear within states, but directed against their government, which in turn harnesses conflict to repress citizens and impose order. The management of conflict, or the process of turning conflict into order can follow a number of different forms. Institutionalized conflict is the nature of elections, where size makes right (and right makes size); in executive and judicial proceedings, authority is given to the institution which finds a principle of justice to guide its decision. When institutions are not present to establish decision rules and hierarchies of authority, a looser form of social decision-making is required, known as negotiation. Negotiation is joint or social decision-making where the decision rule is unanimity and therefore the parties are equal, that is, each has a veto. In negotiation, conflict between positions is overcome in a joint decision, without benefit of votes, institutions, or authorities. A minimum of order is a prerequisite, enough for the parties to communicate, but no more; even the decision rule itself is established only by unanimous agreement and is broken when there is no agreement. This amount of order is based on the characteristic mixed-motive situation, which requires both conflicting and common interests for the negotiation to take place—common interest in reaching agreement, which holds the process together, and conflicting interests to reconcile, which make the process necessary (Ikle l964). Epistemologically, these other processes are easier to analyze and their results easier to explain, in the sense that the explanatory variables are more evident in the process. Thus, voting can be measured (Rae/Taylor 1970), coalitions can be the subject of theory (Riker 1962), hierarchy can be conceptualized (Mosca 1939; 1

I William Zartman, papers prepared for various Processes of International Negotiation (PIN) projects, 1989, 2017. © I William Zartman. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 I. W. Zartman, I William Zartman: A Pioneer in Conflict Management and Area Studies, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06079-4_17

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Putnam 1976), institutions can be categorized (North 1990). The analytical approach to negotiation is less obvious. The predominant school, which takes many forms, explains negotiated outcomes through the use of power (Edgeworth 1881; Zeuthen 1930; Hicks 1932; Schelling 1960; Ikle 1964; Walton/McKersie 1965; Zartman 1974; Harsanyi 1977; Bartos 1987; Brams 1990), defined as actions taken with the intent of inflecting the other party’s behavior in a particular direction (Rubin/Zartman 1995).

17.1

Power and Justice

But power, political science’s key concept, is notoriously difficult to grasp precisely. The standard behavioral definition of power as the ability to move a party in an intended direction (Tawney 1931; Simon 1953; Dahl 1957; Thibaut/Kelley 1959) brooks no dilemma, since it is conclusionary or outcome-directed; the existence of power is proved by the outcome and therefore the most powerful must always win, because the winner is always most powerful, that is, most able to move the other party. The other common definition of power, which identifies it with resources, poses the structural dilemma, whereby weak negotiate with strong and gain favorable (even asymmetrically favorable) outcomes. Actors with an overwhelming imbalance of resources frequently do well (Morgan 1994: p 141) but also frequently do poorly in negotiation, and indeed, contrary to common wisdom, negotiations among unequals tend to be more efficient and satisfying than negotiations among equals (Pruitt/Carnevale 1993; Rubin/Zartman 1995). Power in negotiation is best apprehended through the value of alternatives, variously termed security points (Zartman 1987: pp 12–13), damage (Harsanyi 1977: pp 179), reservation prices (Lax/Sebenius 1986: p 5l), threat potentials (Rapoport 1966: p 97), security levels (Rapoport 1966: p 101), resistance points (Walton/McKersie 1965: p 41), best alternative to a negotiated agreement or BATNA (Fisher/Ury 1981), among others—the party that least needs an agreement (at these terms) is the strongest, in colloquial terms. Here too, however, the power of alternatives leaves many negotiated outcomes unexplained (Hopkins 1987). Power alone, by any but a tautological definition, does not always account for the maintenance of a veto over conflict resolving proposals; conflict is often preferred over a negotiated order by weaker parties under great pressure. Furthermore, if power were the main key, the structural dilemma would not exist. Yet the structural dilemma is an interesting analytical problem, since many negotiations involve asymmetries that require explanation (Wriggins 1976; Zartman/Rubin 1996; Habeeb 1988). Power is not all, however (Zartman et al. 1996). An alternative explanation revives the element of justice as a basis for acceptable orders or as a criterion for

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conflict termination. Justice, too, is related to comparative needs.2 But needs have variable referents: physical needs (hunger) have to be balanced against moral needs (responsibilities), for example, in evaluating a deal of unequal justice. In the process of negotiating the exchange or division of items contested between them, the parties have to come to an agreement on the notion of justice that will govern this disposition; if they do not, the negotiations will not be able to proceed to a conclusion. Individual notions of justice act as a substantive veto on agreement, and must be coordinated and accepted as the first stage of negotiation. This notion of justice constitutes a formula on the basis of which parties then proceed to the disposition of details. The formula can be a procedural rule for establishing terms of trade, or one or more principles of justice on which such terms can be base (Zartman 1978; Zartman/Berman 1982). Inherent in this argument is the recognition that power alone cannot either produce or explain agreement and cannot substitute for justice determination in the process of negotiation (Young 1994; Zartman 1995; Zartman et al. 1996). The analytical questions then become: What is the meaning of justice in negotiation and how is it determined? What alternative outcomes and explanations of outcomes are provided by power and by justice.

17.2

The Argument

Negotiation is a joint allocation process based on shared principles of justice of formulas to govern specific outcomes.3 Formulas are general principles defining the nature of the process, including the nature of the problem and the terms of trade. These elements in turn express a sense of justice that will guide the negotiations. Beyond this, a general formula governing the proceedings, there can also be subformulas referring to components of the problem or conflict when the issue is complicated; subformulas should be subordinate principles consistent with the general formula. Those who are negotiating define their type of justice in their formula and they find just exchanges in their detailed agreements; if they don’t, the process may continue, to produce a jumbled or incoherent agreement. The basic point is that a crucial segment of the negotiation process involves the establishment of guiding principles before it ever gets to the allocation of details and that that principle expresses a concept of justice. (Young 1994; Aristotle; Deutsch 1985; Zartman 1987; Cook/Hegtveldt 1983; Stolte 1987). The most prominent notion of justice is that of equality or impartial juatic. Equal treatment is seen as fair treatment and equal outcomes are just deserts. Equality in its many forms is a common point of agreement for combining competing claims, forming a 2

The needs school, introduced by Maslow and carried to extremes by Burton, is of little help in analyzing negotiation. The needs referenced here is the need for an agreement, related to available alternatives. 3 There are other definitions of negotiation highlighting other aspects. “Negotiation is a process of parties’ combining conflicting points of view into a joint decision,” Zartman 1978: 40.

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floor (and hence, bilaterally, a ceiling) on relative gains and providing an acceptable formula for agreement as split-the-difference in the end when other criteria have run out. It is also the basic element in the entire procedural ethos under which negotiation takes place, that of reciprocity or the equal exchange of equal concessions (Keohane 1986; Larson 1988). Where equality is desired but cannot or need not be determined, a looser form known as equivalence is often used. The basis of justice in these cases is simply an exchange deemed appropriate or roughly similar, and justice is to be found not in the relative size of the shares but in the mere fact of the exchange, as opposed to receiving the first item as a gift. There are also well-established principles of inequality that serve notions of justice as well—equity (or merit or investment), in which the party who has or contributes the most receives the most, and compensation (or need or redistribution), in which the party which has the least receives the most. Such inequalities are equalizing measures, however, exchanged for some past or future equalizer, in the case of equity or compensation, respectively. Compensation is based on equalizing payments to one side, and “entitlement” and “deserving” are brought about through exchange for some external or non-tangible good from the receiving side, or for a good somewhere else on the time dimension (past or future). Such equalizing is the meaning and purpose of equity in the legal sense, where various instances of compensatory justice are invoked to temper the severity of partial justice principles (Deutsch 1985; Homans 1961; Adams 1965; Messe 1971). Thus, permanent seats on the UN Security Council were given to the Five Great Powers as a down payment on future responsibility for security, not because the Powers had nuclear weapons; merit scholarships are not given because of entitlement for intelligence but as a trade-off for future contribution to society (or to alumni funds); and developing countries receive compensation for reduction of ozone-depleting substances in exchange for future development (or for past mistreatment) (Benedick 1991: pp 152–57). A third type of justice principle is equal only in that it is to be equally applied equality before the law but it designates a winner, according to an established rule or generalized formula. Priority (partial) justice refers to principles from external sources that decree a particular outcome—“First come first served,” “Finders keepers,” “Winner take all,” “Polluter pays,” “Riparian rights,” “Noblesse oblige,” “Primogeniture,” and many others. These principles are usually absolute, incontrovertible; and indicate total allocation, not sharing. Since they are principles that favor one side, they are usually adopted to justify opening positions or the wants, needs and interests of each side, but they may also be used as the basis of agreement under the equal application principle. All variations can be reduced to these three types, and any kind of outcome— final or proposed—can be classified in one or a combination of these principles. Outcomes are negotiated first among expressions of these principles, until deductively or inductively a formula is arrived at to govern the negotiated agreement. Sometimes, the stakes are such that a single, simple principle can constitute that formula; in other circumstances, they may be complex enough to require a formula

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of compound justice, involving a pairing or combination of principles to constitute the agreement. The formulating process—again schematically—generally begins with the parties’ posing a partial justice principle based on some external ruling or precedent that favor their position. Thereafter the process is taken up with the search for a joint determination of whichever principle of justice the parties can agree on— including a partial justice principle—to guide them to a conclusion. They will try to determine whether there is a range of overlapping or coincident principles that can frame a consensus—a Zone of Possible Agreement (ZOPA)—within which they can tailor a final outcome Usually ZOPA is thought of in terms of outcomes but in fact the proposed outcomes are clothed in principles that govern their acceptability. The process is not unidirectional; if a formula turns out to be unsatisfactory as negotiations continue, the parties will go back to reformulation and even to diagnosis, in a trial-and-error attempt to reframe the approach. “Justice” will probably not figure explicitly in the debates, but is easily identified by its content and by other phrases used to describe and justify the choice.

17.3

The Problem

But all this is only the introduction to the unanswered question of the process: How are formulas, subformulas and then details decided? The tools are available, as enumerated, but how is the ruling notion of justice chosen? The orthodox political answer goes back to power. A second answer could be appropriateness, the fit of a formula to the problem or conflict. Negotiators could disinterestedly, irrespective of their interest, pick a principle that best takes care of the issue and find justice in solution. Fit is not usually obvious and in addition to its technical effectiveness, usually involves some externalities and hidden notions of justice for the parties A third criterion could be agreeability, in which the parties land where they can, without much concern for the applicability or effects of the coincident decision. In this case, justice itself in any form becomes a secondary consideration in the decision. A fourth reason could be time, a specific case of agreeability in a stop-the-music effect imposed on the parties to come to terms wherever they are in the process. Again, justice (and coherence) is an unintended consequence of the decision. On further consideration, time or deadlines as a criterion for agreement in fact covers the same sort of considerations. The party that needs the agreement (at these terms) most gives in. Generally when the negotiations reach the decision point, the difference is narrowed and lower in significance, but brinkmanship moments (Nixon on SLBMs in Moscow, Reagan on SDI in Reykjavik) involve decisions on major gaps. In the two examples, the type of justice involved was equality: Brezhnev was willing to accept inequality in coverage under the agreement, Gorbachev was not. In the first case, the agreement was considered “just enough” or

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equal in its coverage not considering items left out; in the second case not. Thus agreements may stop with potential gains still on the table but nonetheless still just enough to come to closure (Hopmann 2018).

17.4

The Evidence

With these deductive considerations in mind, it is time to turn to cases to provide some inductive answers. Cases have been chosen unscientifically, mainly because they are interesting and because information (data) is available, rather random criteria. Thus any answer they provide will be merely evidence and insights for further investigation wider and more selective samples, broken down by type, for example. But is worthwhile looking at some very different instances to see how the question can be handled. Cases considered include the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPoA) on Iranian nuclear nonproliferation, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the 1995 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, The 1984 Stockholm Conference on the Disarmament of Europe, the 2016 Peace Agreement with the FARC in Colombia, the 1992 El-Salvador Peace Agreement, the 1995 Dayton Bosnian Peace Agreement, the 1991 Iran Hostages Agreement, the Negotiations on the 1998 Independence of Namibia, and the 1998 Ecuador-Peru Border Agreement. Some of these cases are mediated but it makes no difference for the analysis; the mediator is a catalyst, sometimes even adding its own ideas, but the decisions are in the hands of the negotiators. The Iran nonproliferation talks leading to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPoA) on 2015 began gradually in a diagnosis phase as Western countries and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) sought to find out just how Iran’s nuclear activity was proceeding. Between 2003 and 2006, Iran and the EU-3 conduced a number of talks and made some joint declarations ending in a break off of talks, the US and UN imposition (separately) of sanctions, and the election of Ahmedinejad as Iranian president. Broadened sanctions and an IAEA report of increased enrichment led to reopened talks with Iran in 2012, now by the P5+1 (Germany). Iran’s position was one of partial justice, grounded in its “inherent right” to enrichment for peaceful purposes, declaring that it had no weapons intentions and calling for an easement of sanctions; specifically it pursued 20% enrichment. The P5+1 position was also one of partial justice, calling for adherence to IAEA limitations including regular IAEA inspections, specifically a 3.5% enrichment limitation below weapons grade. From these positions negotiations began (or continued) to look for terms of trade that would provide a just agreement. Up to this point, the terms of trade focused on the Western demand for nonproliferation. The Westerners were the demandeurs, with little to offer in exchange and a formula for justice an elusive challenge. After 2012 the table turned: Iran became the demandeur as the sanction began to bite and its goal was to have them removed. Now it was a case of finding equivalence for a fair deal: how much sanctions relief would buy how much nonproliferation? The P5+1 dropped its

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The Evidence

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demand for total removal of 20% uranium and an end to 20% and plutonium enrichment, allowing 3.5% enrichment for uranium but kept sanctions until the agreement was consummated. It was not enough. Iran moved from production and preservation of stockpiles to conservation of facilities and centrifuges, providing a shift in terms of trade at the end of 2013 and the signature of a six-months interim agreement, the Joint Plan (JPoA). The Plan brought the relaxation of a number of sanctions in exchange for agreement to downblend all 20% enriched uranium to 5% and a halt in the installation or construction of centrifuges. By early-2015, the new formula had been translated from total elimination to small retention of both enriched uranium and capacity and facilities (centrifuges) in exchanges for full inspection and eliminated anti-proliferation sanctions (but not others) when the nonproliferation conditions were accomplished. “Both sides saw the stakes as too high and the endgame as too close not to push through” (Tabatabai 2018: 15). The details are obviously more complex but the direction of the negotiation is clear. The parties started with the positions of partial or priority justice and whittled them down to a sharp point of agreement based on equivalence in July 2015. In the process, the position of demandeur changed sides with the imposition of sanctions, making Iran take the Western demands seriously but allowing the parties to have something to exchange. In fact a ripening action brought about a mutually hurting stalemate where there had been none and impelled the parties together to seek a way out. In the process, the concessions of each side justified the concessions of the other side, judged at least equivalent. One may say that the West was more powerful since it accomplished that shift, but at the same time the shift allowed for an exchange of concessions that made the outcome just and acceptable to both sides. Was the final outcome just in absolute terms for each side? Each end up in a position that it could judge as just in the circumstances and, depending on the audience, each declared that it had won, relatively and absolutely. The agreement preserved retention of face-saving pieces of the original positions for each side, although these may also be termed positions from which to rebuild and react to proliferation when the agreement ends. The balance of equivalence in these concessions and in the ultimate agreement is a matter of judgment, but both sides walked away at least satisfied. The alternative (BATNA) for both sides was the likelihood of war, an outcome both sides wanted avoid. Once Western actions had introduced a counterbalancing problem and equalized the situation, the negotiations themselves proceeded through a process to an outcome of impartial justice. The absolute justice of what each side “got” can be debated interminably. The Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 provided an almost-textbook case of negotiation, involving a few simple moves. Countervailing power was used to carry the crisis into stalemate, from which war, capitulation, and a negotiated deal were the only ways out. Insistence on capitulation, which was within the grasp of US power, would have produced war. Even though the result reflected the unbalanced distribution of resource power, it became possible only when a notion of justice was addressed and resolved, and the process of resolving involved a number of attempts to create the appropriate balance by criteria of justice.

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The installation of Soviet missiles in Cuba was decided in June 1962 (Khrushchev 1970, 493–94) and discovered by the US on 16 October (R. Kennedy 1969, l). The Soviet action was later justified as a deterrent against American invasion of Cuba, based on an absolute priority principle of collective defense, equally applied: ”We had the same rights and opportunities as the Americans….governed by the same rules and limits….” (Khrushchev 1970: pp 496, 493-95; Khrushchev 1974: p 511). For the US, the right of self-defense against an aggressive move received very little mention in the Executive Committee and was assumed as the legitimate expression of an absolute priority principle of justice (Rusk in Trachtenberg 1985: p 171; R. Kennedy 1969). Discussions centered on the choice of an appropriate American response between air strike and blockade, neither of which would have resolved the issue and removed the missiles (J. F. Kennedy & Dillon in Trachtenberg 1985: p 195). The quarantine was chosen as the first response to force withdrawal from the Soviet Union; air strikes were left as the second, in a threat position (R. Kennedy 1969: 32–33; Rusk & McNamara in Trachtenberg 1985: p 173, 182; R. Kennedy in Trachtenberg 1985: p 200). It was early decided that the quarantine around Cuba would not be traded against a Soviet blockade of Berlin (Trachtenberg 1985: pp 178–79). The purpose of the quarantine was to impose a stalemate that would force a decision and would provide an item for trade against the removal of the missiles, as the expression of a priority justice principle but one that was uninteresting to the Soviet Union. In the search for a joint notion of justice, Ambassador Adlai Stevenson proposed another trade, that of missiles in Turkey and Italy plus the Guantanamo Bay naval base in exchange for missiles in Cuba, 1969: p 27). Similarly, the proposal of Acting Secretary-General U Thant for a temporary lifting of the quarantine in exchange for a temporary suspension of missile deliveries (which would leave some missiles in Cuba still approaching operational status) was rejected by the US (after acceptance by the USSR) (R. Kennedy 1969: p 52). The appropriate referents for equivalent justice contained within the Cuban area were offered by Khrushchev in his letter of 26 October: US promise not to invade Cuba in exchange for missile “demobilization” (Khrushchev 1962: p 642, 645). The second Khrushchev letter of the following day repeated equivalence but in more nearly equal terms but no longer limited to the Cuban area: Soviet missiles out of Cuba in exchange for US missiles out of Turkey (Khrushchev 1962) The president considered that it might “make a good trade” whereas the State Department, in rejecting it, proposed the rejection of any equivalence, no trade could be made”. [J. F. Kennedy in Trachtenberg 1985: pp 199, 201; R. Kennedy 1969: p 79]). The Executive Committee instead opted to take up the previous offer: Soviet offensive weapons out of Cuba in exchange for US removal of quarantine and assurances against invasion (R. Kennedy 1962: p 649). Justice is never mentioned in the Kennedy-Khrushchev exchanges. There was much discussion of terms of trade, the ingredients of equivalent justice, however, and in the debate over the two Khrushchev letters, President Kennedy clearly indicated that ”we have to face up to the possibility of some kind of trade over missiles.” (J. F. Kennedy in Trachentenberg 1985: p 199). Grudgingly, Khrushchev

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The Evidence

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—who having less to crow about, crowed more—indicated that ”by agreeing even to symbolic measures, Kennedy was creating the impression of mutual concessions (Khrushchev 1974: p 512). There is no doubt that the last days of the crisis and the bulk of the bargaining were spent in an intense search for terms of trade that would justify the withdrawal of the missiles, the lifting of the quarantine, and the negotiation of an agreement. Negotiations on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) finally began in 1994 after a circuitous course over decades and ended in June 1996, at a deadline imposed by the UN General Assembly, and adopted by the General Assembly in September. Negotiations were conducted seriatim, issue by issue with little linkage, but under a somewhat clumsy formula enunciated by the UN Committee on Disarmament (CD) “to negotiate intensively a universal and multilaterally and effectively verifiable comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty” (CD/ PV.1238, 12/12/1993). The major issues concerned the basic obligation of disarmament versus test-ban (called “Banning the Bomb or the Bang”) (4, Meerts/ Zartman 2012), protective versus intrusive verification, international organization versus state control, common (equality) versus differentiated (equity) interests, and collective versus state security. Underlying these issues, the mandate opened up a tension between measures to facilitate a thorough inspection when illegal testing was suspects and measures to protect states from infringement of their sovereignty and security. Although there were some 140 states negotiating, they tended to cluster into a core group of nuclear weapons states (NWS) and a large nonnuclear group (NNWS), plus a small group of nuclear-capable weapons states (NCWS) and another of middle-power nonnuclear “regime-builders” or progressive deal-makers. Opening positions of partial justice include the Western NWS calling for a treaty limited to banning tests, intrusive verification, state control of decisions on on-site inspections (OSI), protection for NWS capacity and decision preeminence, and emphasis on individual state security; the NNWS plus India, China and Pakistan stood on the opposite end of each issue. On the basic obligation, after continual debate the goal of nuclear disarmament was relegated to the preamble and the concentration of the treaty on test banning reaffirmed, a symbolic nod to the NNWS group in exchange for a textual victory for the core group. On the OSI issue, there was a distinct concession-convergence process as the sides edged toward each other to end up between voluntary and mandatory, on “restrictedly mandatory” procedures on initiation and frequency of inspections, slightly leaning on the NWS side. Further, on the same issue, was the question whether “consultation and clarification” (C&C) could delay or replace OSI, as desired by the NNWS, or would only be facultative; editorial maneuvering again ended closer to the NWS wording. Similarly, on member state versus international organization (CTBTO) decision-making on treaty invocation and individual members versus collective security concerns, delicate negotiations to strike a balance, often slightly contradictory, tended to again lean toward the NWS. Finally, differences on the adhesions required for entry into force were combined inconclusively in such a way that the treaty has not yet met them two decades later.

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Lesser items also exhibited a concession-convergence process, often ending in a lowest-common-denominator or contradictory result. Who made the decision in this compound case? The first answer is, Everyone. A compendium of these seriatim processes shows that from opposite position the parties inched toward each other, often with clever editorial bargaining and wordsmanship till their reached middle ground. The second conclusion is that the general nature of the treaty leaned slightly to the NWS position in favor of a mandate that could seriously investigate accusations of infraction while maintaining their own position as nuclear weapons (but non-testing) states. That adds up to an outcome of process equality with a dash of equity. Was justice served by the outcome in the eyes of the individual states? To a large extent but not large enough —the treaty did not receive enough states’ ratification to enter into effect and is still waiting. The Stockholm Conference on Disarmament in Europe (CDE) represents a very different test for the notions of justice in negotiation. It shows that a common notion of justice (the principle question can be identified early on but can run up against the referent question, that additional principles of justice may be required to keep negotiations moving, that that internal changes in the parties and in their relations with each other may also be required in order to be able to complete the principle and resolve the referent questions, so as finally to arrive at an agreement. CDE grew out of the Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) in 1975 (Ghebali 1989; Leatherman 1996). The Helsinki Final Act contained, among other things, both a no use of force (NUF) declaration and a few limited but instructive confidence-building measures (CBMs). In 1978 France proposed a European disarmament conference “from the Atlantic to the Urals” (in a Gaullist phrase), initially focusing exclusively on CBMs. The relationship between the conference and the measures was debated at the Madrid meeting of CSCE in 1983, resulting in the Madrid Mandate for the Stockholm Conference to “begin a process of which the first stage will be devoted to the negotiation and adoption of a set of mutually complementary [confidence and security building] measures… [over] the entire continent of Europe.” The conference began in Stockholm on 17 January 1984. The careful wording of the mandate represented both a clear agreement on the principles of justice and a troublesome ambiguity on its application. The “mutually complementary measures” were to be an exercise in equal justice, since they were to be equally applied to all parties within the area and this equality of treatment was a crucial rule of standing and treatment for the CSCE members, but most particularly for the NATO and Warsaw Pact partners. Yet the geographic application of the equal measures was asymmetric. CPSU General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev (1986) 1: “We naturally expect reciprocal [i e equal or at least equivalent] steps from the West. Military preparations in the European zone of NATO do not start from the continental edge of Europe” (Borawski 1992: p 28). The same problem was analyzed in careful detail by US Ambassador James Goodby (1988: 164, 154). The asymmetrical geographical coverage probably caused real concerns in some quarters in Moscow, however, and the Soviet delegate sought to compensate for

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The Evidence

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this by making proposals that affected the West to a greater extent than the East (… ceiling on exercises,…high threshold on notification,…naval activities on the high seas, [and]…air activities.)…Thus they sought to achieve not only a geographic offset to the unequal treatment they tried to portray in the outcome of the Madrid mandate, but also to provide for coverage of those US forces that they perceived to be a special threat to themselves. A third category of obstacles common to many of the issues above stemmed from the asymmetries in the way US and Soviet forces are structured and trained. The negotiations faced a dilemma: How to implement the agreed principle of equality when its implementation could not be accomplished with equal interest and equal effect? Either the principle had to be changed, from equal to unequal justice, as the Soviets tried by seeking compensation for the asymmetries, or ways had to be found the apply the mandated principle of equality. As Soviet Ambassador Grinevsky said (or was instructed to say) as late as 22 March 1985 in round V, “Most of the proposals…[in NATO’s SC.1 Amplified] continue to be aimed at laying bare the military activities of the Warsaw Treaty countries, at securing unilateral military advantages. As before, they do not meet the requirements of equality of rights, balance and reciprocity, equal respect for the security interests of all participating states [Borawski 1992: p 65].” Until the referent question could be answered satisfactorily, the principle question remained abstract and negotiations were stuck. The negotiators were working on the problem, however. A little publicized Walk on the Wharf in Stockholm by Ambassadors Goodby and Grinevsky produced the suggestion of a new and complementary principle of equivalence—Soviet agreement to CSBMs in exchange for US agreement to a renewed NUF declaration. The suggestion was conveyed to President Reagan who included it as an apparent “precipitating act” (Saunders 1989: p 437) in his speech to the Irish parliament on 4 June 1984: “If discussions on reaffirming the principle not to use force, a principle in which we believe so deeply, will bring the Soviet Union to negotiate agreements which will give concrete, new meaning to that principle, we will gladly enter into such discussions.” Equivalence of issues did not replace equality of application as the governing principle of justice, however; it only facilitated it, and other changes were needed to make the latter acceptable. These changes came with the leadership succession in the Soviet Union. Confidence-building leading to arms reduction in Europe became a prime Soviet interest, therefore allowing a focus on “the whole of Europe” without implying asymmetry. The Europeanness of the Soviet Union was a historic Russian theme of importance to Gorbachev, overriding perceptions of geographical imbalance. The first summit meeting between Reagan and Gorbachev, in the midst of round VIII in Geneva, produced a final statement that “reaffirmed the need for a document which would include mutually acceptable confidence- and security-building measures and give concrete expression and effect to the principle of nonuse of force [Borawski 1992: p 77].” Acceptance of the two principles of justice—equality and equivalence—allowed the negotiators to move ahead to the details of the agreement, translating the principled formula into specific measures for the first time. The informal structure

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that took over by round VII and characterized proceedings through 1986 testified to the effect of agreement on the formula, allowing parties to work together in search of agreeable provisions (Borawski 1992: p 76). Concessions began to appear at the beginning of 1986, starting with Gorbachev’s address on disarmament on 15 January and continuing in the IX, X and XI rounds between January and July (Borawski 1992: pp 84f, 90f). In the end, Ambassador Barry, Goodby’s successor, judged, “We gave away more than we wanted, but we got…a fair bargain,…” (Washington Post 1986). Power alone could not have produced and could not explain the agreement. Even though the agreement on terms close to the American position came after the weakening (as prelude to the eventual collapse) of the Soviet Union, it was not the pressure of that asymmetry that caused the Soviet Union to agree. The key to that agreement was its formulation in acceptable terms of justice, and until that was accomplished, the negotiations were stuck. Government negotiations with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) were an intermittent process for years but began in earnest only at the end of 2012 under the presidency of Juan Manuel Santos, ending with a peace agreement in November 2016 (Rettberg/Nasi 2018). In the previous presidency of Uribe, Santos as Defense Minister carried out an intense military campaign to weaken the FARC. Then sensing—as did the FARC but not Uribe—that he could not eliminate them, he moved to turn the mutually hurting stalemate into negotiations. Throughout mid-October 2012 the parties worked a set of rules governing the upcoming negotiation. Some of these were procedural but the formula for justice comprised five issues to be resolved in exchange for a peace agreement: rural reform, political participation, drug trafficking, transitional justice, and demobilization. The joint declaration of October 2012 stated that if justice were to be served it would have to cover the indicated issues, which were linked within an overall formula of disarmament, drug disengagement and accountability in exchange for participation and rural reform. For the FARC, disarmament for participation represented a reaffirmation of ends and a change in means, and challenged the established parties of the government; accountability represented the cost of achieving its priority goal of rural reform. Negotiations then involved working out equivalence between and within the two sides of the terms of trade. The first three matters were negotiated at roughly 6-months’ intervals until the fourth issue of transitional justice arose. To begin with it involved expanding the Justice for Whom? Question to include stakeholders, the victims of the conflict (who turned into shareholders when they were given a chance to testify at the negotiation sessions). The parties had long before stated their positions of priority justice. The FARC refused any jail sentence and claimed instead to be prime victims of state violence and oppression (the reason for its revolt since its founding in 1962); the government was unable to grant blanket amnesty (under the Rome Convention) and faced a reaction from its military if it acknowledged equal responsibility. The face-off was gradually whittled down by some creative flexibility, beginning with a collective commitment to repair harm to all victims of the conflict and an agreement to establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission and a

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The Evidence

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Special Tribunal. Without any preliminary acknowledgement of culpability, the FARC agreed to contribute illicitly gained property for compensation. A sliding scale of punishment was established based on timely confession, beginning with “effective restriction of freedom” and rising to up to 20 years imprisonment for failure to confess. Although detailed equality before the law was followed, the agreement was rejected in a referendum, readjusted slightly, and then adopted by Congress. On the final issue of termination and demobilization, the FARC wanted delays in disarmament (which it had accepted in principle), access to political campaigning in a large number of cantonments before disarmament, and submission of the agreements to a national constituent assembly, with possibility of further discussion and amendment before being enshrined in the constitution. The government position was for immediate disarmament and acceptance by referendum. Again, there was a balanced process of concessions from the two initially justified positions: the government agreed to protect the FARC from militia attacks and the UN agreed to oversee the disarmament, which would be spaced over a six-month period. Cantonment areas were agreed upon with UN financial assistance. The issues of the referendum were decided by the voters, who rejected the accords, and then by the government, who achieved approval of the slightly refitted agreements by the Colombian parliament. Who made the decision? It is difficult to assign victory to either side relative to their initial positions, and the unilateral justice of both sides’ outcomes was carried by the weight lifted by the end of the conflict; there was a shared victory over the common, low BATNA—return to unwinnable war. The process to the agreement was strongly marked by equivalent concessions all along the way. The government led the concession-making in order to reach an agreement and its moves invited reciprocal concessions from the FARC. This is not to deny the strain, pain and emotion that was involved in the months of negotiation in each issue. The FARC’s whole effort had been aimed at gaining a full role in the political process and a full recognition of reform in the condition of the peasant, goals toward which—as the overall formula expressed—the agreement enabled it to reach. Peace Negotiations in El Salvador came after a decade of intense Communist-supported rebellion in the 1980s and culminated in the Peace Agreement of January 1992 (deSoto 1999). The mixed results of the major offense of the Frente Farabundo Marti para la Liberation Nacional (FMLN) in November 1989 created the realization of a mutually hurting stalemate and the steps toward discussions and then UN mediation begun gingerly at the end of the decade provided the possibility of a way out of the conflict. By April and May 1990, the parties came to agreements on the basic rules, agenda, timetable and formula for the negotiations The personal representative of the UN secretary-general, Alvaro de Soto played a crucial mediatory role in the negotiations. The April (Geneva) agreement indicated a four point goal of the negotiations—end conflict, promote democratization, guarantee human rights, and reunify society—and the May (Caracas) agreement specified seven issues to be handled—army restructuring (DDR), human rights, judicial revision, constitutional reform, economic and social

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issues—all items demanded by the FMLN, and, after initial agreements, ceasefire and final reconsideration of the same issues, plus UN verification. There does not seem to have been any specific elaboration of terms of trade or type of justice beyond settlement of all the issues to the parties’ satisfaction, although the parties had their own views on each of the issues (and other matters as well, notably procedural). For the FMLN, justice lay primarily in the military restructuring and the economic and social issues, the government’s priority was to end the rebel conflict. The FMLN was the demandeur in wanting changes in the entire politico-militaro-economico-social system in El Salvador; it could not impose these demands but it could always return to the conflict (as it did several ties during the negotiations) to impose negotiations. The government, in short, represented the status quo and was willing to accept only as much/little as necessary to keep the FMLN from reviving the conflict; thus, it too was a demandeur. Thus each side had its definition of justice, and was satisfied, under the circumstances that it was met. The result was more encompassing than in Colombia 25 years later. Negotiations over Namibian independence pitted South Africa against the Namibian national liberation movement, the South-West African Peoples Organization (SWAPO) but also against an array of other adversaries from the more moderate nationalist movements such as the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance (DTA) to the sovereign states of Angola and Cuba, in the presence of a number of mediators, including the Front Line States, the Western Contact group, the United States and the Soviet Union (Crocker 1993; Zartman 1989, Chap. 5). South Africa consistently proclaimed that a just solution was to be found in procedural terms through a general election, as a self-justifying principle of priority justice, although it attached a number of conditions—no external pressure, no violence—that would insure that a friendly neighbor could be assured. The South African position was to trade in its rule of Namibia (South West Africa) for independence in such a way as to install a minimally friendly government, but it was couched in terms of priority principles of justice—free and fair elections under conditions of peace and stability. SWAPO’s position was simpler but also presented in terms of priority justice: It’s ours, we fought for it, repeated SWAPO leader Sam Nujoma on many occasions. FLS allies finally brought SWAPO around to agreeing to UNR 435 providing for one-person-one-vote elections under paired UN and South African auspices that SWAPO, which had already been declared “the sole legitimate representative of the Namibian people,” felt were unnecessary. “South Africa’s only role,” said SWAPO’s UN observer Theo Ben Gurirab (NYT 12 June 77), “is to announce publicly that it accepts all UN resolutions on South-West Africa and that means withdrawing from the territory, agreeing to UN-controlled elections, and releasing political prisoners.” The priority justice positions of each side did little to satisfy the other, and it is little wonder that the negotiations deadlocked. Even more striking was the fact that the mediators also clung to a principle of priority justice, rejecting any notion of division, exchange or sharing. It was a new linkage by the succeeding mediator that provided a principle of equality. The objections of each side to the other’s principle were to be met by a paired withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola and of South African troops from

17.4

The Evidence

307

Namibia, after which the free and fair elections could be held. As Assistant Secretary of State Chester Crocker (1982) explained. “The relationship that exists between these two issues was not invented by the Reagan Administration or by the United States—it’s a fact, it’s a fact of history, of geography, of logic. It’s also a fact that no party can lay down prior conditions or preconditions to any other party. … And given the history, and the lack of confidence that exists on both sides of that border, we believe that it’s unrealistic for any side to say to the other, ‘You go first.’ What we’re seeking is parallel movement on the two questions—South African withdrawal from Namibia as provide under the UN plan, Resolution 435, and Cuban withdrawal from Angola.” The new formula was facilitated by a change in parties, the state of Angola replacing the movement of SWAPO in dealing with South Africa. The confrontation of two sovereign states with their own national interests helped the applicability of an equality principle of justice, with the referent question still to be specified. The equality (or equivalence) principle of a paired withdrawal formed the basis of the eventual solution in 1988 and, perhaps as important, guided in its spirit the search for just and equivalent Way Out with implementing details for the final agreement—“a reasonable and balanced” set of conditions in the words of one side’s spokesman and “a just and fair settlement” in the words of another’s (NYT 1988a; Washington Post 1988). Angolan president Eduardo dos Santos finally indicated on 24 July 1986 that ”We believe the time is right for negotiation of a just political solution” (FBIS Africa, 24 July 1986, SADCC meeting), and Cuban President Fidel Castro stated in the midst of the final negotiations, “If the agreement is completed and respected, Angola and Cuba will carry out a gradual and total withdrawal of all the [Cuban] internationalist contingent in Angola. There is a real possibility of a just and honorable solution to the war.” (NYT 1988b). The formula was specific enough to be considered an instance of equality, rather than simply equivalence, since the items exchange—the withdrawal of foreign troops—were the same and even the number of troops—90,000 South Africans and 80,000 Cubans— was nearly identical, even if their distance and their timetable for withdrawal was not fully coincident; most importantly, of course, South African gave up colonial sovereignty with its withdrawal, whereas Cuba gave up contracted assistance. The formula was not merely based on “getting something” in exchange for independence but rather a matched and balance trade-off that provided the guide for further details. It is noteworthy that the one missing element in the application of equal justice to both areas was the holding of elections in Angola, parallel to those in Namibia. The shift from priority to equality principles of justice that both sides could subscribe to provided the basis for the negotiated agreement in southwestern Africa. Negotiations to end the Bosnian dispute ended with the signature of the Dayton agreement on 21 November 1995. The negotiations followed a preceding round between Bosnians and Croats setting up a bilateral Federation in March 1994 that would then bargain with the Serbs at Dayton, although the two federated parties continued to have their own positions. On this basis, the Contact Group of the Big 4

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plus Germany agreed in June to a single state of two entities, 49 percent of the land going to the Republika Srbska and 51 percent to the two-party Federation, a dance around a focal point (50%) that reflect the complexity of findings a just solution. The overall formula was set up in the Lake-Tarnoff presentation in August 1994 (H74) and was grudgingly accepted by the parties at Geneva at the Joint Agreed Principles on September (H112-141; Sapcanin 1997). It was “a single international personality” but composed of two entities, one of them federated—a formula of 1-2-3—plus other smaller (but scarcely lesser) points framing a just outcome including human rights, free and fair elections, and refugees added in a further meeting in New York later in September. The neighboring state leaders—Slobodan Milosevic for Serbia and Franjo Tudjman for Croatia—would serve as spokesmen for their two Bosnian wings, Alija Izetbegovic for Bosnia itself, and Richard Holbrooke would be the US mediator. Two other issues constituted terms of trade: territory and borders—notably Sarajevo and Eastern Slavonia, but many other areas —in exchange for sanctions relief. The Serb side was particularly exercised over the issue of sanctions, which were biting hard. Once the principled definition of a just outcome was established, the negotiations turn to finding specific terms of trade that would remain faithful to the formula and embodied just exchanges. Things did not move fast at Dayton. It took until Day Ten (10 November) for the roadblock issue of Eastern Slavonia to be settled with Serbia, on a subformula of state sovereignty (territory) in exchange for human rights (people; the land would return to Croatia in a year (or two, as asked by Milosevic) in exchange for protection of its Serb minority. The issue of the Croat-inhabited Krajina was to be settled with Bosnia through abandonment of recognition of the region as Herzog Bosnia in exchange for some higher positions in the Federation and a transfer of some central government powers to the Federation (Touval 2002: 159–160; Sapcanin 1997: 15). Thereafter, in the next ten days, in which the most serious and heated bargaining took place, claims and exchanges focused on the principle of justice embodied in the 49-51 formula on the Serb versus Federal allocation of territory. The debate was all about fitting this or that piece of territory into the unusual focal point (Schüssler 2018). Bosnia opened with a map showing 64 percent, Serbia countered with 65 percent for itself, and the debate shifted to discussion of the value of the land involved (Sapcanin 25). As Jugoslav Foreign Minister Milutinovic explained, “It was not all tactics. It was not all game, either…. We really had to make decisions that have an impact on people’s lives in certain regions.” (Sapcanin 1997: 26) “At one point, (Swedish negotiator Carl) Bildt ran into Milosevic…and found him ‘desperate.’ ‘Give me anything,’ he said, ‘rocks, swamps, hills—anything, as long as it gets us to 49–51.’” (Holbrooke 302). When this was settled to meet individual criteria for a just settlement, the issue of Brcko arose as a last-minute deal breaker. It took a call from President Clinton to get President Tudjman to move toward 49–51 but he agreed to give up only 75 percent of the needed territory, calling on the Bosnians to contribute the rest and to add a part of the Posavina pocket in a concessions within the Federation’s 51 percent. In the end, Brcko was left to a decision to postpone a decision and international arbitration (Sapcanin 1997, 27; Holbrooke; Troitskiy 2018, 308). In the clinching

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The Evidence

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phrase of Bosnia President Alija Izetbegovic, “It is not a just peace. But my people need peace.” (Holbrooke 309). Who made the decisions and why? It is generally agreed that Croatia was in a more powerful of the three sides, having less need for the Federation and the ability to destroy it, and that Bosnia was in the weakest position, with no fallback position. Yet, on one hand, it was Izetbegovic who held out to the end and who demanded and got the entire city of Sarajevo, including the airport and suburb of Grbavica from the Serbs (possibly because of internal infighting stemming from the decision over who would represent the Bosnian Serbs [Holbrooke 293]). On the other hand, Croatia was able to gain some edge in some of the arrangements over small percentages of territory (still within the Federation’s 51 percent). While some of the little corners were undoubtedly locally important, it is hard to see any element of power imbalance in the allocation process, bound as it was by the 49-51 formula and to the shared aversion to a return to war. The criterion seemed to be acceptability, and the mediator waved a BATNA threat of collapse and return to war at various parties at various times. It then came down to who was more willing to hold up the agreement and run the risk of collapse, a typically dueling calculation (Zartman 2018), balanced against concern for represented populations in small corners. These two criteria for just decisions on details and on the final agreement often weighed against each other, but the same time were shared by all the parties. The Iran Hostage Negotiations only began in fact at the beginning of September 1980, ten months after the storming of the US embassy in Tehran, and ended with the return of the hostages in mid-January 1991. An earlier attempt at negotiations during the first five months of the crisis collapsed because the parties were not able to establish a formula for a just exchange as the basis of an agreement (Christopher 3). Once the hostages were no longer of political use to the Iranian regime after the parliamentary elections (Christopher 286–289), the parties turned again to looking into the terms of a negotiation, in a process that fits the model very well. The taking of hostages by Iran had been followed in ten days by the taking of “hostages” by the US in the freezing of $12 billion worth of Iranian assets in US and abroad to form the US terms of trade, a justice-as-equivalence formula. In mid-September Ayatollah Khomeini enunciated the terms of trade that Iran viewed as just: return of the frozen assets, cancelation of all US claims, return of the Shah’s wealth, and a non-intervention pledge, in exchange for the hostages. The first stage of the negotiations was then to bring the two sets of terms of trade into coincidence (Christopher 302–305). The US responded in early November by accepting all four points within its legal possibility (McManus 196). The negotiations then turned to working out the detailed equivalence between the two sets of terms of trade. The Iran negotiations in Algiers were over big sums of money with no focal point to help keep the evolving outcome on center, plus technical education sessions of legal possibilities. “The process…was essentially that of amending and supplementing the two declarations.” (Christopher 314). A number of accounts report that the American team reminded itself of the rules of haggling in a Persian bazaar (Christopher 310, M203): “The form is almost sacrosanct….the first stage,

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without exception, is the merchant’s original offer [of priority justice]—inflated, outrageous, ‘unreasonable.’ and designed to measure each customer’s gullibility. The proper response is a contemptuous snort and a counteroffer [of priority justice] well below what both parties know the rug’s value to be—the signal that it is time for real bargaining to begin.” (McManus 203. It was additionally complicated by the need to educate and convince the Algerian intermediaries of the reasons and reasonableness of the American positions in technical detail (Christopher 315). Finally, the process was running against the clock imposed by the impending end of President Carter’s term of office (McManus 204). It is ironic that the Iranians, out of spite, did not release the hostages until Carter was out of office, not realizing that the incoming Reagan administration declared a month later that “the present Administration would not have negotiated with Iran for the release of the hostages.” (C288). The justice of the final result is a judgment call for each side. Both sides were demandeurs, so the positions as well as the outcomes were equalized. Iran got only half of its of initial partial justice list. But it did get the hostages off its hands—a wasted asset—and its financial assets returned—within the limited of legal possibility, and, in its own eyes at least achieved the “humiliation” of the Great Satan. Warren Christopher calculated: “I think they finally recheck the point where the costs of retaining the hostages outweighed he alleged benefits of keeping them,” (M206), or, as Iranian negotiator Behzad Nabavi figured, in his own terms, “The hostages are like a fruit from which all the juice has been squeezed.” (M209). On the US side, one of the negotiating team wrote, “I think we substantially achieved all of our negotiating objectives, over and above the basic threshold of achieving the hostages release. In response to the four Iranian demands, we gave away nothing of value that was ours; we simply returned a relatively small part of what was theirs and the balance held back to pay of much of what Iran owed to our claimants.” (Christopher 324). The Ecuador-Peru Border Dispute, which began when the two countries became independent in the first half of the nineteenth century and was marked by regular border wars ever since, was ended with a comprehensive settlement in October 1998, produced by an active and patient mediation by the four guarantee states, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and the US, who redefined the governing notion of justice. The basis of a settlement was established as early as 1942 in the Rio Protocol that identified the guarantors’ role and delimited the boundary, but the process of detailed demarcation led to the discovery of new terrain features. Ecuador declared the Protocol unworkable and invalid, and war broke out again in 1995. After a month of combat, the guarantors separated the warring troops in February 1995 and after two more years spent in procedural negotiations and declarations of priority justice by each party, they brought the parties to accept mediated negotiation. Ecuador accepted the validity of the Protocol and Peru accepted that there were problems in its implementation. Ecuador’s position of priority justice was its free and untaxed navigation rights on the Amazon and its tributaries, whereas Peru’s was sovereignty over the disputed territory, both positions grounded in international

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law and historic documents. “All sides were painfully aware that in the long run the alternative to settlement was war” (Einaudi 1999: 413). It took two years after the beginning of negotiations to establish a formula for a just agreement on four interlocked issues: a land border, freedom of commerce and navigation, regional development and integration, and mutual security, all four tied together to make a single formula for justice; “a central plank of the 1998 Peace Accords [was] that the conflicting territorial claims can only be definitely laid to rest by jointly developing the contested area in an integrated manner.’ (Biato 2017). Justice was conceived as equitable settlements on each issue in a “single undertaking” with trade-offs among them (i e nothing is settled until everything is settled); both parties agreed that no further “impasses” would be added to the list of issues. “The settlement was constructed by developing modern interests that offset traditional disagreements” (Einaudi 1999: 407); adoption of this sense of justice was facilitated by a change of leadership in both countries. More specifically, the dispute over the land border was swallowed up in advances in common economic promotion, regional integration, trade and navigation, environment, security and Indian affairs, and zero-sum hostilities could be set aside by the need to cooperate on problem-solving issue. In addition, the zero-sum issues of territory and sovereignty were settled by the enormously creative wordsmanship of the mediating guarantors: in compensation, deemed just, for acceptance of the largely watershed Rio Protocol demarcation of the border, Ecuador was granted a square kilometer of private—but not sovereign—property including the battleground cemetery of Tiwintza and navigation rights on the adjacent Amazon tributaries with two private —not sovereign—trading posts on the river subject to Peruvian law; a demilitarized zone of some 30,000 square kilometers on both side of the border would be set aside as a nature preserve. Ecuador thus preserved its Amazonian trade and identity and Peru its sovereignty, their original demands for priority justice (Simmons 1999: 20; Herz/Nogueira 2002: 59; Toche et al. 1998). In a virtuous circle effect, the agreement created a relationship of good will that made the treat exchanges possible and established a sense of just concessions on both sides.

17.5

Conclusions

The model placing justice in negotiation states that negotiations tend to begin with the parties’ declaring their own position for a solution expressed in terms of priority or parital justice, supported by a principle favorable to their interests. Thereafter, the parties negotiate a formula that will ground and guide the ensuing negotiations—a principle of justice defining the problem and establishing terms of trade. As negotiations then turn to the settlement of details (wherein lies the devil), they will implement or use the formula or devise subformulas consistent with the main principle. Justice comes in the process, through the matter of by whom and by what criteria the decisions on formula, subformulas and terms of trade on details are made. It also comes in the end, closing the circle back to the individual parties, in

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the judgment of whether the outcome is deemed just for each of them, a judgment that is in their own heads. In general the seven cases reviewed fit the model mutatis mutandis, along with interesting insights and further questions. It is worth noting that all negotiations began because the moment was ripe; the parties found themselves in a mutually hurting stalemate and both looked to negotiations as a way out. War, desired by none, was the alternative (BATNA). In the cases of rebel and interstate armed conflict—Colombia, El Salvador, Bosnia, Namibia, Ecuador-Peru—the parties had fought themselves to s standstill and, panting, looked for an alternative to returning to an unwinnable war, by their own calculations. The formula posed a price for peace that the parties established together and accepted: “This is what we need to pay if we are to avoid war and end the conflict.” In the Iran nonproliferation case and the Cuban Missile Crises, the same danger of unwanted but impending violence impelled the parties to talk seriously to avoid it. In the Iran hostages case, Iran found itself stuck with now-worn out hostages on its hands and with sanctions, while the US was blocked in gaining the return of its diplomats. In the CTBT and CDE cases, the stalemate was diplomatic and decades old and the hurt came from the Cold War pressures and from pressure from the Committee on Disarmament and the UN General Assembly to finally get to work on negotiations. After some initial priority openings, negotiators turned to a search for a formula involving some identification of terms of trade embodying some ideas of justice. Occasionally these were set up by a mandating institution, as in the very different cases of the CDE, CTBT or Ecuador-Peru negotiations. More frequently they were negotiated from the start by the parties as an agenda, as in Colombia, El Salvador and Dayton. In Colombia and Ecuador-Peru, the issues showed even input from both sides, in El Salvador they reflected rebel demands, and in the latter two cases they showed the hand of the mediator. Namibian negotiations took place under a UN mandate, enlarged to provide equivalence. By coincidence, the two Iran cases showed some interesting twists. In both cases, the imposition of sanctions made the conflict ripe for resolution and shifted the position of demandeur to Iran and established the basic terms of trade. In the hostage case, Iran added a few more conditions and the US accepted them in its own interpretation; on that basis, negotiations turned to implementation and details. In the nonproliferation case, with the shift in the demandeur status to Iran negotiations moved from a total equivalence—total lifting of sanctions in exchange for total removal of nuclear—to an equivalence of partial accomplishment on both sides—lifting of only proliferation-related sanctions for token maintenance of some nuclear-capability facilities—that allowed for a mutually satisfactory agreement, an interesting case where bilaterally reducing the terms allowed for a balanced agreement. The Peru-Ecuador presented a similar but more drastic shift. After decades of deadlock protesting priority positions, the two neighbors were brought to a formula for shared justice and trade-offs aimed at border settlement and joint development of the region, from which they could work out mutually enhancing details. In Cuba, the parties found agreement on one side of the formula (the US priority issue) and looked around for an equivalent term that would justify its acceptance. Finally, in

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Conclusions

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New York and then Dayton the parties were literally brought together by a heavy-handed mediator into a bilateral federation and then a biparty single state formula; it is hard to define the type of justice this formula embodied but the compound principle was then used as the template for the following negotiations on territorial and monitoring details. In sum, in all cases justice as a principle found specific form in the opening formula and deductively governed the negotiations in detail. In most cases, the formula for a just agreement gave sufficient guidelines to the negotiators on the issues to be handled in order to produce a just and jointly acceptable agreement. In most cases, definition and acceptance of the notion of justice depended on the choice and often the change of individual parties negotiating, notably in Peru-Ecuador, Colombia, Namibia, both Iran cases, and Bosnia. In Colombia, El Salvador, Bosnia, and the hostage case, the formula stood as once established by both parties and remained unchanged into the detail phase of the negotiations, as did the new formula evolved by the guarantors in the Ecuador-Peru case. In the CTBT case, the issues posited by the formula for an acceptable agreement remained steady but the formula gave little guidance on how to settle the details, and for the most part they were simply handled by exchanged or converged concessions. In the JCPoA and Peru/Ecuador cases the formula was revisited and revised when its original form proved impossible to consummate. The dominant criterion appears to be simply acceptability. “If negotiation is giving something to get something, how much do I have to give to get enough of what I want in order for the other side to get enough of what it wants to keep the agreement that gives me what I want,” a reciprocal process question, “want” being a flexible term. Within these boundaries, power seemed to have little sway. Admittedly, in the cases studied, both sides in their hurting stalemates had roughly equivalent security points of BATNAs. They kept each other balanced and in check, in process and in outcome. The American judgment on the hostage case, quoted above, is apposite. Certainly there are other cases where that equilibrium of positions does not obtain, but power and power relations are likely to take much more complex than simply zero-sum forms (power is never zero-sum). An analysis of cases such as USCanFTA and NAFTA negotiations would be enlightening. In a ripe situation with the parties in a mutually hurting stalemate, the engagement of the parties to the point of agreement testifies to the justice and fairness of the process. In all but the CTBT case, parties tested the limits of agreement by temporarily breaking off negotiations and, in the rebel cases, returning to violence to see how it felt. In Ecuador-Peru and Bosnia (Herz/Nogueiro 2002: 87; Holbrook 1998: 293), the mediator also threatened to withdraw, forcing the parties to make the decision to keep on. Indeed the theory of turning points indicates that at some point in the negotiations a party is likely to break off talks and take stock of where it is in the process; if it likes where it is going and sees justice in the process and likely outcome, a turning point will have occurred, and in fact the parties may be entering into the endgame (Bartos 1978; Druckman 2018). Thus, the path of justice from formula to agreement is expected to be continually tested and if found wanting, the negotiation collapses.

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And what about the justice of the final result in each party’s eyes and terms? That remains a judgment call, through all the hazards of the winner’s curse, postpartum blues, the morning after, aggressive journalism, and party politics. Since justice is deserts as well as forms of equality, the referent is up for grabs.

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Larson, D. W. 1988. “The Psychology of Reciprocity in International Relations,” Negotiation Journal 3:281–302. Lax, David & Sebenius, James, 1986. The Manager as Negotiator (New York: Free Press). Leatherman, Janie, 1996. Principles and Paradoxes of Peaceful Change (Syracuse University Press). McManus, Doyle 1981. Free at Last!. (Signet). Melmud, Mordechai, Meerts, Paul & Zartman, I William eds., 2014. Banning the Bomb or the Bang? (Cambridge). Messe, L. 1971. “Equity in Bilateral Bargaining,” XVII Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 3: 287–91. Morgan, T. C. 1994. Untying the Knot of War. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press. Mosca. G. 1939. The Ruling Class (McGraw Hill) New York Times 31 August 1988a. New York Times 27 July 1988b. North, D. 1990. Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance (Cambridge University Press). Odell, J (l995). “Toward a Valid Theory of Economic Negotiations,” mss. Pruitt, D. G. & Carnevale, P (1993). Negotiation in Social Conflict (Brooks/Cole). Putnam, R. 1976. The Comparaytive Study of Political Elites (Prentice Hall). Rae, D. & Taylor, M. 1970. The Analysis of Political Cleavages (Yale). Rapoport, Anatol, 1966. Two-Person Game Theory (University of Michigan Press). Rettberg, Angelina & Nasi, Carlo 2018. “Colombia’s Farewell to Civil War,” in I William Zartman., How Negotiations End: Bargaining in the Endgame (Cambridge University Press). Riker, W. 1962. The Theory of Political Coalitions. (Yale University). Rubin, J. Z. & Zartman, I. W. 1995. “Asymmetrical Negotiations: Some Survey Results that may Surprise,” XI Negotiation Journal 4:349-64 (October). Saunders, Harold, 1989. Looking Ahead: Reconstituting the Arab-Israeli Peace Process,¿” in William B Quandt, ed., The Middle East Ten Years After Camp David (Brookings). Scapchanin 1997. “Bosnia Negotiations Observed.” Conflict Management Program. School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University. Schelling, T. 1960. The Strategy of Conflict (Harvard University Press). Simmons, Beth 1999. Territorial Disputes and their Resolution (USIP). Simon, H. 1953. “Notes on the observation and measurement of power.” XV Journal of Politics 3:500–516. Stolte, J. 1987. The Formation of Justice Norms,¿” LII American Sociological Review 4:774–84. Tabatabai, Ariel 2018. “The Iranian Non-Proliferation Negotiations,” in I William Zartman., How Negotiations End: Bargaining in the Endgame (Cambridge University Press). Tawney, R. H. 1931. Equality (Unwin). Thibaut, J. W. & Kelley, H. H. 1959. The Social Psychology of Groups (Wiley). Toche, Eduardo, Ledesma, Walter & Foy, Pierre 1998. Peru-Eduador: entre la Guerra y la paz. DESCO. Trachtenberg, m. ed., 1985. ”White House Taoes and the Minutes of the Cuban Missile Crisis,” International Security I 1:164–203. Walton, R. & McKersie, R. 1965. A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations (McGraw Hill). Washington Post 11 August 1988. Wriggins, H. 1976. Up for Auction: Malta Bargains with Britain, 1971,” in Zartman, I. W., ed., The 50% Solution (Yale University Press). Young, H. P. 1994. Equity (Princeton University Press). Zartman, I. W. 1974. “The Political Analysis of Negotiation: Who Gets What When How?” XXVI World Politics 3:33–37 (April). Zartman, I. W., ed. 1978. The Negotiation Process (SAGE). Zartman, I. W., ed. 1976. The 50% Solution (New Haven: Yale University Press). Zartman, I. W. 1995. “The Role of Justice in Security Negotiations,” XXXVIII American Behavioral Scientist 6:889–903.

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Zartman, I. W. & Berman, M. 1982. The Practical Negotiator (Yale University Press). Zartman, I William, 1989. Ripe for Resolution: Conflict and Intervention in Africa (Oxford University Press). Zartman, I. W., Druckman, D., Jensen, L., Pruitt, D. G. & Young, H. P. 1996. “Negotiation as a Search for Justice,” International Negotiation 1:1–20. Zartman, I. W. & Rubin, J. Z. eds 1996. Power and Negotiation (University of Michigan Press). Zeuthen, F. 1930. Problems of Monopoly and Economic Welfare (Routledge and Kegan Paul).

Chapter 18

The Process of Social Reconciliation

Reconciliation is a two-way street.1 It takes two to reconcile, and in this way reconciliation is a more arduous effort than conflict. While conflict always, eventually, has a target, it can be launched against a neutral party who has no intention of entering into the conflict. Reconciliation, on the other hand, entails the work of two “consenting adults.” It can be initiated but not accomplished by one party alone. Reconciliation is a striking event requiring effort, but fortunately not rare. Many Third World justice and peace processes are centered on the notion of reconciliation, in which the offender is regarded as a perpetrator of antisocial but not criminal behavior and needs to be reinserted into the norms of society, restoring the social tissue of the community; specified and accepted norms and rituals are the vehicles of reconciliation. At the other end of the political spectrum, the Franco-German reconciliation over the years after World War II was an event of huge importance that both made possible and was made possible by the construction of Europe. The evolution of relations between the US and Russia (former Soviet Union) and China has involved the process of reconciliation and recoil. Various parts of the Christian church, once embroiled in wars of religion, are gradually being reconciled into a single community of faith (probably under the impact of the diminished importance of religion in an increasingly secularized world, at least in some parts of it). More than any other writer of Scriptures, St Paul talks of the need to be reconciled with God and the need to accept the reconciliation provided by Christ’s sacrifice (Romans 5:10–11), but in Christian theology reconciliation refers more exclusively to relations with God than with ones fellow person, which should automatically follow higher reconciliation (Matthew 5:2–4).

I William Zartman, “Memories between War and Peace and the Process of Social Reconciliation,” in Serge Jaumain and Éric Remacle, eds., Mémoire de Guerre et construction de la paix (Bruxelles: Peter Lang 2006), pp 20–29. Reprinted by permission.

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Conflicts in this world end when the parties find them too costly to continue and unlikely to produce results at an acceptable cost. Actually, they may continue after that point if the parties are unable to come to an agreement to end their costly conflict, a point at which a mediator comes in handy. However, ending a conflict is not the same thing as reconciliation. Although agreed terminology is somewhat elusive, ending a conflict, in the limited and frequently used sense, means stopping the violence used to conduct it or conflict management. The common conflation of “conflict” and “violent conflict” is unfortunate, since it obscures the true nature of conflict. Conflict refers to an active incompatibility (“opposing action of incompatibles,” says Webster, among other things), an opposition of positions that the parties are willing to pursue of do something about (Hobbes 1964/1651; Raven/Kuglanski 1969). Ordinary life is full of conflict; it is latent, below the surface and passive, in the sense that no one wants to push it on the other. When a passive conflict is activated, it is declared and pursued with the intention of prevailing, and the conflict escalates, either to victory of one element over the opponent, or stalemate and conciliation, or fatigue. Civilized life has found out ways of managing these conflicts so that they do not require violence and can be pursued and resolved otherwise. The image of Robin Hood and Little John on the bridge, fighting with their sticks until one of them (Robin Hood, in the event) ended up in the drink, is now replaced by such conventions as politeness (“After you”) and stoplights, shows the evolution of norms from violence to non-violence in dealing with conflict. The conflict remains, however, at a low level of activity: someone has to go first over the one-lane bridge. But its escalation is arrested. When conflicts end, the issue is settled at least enough for life to go on. It is not necessarily settled fundamentally, or for the next time it resurfaces, or in its deeper antecedents or causes. The termination is essentially one of separation: the clash between the parties is ended because they have agreed to go their own ways rather than pursuing their incompatibility actively. As the sayings go, “The chapter is closed.” Or “It’s now a dead issue.” There is much that is positive in this result. The danger of escalating the active pursuit of the difference is over, and the danger of spillover or contagion to other parties and issues is ended. The slate is clean, meaning the item is removed from its surface. But the story of Robin Hood and Little John did not end there. They had a good laugh as Little John pulled Robin Hood out of the stream, Robin Hood congratulated Little John on his prowess with the stick and Little John returned the compliment, Robin Hood invited him to join his Merry Men, and they went off to Sherwood Forest arm in arm, where we will call on them no more. Except to note that they were reconciled. The conflict over the passage was left behind and the two joined together in a new relationship. The relationship contained several elements: recognition, erasure of the damage, a new type of mutual attitude, a common project, and a mechanism for solving problems and future conflicts.

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The Elements of Reconciliation

Five elements are important components of reconciliation and of a deeper and more permanent ending of conflict. These elements complete the notion of conflict termination but they also develop the idea of reconciliation into its full process and meaning. Their precondition is an end to the fighting and a settlement of the contentious issue, as discussed. Their beginning is a mutual recognition of the parties. Peace per se can be achieved by simply walking away from the conflict without any acknowledgement of the other party, but mutual recognition means an acknowledgement of the existence of each other between the parties. This recognition contains deeper meanings and implications, such as acknowledgement of the moral (not necessarily power) equality of each other, of the dignity of each other, and even of the wounds of each other and each party’s role in their cause. Reconciliation can only come as a consequence of the mutual recognition of grievances, the necessary corollary of the mutual recognition of parties that begins the process. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict began to move toward (but not yet attain) resolution when the two sides recognized each other and overcame the famous remark of Prime Minister Golda Meir, “Who are the Palestinians?” in response to the Palestinians refusal to recognize Israel and even to show it in their schoolbook maps of the region. South Africa began its path to domestic reconciliation by recognizing the equality of Blacks, formerly non-persons on the level of citizenship in apartheid society, with the Whites. It is impossible to negotiate a settlement to conflict without recognizing the status and equality of the other side, a major problem that impedes the resolution of internal wars. Erasure of damage is the common and core notion of reconciliation. Scripture tells us to go and be reconciled with our brothers if there is something between us. Traditional African practices have had an important role for acknowledgement and reinsertion as the key to the restoration of the social tissue of the village (Zartman 2000, 2011, 2017). At the other end of history, Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs) are a growing part of the post-conflict landscape, popularized by the South African experience. Implicit in these accounts, and as initially noted, is a recognition that reconciliation is a two-person and hence two-step process of atonement and forgiveness. The first step, by the first party, is atonement—the truth in TRCs, the recognition of guilt in Africa, the “go[ing] thy way….to thy brother” in Matthew 5:24. In a point frequently missed in discussions of post-conflict relations, reconciliation is not unrequited, unilateral forgiveness. It is the result of acknowledgement of responsibility and request for pardon. The second step, by the second party, is forgiveness, the response. Forgiveness awaits atonement and atonement calls for forgiveness. The dynamic is simple enough and direct, but it opens an important debate. Should forgiveness await atonement, or does on forgive “seventy times seven” with no atonement mentioned? The answer depends on the agent in the analysis. In a

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social context, atonement and forgiveness go together. As in any social exchange such as negotiation, requitement—the expectation of a response—is part of the relationship. Even if forgiveness does not flow from prior atonement, it can be expected to receive atonement as a response. The social relationship of reconciliation thus contains the two parts. However, as a personal action or a moral individual, forgiveness stands alone. It does so in the Lord’s prayer, in the injunction to Peter, all the way down to the exercise of presidential pardon. Much like giving a coin to a beggar, one does it for oneself, not as an expectation that the beggar will reform as a result. A major concern still remains, the matter of justice as opposed to peace. For the sake of their victims and as an adjunct to the future conflict management mechanisms, the perpetrators of violent excesses must not be left to feel they can get away with it. The debate still continues on the appropriate form of accountability and the appropriate mixture of accountability and forgiveness in conflict transformation. The human mind contains two counterbalancing proclivities: one to demand revenge and a settling of scores for injustice, and the other to forget and erase memories of past atrocities. Together, the two can be brought together to replicate the two steps of reconciliation, as in the symbolic efforts of traditional societies to mend the tears in the social fabric. Revenge itself is a matter of evening the score or leveling the field again, to remove the injustice, and mechanisms of accountability are a means of establishing normatively acceptable replacements for revenge. Payment for a murder by offering three cows or by submitting to a straight-razor shave by the victim’s father, as have been practiced in Africa and the Mideast, is an infinitely more civilized way of establishing ritual accountability than the unending accountability practiced by the Hatfields and McCoys. While such erasures are never complete, at best, and leave scars even when wounds heal, they do indicate the necessary element to reconciliation. “It is not easy to reconcile until there is justice, until we know what happened to our relatives,” said a victim of the fight against Sendero Luminoso in Peru. International norms on accountability still show enormous variability and only slow evolution to the kinds of standards present in domestic criminal law and traditional customary practices. The path from Napoleon’s exile through the Nurnberg trials to the International Criminal Tribunals on Yugoslavia and Rwanda and eventually the International Criminal Court is jagged and bumpy, and it does not run through Mozambique, Israel and Palestine, or Cyprus. TRCs in various forms have been called for in Algeria, Israel and Palestine, Congo, among others and have become parts of peace agreements and post-conflict processes beginning with Argentina in 1983 and going on to Peru, Sierra Leone, Liberia, El Salvador, Rwanda, Guatemala, and many others, as well as South Africa, although the best form is still not a matter of consensus. Common wisdom holds that senior officials should be held responsible and common folk should be forgiven, but such practices are scarcely universal and the line between the two is uncertain (as current efforts to hold junior officers as accountable as their superiors in Argentina show). In sum, there is much to be done to work out appropriate measures of erasure in individual

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cases and to standardize these measures into accountability norms to facilitate, in turn, the creation of individual measures and the elimination of impunity. New types of attitudes, the next element, are the consequence of the erasure of damage and the gateway to the remaining elements. Conflict involves negative attitudes between the parties, recognition and erasure replace these with mutual attitudes that are at least neutral, but reconciliation requires positive attitudes. The shift from negative to positive feelings cannot be accomplished without a transition; in order to find reasons why the parties can work together, parties first have to get over the reasons why they fought each other. It should be remembered too that in talking of ‘parties,’ the reference is not simply to a leader or a leadership group (often divided into hawks and doves) but also to the public behind them, which they have used for support during the conflict and now again need for support during the reconciliation. Thus changes in attitudes require both a “teacher training” and a “public education” process. New attitudes enable the parties to forget the wounds of the past, to interpret new events in a different light than the old suspicions, and to think creatively together. Growing attention is being given to the associated need to rethink and rewrite the history of past relationships in the light of new needs. This is not a matter of doctoring facts, but rather of straightening out interpretations, recognizing problems and reactions on both sides, completing the work of erasure by removing demonizing images and one-sided accounts. A major blockage to reconciliation in the Middle East is the insulting and defamatory image of Arabs and Jews presented to each other; while Israeli schoolbooks have begun to be revised, half a century after the original founding revolution, the texts in Arab schools, and notably in Palestine where the founding revolution has not yet taken place, have not changed their racist tone. Structures are the tangible product of changed attitudes, holding the change in place, but it may take newly-shaped relations to produce attitudinal change (Zartman et al. 2012). There is no optimal sequences; rather the two elements should accompany each other, at least at the end of the process, even though one may be needed to take the initiating step (much like atonement and pardon). Brown versus the Board of Education produced the legal structure that outlawed structures of racial discrimination in education but also set the stage for more widespread attitudinal change. But the structural change would not have been possible without some attitudinal change in some parts of public opinion (and among the Supreme Court justices). The next step in consummating reconciliation is a common project, made possible by the new attitudes. A common project means working together, collaboration in a shared destiny, so that each party cannot pursue its own program and even fulfill its own identity without the other. It has been frequently noted that the Franco-German reconciliation was not made possible merely by efforts at overcoming the heritage of numerous wars but depended completely on commitment to the construction of Europe. In a like manner, the end of the Thirty Years’ and Napoleonic Wars depended on the construction of a European state system and on a Concert of Europe, respectively. The South African transformation of 1994, as

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opposed to the limited constitutional dispensations offered in the mid-1980s, embodies a common project under a new political system. Against these positive examples, others stand out as yet incomplete. Israel created a set of bilateral relations with its neighbors, Egypt and Jordan that settled outstanding issues but not a common project of a Mideast security or economic community. Parties in Bosnia and Mozambique have established and followed the rules of electoral rather than armed competition and have cooperated to an extent in the institutions of governance, but they have still not entered in the common project of building state, society and economy together. Their conflicts are managed, but the parties are not yet reconciled. Finally, with one backward look at past conflicts, the parties need to establish forward-looking dispute-resolution mechanisms for handling leftover and recurrences of past problems and the emergence of new problems. While attitudes provide the spirit and common projects provide the goal of working together, there is still a need to have norms and institutions—sometimes called regimes—for handling incidents in a routine manner that does not revive old memories, habits and scars. Many international treaties have dispute-settlement mechanisms just for the purpose of removing revived and new disputes from the passions of politics and facilitation the reconciliation that cooperation requires. These five elements are the steps in the process of reconciliation. They overlap in their sequence, and they take long periods of time to accomplish. Franco-German reconciliation has taken half a century, post-Cold-War reconciliation is taking decades, and reconciliation among Christians—and between Christians and Jews— has taken half a millennium. (Reconciliation among the People of the Book—the three religions of the Abrahamic tradition—is still wanting after thirteen centuries, and for the moment is becoming more elusive).

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The Ends of Reconciliation

Reconciliation is a nice thing in and of itself, but its value is as utilitarian as it is moral or ethical. Unless reconciliation take place, cooperation and other positive aspects of rebuilding society—communal, national, or international—cannot occur. Thus reconciliation is an instrumental value and not just a goal in itself. It is necessary to the replacement of costly, hostile relations with constructive, creative potentialities. Yet reconciliation is not a precondition for construction, something to be awaited before it is possible to move forward. It is a construction that accompanies the resolution of conflict, and for that reason the six steps of the process are important to observe. In a sense, all this seems so obvious that one may wonder what the issue is and why there should be any confusion between ending conflicts and achieving reconciliation. Much scholarship but also enormous amounts of diplomatic activity have been spent on conflict termination or resolution, and that activity is the crucial beginning of any further peacebuilding efforts. The blurred distinction between

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conflict management, or reducing the pursuit of conflict from the violent to the political level, and conflict resolution, or settling the specific issue at hand, is nonetheless important to the determination of peacemaking strategies and tactics. Negotiation, as the combination of opposing positions into a joint decision, is the primary means of bringing conflict to an end, and its methods of concession, compensation and construction of new outcomes as means of moving from zero-sum to positive-sum outcomes have received much theoretical as well as practical attention. The challenge of peacemaking as conflict management and resolution has been so great to scholars and diplomats alike that it has monopolized attention, with positive results. Thus, it tends to be considered as the whole job, and its accomplishment means that the job is done. Of course, it is not, but what remains is the unending challenge of implementation and transformation, or changing relations from mutual hostility to mutual interdependence. The path to this outcome is the process of reconciliation. The work is open-ended, much less dramatic than ending a violent conflict, much less amenable to insightful theory or diplomatic triumphs. Yet without it, diplomatic accomplishments will need repeating, single negotiations will become peace processes, and conflicts will reemerged enriched and entrenched by unreconciled antagonists. Conflict termination is important but incomplete without the process of reconciliation.

References Botman H. Russel and Petersen, Robin eds. 1996. To Remember and To Heal: Theological and Psychological Reflections on Truth and Reconciliation (Human & Rousseau) Bronkhorst, Daan 1995. Truth and Reconciliation: Obstacles and Opportunities for Human Rights (Amnesty International Dutch Division) Henderson, Michael 2002. Forgiveness: Breaking the Chain of Hate (BookPartners) Hayner, Priscilla 2000. “Past Truths, Present Dangers: The Role of Official Truth Seeking in Conflict Resolution and Prevention,” in Paul Stern and Daniel Druckman, eds. International Conflict Resolution after the Cold War (National Academy Press) Hobbes, Thomas 1964/1651. Leviathan Lederach, John Paul 1998. Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies. (US Institute of Peace) McNally, Richard 2003. Remembering Trauma (Harvard University Press) Raven, Bertram & Kuglanski, Arie 19790. “Conflict and Power,” in Paul Swimgle, ed., The Structure of Coflict (Academic Press) Rosoux, Valérie 2000. Les uages de la mémoire dans les relations internationales (Bruylant) Rosoux, Valerie & Anstey, Mark, eds. 2018. Reconciliation and Negoiation (Springer) Ricoeur, Paul 1997. La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli (Le Seuil, 2000) Zartman, I William, ed. 2000., Traditional Cures for Modern Conflicts: Traditional Conflict ‘Medicine’ in Africa (Lynne Rienner) Zarrtman, I William ed. 2011. Peacemaking in West Africa. Special issue of the African Conflict and Peace Review, I 2 (fall) Zartman, I Wiliam 2017. “Relying on One’s Self: Traditional Methods of Conflict Management” in Pamela Aall and Chester A Crocker, eds., The Fabic of Peace in Africa (CIGI)

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Zartman I William (2018) Soft Power and Traditional African Conflict Management. OCP, Morocco Zartman, I Wiliam, Anstey. Mark & Meerts, Paul 2012. The Slippery Slope to Genocide: Reducing Identity Conflicts and Preventing Mass Murder. (Oxford)

Chapter 19

Return to Theories of Cooperation

Cooperation after the Cold War seems to be restricted, contentious and elusive, not exactly replaced by unilateralism but still exhibiting a pervasive tendency to grasp for policies that depend on one or few actors.1 Of course, before the Trump era, the second Bush administration is often cited as the prime example, although in reality its single-shooting was more a matter of aggressive packaging during its first term than effective unilateral action. Nonetheless, it had a real predilection for small groups, such as the Quartet on Israel or the G4+1 on Iran or the 6-Power Talks on Korea. But other leading states in the early 21st century have also followed a policy of limited cooperation or minilateralism. Russia has embarked on a single-handed revival of Cold War attitudes, with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as a supportive claque but not a multilateral cooperative group and Cooperation, if at all, based on the business of selling oil and gas. The major powers of Asia—China, Japan, and India—focus on their own positions and policies rather than on broad cooperative ventures. Iran and North Korea too have sought security in unilateral nuclear action; and Venezuela embarked on an attitude of sticking it to its Big Brother in the Hemisphere, picking up a few friends along the way, until its economy imploded. Europe in its Union suit has adopted an official policy of cooperation, scarcely containing a boisterous rise of “My Country First” parties. The major multilateralist cooperative ventures such as the Doha Round of trade talks or the post-Kyoto plans on climate change have been neither efficient nor effective (Zartman/Touval 2009) and the two achievements––Paris Climate Agreement of 2015 and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPoA) with Iran of 2016––remain under attack. The 21st century has not opened up as an era of cooperation, and has not brought much support to the theory that cooperation is innate, reciprocated and future-shadowed. I William Zartman & Saadia Tourval, “Return to the Theories of Cooperation” and “Improving Knowledge of Cooperation, “in I William Zartman and Saadia Touval, eds. International Cooperation: The Extents and Lmitis of Mulilateralism. Cambirdge University Press, pp. 1–14 and 227–234. Reprinted with permission.

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Cooperation among states is much more common than war. Yet there is much less conceptualization about cooperation than there is about the causes of and behavior in war, and the study of international cooperation—attempts to understand the phenomenon—has produced much debate. “Conflict seems very natural, and it is easy to understand, … Cooperation, however, appears as a phenomenon that requires subtle explanations.” (Hammerstein 2003: 1–2). Cooperation is defined here as a situation where parties agree to work together to produce new gains for each of the participants unavailable to them by unilateral action, at some cost. Its constituent elements are: working together, agreement to do so (not just coincidence), cost, and new gains for all parties. (This definition is not too far from but a bit more specific than Webster’s: “an association of parties for their common benefit; collective action in pursuit of common well-being.” Cf Smith 2003; Clements/Stephens 1995; Dugatkin 1997). By “gains” we mean not only material gains, but also perception of progress toward goals, such as improved security, status, or freedom of action for oneself and the imposition of constraints on other actors, etc. Thus, cooperation is used here to mean more than simply the opposite or absence of conflict, as some binary codings indicate. It is a conscious, specific, positive action with some code. Some definitions require that at least one party in the cooperating group to be worse off, at least in the short run, by cooperating than by not cooperating (Bowles/ Gintis 2003; Richardson et al. 2003) but this definition is illogical. The party in question would only cooperate if its calculations are other than material and/or short run; it must get either (nonmaterial) satisfaction or long-run gains of some sort to make cooperation worthwhile. The opposite of this condition of cost without gain is the free-rider problem of gain without cost. But this in its turn depends on the establishment of cooperation by those who both pay and gain.

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Conflict and Cooperation

While there is conflict without cooperation, it appears that there is no cooperation without conflict. Cooperation is dependent on conflict to overcome. Indeed, attempts at cooperation may create conflict (to be overcome), since parties’ attempt to work together brings out differing interests to be tailored to fit—the costs of cooperation. By ‘conflict’ we do not mean war or violence, but rather perceptions of incompatibilities. Cooperating nations generally perceive both common and conflicting interests. They may thus disagree about some of their goals, their respective contributions, the burdens they carry and benefits they derive in the common enterprise. This produces a rich field for inquiry on why states cooperate, how they arrive at cooperation, how they practice cooperation, and how cooperation is sustained.

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If so, then the first step in understanding cooperation is to take stock of the meaning of conflict. While the term is frequently used as shorthand for “violent conflict,” the violent form of conflict cannot be understood without addressing first its broader form, which is simply an incompatibility of goals (Bernard 1949, 1957: p. 38; Coser 1956: p. 8). Of course incompatibility is scarcely significant if it is taken lying down; it is when the value incompatibility turns from passive to active and leads to some escalation of action or conflict behavior that it becomes an object of concern, both practical and analytical. A focused form of this notion sees frustration over the inability to attain blocked goals as the source of conflict, based on a clear understanding of the component incompatibilities. However, recent studies have focused on the misperception and fear of conflict behavior on the basis of perceived incompatibilities, rather than on the substance of the incompatibilities themselves. Activated conflict comes from the security dilemma, where a party seeking to assure even minimal security is perceived as acting threateningly toward another party, who takes measures to assure its own security and thereby threatens the other even more. (Jervis, Posen). The current focus of analysis is on information, bypassing the substance of the incompatibility. If parties could accurately communicate both their intentions and their capabilities, they would not venture into conflict, which would be either unnecessary or unwise (Fearon 1995; Kydd 2005). On this basis, cooperation is dependent on overcoming the tendency toward conflict, whether that tendency is based on objective incompatibilities or on erroneous information about them. However, the remedy is different in the two views of conflict sources. If the conflict lies in real goal incompatibility, that clash must be dealt with by lowering the incompatibility or at least its salience. Various means are available: one party can bow to the other, the two can negotiate a compromise or compensation or can construct a new set of goals that reframes the goals in such a way that they become compatible or are subsumed under superordinate values, the parties can agree that the incompatible goals are unimportant and table them without actually dropping them. More importantly, these means of reducing the conflict borne of incompatibilities can be exercised on a case-by-case basis or extended more lengthily and generically. Even ad hoc resolution builds norms and precedents that influence future cooperative settlements, whereas longer term or more institutionalized measures and mechanisms address generic elements explicitly. If unreliable information is the problem, the answer is easier in concept: Get it right! But because it is suspicion about information that is the difficulty, more information is as suspect as less; cooperation comes with the installation of trust. (Yet mechanisms for inducing trust, such as provisions for verification and punishment or third parties as trust-holders, usually require cooperation in order to produce cooperation: A circular argument.) (on structures and attitudes se Zartman et al. 2012, and Zartman 2015, included in this collection).

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Nature and Cooperation

The analytical question then becomes, Why, when and how do parties agree to pay the cost of working together to produce new gains? Answers to the questions come from a number of different schools of analysis, providing different implications for the practice and analysis of negotiation. One school looks at the nature of political aggregates such as states, seeing specific behavior inherent in their sovereign nature. Another discerns differing state actions inherent in the nature of the interstate system and in states’ response to innate interstate conflict. And, a third is based on evolutionary behavior in human societies designed to preserve the species. Distinct though these schools may be, they have a considerable degree of overlap and conjuncture. A common condition of cooperation is interdependence. States are not alone; they need the active or passive help of others in order to achieve their goals, most notably to help assure their security, to establish rules of international behavior, to conduct trade and manage international economic relations, and to help protect from public bads such as environmental risks. Calculations of efficiency accompany the needs for effectiveness generated by interdependence: states may believe that it would cost them less to achieve their goals by cooperating with others, than to act alone. Behavioral scientists debate whether cooperation is innate or learned, whether it is genetic or social, related to unilateral justice (“what I deserve”) or multilateral justice (“what’s best for all of us”), hence whether it is based in inherent tendencies toward selfish or unselfish behavior (Bowles Bowles/Samuel 2006; Choi/Bowles 2007). Some scholars believe that states are defensive, self-identifying and self-interested entities, whose leaders are responsible only for their populations’ security and welfare, and are therefore in competitive or conflictual relation with other states. Inherently selfish behavior or “cooperation for us” addresses specific needs through acquisition, effectiveness, and efficiency (Lax/Sebenius 1986). Acquisition refers to the need to create value where the desired ends are unavailable to the individual party acting alone. Effectiveness refers to the need to work with other parties to create that value and accomplish certain goals, when parties cannot achieve their ends unilaterally. Efficiency refers to the need to reduce costs—primarily transaction costs—in working with other parties, so that the wheel of concerted action does not need to be reinvented each time. These three needs—elusive ends, scarce means, reducible costs—drive parties to work together over a short or longer time, depending in turn on their estimates of the other parties’ proclivities to do the same thing. The corresponding negotiating style is distributive, gains re relative, and the approach is through concessions/convergence. Negotiating parties are focused on what they can bring home, those benefits are judged in relation to those of the other parties, and the game of negotiating (‘bargaining’) is played with the purpose of holding as fast as possible to one’s positions while getting the other to give in the most in arriving at a common position.

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Other scholars, however, question the view that international relations are characterized by a Hobbesian “state of nature” and inherently conflictual (Stein 1990). The notion of innate sociability runs through Grotius, Pufendorf, and Montesquieu to Adam Smith, where it forms the basis of mutual regulation and gains through exchange (trade). States cooperate when they can achieve gains through exchange, an economic concept that has equal meaning in politics and that encapsulates the basic notion of negotiation through compensation. Indeed, the early state period after the Peaces of Westphalia in 1648 was the same time when the French term négoce (business) was being transformed into négociation (diplomacy) (deCallières 1716/2000; deFelice 1778/1976), whose basic idea is giving something to get something, the definition of trade on which subsequent prescriptions for negotiation are founded. The negotiating style associated with this approach is integrative, and the approach is through compensation and even construction or reframing, The needs of inherently unselfish behavior or “cooperation in us” include requitement, reputation, and fairness (Vogel 2004; de Waal 1992; Sober/Wilson 1998). Requitement is the expectation of reciprocity, negative and/or positive, an inherent quality in social relations and in most ethical systems. Reputation refers to the expectations parties create about themselves, operating in two directions in support of cooperation: as images that parties tend for purposes of self-esteem, and as bases for others’ actions. Fairness, a loose form of justice, involves the expectation and behavioral norm that parties are due to receive treatment corresponding to some universal notion of equality, either as numerical individuals or as deserving actors (Zartman et al. 1996; Albin 2001). These three qualities, and perhaps others in support, provide a network that lies at the base of claims of inherency in the tendency to cooperate. Since the debate continues over whether cooperative behavior is innate or learned, the search for the etiology and the means of cooperation must take both into account. But the difference between the two assumptions is not as great as is often assumed. For those who see cooperation as innate it is the alternative to conflict, whereas for those for whom it must be learned it is because otherwise they would be consumed by conflict. Either way, cooperation is the antidote to conflict. But the difference in their views of cooperation informs their approach to negotiation as well.

19.3

The Nature of the State System

The primary key to cooperation is reciprocity, that is, an assurance of similar, beneficial return behavior in the future. Selfish states bury conflict if (as long as) the other party does so too, and unselfish states bury conflict because the other party does so too. The various schools of international relations differ only in their perspective: Realists take a short-term and Liberals a long-term view. However, the difference is perspective produces important differences in behavioral

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interpretations. The Realist believes that cooperation is not sustainable but occurs only on a momentary basis, as long as benefits are present and up-to-date (Waltz 1954). Parties have a tendency to cheat and free-ride as soon as they can gain greater benefits from doing so than from cooperating. Problems of information cannot be overcome reliably, since states will cheat when it is in their interest too do so; all that can be done is to understand when cheating is likely and to take appropriate safeguards. Indeed, Realism, by its short-term ‘rational’ tendency to defect, actually reduces the benefits of cooperation, by enhancing fear of defection. Liberals believe that states cooperate in the expectation of benefits from future cooperation, as well as current payoffs (Milner 1992). In addition, they hold that anticipated reciprocity provides benefits from reputation and relationship that are only less precise but tie states into patterns of behavior. Information can play a role in sustaining this expectation, since the greater the reliable information on future reciprocity, the greater the chances of cooperation lasting. Since it is inefficient to negotiate the terms of reciprocity each time, states institutionalize their cooperation through regimes, laws, and organizations. In successive, essentially ad hoc negotiations, the wheel of cooperation has to be invented each time, whereas regimes are established and corrected by negotiated principles that do not have to concern themselves with the immediate details of individual cases. Essentially regimes establish formulas for cooperation, leaving the details to their application, while “reinvented” cooperation needs to negotiate both formula and details (Spector/ Zartman 2003). Thus, Realists take measures to guard against foreseen defection, whereas Liberals emphasize measures to prolong foreseen cooperation. Defection and reciprocation are related to the more basic notion of benefits— their creation and their allocation. Cooperation is established to avoid repeated transaction costs, but it also carries high transaction costs of its own; it is always quicker and possibly cheaper to act by oneself, and beyond that, costs rise in proportion to the number of parties. There is efficiency and effectiveness in unilateral action in some areas, more so than in multilateral cooperation. Theoretically, however, costs should fall in relation to the number of issues, also an aspect of multilateral cooperation, since more issues provide more trade-offs and a greater chance to attain “comparative advantage” deals. This is the way to reaching the Nash (1950) Point—the point where the product of the outcomes is maximized— according to the key to much negotiation expressed in Homans’ (Homns and Charles 1960) Maxim—“The more the items at stake can be divided into goods valued more by one party than they cost to the other and…[the reverse], the greater the chances of a successful outcome.” (Avenhaus 2007) These negotiations deal with the twin aspects of cooperation, value-making and value taking, referring to integrative and distributive functions. Cooperation, as noted, occurs to create beneficial outcomes that the parties cannot create alone, but it is also needed to allocate those benefits; there is always a distributive as well as an integrative aspect to cooperation. Beyond creation and allocation of costs and benefits, cooperation is also about underlying or overarching values as an element that separates Realists from Liberals. For cooperation to be more than a single engagement, in the way that the

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Realists see it, it must rest on and contribute to a community of values, as the Liberals point it. Thus negotiations on cooperation relate not only to the specific stakes and measures of the encounter but also to the pact-building relationship and reiteration, that is, to shared decision-making. In reality, the two necessarily overlap, since ad hoc cooperation in an area not governed by previously negotiated regimes does not occur in a vacuum, but in a context of norms, expectations and precedents that act as a proto-regime. The confrontation between the two views leads to a tension between “unilateral if I can, cooperative/multilateral if I must” and “multilateral/cooperative if I can, unilateral if I must” (Ruggie 1992). Normally, the outcome of this internal debate (when it is philosophized in these terms) is to begin with the first, Realist formula, then switch to the second, Liberal formula for reasons of efficiency and effectiveness. In fact different governments confronted with different problems will lean in one direction or another at different moments. The initial lessons for negotiation are already encased in these theoretical approaches to cooperation. Reciprocity is encouraged by negotiating institutionalized relationships. Formulas are defined by identifying the terms of exchange that produce gains through trade. Building reciprocity (relationship) and communality (kinship) are sound elements in negotiating satisfactory outcomes. Mutually hurting stalemates move conflicting parties toward cooperation.

19.4

Limitations on Cooperation and Its Explanation: Kinship

Yet reciprocity is not enough of an explanation for cooperation. If it were, a wave of large multilateral cooperation would have swept further and faster than it has, as states (that is, statesmen and their publics) came to realize the compound benefits of enlightened self-interest. This realization came to the surface only in the twentieth century, but has spread only very slowly to encompass some activities but leaving many others untouched. Instead, the problems of inefficiency and ineffectiveness, as well as the undermining effects of sideline observation, free riding and free viewing limit cooperation and weigh in on the decision to cooperate, without however eliminating it. What then determines the dimensions of cooperation? Neither Realism nor Liberalism give an answer, and whether cooperation is “in us” or “for us” tells only our predilections, not what triggers them or what makes them last, although as noted they last less long for the Realists than for the Liberals in any case. Furthermore, recognizing the true nature of the general predilection does not explain the current tendency for limited rather than global cooperation, or how to make cooperation either broader or longer lasting. For these answers one has to look outside the contending approaches and consult recent findings that reach beyond the initial problem of cooperate-or-not to focus on the enabling conditions of the cooperation decision.

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Alongside the international relations and social science studies, growing scholarship in evolutionary studies in behavioral science has focused on the same question of cooperation, often working through game theory to overcome its Prisoners’ Dilemma Game (PDG) (Axelrod/Hamilton 1981, Maynard Smith 1982). While the analysis has dealt with human evolution, it comes to a conclusion similar to that of international relations, even though with mutatis mutandis of significance, but also to some additional conclusions. A significant, if secondary, explanation of cooperation in evolution turns to the same concept as in international relations— reciprocity (Trivers 1971). The variously refined strategies of tit-for-tat, tit-for-double-tat (Axelrod 1984) and win–stay/lose–shift (Nowak/Sigmund 1993) and the looser notion of reputation (Nowak/Sigmund 1998) all operationalize a Shadow of the Future. These strategies have been a basic and significant component of negotiation theory, and the general notion of reciprocity is solidly anchored in the reality of international cooperation. But the primary evolutionary answer regarding reasons for cooperation is found in kinship (Hamilton 1964; Hammerstein 2003; Nowak/Highfield 2011). Such kin selection or inclusive fitness does not depend on reciprocity but rather draws on a special kind of altruism, in which the individual does not benefit but his group does. While it might seem that this explanation of cooperation would not apply to states, in fact it does, as states seek to establish their “families” ethnically, regionally or ideologically in order to promote cooperation, solidarity and support. The individual state actor does benefit indirectly, through its group. In fact, ethnic and regional cooperation is often based on “protection of the species,” and cooperation among ideological kin can even be seen to foster not only ‘kin’ protection but expansion. Reciprocity in the extended sense is too broad, providing too great a dilution of the benefits. Instead, states cooperate with others “like them,” whether it be socially (ethnically or in other identity terms), geographically, or ideologically. Imagined kinship holds cooperation together in “social altruism,” so that benefits can be shared among those who hold the same values and identities; indeed, not only costs but cost-bearers can be sacrificed for the larger group of states in cooperating for the greater good. Values and identities, taking an idea from Durkheim (1915/1965), are the necessary glue for cooperation, not simply costed benefits; they identify not only the purpose of the cooperation but also the shared kinship of those included in the cooperation (Richerson/Boyd 2005). This finding does not derive from constructivism but, in reverse, brings an important emphasis to it, and reaches over the contending explanations of Realism and Liberalism. A good example of two of the types of imagined kinship was well expressed by Egypt’s Gamal Abdul Nasser when he talked of Unity of Ranks versus Unity of Forces, the first referring to cooperation among all Arab states and the second to more ideologically based cooperation among progressive Arab states (expressing his frustration with the conservative monarchies, albeit Arab). These two subtypes of cooperation are frequently in conflict, with the latter expressing the impatience of more dynamic or radical states to go faster in the intended direction than those cooperating on the basis of purely ascriptive kinship. Obviously, Unity of Forces or

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the achievemental cooperation weakens the unity of the larger, ascriptive kinship, which the Forces would claim was already weakened by the foot-dragging of the slow-goers. A more standard understanding of kinship is challenged by a newly defined imagined kinship that provides a more solid normative basis of cooperation. Another example of the importance of defining kinship as the key to cooperation is found in the Polish campaign for entry into the European Union (EU) and NATO, as analyzed by Roman Kuzniar (2008). He pointed out that prior to establishing its position on the acquis communautaires, Poland launched a campaign emphasizing that it ‘is’ European and not of a different world on the other side of the former Iron Curtain. Its position in imagined kinship was established before the terms of cooperation could be worked out. The two notions of kinship are at the root of the debate over Turkish accession to the EU—Turkey is “one of ours” as a modernizing state (achievement) but not “one of us” as outside the Christian Atlamtic community (ascription). In fact, an expansion of the original PDG experiment in building trust using newer methodologies refines its preliminary conclusion (Stanger 2009). Not only is a Shadow of the Future a powerful motivation for parties to build a reputation for themselves and a relationship with others as a reason for cooperating; a Shadow of the Past also operates. This should not be surprising, considering the same type of reasoning, mutatis mutandis, that has characterized evolutionary studies of cooperation. Expectations of reciprocation are the future shadow (Trivers 1971), but defined kinship casts the past shadow that provides a reason to trust. States attempt to propagate a notion of “their own kind” as imagined kinship among allies to strengthen solidarity, whether that kind be defined in terms of ideology, region or ethnicity. In sum, states’ decision to cooperate differs according to their past prides and prejudices in considering each other as well as their prospect of future relations (Shadows of the Past and Future). While most of the use of game theory in international relations and evolution alike has been based on the PDG, the arguably more helpful scenario of the ‘other’ big Dilemma, the Chicken Dilemma Game (CDG), produces insights of positive policy usefulness (Goldstein 2009). In the CDG, deadlock is their worst outcome and the search to avoid it shows no clear (dominant) strategy as to how to either achieve avoidance or reach a jointly beneficial agreement. In other words, states reach out toward cooperation when they find themselves faced with their worst outcome if they do not come to an agreement (as opposed to the PDG, where the worst outcome is giving into the other party and deadlock is supportable in comparison), a situation known as a mutually hurting stalemate (Zartman 1997, 2000). In game theoretic terms, in the presence of two Nash equilibria, in a Chicken Game they will seek to create new outcomes at the Nash Point that turn the game into an Angels’ Project (northwest corner high), a situation of mutual cooperation that avoids the risk of individual defection, if only through free riding, only by means of longer range cooperative thinking embodied in a relationship (Avenhaus 2007). Such efforts are outside the CDG scenario, game theorists are quick to point out, but they can be read into the scenario or into the uncomfortable situation it portrays.

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Such a situation does not tell when the parties will come to that realization, or where they will end up, but it does indicate that in the absence of a dominant solution they will begin to think, and eventually seek to define a way out of the stalemate. But PDG points to useful strategies in building cooperation, such as emphasizing the painful unacceptability of nonagreement and identifying a focal point or salient solution as a Nash Point to win parties away from their unilateral preferences. To do so, they have to build a sense of common dilemma and the need for a cooperative solution, and hence a common identity in the face of the problem. In both scenarios, states cooperate when, and only when, they have established relations of trust or commonality, through negotiation. Interstate analysis shows that negotiation can build trust as the means to reaching an agreement, neither as a precondition nor as a result but as a necessary part of the process, required for its successful conclusion. This, both the EU and NATO came to a cooperative agreement with Poland when they realized that they would both be in a worse situation if they did not and that Poland was an integral part of the European and larger Atlantic worlds (a realization not fully reached, for example, in regard to Turkey, Ukraine or Georgia). Unfortunately, there is a negative as well as positive side to the solidarizing element of imagined kinship. Cooperation is most solid when parties cooperate not only for something but against something, and more specifically against someone. Nothing helps cooperation like an external enemy. Enemies promote internal solidarity around a common purpose; they help the parties identify themselves, by identifying who they are not, as an aid to identifying who they are. The lesson is apposite to the understanding of cooperation in the post-Cold War (and postcolonial) era. The external enemy was obvious in both periods of time and was useful in fostering defensive solidarity; indeed unity under decolonization was best expressed in who the colonized was not (the colonizer) in order to overcome divisions that might arise among cooperating components in trying to identify who the colony was. NATO after the Cold War accomplished a monumental feat by holding together when the external enemy had disappeared, but then runs into the clash between the negative (anti-Qaeda but also anti-Russian) and positive (prodemocratic) basis of its cooperation on issues of NATO expansion. The absence of a clear external enemy in the case of anti-protectionist cooperation in the Doha round and antipollution cooperation in the Kyoto negotiations has a powerful weakening effect.

19.5

Limitations on Cooperation and Its Explanation: Size

The other limitation on cooperation can be expressed as a search for a Minimum Effective Coalition (MEC). Earlier work on coalitions (Shapley/Shubik 1954; Riker 1960; Bacharach/Lawler 1980; Brams et al. 1994) emphasized the importance of the Minimum Winning Coalition (MWC) and then the Minimum Contiguous Winning Coalition (MCWC), particularly in regard to voting. All were based on the

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crucial concept of “minimum,” that is, coalitions would be no larger than necessary to put the coalition over the top. Inherent in that characteristic is the additional implication that superfluous members would claim their shares on the benefits of winning and diminish the shares of the others. While these concepts are relevant to multilateral cooperation in regime-building for example, where winning votes or more usually consensus is important to the definition of the cooperative terms, they need to be modified to be applicable to other types of cooperation. In security matters, trade cooperation, and other areas where universal cooperation carries the terms of agreement down to the lowest common denominator (Chasek 2001), or, worse, to inaction—Seyom Brown’s (2008a, b) ‘balking’—all that is needed is cooperation among the few necessary to build capability for the chosen policy. The result is coalitions of the willing, regional and bilateral free trade agreements, and other examples of cooperation limited to the minimum necessary for effective action, overcoming the reluctant, the competing orientations, the lowest common denominators, and the claims of those who would add nothing significant to the capabilities of a smaller group. The MEC overcomes Touval’s (2009) critique of cooperation ineffectiveness and even inefficiency by limiting cooperation to its highest common denominator. Minimum effectiveness is also seen to be a decision criterion in cooperation for conflict management. When the situation involves the conflict of a member of the international community with an outside party, the community of bystanders passively or actively supports their member in conflict, but it urges cooperation and a policy of negotiation and moderation—conflict management—when the conflict begins to hurt them (Zartman 2009). But when the situation is one where both parties to the conflict are external to the cooperating community, the international community lets one of its members intervene to manage conflict as mediator, reinforcing its position as often-critical bystander. The common element for the international community’s decision to cooperate among themselves is that in both cases they seek to reduce their risk of loss, whether it be a loss from threatened relations with parties of the conflict or loss from the battle scars of mediation. The first situation is understandable; the second may also be understandable even though more active support for the mediating member would increase its effectiveness and reduce the danger of wounds. Instead, individual bystanders often benefit from their own relations from one of the conflicting parties, despite the need for solidarity behind the mediation. It would be interesting to test these conclusions in regard to a restricted “kin” community such as the EU; it certainly holds in relation to the UN mediation in Syria (Hinnebusch/Zartman 2016). The notion of imagined kinship can also be used to extend rather than limit cooperation, enabling minimum effective behavior under cooperation to be pushed beyond its ostensible limits, under specific conditions (Doran 2009; Larson/ Shevchenko 2009). Large states extend their cooperation when multiple participation is more important for effectiveness than its terms, and small states respond

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the favor and cooperate in order to influence and even restrain large states, reversing the logic of bandwagoning. Both approaches mean that the substance of the cooperation is often thereby reduced to the lowest common denominator, or, in other words, “much” is sacrificed to “many.” The trap, or fallacy, of each strategy is that small states risk finding themselves sitting powerless on the bandwagon that the larger partners drive, whereas the larger state faces the choice between weak policies or alienating states whose cooperation it will need at some other time. Under such conditions, inventing a sense of commonality is a response of necessity and an aid to more effective cooperation. Large states of the international community also increase their effectiveness by promoting a broader sense of imagined kinship than by sticking to the Minimum Effective notion, returning to a basic theme of negotiation theory that parties reach agreement most efficiently and effectively when they cultivate the impression of equality (Zartman/Rubin 2000). Recognizing that true equality does not exist outside the laboratory, social identity theory emphasizes the costliness of near-equality (or minor asymmetry) that creates position bargaining to the detriment of purposeful cooperation. Efforts to give the impression of equality, respect, and communality are an effective antidote. Status and prestige concerns are aspects of imagined kinship that provide an affective basis for cooperation, the bed on which cooperation lies and that works best when the lumps are smoothed out. Building positive identity in an imagined kinship rather than exclusion can be the key to effectiveness.

19.6

Conclusion

Reciprocity explains why nations—and other parties—cooperate, and building long-term institutions of reciprocity to lock in the Shadow of the Future are effective in extending and stabilizing cooperation. Both the Realists and the Liberals are caught in their self-proving hypotheses, but the Realists’ assumption limits cooperation whereas the Liberal’s promotes it, for the greater benefit of the parties. These basic understandings provide useful insights into sound negotiating practices. But they do not answer the further question: What limits cooperation (other than the Realists’ paranoia) and how can that limiting factor be used positively? The answer lies in the sister of the Shadow of the Future, a Shadow of the Past provided by the both solidarizing and limiting factor of kinship, not as a biological concept but as created communality. Imagined kinship is a strong aid if not a necessity for effective cooperation, and it limits that effectiveness to its applicable membership. Conversely, strengthening or extending cooperation requires reframing notions of the imagined kinship. Similarly, the notion of a Minimum Effective Coalition explains the tendency to keep cooperation limited to the numbers strictly required for effectiveness, so that benefits are not spread too

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thin. If large numbers than apparently needed are required, the glue for their cohesion and cooperation is found again in imagined kinship. Again, this insight provides guides for more effective negotiation tactics. Bowles/Gintis (2003: 433), implicitly equate Realists with sociopaths. Fishbine (2017) shows how the widespread teaching of Realism has fed the rise of populism in public views of the US in the world.

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Kydd, Andrew H 2005. Trust and Mistrust in International Relations. (Princeton University Press). Larson, Deborah Welch & Shevchenko, Alexei 2009. “Status Concerns in Multilateral Cooperation,” in Zartman & Touval 2009. Lax, David & Sebenius, James 1986. The Manager as Negotiator (Free Press). Maynard Smith, J 1982. Evolution and the Theory of Games (Cambridge University Press. Milner, Helen 1992. “International Theories of Cooperation,” World Politics XXXXIV 466-496. Nash, John 1950. “The Bargaining Problem,” Econometrica XVIII 1:155–62. Nowak, Martin & Sigmund, K 1993. Nature 364: 56. Nowak, Martin & Sigmund, K 1998. Nature 393: 573. Nowak, Martin with Highfield, Roger 2011. Supercooperators (Free Press). Richerson, Peter, Boyd, Robert, & Henrich, Joseph 2003. “Cultural Evolution of Human Cooperation,” in Hammerstein 2003. Richerson, P J & Boyd, R 2005. Not by Genes alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution (University of Chicago Press). Riker, William H 1962. The Theory of Political Coalitions (Yale University Press). Ruggie, John Gerard, ed. 1993. Multilateralism Matters: The Theory and Praxis of an Institutional Form (Columbia University Press). Shapley, L S & Shubik, M 1954. “A Method of Evaluating the Distribution of Power in a Committee System,” American Political Science Review IIL3:787–0792. Smith, Eric A, 2003. “Human Cooperation,” in Hammerstein 2003. Sober, Elliott & Wilson, David Sloan 1998. Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior (Harvard UP). Spector, Bertram I & Zartman, I William, eds. 2003. Getting it Done: Post-Agreement Negotiations and International Regimes. (USIP). Stanger, Alison 2009. “The Shadow of the Past over Cooperation and Conflict,” in Zartman & Touval 2009. Stein, Arthur 1990. Why Nations Cooperate (Cornell University Press). Stein, Janice & Pauly 1993. Choosing to Cooperate (The Johns Hopkins University Press). Taylor, Michael 1987. The Possibility of Cooperation (Cambridge UP). Touval, Saadia 2009. “Negotiated Cooperation and its Alternatives,” in Zartman & Touval, 2009. Trivers, R 1971. Quarterly Review of Biology XXXVI 35. Vogel, Gretchen 2004. “The Evolution of the Golden Rule,” Science 303: 1131 (20 Feb). Waltz, Kenneth 1954. Man, the State and War (Columbia University Press). Young, Oran 1989. International Cooperation (Cornell). Zartman, I William 1997. “Ripeness,” PINPoints 11:2–3. Zartman, I William 2000. “Beyond the Hurting Stalemate: Ripeness Revisited,” in Paul Stern and Daniel Druckman, eds, International Conflict Resolution after the Cold War (National Academies Press. Zartman, I William 2009. “Cooperation and Conflict Management,” in Zartman & Touval 2009. Zartman, I William 2015. Preventing Deadly Confluct (Polity). Zartman, I William et al. 1996. “Negotiation as a Search for Justice,” International Negotiation I 1:79–98. Zartman, I William & Touval, Saadia, eds. 2009. Cooperation: The Extensions and Limits of International Multilateralism (Cambridge University Press). Zartman, I William, Anstey, Mark & Meerts, Paul 2010. The Slippery Slope to Genocide (Oxford University Press). Zartman, I William & Hinnebusch, Raymond 2016. UN Mediation in the Syrian Crisis (IPI).

Chapter 20

Governance as Conflict Management

Governing is conflict management.1 In the long-established systemic understanding of governing, demands emerge from the body politic and are brought to the attention of the governors, who then handle them as best they can and will, returning them in a new form to the base of origin, which recycles and reissues them. But these demands are never harmonious and are often downright contradictory, so that interest aggregation and policy choice become the crucial exercise of governing. Often unrequited demands inspire their makers to move from substantive to procedural impositions on the governing process, to the point where representation is not enough and overthrow and takeover become their program. Whether dealing with conflicts among demands or among demanders, conflict management is the nature of governance. In internal governance even more than in international politics, it is the management rather than the resolution of conflict that is the maximum attainable goal. Conflicts among domestic demands and demanders are rarely eliminated; they are only reduced, satisficed, downgraded, contained, at best, until the demanders get new ammunition, new evidence, new pressure, new followers, or new issues and demands that break up their ranks and overshadow their earlier appeals. Issue realignment then causes new demands and demanders to enter into new conflicts for the governors’ attention, but it does not prevent old demands from remaining or reemerging. Management of conflict means reacting responsively to reduce demands in a manner consistent with human dignity so that the conflict does not escalate into violence. West African states were born as sovereign units—for the most part, in 1960— through the management of a major conflict, between nationalist elites and colonial rulers, over independence. That conflict was only managed, settled in principle by the granting of sovereign status but with implications and details to be worked out I William Zartman, “Governance as Conflict Management in West Africa,” in I William Zartman, ed., Governance as Conflict Management: Politics and Violence in West Africa. Brookings 1997, pp 9–48. Reprint with permission.

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over time once the danger of violence had been removed. Issues such as how much independence, relations between internal and external demands, relations between state and regional sovereignty, and others, remain. For four decades of independence, these sixteen states avoided wars among themselves with very few exceptions, but they have been subject to many different internal conflicts—social, factional, civil/military, ethnic, religious and others. A few of these have nearly torn their countries apart and have been managed primarily by military means. Most others form the business of governance, often in a postponing and aggravating way, but sometimes in a way that leads to resolution or to ongoing care. Despite (or because of) their newness and poverty, they have lessons to convey about the way conflict management is practiced and its pitfalls navigated. Although governance has been analyzed from many different angles—as institutionalization, legitimization, lawmaking, problem-solving, nation- or state-building, integration and allocation, to name a few—all of these can be related to the process of handling conflicting demands in such a way as to retain the allegiance and participation of the demanders in the national political system. Thus conceived, state-building becomes a matter of establishing the institutions for this task; legitimization becomes a matter of building reliable support for those who carry out the task; lawmaking becomes the formulation and implementation of rules for managing conflicting demands; problem-solving becomes a matter of creating the power and procedures for providing appropriate answers to the groups’ demands; nation-building means transferring a sense of belonging from the group to the managing state unit; integration and allocation means bringing such groups into a national interaction in such a way as to provide and distribute returns to them; and so on. The basic element of this approach to governance as conflict management is the demand-bearing group, the socio-political collectivity that supports and articulates the demands that make up politics. Three elements distinguish this type of collectivity from other aggregations of individuals. One is the groupness, the sense of cohesion and action on the part of some members of society, self-distinguishing themselves from others. Groups can come together and hang together for varying amounts of time and for various reasons, from the spontaneous street mob whose cohesion is shortlived and volatile to the institutionalized professional or ethnic identity association that continues to exist even when not in action. There are many levels and many bases for such a sense of cohesion, several often coexisting in the same group. Like the demands which the group expresses, these sources can be categorized as ethno-regional, socio-economic, age and ideological (Zartman 1980), with interesting contrasts as the various sources combine and as they relate to specific demands. These categories are only theoretical and potential; whether they are present in any particular case is an empirical question. Nothing implies the a priori existence of groups along any of these dimensions to match the conceptual existence of the dimension as a potential source of cohesion and demands. Categories can abound aplenty but until they cohere and act, they are not political groups. Demand-bearing groups are groups that identify themselves and stand up to be recognized. Thus, this approach lies between Marxist class analysis, which

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assumes the existence of groups along a particular dimensions, whether they exist or not, and Bentleyian group analysis, which focuses on groups inductively without any dimensional categorization. The second basic element is the demand itself, including its subject, intensity and goal. It is the demand that distinguishes relevant groups from mere identity or anomic groups, that is, categories or crowds; only when they turn their identification or their momentary existence into a purposive demand-oriented action do they become relevant to the governance process. The demand may be substantive, relating to a particular grievance, or procedural, relating to means of handling grievances (including constitutional questions, regional autonomy and secession, changes in government, etc.). Again, there are no assumptions about the nature of demands, other than the notion that substance precedes procedure: People try to get their grievances handled within existing channels before they turn to demanding changes in the channels themselves. It is probably a mistake to try to categorize demands, since specific or general issues may override general or specific issues according to the intensity and breadth of concern and the conditions of the moment. The same categorization as mentioned above, into ethno-, socio-, ideo-, and evipolitical [age], may be used but is probably is too restrictive for present purposes. Nor is the calculus of demands worked out very specifically as yet; inattention on the part of the governors can discourage or intensify demands, attention can either encourage or satisfy (or satisfice) demands, and multiple demands can either reinforce or neutralize each other, whether coincident or crosscutting or not. But other effects and intervening variables need to be worked out. The third element, lying between cohesion and demands, is supports, an elusive but important element that has been little recognized in the previous group literature from Marx to Bentham. Groups have a potential contribution to make to the larger politico-economic society in which they exist in addition to doing something for their members (cohesion). Either as a corporate entity or as an aggregate of members, they may sell real estate or enforce the law or fight wars or pump oil or contribute to the cultural tissue of the country. These contributions may be large or small by nature and they may be well or fully accomplished or not. The point is that demands have a corollary: “what your country can do for you” also carries with it “what you can do for your country?” Even where the group is constituted about a demand that stems from an inherent right of citizenship—for human rights or defense against attack or consumer goods—these demands have corresponding citizenship supports, such as loyalty allegiance, compliance with the law, and so on. In an era where the demands of the citizenry and the responsibilities of government are highly emphasized, it is important to remember that every card has two sides. There are also a myriad ways in which conflicts can be managed, categorized along different directions, but there are only a few helpful beginnings of typologies for the present analytical purposes (Himes 1980; Rubin et al. 1994; Collier 1982; Collier/Collier 1991; Lipset/Rokkan 1967; Stinchcomb 1967, esp 102–103) A useful six-fold typology runs from procedural attempts at dealing with the conflicting groups through substantive attempts at dealing with the conflicting demands back to procedure again: Reconciling, Allocating, Institutionalizing,

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Submerging, Adjudicating, Repressing (RAISAR). In the first, reconciliation means conflict management by bringing the parties together to overcome their own differences. Allocating is a direct exercise of government decision to resolve the conflict by decreeing the shares of the disputed goods and services that the conflicting parties will have or by adding new goods and services as payoffs. Institutionalization refers to the establishment of procedures to allow society to deal with the conflicts by a decision on either the issues or the groups; the institution is most commonly electoral, although a judicial decision might also be included if the judiciary is seen to be independent of government. The fourth, Submerging, refers to a government initiative that overcomes the conflict by putting forth new programs, higher goals, overarching concerns, or reframed perceptions (Sherif & Sherif). The fifth, adjudication, is a more specific extension of the fourth, by decreeing the rights and wrongs in the conflict among groups in other than merely allocative terms. Finally, repression can be used to eliminate the conflicting groups themselves. The latter is the least effective as a tool of conflict management (although it may be necessary in extremis) but the others all have their place; the first three, however, involve the conflicting groups in the management of the conflict, under government guidance, whereas the latter three treat groups as petitioners to and subjects of government. Earlier predecessors of the institutional and systems analysts were the social contract theorists of the eighteenth century, whose roots went back to the politics of Aristotle. The social contract established the system for managing society’s conflicts. Despite the extraordinary insights of social contract analysis, it is weakened by its highly philosophical or ahistorical nature, for it is generally quite difficult to find the moment when the social contract was drawn up. The closest event in the life of an ongoing polity is the constituent assembly or the sovereign national conference (CNS) frequently used in West Africa, but constituent assemblies are of varying degree of representivity and take place with an already-determined contractual context and CNSs have sometimes proven less decisive than the social contract would imply (Mongo 1996; Sisk 1995). In the case of new states, however, an even better approximation of the social contract is found, in a combination of the independence bargain and the constitutional determinations carried out by the nationalist movement. The nationalist movement is a rare moment in a nation’s history when a single demand overrides all (or most) others, an ascriptive identity subsumes all (or most) others, and other conflicts are managed by being submerged. This moment, as the “funnel phase” of national political action, thus represents an appropriate as well as convenient moment to begin the analysis of governance as conflict management. The independence bargain is flawed, however, as a social contract in one way. It is not merely a contract among the constituent demand-bearing groups of the polity, but between them and the decolonizing power (Zartman 1970). To be sure, the domestic constituents must come together in some way to present their demands to the foreign state, but tactical considerations and the nature of the opponent also impinge on the process. The result is that conflict is indeed only managed, the social contract of the moment rarely sticks, and the history of new nations is marked by an

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ongoing dispute over who should govern and who should benefit from government and a periodic return to the encounter to redo the contract with new players. Whether negotiated once or many times, the social contract is not merely a resolution of momentary conflicts over the division of rights and obligations. It also provides, whether explicitly or not, for mechanisms of further conflict resolutions and management, in the form of institutions of governance. This dual nature of the contract, as an act of governance and an act creating the rules for further governance makes it a doubly key moment in the evolution of the polity. The institutions thus created frame the exercise of governance until the next revision, again explicitly or implicitly. Government of course is not the only conflict management mechanism, only the highest one. Society can manage its own conflicts, and in a well-balanced state-society relationship, many of the conflicts originating within society stay there. Society can manage its conflicts in three ways, either by unilateral restraint and accommodation on the part of one party to a conflict, by bilateral negotiation and accommodation between the two (or more) conflicting groups, or by third-party mediation on the part of another group in society external to the conflict (including those specifically constituted for the purpose). When conflicts cannot be handled by society itself, when a court of appeals is needed, or when conflicts are so broad as to be national in scope, the state is needed as conflict manager. If all conflicts are taken to the state, there is political inflation and the state is overburdened, probably prevented from carrying out its functions properly. If no conflicts are taken to the state, the state is useless and not performing its proper functions; it is reduce. This approach contains a specific interpretation, even an American interpretation. It assumes that, appropriately, government is (or should be) a conflict management mechanism independent of and over and above conflicting groups, but not an element in the conflict per se. When groups accede to supreme authority, they take on the roles and interests of government, losing in part or at least overshadowing their original group interests and demands (Gramsci 1967). Hence, “is” is used here to identify the appropriate function of government, not the way it really works in all cases. “Normal politics” is thus considered to be an exercise in which social groups place their demands before government, which is then held accountable by the groups of society for the ways in which it handles their demands. An African assumption could be quite different, that conflict is essentially between groups and government and that in governance, government is managing its own conflicts with society. “Normal politics” has broken down; the real nature of politics is a war between society and government, which continues even when a new group becomes government and takes its turn at the trough. African governments grew out of the second notion, of politics as a conflict between society and government—between the pays réel and the pays legal in the late colonial period of rising nationalism. Newly sovereign states tried to return to the first interpretation of the state as manager of conflicts, upon independence, but many of then more or less rapidly slipped back into the second. That shift is important to the subsequent analysis, for two reasons. First, it makes conflict management more difficult, by turning it from a third party exercise into a direct

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exercise between the conflicting parties. The basic wisdom on conflict management indicates that third parties are helpful to the resolution of bilateral conflicts, indicating that the latter are more difficult to handle than mediated or arbitrated conflicts, since the parties are too absorbed in the conflict to be able to think creatively of its management (Berkowitz/Rubin 1992; Kressell/Pruitt 1989; Webb/Mitchell 1988; Kolb et al. 1997). Thus, there is an indicated role for government that is no longer being played. Second, by extension, this situation weakens and even delegitimizes government, since government is seen by large parts of society as part of the problem, not part of the solution. Such an image is self-perpetuating, creating a situation that becomes hard to escape. This work seeks to describe the evolution of governance as conflict management in Western (West and Equatorial) Africa from Mauritania to Congo, and to explain the origin and outcome of conflicts and governance patterns over the three decades of independence. Succinctly, colonialism created differentiation and repressed its expression; nationalism created a management mechanism and squandered it; single party and military regimes created pluralism and repressed it; democratization suffers as a result. The first provided the essential cleavage in society and in it the source of both conflict and its management, as the modernized strata made common cause with their own people to oust the modernizing colonizer and set up government for their own benefit. The third provided the motor for that government’s overthrow through the democratization movement based on increasing pluralization of interests. But that movement then fell victim of the failure of its predecessors to manage conflict. Why Western Africa? Because of its appropriateness in illustrating and testing the approach, in two words, as a region and as a lesson. West Africa has arguably the best developed sense of regional identity on the continent, not only because of its geography, which leaves only its eastern boundary imprecise, but also because of its cultural unity and interactional cohesion. That eastern boundary and the colonial experience of Equatorial Africa argue for its inclusion as well. West Africa has for centuries before colonization been an area of interdependent heterogeneity among proto-states, a characteristic that continued with the interpenetration of the two major systems of colonial order, the British and the French, plus, earlier, the German. After Ghana inaugurated Black Africa’s wave of successful nationalism in 1957, fourteen of the extended region’s twenty-one territories received their independence in 1960, on dates throughout the year that were closely related to each other. All turned their nationalist movements into single-parties (one for each region in Nigeria), and Senegal and Cote d’Ivoire have retained their original parties the longest. West Africa began the continent’s series of military coups with Togo in 1963 and then Ghana following on Nigeria in 1966. Ghana (and Sierra Leone) in 1969 were succeeded by Nigeria (and Upper Volta) in 1979 in returning to civilian rule, and then in reverting to corrective military rule. All have come under the spell of democratization, and responded in their individual fashions. In this ragged course, the 21 countries of the region have provided demonstration effects—positive and negative—for each other. Indeed, largely because of the French connection, the West African countries have served a demonstration effect

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on the six countries of the neighboring region of Equatorial Africa in the northern Congo basin, which could also be included as an annex to the region as well. The other remarkable shared characteristic is that West Africa has not been torn by the interstate conflict that ties other area of Africa—the Horn, southern, North Africa—together into conflict systems (Lyons 1993; Stedman 1991). Conflict in West Africa is internal to the states, and they have dealt with it in many different ways. Of the 21 states in the region, Nigeria, Ghana, and Cote d’Ivoire are the largest, both in population and in economy. Nigeria had its war in 1966–1970 over a secessionist region, Biafra, and has combined allocation, institutionalization and repression as the means of managing persistent social and geo-ethnic conflicts. Ghana’s conflicts have been social and ideological, and their most extreme form, the military coup, has been merely one expression among others of institutionalization and repression to manage what reconciliation and allocation could not. Cote d’Ivoire knew a remarkable stability through a system that manages its social and geo-ethnic conflicts by allocation, reconciliation, and institutionalization. While these are not the only mixtures of the means of management, they are typical of the continent. Other cases could be added (for a thicker book) and comparisons could be made with smaller or poorer countries. In short, West Africa has a message: that governance can be understood and practiced as conflict management.

20.1

The Nationalist Movement and the Suppression of Conflict

Typically, the struggle for independence in West Africa went through the characteristic stages of nationalist protest—acquiescence, imitation, reform group, and nationalist movement (Brown 1964; Hodgkin 1960; Zartman 1970). After the initial submission to colonial conquest, some elements of the population began to see the path to dignity and participation in an imitation of the ways of the colonizer, designed to bring the colonial individual into the modernized ruling community.2 The necessary rejection of these individual efforts, poignantly documented in such works as Carey’s (1939) Mr Johnson, Achebe’s (1959) Things Fall Apart, and Laurence’s (1960) This Side Jordan, turned individuals to collective action, and they banded together as reform groups. At this, the first group stage of protest, the demand-earing group still recognized the legitimacy of the colonial order and still identified with the colonizer as the modernized segment of the population, seeking equal treatment—wages, social benefits, participation in councils—along with the rest of the modernized. The necessary rejection of these collective efforts led to a reexamination of identity and legitimacy as well as politics. Reformers—some with

2

For similar literature in a neighboring region, see Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized. For an interesting review, see J Barry Riddell, “Let There Be Light: The Voices of West African Novels,” Journal of Modern African Studies XXVII 3:473–85 (199).

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great difficulty—rejected their modernized identification and their self-alienation from the rest of the population, and sought a new identity as nationals, forced on them by the colonizer’s rejection. The nationalist movement in turn rejected the legitimacy of colonial rule as a practical denial of its own principles and found redress of their demands possible only through their own control of power. They therefore sought to seize the state. (Where they failed, they turned into a revolutionary force, absent in West Africa except for the PAIGC in Portuguese Guinea [Zartman 1964]). The achievement-based differentiation which underlay the reform group stage, between the modernized or évolué population and the colonizer was overcome in a new ascriptive identification as nationals or colonized. Substantive demands for equality within the modern system in the previous stage were replaced by procedural demands for control and replacement of the illegitimate colonial state, with national leaders “making articulate a general dissatisfaction with colonial rule.”(Austin 1964: 154)3. The many different groups covered by the national identity go together into a Great Coalition behind the demand for independence. In the process, particular demands were used as campaign material, but the general appeal was to nationality and self-determination¨ (on Guinea, Ghana & Nigeria see Appiah 1991: 20; Zolberg 1966: 15f; Ajayi/Crowder 1974: II, 633f, 640). Whatever the marginal differences among various groups, the nature of colonial rule in nationalist terms was such that very few saw benefit in the status quo. The major conflict in the nationalist movement phase was over tactics and leadership, not over substantive demands. Cooperation versus opposition to the colonial administration, and confidence in one leader’s versus another’s abilities (including ethnic-based sources of such confidence) were the principal sources of division between competing parties, and therefore conflict was subsumed under the competing organizations. “These coalitions were large,…while many of their opponents almost by default stressed specific affiliations.” (Zolberg 1966: 35). Some groups saw their interests served in more rapid accession to self-rule while others were more cautious —Convention Peoples’ Party (CPP) versus United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) in Gold Coast, Progressives versus Conservatives in Sierra Leone, African Socialist Movement (MSA)/Sawaba versus Nigerien Peoples’ Party (PPN) in Niger and MSA versus the Democratic Union for the Defense of the Interests (sic) (UDDI) in Congo, Democratic Party of Guinea (PDG) versus Democratic Party of Ivory Coast (PDCI) within the African Democratic Rally (RDA) in French West Africa, the Camerounian Peoples Union (UPC) versus the Camerounian Union (UC) in Cameroon. and the National Liberation Movement of Equatorial Guinea

3

For a discussion of voluntary associations in colonial Africa, see Thomas Hodgkin, Nationalism in Colonial Africa (London 1956); Immanuel Wallerstein, “Voluntary Associations,” in James Coleman and Carl G Rosberg, eds., Political Parties and National Integration in Tropical Africa (University of California Press 1964), pp 318–39; Kenneth Little, West African Urbanization: A Study of Voluntary Associations in Social Change (Cambridge University Press 1965); and Claude Meillassoux, Urbanization of an African Community: Voluntary Associations in Bamako (University of Washington Press 1968).

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(MoNaLiGE) versus the National Union Movement of Equatorial Guinea (MUNGE). The effect of the nationalist movement, however, was to raise demands, both in general and in particular. Independence was both the effect and the cause of the much-mentioned Revolution of Rising Expectations, by which the mobilized African populations expected to benefit as much from self-rule as they suspected the colonial populations had benefitted from colonial rule—and then even more, because development was expected to follow as a consequence of independence. But specific demands also increased with independence to strain the nationalist movement, as the Rising Expectations spurred the emergence of narrower groups that felt they had a special claim on the benefits of independence. The result was what Zolberg referred to as “two contradictory trends: …the bandwagon effect [and]…the threat of fragmentation.” (Zolberg 1966: 19). All sorts of groups— professional, students, workers, ethno-culturals, farmers, traditionals, etc.—made common cause in the nationalist Great Coalition. Yet each expected to receive complete satisfaction for its demands despite obvious conflicts they posed to demands of other groups.

20.2

Independence and the Social Contract

Independence brought the leaders of the nationalist movement to power, giving them the authority to write the social contract but removing the unifying goal of independence that made a contract possible. Few writers at the time mentioned a social contract. Zolberg (1966: 27, 35, 75) refers to “the rules of the game” but that is a smaller concept located within the social contract. As a complication, the contract was twofold: an agreement with the departing colonial power to act as a successor state and maintain the existing institutional regime and some degree of economic privilege (on other parts of Africa, see Rothchild 1973, chap. 4; 1987; Zartman 1964b) and an agreement among the nationalist winners. Unlike the classical notions of a social contract, the latter African agreement was not drawn up among the ruled or even between the ruled and the rulers, but among the new rulers in the name of the ruled. The disparities of development accentuated the normally elite nature of politics, making personal charisma one major source of legitimacy¨ (Schatzberg 1991) but the nature of nationalism meant that the language of legitimacy had to be couched in terms of the single, united nation, providing institutionalized revolution as the other source. A contract made with oneself rather than between two contracting parties is only as valid as the sanctions that underwrite the good faith of its intentions. But there were no sanctions in the hands of the ruled. The new contract put power in the hands of the nationalist elite, organized into a single party that incarnated the single nation. It foresaw a plebiscitary, consensual system of the General Will, with no provision for competition opposition, losers, or civil and human rights. It considered pluralism, division, and conflict to be an ever present danger carrying a threat of colonial return, never successfully banished by

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the unitarian nature of the contract and therefore needing to be kept under careful control. Born of the struggle for independence, it was a contract for the protection of power, shielding the new state from attacks similar to those which its owners had used to take it over, not a contract guiding or limiting the exercise of power. The new powerholders were not specifically identified in the nationalist agreement but they were implied in its political evolution, along the diverse elite dimensions. It included an ethnic dominance—Baoule in Cote d’Ivoire, Wolof in Senegal, Hausa-Fulani in federal Nigeria and Igbo and Yoruba in its eastern and western provinces, Soussou-Malinke in Guinea, American Liberian in Liberia, Bambara in Mali, Sara in Chad, Creole and then Mende in Sierra Leone, Zarma-Songhai in Niger, Ewe in Togo, Akan in Ghana—which did not always correspond to the proportion of the population, with other ethnic groups merely being represented. It also included a socio-economic bias in favor of the urban population, and specifically of the capital city, with proconsular relations with the provinces and exploitative relations with the rural areas. The implications for government, only partially analyzed (Esseks 1975; Bates 1981; Sandbrook 1982) meant the need to turn a Great Coalition into a Ruling Coalition, and to develop coherent and realizable programs. New institutions for decision-making and implementation had to be set up and broken in, at the same time as decisions were being made. Stagnation, clogged decision apparatus, and political criteria for decision on allocation threatened the process. The allocation strategy comprised an equally great array of means involving aid, investment, exports and nationalizations. For parts of the first decade, governments could run on the legitimacy of their nationalist heritage and on the fat of the goose that laid the colonial egg before their inability to respond to demands or to shrink them became apparent. The implications for politics, only partially analyzed (Zolberg 1966; Apter, Hodgkins 1960, Morgenthau), were that political competition was admissible only within the party-state-nation and that those outside were treasonous, disloyal to all three elements. Groups were coopted into the single party or pushed back on their specific, sectarian or ethnic base. Cooption was selected on the basis of contribution of the group to national unity and political stability, not always for the purpose of meeting urgent demands. Since the nationalist movement was a Great Coalition, it encompassed all the demands it needed, and indeed the raised expectations amidst the characteristic underdevelopment meant that demands were in overabundance. Demand-bearing groups that were not part of the original contract, either left out in the beginning or newly arisen thereafter, continued to be excluded from the benefits of independence; these included late developing ethnic regions such as the Bete and northern groups in Cote d’Ivoire, Kabye of Togo and the Ashanti and Gurma of Ghana, and the new generations of students. Demand groups included in the Great Coalition were either brought to heel and to limit their demands or else began a gradual process of crowding out others for whom there was no room at the fixed or shrinking trough. Losers included Yorubas in Nigeria, among others. In this situation, the major mechanism of conflict management was the single party. By serving as a mechanism of cooption and ostracism, it managed the

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demand-bearing groups rather than the demands themselves, a strategy that was natural if not appropriate during the initial years of power consolidation of the new regime, since demands were basically procedural. Probably the most prominent source of demands involved the revival and final settlement of personal rivalries left over from the independence struggle. The affairs of Mamadou Dia in Senegal, Jean-Baptiste Mockey in Cote d’Ivoire, Chief Awolowo in Nigeria, Reuben Um Nyobo in Cameroun, Jean Aubame in Gabon, and J B Danquah and Kofi Busia in Ghana, all had their origins in tactical and clientele differences before independence that were revived and settled once again after independence. It is significant of the structure of politics that no such cases occurred in Guinea and Mali, where party unicity was consolidated earlier (Rosberg and Coleman), and that the same issue, taking the form of the tripartite rivalry, was never resolved at all in Dahomey, laying the ground for the military coup (Decalo). Occasionally, personal and tactical opposition was reinforced by generational differences as well. The second source of demands was ethnic, where groups already left out in the nationalist movement, protested by reinforcing their exclusion. Some were organized, some were not. Ewes and Ashantis in Ghana, Tubus in Chad, Betes and Sanwis in Cote d’Ivoire, Tuareg in Mali and Niger, tribals in Liberia, Temne in Sierra Leone, Casamançais in Senegal, Hausas in Niger, Mossi in Burkina Faso, Igbos in Nigeria. As well as Berbers in North Africa—Riffis in Morocco (1958), Kabyles in Algeria (1963) and southerners in Tunisia (1956–57)—Ndebele in Zimbabwe, Nilotes in Sudan, and Hutus in Burundi and Tutsis in Rwanda were all exceptions to the Great Coalition who took to politics and, frequently, violence to attack the system for excluding them from its expected benefits (Ajayi/Crowder 1974: 633; Cohen 1981; O’Brien et al. 1989: 16; Brown 1983: 431–60; Lemarchand 1986: 27–41. Other ethnic oppositions based on narrower demands also arose as the new elite consolidated its position and narrowed its own base, downgrading groups which were formerly part of the national coalition, such as original inhabitants of capital cities displaced by new in-migrants or earlier beneficiaries of colonization bypassed by new urban centers. Other, socio-economic groups grew only slowly with their separate demands, partly because it took time for them to reach individual corporate existence and partly because they were the targets of a mixed strategy of gratification and control during the early years of independence. The most striking cases are the labor, youth and women’s organization which, whatever autonomy they may have had before independence, all became tightly controlled party auxiliaries. Faced with the standard confrontation between demands of the workers and demands on the workers, labor unions became instruments of national unity and development rather than demand-bearing groups acting on government. Such efforts at control were not necessarily conclusive or uncontested, but they marked the general trend beginning soon after independence and lasting decades. Unity was decreed, organized, monopolized, enacted and enforced by the part-government as the primary strategy of conflict management. Conflicts among demands and demand-bearing groups were exorcized, denied, and suppressed. Like the party auxiliaries, the representatives in the national assemblies were

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nationalized, removed from their constituents by being elected on a single-party national list; they thus became accountable only upward, to the national leadership, and not downward to their voters and their diverse interests. The standard political mechanisms—formal or informal—for bringing demands to the attention of government, for enforcing accountability for meeting them, and—importantly—for negotiating effective and enforceable compromises were largely eliminated. The account of two decades of Sierra Leone politics is a slow-motion microcosm of the phenomenon: “The government of Sir Albert Margai began to utilize the power of the state to stifle criticism and coerce its opponents into silence,” spreading in the mid 1960s “the idea of solving their political difficulties through the institutions of the one-party state…..Thus, by 1978, legal opposition to the APC was ended. The power of the state was highly personalized and centralized, all major institutions of the state and many non-government institutions were either under government control or had lost the ability, the means, and sometimes the will to act independently. This remained the case in 1984.” With the elimination of political channels of representation and accountability, and the executive takeover of most of the functions of government, there remained only one channel for handling demands and managing conflict—the administrative structure provided by both the state and the party, often in uncertain relation to each other. Local groups brought their needs to the attention of their governors or prefects and party federations. Where the system worked, the uncertain relations between party and administration and the divergent pulls of ethnic homelands provided the constructive basis for competition among provinces and districts for available resources. Regular party congresses and periodic conferences des cadres confirmed the orientation of the party-government at frequent and crucial intervals. After a decade, a prime minister was introduced as a minister of governmental affairs to organize allocation and to preserve the national leader’s position as chief of the nation. The first test of the single-party system of governance came in the mid-1960s, when the allocation strategy collapsed and the system of conflict management underwent serious strains as a result. Market failure for single-crop economies, combined with shortfalls in foreign aid and investment suddenly reduced available resources and heightened the pressure of expectations. At the same time, demands gradually rose for better social services, accentuating the allocation conflict. Although there were small country variances in this timetable, all states in West and Central (and even North) Africa who had gained independence around 1960 were on the same schedule. Their response, however, varied. In some, the single party proved flexible and resilient, combining strategies of response with strategies of control. Market and product diversification, special aid appeals, and external currency support combined to produce resources to take the edge off of conflicting demands from the capital, provincial centers, and rural populations. What could not be satisficed was dampened, as the single party turned to demobilization and handed over its allocation functions to the state administration. The party offices, formerly acting as a ministry of mobilization, reduced their personnel and their hours, managing competing

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demands by restricting the channels—and hence the expectations—for their expression. Such retrenchment strategies provided a breathing space and a chance for a new orientation. The social base of the ruling coalition was reduced and refocused on the urban population, narrowing and concentrating the scope of demands and the groups that expressed them. New economic policies were undertaken, involving increased state role in the organization of production through parastatals, increased public investments particularly in the boom years of the mid-1970s, increase in urban construction and urban services, and increased food imports—programs that responded to the ongoing demands of the regime’s social base. Increased nationalization of foreign holdings, export diversification, import substitution and transformation industry, infant industry protection, and foreign borrowing were the array of strategies used to increase available resources. Armed with these efforts to meet a restricted list of demands and dampen the rest, some single party regimes were able to combine measures of supply and control to hang on. Such was the case in Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Senegal, Cameroun, Gabon, and Liberia. But in all cases the political organization persisted only by reducing and denaturing its own activities. Nowhere did it continue to operate as an organ of interest articulation and aggregation, conveying and combining the demands of critical groups in the population to the governors. On one hand, the demands of allegiance and development were so obvious that an elaborate articulation mechanism was unnecessary. But on the other hand, demands being so numerous and overwhelming, government had to make choices, even for the narrowed referent group. The party’s functions were overtaken and taken over by the needs of control and downward dissemination of information, replacing upward flows of demands. In other cases, however, the inability of the single-party system to contain increasing and conflicting demands clearly showed the nationalist generation to be more skilled in taking power than in exercising it. The party itself became a burden on government, significant demands made their way to the top outside the party channels, and the executive found itself unable either to reduce or satisfy the demands piled on it. Sometimes these burst out in riots, strikes, demonstrations and other evidence that the nationalist leaders were no longer in control even of public order. Labor strikes in Ghana in l96l, election riots in Nigeria in 1964, 1965 and 1966, veterans’ protests in Togo in 1963, a general strike in Upper Volta in 1963; the outbreak of the rebellion in northern Chad in 1965—all were major breakdowns in civil order preceding regime change. Occasionally but less frequently, these groups were ethnic rather than socio-economic, with demands for a greater share in the shrinking pie and an elimination of discrimination. In other (and also in overlapping) cases, the pinch of the late 1960s, before the boom of the next decade, hurt specific groups with the ability of doing more than just disturbing civil order, notably the military. When political and economic mistreatment turned the military from a support group to a demand group of the regime, it had the means to do something about it, and to resolve the government’s problems of ineptitude and overextension at the same time. The army took over government. The coup became the standard method of elite succession, since the

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normal election process was used to restrict competition and conflict and to keep the nationalist leaders in power. Coups were admirably suited to the purpose, since they both brought in representatives of new demands groups and also performed restrictive functions that the party system was unable to fulfill.

20.3

The Military and the Repression of Conflict

Military takeover of government was not a frivolous or incidental event in African history but a characteristic response to the inability of party government to manage the conflicts of demands at the time. The military took some initial steps to deal with the situation: It restored civil order and banned politics, resolving by gun and fiat the debilitating dilemmas of its predecessor. Over the longer run, it took further measures to manage the issue of conflicting demands, both by seizing the economic conditions of the time to increase resources (following measures similar to those of the remaining civilian regimes), and by installing further measures to increase its supports and controls and keep demands down, such as a new single party and a guiding ideology. For a while, these regimes succeeded in these tasks, although often at the expenses of growth and development. However, by their nature they also raised other problems of demand-bearing groups which troubled and sometimes ended the regime’s life-demands from the one sources which they could not control and to which they themselves were prey, notably ethnic groups; demands from specific socio-economic or generational groups which their coup and their ideology invited, notably youth; and demands from within themselves, other military factions, introducing a new ethos of government about conflict management and demands. The military’s first job was to clamp down on demands and shrink the political arena, so that government would not be called on to manage the conflicts among competing pressures with (and from) shrinking resources. Parties were banned, constitutions abrogated, supreme military councils created, and a new order decreed. Typically, power was to be returned to civilians once the stables were cleaned. Government became an affair of technicians, with the technicians of control associating the technicians of supply, free of the encumbering demands of diverse and conflicting groups. But demand-bearing groups were not to be abolished. The military itself was one, or perhaps several, often torn between factions who saw themselves as the spokesmen for the demand for good and clean government and those who insisted on bringing enhanced corporate military demands to the budget. Corporate needs competed with domestic development and services demands, gradually exacerbating the economic difficulties of the countries. In some cases, new factional coup attempts were corrective measures, the junior officer’s correspondent of the senior

20.3

The Military and the Repression of Conflict

353

leader’s efforts to weed out internal deviation and consolidate power, in Egyptian terms the Nasserite type of secondary coup against a Naguib government.4 In other cases, the military was riven by subgroups of itself, competing military factions who sought to use the available means of succession for their own accelerated benefit. New, usually younger military groups struck for their time in power, introducing a “turn at the trough” ethos of politics that deformed its political vocation as public service in conflict management and demand satisfaction, and saw it only as a shortterm elite occupation, with no responsibility to the governed and their needs.5 Finally, the military was also both divided by and representative of ethnic groups and demands. With all other group demands on hold, ethnic demands rose to the fore, ethnic groups suddenly had direct access to power, and intra-military differences suddenly dropped to conflicts of primordial identities. Thus the first Nigerian military government immediately split along tribal lines, and attempted coups in 1969 and 1977 in Congo and 1975 in Ghana were born of ethno-regional dissatisfaction in the ruling military, among others. By eliminating troublesome demands from the outside, the military merely enhanced demands that surfaced within. However, the nature of the military government and the measures it took to consolidate its power also raised its vulnerability to new demands from the outside. These groups seized on the military’s self-proclaimed progressive image, identifying with it and using it against the governors themselves. Moreover, the new demand-bearing groups were by their nature aggregative, not specific, and so had a broader claim on government’s attention. They were youth, with generational demands, and intellectuals, with ideological demands—the two often combining their forces and identities. The radical turn of government and its consolidation in power in Benin in 1972 and in Congo in 1979, labor pressures on Sankara in Burkina Faso after 1983, and the return of Rawlings in 1981, are examples. In other places such as Liberia, Mali and Equatorial Guinea, student and labor groups were not successful in influencing the military regime and so turned against it with their

4 Such were the actions of Maj. Kouandete’s Military Vigilance Committee against the regime of Gen. Soglo in Dahomey in 1967; the series of coups by Gens Joseph Ankrah, A A Afrifa, Ignatius Acheampong, and W K Akuffo in 1966, 1969, 1972, and 1972, the latter three then executed by Flt. Lt Jerry Rawlings in Ghana in 1979; the almost-textbook succession of coups from Gen. Lamizana in 1966 to Col. Zerbo in 1974 to Maj. Ouedraogo in 1980 to Capt. Sankara in 1983 to Capt. Campaore in Upper Volta (Burkina Faso); the series of junior officers’ coups (Lt Kikanga and Capt Miaouma in 1970, Lt Diawara in 1972, Capt Kikadidi in 1977) against Capt. Marien Ngouabi and Col. Denis Sasso Nguesso against Gen Yoachim Yhombi-Opango in 1979 in Congo; and the reverse sequence of Majors Nzeogwu, Ifeajuna and Okafor ousted by Gen. Iguiyi-Ironsi in 1966 in Nigeria, but later Gen Yakubu Gowon’s replacement by younger Gens. Murtala Mohammed and then Olesegun Obasanjo in Nigeria in 1975. 5 Such was the coup in Liberia by Sgt Samuel Doe in 1980, followed by further attempts by Maj. Gen. Thomas Weh Syen, Brig. Gen. Thomas Quiwonkpa. and Gabriel Kpollah in 1981, 1985 and 1988, respectively, and possibly those by Charles Taylor and Prince Johnson in 1990 and 1991 as well, and also the attempted coup in Ghana by Lts Arthur and Yeboah in 1967 and in Benin by Col. Maurice Kouandete in 1969 and 1972, among others.

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demands, preparing for its later overthrow. These demands were invited by the military’s measures to overcome its own vulnerability. In taking power, the military traded in a vulnerability to crowds of specific demands for a more generic vulnerability—its own illegitimacy. Military regimes benefit from a passing moment of revolutionary legitimacy (and perhaps a bit of charisma, depending on the case), but must soon make plans for seating themselves regularly and institutionally in office. They must build institutionalized support for themselves, particularly if their program is one of dampening demands and conducting development on its own schedule. The two instruments available to the military government were ideology and, ironically, single party. Both are centralizing elements of control and mobilization, designed to channel and limits upward demands and make them compatible with the predetermined directions of the ruler. However, as a consequence, they all magnify the upward pressures that do get through the controls, forcing government to resolve conflicts by heading its programs in a given direction. Ideology was centralizing, consumptionist, socialist, reinforcing the hold of the urban sector on government programs. The new single party was a creation from the top—the Movement for Social Evolution in Black Africa (as a single party in Central African Republic) in 1962, the Chadian Progressive Party (PPT) in Chad in 1963 which became the National Movement for the Cultural and Social Revolution (MNRCS) in 1973, the National Cameroonian Union (UNC) in 1966, the Democratic Party of Gabon (PDG) in 1968, the Togolese Peoples’ Rally (RPT) in 1969, the Congolese Labor Party (PCT) in 1969, the Democratic Union of the Malian People (UDPM) in 1974, the Party of the Peoples Revolution of Benin (PRPB) in 1975, the All-Peoples’ Congress [of Sierra Leone] in 1978, the National Movement for Society and Development (MNSD) in Niger (François 1982; Bienen 1987). But otherwise it shared many of the characteristics of the fossilized single parties in civilian-ruled states—a downward transmission belt for instructions, a method of local organization and control paralleling the ministry of the interior, effective at best in mobilizing a narrow support group for and watchdog over the governors. Like their civilian contemporaries, the military regimes benefitted from the boom years of the mid 1970s, when the terms of trade for tropical products as well as oil peaked (Fig. l). They also used the same strategies for developing resources— expansion of parastatals, increased borrowing, greater public investment, further nationalizations—and spent them for similar purposes (plus military expenses)— providing food, housing and services for the urban base to their regime. But the terms of trade peaks of the mid-1970s (early 1980s for Nigeria and the other oil states) occurred and against a background of other rising indicators for consumers —food prices that tripled in the early l970s, energy prices that quadrupled in 1974 and then doubled again in 1978, and against a foreground of droughts throughout the period and again after 1982, and a collapse in foreign aid after 1982 as a result of the developing countries’ recession (Fig. l). As a result, except for oil-producing countries (Nigeria, Gabon, Cameroun, Congo), the turn of the decade brought a resource failure that exceeded that of the previous decade (Fig. 2). This failure brought on a new series of coups in the region, each with its peculiar national forms

20.3

The Military and the Repression of Conflict

355

of the common cause: Mauritania in 1978, 1979 and 1980, Equatorial Guinea in 1979, Guinea Bissau, Upper Volta and Liberia in 1980; Upper Volta in 1980 and 1983, Guinea and Niger in 1985, Ghana in 1979 and 1981, Nigeria in 1983 and 1985. In the end, the military regime had only two possible futures. Either it enjoyed its time at the trough, found it impossible to leave, and clung to power for unconscionably long times (nearly three decades in Zaire and Togo, 22 years in Mali, 20 in Benin), outrunning any new ideas, legitimacy or ability to govern that they might have had at the beginning. Or they realized that their contribution to government was limited to helping the independence generation to retire and to clean the stables after them, but that (contrary to the academic as well as the public myths of the time) they had no special skills for governing. In that case they prepared for civilian return and an opening of the system to the free competition of groups and demands. Attractive as the latter sounds, it has not been easy. Resources are as limited, demands as conflicting, and politicians as venal as ever before. As many a corrective military ruler throughout the world has learned, the stables are not easy to clean thoroughly, and the horses when let back in keep their old habits. Military rulers returned their polities to civilian rulers in competitive elections in Sierra Leone (1968), Upper Volta (1975), Ghana (1969, 1979), and Nigeria (1979), only to find that the old crowd of independence politicians and their followers were the only ones with the skill and taste to take up politics (O’Brien et al. 1989: l7; Hayward 1984; Brown 1983; Agbese 1990; Zartman 1983). The military could only come back again and clean the stables more thoroughly, barring more stringently the return of those with political experience, as it did in all four countries in 1958, 1980, 1972 and 1981, and 1983, respectively.

20.4

Ethno-regional and Socio-economic Demand Groups

Development means social differentiation, and the 1970s and 1980s were years of enough socio-economic change to produce horizontal income, status, and professional differences in society, to awaken generational antagonisms, and to accentuate vertical distinctions and loyalties. The nature of the regime—civilian or military— mattered relatively little in its effects. Both, as seen, sought to handle mounting and conflicting demands by squeezing politics out of society and monopolizing what was left of politics as a bureaucratic exercise. Both tried to maximize fluctuating resources to provide benefits for their urban power base, keeping the rural areas under control. Both were perceived as favoring one region or ethnic group over another. Under the pressures of growth, constraint, and favoritism, society heaved and crumbled into component pieces. As cities grew at an extraordinary rate—6% per year on the average in the 1970s and in the 1980s in West Africa, more than in any other subregion and roughly double the population growth rate [IBRD Dev Rept 1990]—strata and occupations

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grew and gave rise to groups with conflicting socio-economic demands. Two urban groups have been particularly important: students and labor. In Nigeria between 1971 and 1987, 5 out of every 14 public protests were conducted by students and 4 by labor, against only 2 by peasants (Lerche 1982: 7). Another group of significance was that of market women. Students are a predesignated group whether they are formally organized or not; their very existence brings them together, gives them demands, confirms them in an intergenerational conflict, locks them into an expectational shortfall, and provides them with a locus and a proto-organization (Levine 1968). As a segment of the population trained to replace its elders, African students are still under the independence ethos, expecting a subsidized existence in school and an important job on their graduation. The timing of examinations gives so that the students are only somewhat dispersed and free to carry out their convenient deadlines for interruption; the most prominent sanction is to close the universities (conscription not being readily available) protests more effectively. Party regimes sought to control their students into official unions, which gave them an organization to protest through or against, as in Cote d’Ivoire in mid-1991. Typically, student protests have been directed against fees and cafeteria conditions, issues symptomatic both of the expectations of the students and the shortfalls from the tightening economic conditions. But students also protested larger policy issues, such as American policy in Angola or government deprivation of human rights in Côte d’Ivoire in the mid-1970s. If student groups and demands are an indicator of generational conflict, labor groups and demands are an important aspect of socio-economic conflict. Labor (including civil service) is the social base of African regimes; even if their programs are often targeted toward the middle class, the mass component of their urban base that must be satisfied is labor, and the category of government employees with common interests toward their employer often blurs the standard class distinction. Paradoxically, even though African exports are generally agricultural and hence of rural origin, manufacturing is primarily urban, so that labor has a major hold on the resources of the country. Labor’s position at the crossroads of resource supply and allocation demands gives it a crucial role in the governance process. Unions have traditionally been strong in services and in industry, with teachers’ and government employee’s unions as well as railroad and small manufacturing trade unions playing an active role since the time of the nationalist movement. Labor demands have focused directly on living conditions and specifically on government pricing policies, continually recalling to government the basis of the social contract providing cheap food in exchange for support and productivity. While labor’s existence does not provide the same automatic organization that does students‘, the reigning ethos requires unionization, posing the classical labor dilemma of organization for national solidarity versus organization for labor demands (Low, Sandbrook, Kraus, Ofong). Universally, nationalist labor unions have been tamed by the single party or military regime, setting up a target for rank-and-file rebellion as demands grow. Either these official unions have been taken over by the membership, or they have been circumvented by break-away unions who carry membership demands to the government (the largest employer).

20.4

Ethno-regional and Socio-economic Demand Groups

357

Even in populist regimes as in Ghana and Burkina Faso, the conflict in the 1980s between established trade unions on one hand, and the workers’ defense councils and committees for the defense of the revolution, respectively, weakens effective spokesmen and exacerbates conflict over social demands (Bienen 1987; Haynes 1991). In the process, the breakup of labor unity frees smaller professional organizations to pursue their own demands. Of these, teachers’ unions are the most active, and they reinforce their weight by providing a bridge to student organizations’ demands. Some of these groups were beneficiaries of government programs and had their demands taken care of to some degree, at the expense of others who were left out. It is inevitable over the two generations of independence that demands change and issues realign, as happens in any polity. However, it is more difficult in Africa to make any certain statements since the data are unavailable. Polls and surveys, election campaigns and votes, even content analyzes of press and public debate— the normal measures of issue evolutions (1970)—are generally not to be found. Moreover, the general nature of African problems of development and related demands have been constant since independence, so that the baseline of demands remains the same. However, new conflicts arising from reorientations in demands have been less frequent than a simple resurfacing of the same old demands for clean government, better living conditions, and greater liberty, and against corruption, austerity, and repression, given new vigor by a growing awareness of pluralistic interests and a changed international climate in favor of pluralism and civil liberties. But Western African governments in the 1980s were also under pressure from ethnic demand-bearing groups. They used an array of strategies to handle ethnic conflict, including assimilation, cooptation, competition, autonomy, and conquest, and ethnic groups responded with their own strategies, from petition to secession to overthrow. In Senegal, for example, a new nation was gradually being created through assimilation, built about a central core or “nationalizing zone” on the basis of French and Wolof but ignoring ethnic distinctions; the negative side of the consolidation and expansion of the core implied a neglect of the peripheries, notably in the south (Casamance) and the east. In Mali, a similar assimilation was practiced through the use of Malinke and French; in Sierra Leone, conscious government policy sought to mix Creoles and up-country people in positions of power. In Gabon, where politics has been controlled by a tight coalition of small ethnic groups held together by a common interest in fending off potential dominance by the one largest tribe (the Fang, with 40% of the population), both the minorities and the majority have been kept under control by cooptation of their representatives into ruling circles and remunerative positions, using the country’s export-led resources. In Chad, Benin and Togo, the periphery simply took over the center as an army of occupation, allowing the populations of the capitals to benefit from being there but using the central power to benefit specific parts of the hinterland. In Côte d’Ivoire, the government encouraged competition among the various regions and their ethnic components for benefits from the center; prefects and party leaders are rewarded, and through them their regions, for efforts to keep people away from the center through development projects. In Nigeria, a rare case,

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a policy of autonomy has created a proliferation of centers in an ever-increasing number of federal states, each with its own resources and payoffs. By their nature, all these strategies implied the denial or neglect of some regions and groups of the population, and led to their coalescence around demands as discriminated groups. Many of these came from outlying rural areas which were only just receiving the disruptive effects of administration from the capital without any corresponding benefits (Favret 1960). In effect, it was a late-blooming nationalism against administrative “colonization” from the center, similar to the nationalist movement’s reaction to colonial rule from the metropole. Conceptually, the demands moved from protest toward the center, to secession from the center, to overthrow of the center, with examples of all three phases. It is ironic that the forerunner of this type of ethnic protest in all three phases occurred in Chad from l965, when the northern region went into dissidence, eventually to conquer the capital a decade and a half later. The same dissidence was repeated in the Casamance of Senegal after 1982, the Targui regions of the Sahara in Mali, Algeria, Niger and Libya after 1964, and the northern region of Cameroon (particularly after the northern president retired in 1985). It also showed up in reverse in discrimination against the Halpulars in Mauritania in the valley of the Senegal river and the Moors in Senegal. In the above cases, the effects of the Sahelian drought of the 1970s and 1980s on the national economies reduced resources and exacerbated the allocation problem. A similar dynamic took a sharper form in Liberia in the 1980s, where the comprador behavior of the Americo-Liberians drove the hinterland not into secession but into takeover: The Krahns, let into the capital as soldiers, took over the power they had been hired to defend. When, under Samuel Doe, they then turned around and hired the Americo-Liberians for the technical skills they needed to govern, the Mandingos, Geos and Manos revolted under Charles Taylor to oust them in turn, at the end of the decade. These ethnic demands in turn evoked strong responses from their governments. Although a minority of the states in the region have been affected by such sharp ethnic and regional protests, where they did occur they were violent and were met with violence. In the extreme cases of Chad in the early 1980s and Liberia in the early 1990s, they brought about the collapse of the state itself, pulling down the pillars of government on their heads (Foltz 1995). The other cases have been peripheral enough not to disturb the functioning of government but they have torn apart the social fabric of the country, sometimes—as in Senegal in 1989, Cameroun in 1992 and Congo in 1993—ripping into the heart of the capital itself. Unlike earlier cases, the result has not been the militarization of government bu a weakening of its authority and integrity, as in Senegal and Mali, contributing eventually to its overthrow from the base not from above, as in the case of Mali. As a result, by the end of the 1980s, there was rising pressure and conflict both from ethnic and from socio-economic groups, stemming both from the reduction of resources due to drought and recession and from proliferation of demands due to centralization and pluralization. For an area where the state has been characterized

20.4

Ethno-regional and Socio-economic Demand Groups

359

as both weak and soft, it has done remarkably well in keeping its integrity while facing such increased demands. But the particular governments that operated the state have done less well. The rise of demands has also raised questions about the forms of government and the social contracts which underlay them, and carried demands from substantive matters to procedural ones.

20.5

The Rise of Procedural Demands

The capping of substantive demands for specific benefits by procedural demands for participation in the conflict management process itself has occurred for simple, straightforward and the right reasons: dissatisfaction with centralized, monistic governance coupled with a desire and willingness to open demands and participation to the political marketplace. The change came at the beginning of the 1990s rather than before for reasons of both demand and supply: While the gradual effects of development had produced pluralization and new groups with demands for pieces of the national pie, the world economic recession meant that the pie was shrinking and monistic governments were called to account for their stewardship. The world context reinforced the second part of the equation in three ways—by withdrawing economic resources, by imposing constraints for adjustment, and by providing numerous examples of the illegitimacy of centralized political and economic control throughout the communist world. Although the wave broke at an identifiable moment, at the end of the 1980s, like other such social movements it was foreshadowed by premature and preparatory moves much earlier. One preparatory strain was the continuing insecurity of the military in English-speaking countries over its legitimacy as ruler. English-speaking West Africa (except for the special case of Gambia) provides most of the instances where the African military voluntarily returned power to the civilians in the 1960s and 1970s, not just once, as in Sierra Leone (in 1968) and Nigeria (in 1979), but twice in Ghana (in 1969 and 1979), before the planned returns in all three states in the 1990s. Only then-Upper Volta among the French-speaking states returned to civilian rule, in 1975, as an interlude between a first- and a second-generation military ruler. While all of these civilian returns were reversed soon afterward by a second- or third-generation military officer, they indicate a basic uneasiness in the military with their own legitimacy in power. A second forerunner was the sporadic appearance of opposition to single parties. Ever since a group of colleagues announced to Sekou Toure their intentions of forming an opposition party in 1960—whereupon he promptly arrested them— politicians have sought to challenge the single path of party regimes and to provide alternatives. Many of these parties were ideological, without a social basis other than among intellectuals, and some were ethnic, but a few emerged from other sources of demands and even the supposedly ethnic parties often had a reform element independent of their tribal source of members. Among the first category were the African Independence Party (PAI) in Senegal (Hayward 1987, 245ff,

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255ff, 259f) and the Communist Party of Dahomey (PCD). Among the second were the Fang-based National Reform Movement (MoReNa) founded in 1981 in Gabon, Among the rarer cases of the third were the Progressive Peoples Party (PPP) and the Movement for Justice in Africa (MOJA) in Liberia. The most successful precursor has been Senegal, which even during the nationalist movement had a history of pluralism and which became a three-party state by decree in 1974. Although few states emulated the Senegalese experience, either in its early multipartism or in its smooth presidential transition, it remained an eloquent example of the potentialities and only limited dangers of pluralism. The third precursor of competitive political pluralism was the human rights movement, which set up Leagues (Ligues des Droits de l’Homme) and Amnesty International chapters. These organizations were not just clubs organized about an idea, but an institutional expression of the concerns of groups and individuals with a social basis and a supportive set of their own substantive demands. They included lawyers with an interest in cases and causes, professors concerned about open debate, and businessmen looking for discussions on alternative economic systems. Human rights concerns entered African countries through Amnesty International in London and the Ligue des Droits de l’Homme in Paris, but gradually chapters and local Leagues were set up in the African countries themselves. As the international wave increased in amplitude, it became unseemly for even repressive regimes to continue to oppose the creation of a local human rights organization, even though they would continue to block its efforts; then, with the passage of time and the build up of pressure, it began to become unseemly for them to block its efforts too. The best that regimes could do was to create their own competing Leagues and human rights organizations, weakening the original group but at the same time reinforcing its message.6 In addition, an impressive number of professional and issue-oriented associations were established throughout the region with human rights and political development among their goals—notably Bar Associations in Senegal (1976), Ghana, Gambia, Sierra Leone (1979), Nigeria (1983), and Gabon (1988) (IHRP 1994; HRI 1994). A fourth antecedent of political pluralization was the evolution of social organizations around the issue of employment. Student fortunes took a peculiar twist after the mid-1980s that turned them from restive targets of party government organization to the avant garde of the pluralist opposition. As the economic fortunes of African states declined in the mid-1980s, the guarantee of employment given to students faded away and urban streets became filled with unemployed graduates, trained to know more than government incumbents but blocked by the same

6

Leagues were set up in Cameroun in 1984, in Mauritania in 1986, in Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire and Nigeria in 1987, in Senegal and Mali in 1988, and in Togo, Benin, Guinea, and Niger in 1990, and Liberia and Guinea Bissau and Gambia in 1991; Amnesty chapters in Cote d’Ivoire (1979), Ghana and Senegal in 1980, and Nigeria and Sierra Leone in 1984; human rights commissions in Togo in 1988 and Benin in 1989, and regional human rights organizations in Gabon (1978, 1980), Gambia (1986, 1987), Ghana (1989), Nigeria (1986), Cote d’Ivoire and Benin (1990), and Senegal (1979, 1983).

20.5

The Rise of Procedural Demands

361

incumbents from putting their knowledge to work. The effect of lessened demand was in turn to reduce the supply, of graduates but not of unemployed; youth dropped out of school and college, since their efforts gave them no jobs, but dropped into the petty trades of the unemployed—windshield washers, parking attendants, sunglass salesmen, and so on. They thus became available for political employment as demonstrators, while their brothers and sisters who stayed in school became ipso facto a demand-bearing group for change. Similarly, those who did achieve government employment for their efforts then constituted the other already mobilized group—the labor unions—that also shifted its position toward the end of the 1980s to become a force for pluralism and political change (Haynes). Formerly organized, however restively, under party government control as a source of support for the monistic system, it became the immediate target of government reform programs when structural adjustment programs were adopted under the pressure of the international financial institutions, the US and eventually even the EC. Up to this point, labor had been held in control by rising salaries and bloated bureaucracies, but when these means of cooptation were no longer available, and unions turned to bite the hand that no longer fed them, calling for accountability from the governors. Underlying the unions’ complaint against structural adjustment austerity was the deeper complaint that it had been decided without their participation (Heilbrunn 1993). All four types of antecedents created momentum for demands for a new social contract and a direct, open, pluralistic participation of the governed in their governance. The underlying grievance was that monolithic governments, whether civilian or military, were not able to resolve conflicts in demands from the increasingly pluralistic and disappointed population. Thus another contributor was the sudden disrepute of socialist and single-party regimes, beginning with the Soviet Union, although this development so closely paralleled the evolution of attitudes in Africa that it is hard to establish a cause and effect. Similarly, although the growing procedural demands echoed the pressures of the international financial institutions—World Bank, Monetary Fund, and private sector—for economic openness, accountability and competition, those pressures were generally so unpopular in Africa, even or especially when finally adopted by the governments, that they might have been predicted to undermine the development of political openness and competition (See Africa Confidential 1988 and 1993, among many others.). That they did not is testimony to the strength of grassroot demands for debate and participation. Instead, austerity measures required by the IMF often served as the trigger for popular uprisings against the corrupt authoritarian regimes that enacted them, creating a particularly difficult dilemma for the resulting democratic regimes (Nelson 1992). In sum, conflicts increasingly gravitated from group versus group to groups versus government. What did give pause to the movement was the failure of the democratic experiments, most often in those countries where the military had once withdrawn at the end of the 1970s. They all showed that, however unsuited the military might be for governance, it had cause for removing the civilian politicians of the independence generation who were just as unsuited to rule Return to civilian rule in

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Ghana, Nigeria and the CAR in 1979 meant a return to the independence generation and demand politics, and to a time-at-the-trough ethos that was at least as pervasive among the civilians as among the military. Each in turn treated incumbency as a fast feeding frenzy, knowing—and assuring—that it would soon be replaced by a new group of military awaiting its turn. Yet to disbar all people who had any contact with the previous regime—as Gen Babangida did in Nigeria in 1987—would be to eliminate anyone with any experience in politics and probably to open politics to those who had devoted their time exclusively to the trough in business and finance. It has not been because these problems have been solved that procedural demands have won the day on occasion, but because the pressures for participatory conflict management have been so strong. Indeed, Western Africa—to date—has confirmed Churchill’s (1947) famous judgment that “Democracy is the worst form of government except for those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Military regimes in many Western African countries—Ghana, Benin, Togo, Mali, Guinea, Niger., Chad, Congo, CAR, Mauritania—have been forced by the irresistible pressure from below to edge toward the restoration of civilian rule, in a form that allows demand-bearing groups to compete for scarce resources, although some have drawn back from the edge when they came to the moment of decision. Some military regimes or originally military regimes which did not give in on their own were simply overthrown to make way for a new social contract, although by variously different means. In Mali, mounting pressure from student, civil servant, professional and civil rights groups opened the way for the army to remove the tyrant and prepare for democracy; and in Benin the same groups forced the tyrant to face his people in a national town meeting or national conference in 1990 and conform to the regulations of a new social contract, by which he was ultimately retired. Other military rulers, all ruling over smaller or less developed societies, were gradually pressured to follow suite, in Niger, Congo, Central Africa, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea Bissau. In Liberia, a grassroots revolt destroyed civil order and murdered the tyrant, but then turned on itself and murdered society; in Togo and Zaire the tyrant, able to defeat the pressures for accountability, has become a prisoner of his own army; and in Nigeria, leader of the regional military intervention that was to bring democracy and conflict management to Liberia, the military regime could not bring itself to recognize the results of its own elections in 1993 and clung to power instead. The regimes already civilianized have been much more difficult to pluralize (Zartman 1990). Single party regimes democratize with difficulty, since they already operate under a participatory ethos monopolizing political experience and using a party skilled in winning elections. Unless it is totally discredited, the single party remains a powerful player during the transition. The earliest and most successful record of evolutionary pluralization was Senegal, which has had competing parties since the mid-1970s, even though then, as twenty years later, the opposition had little chance of making major electoral inroads. As in other countries of the region, Cote d’Ivoire faced a year of political upheaval in 1990 from students, faculty, labor and civil servants, in response to major attempts at reductions in civil service salaries and benefits and increases in taxes, in the continuing context of a

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controlled political system. Elsewhere, as already noted and analyzed below, such unrest led to an overthrow of the system. Yet Côte d’Ivoire was able to open its 1990 elections to competition without the slightest threat to Houphouet Boigny or his Democratic Party (PDCI). In the other two major French-speaking states, Paul Biya and Omar Bongo have been able to use the Camerounian Peoples’ Democratic Rally (RDPC) and the Democratic Party of Gabon (PDG), respectively, to coopt and hold off pressure for pluralization for a while. Yet the pressures of pluralism can no longer be contained by a single party, as in the past. The sovereign national conference (CNS), invented by professor Robert Doussou of Benin, was inspired by the French états généraux in 1788, but the African experience was closer at hand, grown out of a long experience in conferences des cadres in Benin, Ivory Coast and elsewhere. The culminating national conference in the series was outside the Western African region, the Conference for a Democratic South Africa (CoDeSA) and its variant forms, between 1991 and 1994 (Mongo 1994). The CNS was an innovative political move—a political revolution—that constituted the meeting grounds for the new demand-bearing groups of society, took sovereignty into the hands of a self-constituted body of civil society and wrote a new social contract creating a new political system. The combined action of civil servants’, teachers’, students’, labor, lawyers’, and sometimes military groups, supported by a suddenly blossoming press, testified to the pluralism which had grown up under the wraps of the authoritarian regimes. In Benin, the demands came from two of the groups most favored by the regime of Mathieu Kerekou, the public sector employees and the students, who launched a strike in January 1989 against austerity measures imposed by the IMF without their being involved in the decision (the third favored group, the army, did not participate and remained an independent guardian of the transition); after the national conference of February 1990, Kerekou was allowed to preside over the transition and then run in the presidential elections a year later, which he lost; six years later, he returned, “reformed.” (Table 20.1). Explicitly or implicitly, the national conference declared itself sovereign and wrote a new social contract for its country. The terms were all generally similar: Debate and expression on public issues would be free and open, and critical or deviant opinions would not be punished; minorities would not be considered a danger to state security nor would their security be in jeopardy; free and fair elections would register the strength of groups and issues behind candidates at periodic intervals; political and economic pluralism and competition would be the basis of a continuing search for the best future for the state and its citizens. Of the 24 states in Western Africa plus Zaire, ten (Benin, Gabon, Congo, Togo, Zaire, CAR, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Chad) had national conferences, three more (Ghana, Guinea, Mauritania) had constitutional revisions that converted their military regime to an elected multiparty system and three others (Cape Verde, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire) opened their single-party system to electoral competition, bringing alternance in the first, contested continuity in the second, and continuity in the third. In some of these states, pluralism was a safety valve, an occasion for free

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Table 20.1 National conferences and their outcomes State

Date

Duration

Elections

Outcome

Benin

Feb. 1990

1 wk

Alternance (Soglo, Kerekou)

Gabon Congo

Mar 1990 Mar 1991

3 wks 3 mos

F&F Feb 1991, Mar 1960 Dec.1993 1998 F&F Aug 1992, 1997

Mali Niger B Faso Ghana

July 1991 July 1991 Aug 1991

2 wks 40 days 2 mos

F&F Apr 1992 F&F Feb 1993 Dec 1991

Aug 1991

7 mos

Togo

Aug 1991

1 mos

F&F Nov–Dec 1992, 1996 Aug 1993

Zaire Aug 1991 CAR Oct 1991 Chad Jan 1993 Source the author

1 yr 2 mos 3 mos

2006 F&F Aug 1993 June 1996

Bongo reelected Alternance (Lissouba), Nguesso coup Alternnce (Konare, ATT) Aternance (Mahamane), coup Compaore reelected Rawlings reelected, alternance (Kufor) Eyadema reelected, Gnassingbe elected Coup Alternance (Patasse), coup Deby reelected, coup

speech and expression of grievances without any serious challenge to the authoritarian regime turned merely from a power monopoly to a power oligopoly. But in half the cases, by one mechanism or another, a profound change was introduced, turning the management of conflict from an authoritarian, top-down exercise into a participatory, bottom-up process. Details often blurred the sharp distinction between the two types, and the larger question remains whether the second will revert back to its authoritarian precedent or hold its own. There is clearly a fork in the road, and an open contest over which of the two paths will dominate the evolution of each country and provide the decisive demonstration effect for its neighbors. In the early years of the 1990s, the democratic path seemed to be the high road, overshadowing the countries that still clung to their authoritarian regimes. Togo and Zaire seemed bent on being pariahs. But the hypocrisy of Babangida and the Nigerian junta in 1993, in invalidating the electoral victory of one of its own handpicked candidates, motivated by a mixture of internal regional antipathy and personal megalomania, added sudden weight to the authoritarian option, and added support to the recalcitrance of other laggards such as Biya in Cameroun. History continues in Western Africa, as the region enters into a conflict between two different ways—authoritarian and participatory—of managing conflict.

20.6

20.6

The Future of Substantive Demands

365

The Future of Substantive Demands

The culminating question is whether Western (and other) Africa at the fork in the road faces a systemic crisis and a major shift in demands, as it did around 1960, or whether the demand-bearing groups that surface today are merely the long-repressed emanations of a system frozen at the moment of independence. Meta-geoethnic politics in the regional jealousies of Nigeria, arriviste materialism within a geoethnic structure in Cote d’Ivoire, and a combination of socio-, ideo- and geoethno-political demands in Ghana repeat the patterns of politics established a third of a century before, as the following chapters spell out. Have demands and groups changed in the interval since independence? If so have the patterns of governance—of managing intergroup conflict—been able to keep apace with those changes? The Western African focus on procedural demands for greater participation in governance in the early 1990s is an exceptional phase expected to last only as long as the governance issue is not settled. But that phase could be a long time, particularly if the various national attempts to settle the issue are not reasonably well synchronized. In the early 1990s, expectations outside and inside Africa put pressure on such states as Nigeria, Cameroon and Ghana, but also Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Central Africa, to open up and civilianize military regimes, and a successful consolidation of power by the Democratic Party regime in Nigeria elected in June 1993 would have passed that pressure on down the line. External donors withheld aid and castigated authoritarian rulers in Nigeria and Cameroon in 1993, and Zaire after 1992. Events in the states of the national conferences put pressure on the holdouts—Togo, Zaire, Cameroun, Gabon, Central African Republic—to place governance in the hands of pluralistic participation. But the successful efforts of the holdouts to coopt the new prime ministers, divide the democracy movements, and control the elections for their succession, as in Zaire and Togo, also created their own pressures on the movements of pluralism, just as a failure of the transition in Nigeria in 1993 added to Rawlings’ success in Ghana inbeing elected as his own successor in 1992 as a trend to contain procedural demands. Senegal’s elections in 1993 were not as free and fair as in previous years, yet Abdou Diouf and his Socialist Party won, as in previous years. To that is added the temptation for newly elected regimes to curb the pressures from below against structural adjustment by reasserting state authority against demand bearing groups of society. As a result, in many countries, efforts to put governance in the hands of society, rather than in the hands of an authoritarian regime, may well become stuck at an intermediate level, where pluralistic forces exist as safety valves for pressing demands but not as realistic contenders for governance—la démocratie à la Sénégalaise (although Senegal itself is under pressure to move to the next step of alternation in power). On this intermediate level, tactical questions become crucial. Is a dominant party system with a safety-valve opposition sufficient to satisfy societal demands? How does one break the voters’ habit of voting for the incumbents because they have

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power, and the governors’ habit of treating the opposition as a nuisance of which it has no fear? Should opposition leaders be given some responsibilizing experience as a minister (usually without portfolio) in an essentially dominant party government, or should he be locked out of power until his time comes, with that time being delayed because of his lack of experience? Should new opposition parties be given official subsidies so they can get started, even if it means that they are on the tether of the state (read “dominant party”), or should they be left to raise their own independent funding, even though few if any businessmen would be seen to invest against the government? The success of procedural demands depends on such tactical and technical dilemmas. In addition, procedural demands may be kept alive for ideological reasons quite distinct from a distributive or substantive base. Thus, while pressure for a communist or African socialist system has little prospect for rising in the rest o the decade (although it could easily return thereafter, as the insufficiencies of competitive democracy become apparent), pressures for Islamic government are quite likely across the Sahel, even if they are not necessarily decisive. Such pressures, it should be emphasized, owe their support to the insufficiencies of current modes of governance but they reflect a particular procedural response; their appeal comes not from a belief that Islamic (or any other) governance is better for Muslims (or socialist or whomever) but that Islamic governance is the right way to do it and to eliminate conflict within society. Substantive demands, however, continue to evolve and remain the basis of domestic political conflict and governance as the management of that conflict. In Africa’s developing states, as elsewhere, material and distributive concerns remain the basis of politics. In some times and areas, these are reduced to demands for basic needs, but more usually they concern relative shares of a shrinking pie and conditions of welfare). They are the same demands as expressed at the time of independence. Indeed they are the demands that underlay the nationalist movement itself, which protested discrimination against Africans in the distribution of the benefits of colonial development. Like the 1980s, the literal irresponsibility of government in the 1950s turned African demands from substantive to procedural as Africans felt that only by taking allocation into their hands could they assure themselves a proper distribution. As in the pre-independence period, the conflict to be managed is between beleaguered government and demand-bearing groups in Nigeria and Ghana and is in danger of becoming so in Côte d’Ivoire. The 1990s are a return to the 1960s in a more complete form. If demands remain the same, the nature of the demand bearing groups has changed. Urban society is well entrenched, less precarious, more differentiated. Privatization and restrictions on the public sector mean more competition, and so more conflict among groups, to be regulated and mediated by government. Cooperation between urban groups that have hitherto formed the social basis of government, such as labor and business, is undergoing increasing strains, turning to competition and conflict. Rural society is diminishing, exploited, and relatively undifferentiated (except by geography and ethnicity). It is held in place by intermediaries—Mourides in

20.6

The Future of Substantive Demands

367

Senegal, planters in Côte d’Ivoire, commercial farmers (Big Men) in Nigeria. In all these characteristics, it is typical of world history. But there are no unambiguous signs of classical historical evolutions, either to a Green Revolution (Huntington 1969) or to commercial agriculture (Moore 1968); the world collapse of agricultural terms of trade has seen to that. Peasant votes are not enough to outweigh a loss of the urban voters and rural alliances with parts of urban society provide an unstable base, and land tenure is not enough of a distributive issue in West Africa to provide a galvanizing issue for the peasantry. In this situation, ethnic groups continue to be functional, providing crosscutting bases for urban-rural and intra-urban alliances. Some of the new regimes (Congo, Benin, Cameroun) represent ethnic or geographic shifts from the old regime (fear of which also occasioned the annulation of democracy in Nigeria in 1993), and as ethnicity writ large, geography provides the pooling of resources and the aggregation of demands that can foster responsive politics. Yet there is also potential for conflict, not only among ethnic groups and regions but between ethnic and socio-economic bases of groups. When a labor union becomes a specific ethnic preserve or a business or other professional group is ethnically dominated, neither its corporate interest nor its productive basis of demands is enhanced. There is an additional new demand-bearing group with its own needs and interests that was not present in the 1950s, called the incumbents. Enjoyment of the perquisites of office (time at the trough) and fear of retaliation for mismanagement (as Rawlings and Doe did to their predecessors), as well as the normal politician’s belief that he alone has the answers and needs just a bit more time to make them stick, lower the interest of incumbents in Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Cameroon, Gabon, Togo and elsewhere (not to mention Zaire) in following the rules of democratic alternance. A major obstacle to a shift to a different mode of conflict management, using institutionalization rather than decree or repression, is the absence of democratic rules of the game, a typical vicious circle. Incumbents and challengers alike have not yet learned or have no grounds to believe that losing an election is not permanent and fatal; indeed, in some places, they have learned the contrary lesson. Incumbents and challengers alike have learned to operate on the assumption that winning an election or at least beneficial enough to last a lifetime. A Nigerian politician in the 1990s was heard to remark, “Just give me a year as Transport Minister, and I and my children will be set up for the rest of our lives.” Breaking that vicious circle is necessary to breaking the revitalized anticolonial notion that government is the enemy of society rather than the manager of conflicts. In addition to being a crisis of institutionalization, the current crisis is also one of allocation, brought on by incompetence at governing but also by the world recession. Countries such as Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroun, and Gabon owe their stability to a long record of economic growth that made allocation possible as a strategy of conflict management. The economic context of the 1990s is not propitious for such strategies, and the argument that times of austerity require democratic consensus is more comforting to theoreticians than to practitioners. The lesson is straightforward, however: Austerity can be made palatable if its necessity is conveyed

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convincingly and if resulting reduced allocations are made to meet a sense of fairness (Friedman 1991; Duggard 1990; Nelson 1986). Governance as conflict management is an internal affair; social contracts, self-government and conflict management are beyond any external meddling. External powers, like any third-party mediators (Touval/Zartman 1985) can communicate a better understanding of the situation, help formulate responses, and provide incentives and cushions for appropriate responses, but they cannot impose or provide national policies. Even if others provide the means for the better management of conflicts, those external sources cannot do the actual managing without delegitimizing the process, and in the process delegitimizing the government that should be the agent of management. But this process does operate in an international context, with policy implications for the outside world. Two strategies of conflict management evoke important, if indirect, foreign roles. Allocation has been seen to hold a dominant position in effective governance, and yet it is hampered by the world markets’ treatment of African production. If African governments are to be able to correct the mismanagement of their predecessors, often practiced with foreign connivance, they will need fair and reliable terms of trade for their production. The world has a responsibility in helping to square their economic position of dependent price-takers with their political position of sovereign policy-makers. As in regard to domestic conflict management, if the substantive grievances of African societies concerning unfair economic treatment are not managed effectively, African polities will turn to procedural demands, recalling either the Southern revolt in the period of the New-International Economic Order of the 1970s or the ideological revolt of the nationalist and communist movements against the systems of world order in the 1950s and 1960s. Whether that proceduralist reaction has any chance of success or not is a matter quite divorced from the higher chances of its disruptive impact on orderly and constructive world relations. Institutionalization is the other salient mode of conflict management. Normal politics, executive allocation, national assembly as a buffer, judiciary as manager, structural adjustment and management by the market, and transnational compensation in regional cooperation provide a formula for ongoing conflict management with periodic corrections. Again, African states need external encouragement and assistance during democratization. Western democracies have done a poor job of explaining the goals, procedures and values of democracy and of relating it to African needs and practices. A better inspirational exercise is required, and a better sense of helpful but nonintrusive ways of promoting democracy. Western democracies have been more effective in using diplomatic pressure or worse, including manipulation of foreign aid, to help keep African states on various economic courses than they have been in using the same means to promote responsible conflict management as governance. Condemnation of Nigeria’s arrested democratization in 1993 and suspension of aid to keep Cameroon (and Zambia and Kenya) on track to political pluralization in 1992 are examples with mixed results.

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Working democracies cannot make others democratic, but they can help others make themselves democratic. Only then can state and society together manage their own conflicts.

References Achebe, Chinua 1959. Things Fall Apart (Astor-Honor). Africa Confidential 1988. “Nigeria: Austerity reaches its limits,” XXIX 1:1–2 (8 January). Africa Confidential 1993. “The IMF and the World Bank: Arguing about Africa,” XXXIV 20:1–4 (8 Oct). Agbese, Pita Ogaba 1990. “The Impending Demise of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic,” Africa Today. XXXVIII 3:23–44. Ajayi, J F A & Crowder, Michael 1974. History of West Africa, vol. II (Longman). Almond, Gabriel & Coleman, James, eds., 1960. The Politics of Developing Area (Princeton University Press). Appiah, Kwame 1991. “Altered States,” Wilson Quarterly XXV 20–32 (winter). Apter, David 1963. Ghana in Transition (Atheneum). Bates, Robert H 1981. Markets and States in Tropical Africa (University of California Press). Berkowitz, Jacob & Rubin, Jeffrey Z. eds., 1992. Mediation in International Relations (St Martin’s). Bienen, Henry 1987. “Populist Military Regimes in Africa,” Armed Forces and Society XI 357– 377 (1985). Brown, David 1983. “Sieges and Scapegoats: The Politics of Pluralism in Ghana andTogo,” Journal of Modern African Stdies XXI 3:431–460 (September). Carey, Joyce 1939. Mr Johnson (Harper). Churchill, Winston 1947. Speech to the House of Commons, Nov. Macmillan Dictionary of Political Quotations 1993, p 109. Coleman, James & Rosberg, Carl eds., 1964. Poliical Parties and National Integration in Tropical Africa (University of California Press). Collier, Ruth 1982. Regimes in Tropical Africa (University of California Press). Collier, Ruth & Collier, David 1991. Shaping the Political Arena (Princeton University Press). Easton, David 1953. The Political System (Knopf). Esseks, John 1975. L’Afrique de l’indépendance politique à l’indépendance économique. Maspero. Foltz, William J 1995. “Reconstructing the State of Chad,” in I William Zartman, ed., Collapsed States (Lynne Rienner). François, Pierre 1982. Class Struggles in Mali,” Review of African Political Economy XXIV 22–38 (May). Gramsci, Antonio 1967. The Modern Prince and other writings. (International Publishers) Haynes (1991) XXXI Journal of Modern African Studies Hayward, Fred 1984. “Poliical Leadership, Power and theState,” African Studies Review XXVII 19–39 (September). Heilbrunn, John R 1993. National Conferences in Benin and Mali,,” Journal of Modern African Studies XXX 2: 284 (June). Himes, Joseph 1980. Conflict and Conflict Management (University of Georgia Press). Hodgkin, Thomas 1962. African Political Parties (Penguin). HRP The Swedish NGO Foundation for Human Rights, 1994. HRI 1994. The Status of Human Rights Organizations in Sub-Saharan Africa (International Human Rights Internship Program).

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Kraus, Jon 1979. ”Strikes and Labor Power in Ghana,” Development and Social Change X 252– 286. Kressell, Kenneth & Pruitt, Dean, eds., 1989. Mediation Research (Jossey-Bass). Laurence, Margaret 1960. This Side Jordan. (St Martin’s). Lerche, C O 1982. Social Strife in Nigeria,” Journal of Modern African Studies IX 7 (Spring). Le Vine, Victor 1967. Political Leadership in Africa (Hoover Institution). Lipset, Seymore Martin & Rokkan, Stein, eds., 1967. Party Systems and Voter Alignments (Free Press). Lowenkopf, Martin 1995, “Liberia: Putting the State Back Together,” in Zartman, ed., 1995. Lyons, Terrence 1993. Morgenthau, Ruth Schachter 1964. Political Parties in French-Speaking West Africa. Oxford Clarendon Press. Micaud, Charles, Brown, L Carl & Moore, Clement Henry 1964. Tunisia: The Politics of Modernization. (Praeger). Mongo, Celestin 1996. “Did National Conventions Take Place?” Paper presented to the Democracy Phase Two conference at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. Nelson, Joan 1992. in Stephen Haggard and John Kaufman, Structural Adjustment (Princeton University Press). O’Brien, Donal B Cruise et al 1989. Contemporary West African States (Cambridge University Press). Ofong, Chibo 1983. Nigerian Trade Union Politics, PhD dissertation. The Johns Hopkins University. Rothchild, Donald 1973. Racial Bargaining in Independent Kenya (Oxford). Rubin, Jeffrey, Pruitt, Dean & Kim, Sung Hee 1994. Social Conflict (McGraw Hill). Sandbrook, Richard & Cohen, Robin, eds. 1995. The Development of an African Working Class (University of Toronto). Schatzberg, Michael 1991. Mobutu or Chaos (University Press of America). Sherif, Muzafer & Sherif, Carolyn 1953. Groups in Harmony and Transition (Harper). Sisk, Timothy 1995. Democritization in South Africa (Princeton). Stedman, Stephen J 1991. Peacemaking in Civil War. Peacemaking in Civil War (Lynne Rienner). Stinchcombe, Arthur 1967. Constructing Social Theory (Harcourt, Brace and World). Touval, Saadia & Zartman, I William 1985, eds., International Mediation (Westview). Webb, K & Mitchell, C R, eds., 1988. New Approaches to International Mediation. (Greenwood). Zartman, I William 1964a. “Africa’s Quiet War in Portuguese Guinea,” Africa Report IX 2:8–12. Zartman, I William 1964b. “Les relations entre la France et l’Algérie,” Revue française de science politique XIV 6:1087–1113 (December). Zartman, I William, ed., 1980. Elites in the Middle East (Praeger) [in this collection]. Zartman, I William 1970. “Revolution and Development,” Civilisations XX 2:281–299 [in this collection]. Zartman, I William, ed.,1995. Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority. (Lynn Rienner) [in this collection]. Zolberg, Aristide 1966. Creating Political Order. Rand McNally.

Chapter 21

Alliance Formation

The major issue in the analysis of alliances concerns momentary effectiveness versus durability.1 The debate is generally led by the assumption-based arguments of the Realists and the Liberals, the former holding that alliance are only temporary expedients, subject to selfish defection and free-riding, whereas the latter believing that reciprocity and the shadow of the future make it evident to states that long term commitments and institutionalized regimes are in their interest. The debate could be more productive if it would move away from these assumptions and examine the different bases of alliances and their individual durability, as this essay seeks to do. Four bases for alliance will be examined—geopolitical, ethnopolitical, ideopolitical, and power2—and their effectiveness and durability assessed in relation to each other. Alliances are formalized cooperation agreements for the purpose of enhancing security. Thus they constitute specific mutual engagements that fall within the general area of cooperation (Zartman/Touval 2006), but of a specific type. They refer to the security of the contracting states rather than to other, welfare values, where the term ‘coalition’ is more frequently used (Dupont 2006; Crump/Zartman 2003). Alliances may begin with or even involve non-written agreements falling short of a formal contract, but are then so designated, as “informal alliances.”3

I William Zartman, “Grounds for Alliances,” PINPoints 38:7–11 (2012). © I William Zartman It could be called something like kinetopolitical or dynapolitical, in the same spirit as the first two, but that would be too precious. 3 While this essay in international politics will refer to parties as states, much of the discussion can be applied to other interparty cooperation, with appropriate name changes. 1 2

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 I. W. Zartman, I William Zartman: A Pioneer in Conflict Management and Area Studies, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06079-4_21

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21.1

21 Alliance Formation

Geopolitical—The Checkerboard

The basic or primitive pattern of friendship and enmity among states was captured in the fourth century BC by the Indian statesman and counselor, Kautilya, who stated, “My neighbor is my enemy; my neighbor’s neighbor is my friend.” The geographical basis of the relationship is clear, and anyone who has a house neighbor knows the verity of the reflection on a personal level. On the state level, the verity is illustrated in many places: by the alliance systems which preceded World Wars I and II, by the West African pattern of alliances immediately following independence in the late 1950s and 1960s; by the North African alliances in the 1970s, and by the South Asian pattern of relations in the last decades of the 1900s, among others (Zartman 1966). The pattern is termined primitive because it represents the basic reflex in a spatial situation. It is the initial pattern in which states fall after independence, as they seek to define their interests and defend their borders and identity against the most immediate threats, and therefore they seek formal cooperation with others in the same situation facing the same threat. It is a basic condition when immediate threats appear and state have to deal with overriding challenges, and the fallback pattern when strains occur within larger cooperation. It is formalized into alliance formation in the presence of heightened fears, and as such is an ideal setting for the security dilemma, where formalization only heightens reciprocal fears and countermeasures. Unfortunately for the neatness of the syllogism applied, states are not square and so the checkerboard image is not an accurate geographic representation; states that are neighbors are often also neighbors’ neighbors, and so are forced to decide which part of the syllogism will govern their actions. Within the vagaries of bumpy boundaries, the partners are preselected and fixed, and variation comes in terms of intensity, not partners. It is therefore the basic or primitive pattern to be overcome by other sources of alliances, and perhaps for that reason has received much less attention than more deliberate alliance patterns.

21.2

Securitarian—The Neighborhood/The Family

Largely in response to the checkerboard, to overcome its geograhical tendencies and incipient security dilemmas, states (and other entities like houseowners) have tried to overcome neighbours’ enmity by intuiting neighbourhood solidarity. The primitive sense of threat is overcome when states perceived that a stronger party outside their midst gives them a common interest for common defense or when they see that common problems within their midst can only be overcome by working together, by either ad hoc cooperation or by the development of common rules,

21.2

Securitarian—The Neighborhood/The Family

373

norms and practices. The spirit is captured in their neighborhood block association where neighbors overcome their fence problems by joining in an internally cooperative and externally defensive agreement. Uncooperative neighbors are subject to joint pressures to conform and, in extremis, ostracism until they move, although they may stick as a sore if they cannot be moved out of the neighborhood. This is the embryonic collective security alliance, where the deviant or enemy is internal to the group, not an external enemy, and is handled by collective measure against it. It is interesting that this model comes from a very basic alliance pattern. Almost automatically, the neighbor tends to take on an additional dimension, that of identity. The accident of contiguity is not enough to create a causus fœderis; parties tend to need to feel they belong together. They devise an identity associated with their contiguity—a name, a flag, a gate to their community, a sports team, a neighborhood beautification project. Such neighborhood identity tends to be completely artificial although it may also latch onto some visible or other shared identity symbol. Neighborhood alliances are strengthened by notions of how “our block is different, and we we make it so so we must cooperate to keep it so.” However, there is a fundamental difference between the neighborhood and the family (and a way to overcome it). The awareness of common interest is enhanced by its natural corollary, the sense of common identity. Studies of evolutionary cooperation have shown that the overriding cause of solidarity is the accident of birth, reified into blood ties. Although such studies necessarily focus on biological kinship, the socio-political lesson by extension lies in the notion of imagined kinship, the tendency to create ties of common identity to support cooperation. Thus kinship can be imagined in the absence of ties of descendence, and even tribalism and nationalism hark back to an imagined original ancestor, national hero, founding father, or myth of creation. Kinship’s more complex dynamic is captured by an equally frequent variation occasioned by a second element of the securitarian alliance: the common enemy. Whether in the checkerboard or the neighborhood pattern, it is the external threat that causes the wagons to circle and prepare the common defense. Kinship also contains defenses again internal enemies, closing family solidarity and seeking to emend the social tissue broken by anti-social behavior, as is the hallmark of African and Arab conflict management. However, the external enemy can also break family solidary by adding a vertical dimension and dealing with it on level, as in the widely spread segmentary system which holds: “Myself against my brother, my brother and I agains my cousins, my cousins and I against the outside world.” Such a mechanism destroys either neighborhood or family stability but provides reliable defense on the level on which the threat is perceived. It is less pervasive that the kinship solidarities of Africa, obtaining in Arab African areas such as Sudan and Somalia.

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21 Alliance Formation

Ideopolitical—The Club

It is only a small step from the Family to the Club, where it is not merely shared identity but a meaningful principle or value that gives the partners cohesion. In the name of some principle, partners are brought together in defense of the common values against an external enemy more threatening than the enmities against the neighborhood or the family. Ideology identifies friends and enemies, tell why the current situation is so bad and how to correct it in the future, an action that demands solidarity among the friends. The message needs to be strong enough to overcome divisions of the neighborhood and solidarities of the family and lock in cooperation against enemies. Thus, ideological alliances need a strong effort to provide a casus fœderis and maintain solidarity against the pressures of geopolitical and ethnic/ nationalist division. There are several types of ideopolitical alliances, relating to the nature of the principle and the relation of the parties within the alliance. One sub-typology depends on whether the principle is innate or created, or in more familiar conceptualization, ascriptive or achievemental. On one hand, the ideology can be based on common characteristics of the neighborhood, inherent on the states’ being there, such as broader nationalism or regionalism, religion, race or ethnicity, broadly understood as applied to the collectivity of states. Arab Unity, Pan-Africanism, European identity, and the Spirit of ASEAN (the Association of South East Asian Nations) are all such expressions giving rise to various forms of alliance, such as the Arab League, the Organization of African States and the African Union, the Council of Europe and the (still-born) European Defense Community, and ASEAN itself. On the other hand lie created or achievemental ideologies, designed to define the “true essence” of the neighborhood, as found among progressive or socialist Arab states, states of the “second African liberation,” or the inner core of “two-speed” European construction, or the Warsaw Pact of Soviet Eastern Europe. The conflict between the two type was well expressed by Egypt’s Gamal Abdul Nasser when (often) he talked of Unity of Ranks vs Unity of Forces, referring to Arab Unity vs progressive Arab states (expressing his frustration with the conservative monarchies, albeit Arab). These two subtypes of ideological alliance are frequently in conflict, with the latter expressing the impatience of more dynamic or radical states to go faster in the intended direction. Obviously. Unity of Forces or the achievemental alliance weakens the unity of the larger, ascriptive neighborhood, which the Forces would claim was already weakened by the foot-dragging of the slow-goers. The conflict need not be between radicals and conservatives but merely between those more interested in action and those more cautious in their measures. The debate is reflected in the dispute over a “two-speed Europe” just as much as in the strains between Nasser’s two types of Unity. Because of this inherent strain, efforts are often made to bridge the two types, by rallying the ascriptive neighborhood along the lines of values found to be contained with and common to

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Ideopolitical—The Club

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membership. Thus it is difficult to place Atlantic cooperation, and specifically the North Atlantic Treaty organization (NATO) exclusively in one sub-type or the other; NATO is a universal organization of its region, but it also claims identifying values applied to all members, so that the Ranks and the Forces are presumptively coincident. The effort to reduce the strains of competition between the two type introduces strains of its own, as core or activist subgroups are constrained from breaking away and the universal membership is prodded to live up to the common ideological principles. The other sub-typology within ideological clubs concerns the internal structure of the alliance, whether symmetrical/egalitarian or asymmetrical/hegemonic, with an intermediate, more complex asymmetric category where there are three tiers of a stronger state, several second-level members, and a larger group of smaller members, or regional subgroups, possibly with structures of their own. Strictly symmetrical structures are rare, even if there is an attempt to create them artificially, such as by giving each member one vote; indeed, their natural rarity is a major reason for their artificial creation. That ideal state is cause enough for tensions within the alliance, for, as Aristotle has noted, “inferiors are [motivated] to become equals, and equals are [motivated] to become superiors.” Most relations are asymmetrical in some way, and ideological alliances tend to be arrayed markedly asymmetrically, around a hegemonic member. In addition to its power, measured by militarily, economically, demographically, politically, or some other way, it is likely to be the major repository of the common ideological principle, whether it be Arabism, Africanism, Communism, Atlanticism, or some other identifying and rallying value. Such imbalance is the root of leadership, but it is also the source of contests. Capture the Flag is a game played within any ideological alliance; its intensity increases as the external threat diminishes and is submerged as the external threat rises. In between, when the threat is present but not so strong as to be overriding, the alliance is often ridden by the Tactical Question—whether to use tough or soft measures, taking the alliance back to the tension between Ranks and Forces (Zartman/Alfredson 2005). In sum, ideological clubs are always troubled by internal tensions, in addition to the geopolitical strains, and their cohesion depends on the skill of the leaders in meeting these tensions and strains and on the strength of the external enemy as a casus foederis. Converting an avowedly defensive alliance into a more peacetime venture, still constructed around the common identifying values, is a massive challenge, as the architects of NATO know. There is no way of telling how long an ideological club will hang together, since the internal tensions work not only to tear it apart but also to hold it together. The point of this discussion is to bring out the fact that durability in this case does not depend merely on the second factor, the strength of the external threat, but also—and perhaps more importantly—on the play out of the various tensions and strains.

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21 Alliance Formation

Strategic—The Mechanism

In this, the third source of alliances, the more traditional understanding of the dynamic comes into play. Power is the source of alliances in three opposite patterns —balancing (Gulick 1955; Liska 1962), bandwagoning (Walt 1987), and balking (Brown 2009). So much has written about this source of alliance that it is not necessary to develop the subject in great detail. The dynamics here are termed mechanisms to distinguish from the looser use of “balance of power” to indicate merely a distribution of power or systemic structure. In all three mechanisms, other states react to a power dynamic but in opposite ways. In a balancing or collective defense alliance, states aggregate in a defensive alliance to keep a rising power in check for their own security, uniting against the common threat (no matter where it comes from geographically). In a bandwagoning alliance, states cohere to the rising power in a protective alliance for their individual security. In a shunning or collective security alliance, states unite against a member of their community that has broken the rules; the mechanism differs from the balance of power in that the enemy is external to the community and specifically identified in the first, whereas it is internal to the community of states and not specifically indicated in the alliance agreement. In all three mechanisms, neither geographical location nor ideological preference has any direct role. The innate tendency of states (and other entities) to prefer independent individual action, unrestrained by the need to compromise with others’ demands, means that power alliances will tend to last only as long as the threat is present, a point that is pleasing to Realists but that undermines the whole mechanism of collective security so dear to the Liberals. The counter-tendency toward cooperation basic to Liberal thinking appears to be less strong in security than in welfare matters, rendering collective security alliances somewhat of a rarity; collective security alliances also suffer from the characteristic need to agree to shun any member of the community that misbehaves rather than focusing on a pre-identified external enemy. Of course, both balancing and bandwagoning alliances could become a habit, whose durability would depend on either the persistence of the external threat or the success of the leaders and other parties in giving it an ideopolitical justification. Thus, out of the Allies in the Napoleonic Wars grew the Holy Alliance, whereas out of the Allies in World War II grew the United Nations. The Allies in the latter War were a balance of power alliance turned ideopolitical; the Axis a bandwagon, also turned ideopolitical (or so we like to think). Collective security alliances such as the UN and regional organizations (OAS, AU, LAS) have worked on occasion but more frequently have broken don into friends vs enemies of the offending states, or a third category of timid states unwilling to carry out their obligations.

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21.5

Conclusions—Sources and Durability

377

Conclusions—Sources and Durability

The purpose of this expanded typology of alliances has been, first, to draw attention to different sources for alliance beyond those usually considered, notably balance of power and its opposite, bandwagoning. In so doing, second, it has been possible to move away from the assumption-based debate between Realists and Liberals over alliance durability by examining more closely the relation between source and outcome. Geopolitical sources of alliance, bringing together neighbors’ neighbors, are remarkably durable and mischievous, not only providing the primitive alliance reflex but also popping up repeatedly to disturb other patterns. Ideopolitical alliances are often established for the very purpose of overcoming geopolitical enmities, and not always very successfully. Yet ideopolitical sources, whether ascriptive or achievemental, provide a durable base of alliance, at the cost of some careful nurturing. They too, in turn, fall prey to internal strains and tensions; when the two ideopolitical sources can be combined, they can be quite robust, but they can also work against each other and undermine the alliance cohesion. Power-based alliances come in three types, depending on the strategy adopted toward a rising hegemon and its position in regard to the proto-alliance community. Balancing and bandwagoning are conceived as short-term reactions that relax when the threat diminishes, but there is a natural tendency to make them last, by turning them into ideopolitical alliances. Shunning is conceived as taking lace within a long-term agreement, although it is assumed to be effective in the short run with no need to turn ideopolitical to last. Yet both assumptions—which go back to the Liberal side of the debate—are often hard to obtain in reality; states are loath to engage wholeheartedly in an agreement that does not identify the enemy beforehand, and once they take their action, it tends to lead to lasting enmity. In a word, alliance durability depends on the source, and is far more complex in reality that the debate in international relations theory would lead us to believe—as is often the case.

References Brown, Seyom 2009. “Adopting to the Evolving Ployarchy,” in I William Zartman, ed., The Imbalance of Power: US Hegemony and the International Order (Lynne Rienner). Crump, Larry & Zartman, I William, eds. 2003. Multilateral Negotiations and Complexity. Special issue of the International Negotiation VIII 1. Dupont, Christophe 2006. La negocition post-moderne (Publibook). Gulick, E V 1955. Europe’s Classical Balance of Power (Norton). Kautilya 1960. Arthasastra, trans. R Sharmasastry (Mysore Printing and Publishing House). Liska, George 1962. Nationsin Alliance (Johns Hopkins University Press). Modelski, George 1964. “Kautinya: Foreign and International System in the Ancient Hinfu World,” American Political Science Resviw LVIII 3:549–560 (September). Walt, Stephen 1987. The Origin of Alliances (Cornell University Press). Zartman, I William 1966. International Relations in the New Africa (Prentice-Hall).

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Zartman, I William & Alfredson, Tanya 2010. “Negotiating with Terrorists and the Tactical Question,” in Rafael Reuveny &William Thompson, eds., Coping with Terrorism (SUNY Press), in this collection. Zartman, I William & Touval, Saadia, eds. 2006. International Cooperation (Lynne Rienner) in this collection.

Chapter 22

National Interest and Ideology

Motivational studies are quagmires of uncertainty.1 The ground between the announced reasons and the ‘real’ reasons for action is marshy, and, while the public reasons may be manifestly political or justificative in nature, an attempt to find the hidden, private, or even subconscious motives can lead the student into the role of psychoanalyst, father confessor, divine, or simply frustrated hair-splitter. He is obliged to judge the choice of criteria on the basis of indirect evidence: justifications given, policies adopted, decision-making processes involved, all joined together with insight and “right reason.” The greatest problem for the analyst lies in the need to keep an academic neutrality toward value systems and criteria used by the subjects of his study. The reader’s greatest problem will be to remember continually that this is a motivational study. A treatment of ideology and interest, in fact a treatment of any determinants of foreign policy, is not a study of acts but of reasons for acting, not a study of policy but of decision-making.2 A state acting for ideological reasons may make the same decision as a state acting for reasons of interest, or the same act may be decided for mixed reasons. A state acting for reasons of national interest may not necessarily act “in the national interest,” depending on who is evaluating that interest and on how successfully the policy has been conceived and carried out. There are other difficulties in such a study. One is the problem of overlapping categories. National interest involves considerations of ideology, but ideology may be a way of perceiving the national interest. Yet the two are not the same. The problem here will be to make the difference clear while accounting for the overlap. There is the opposite danger of unreal extremes. No state operates entirely I William Zartman, “National Interest and Ideology,” in Vernon McKay, ed., African Diplomacy: Studies in the Determinants of Foreign Policy. Praeger, 1966. Reprinted with permission. 2 A question asked during the conference discussion illustrates the difference. Someone asked whether Freetown’s decision to recognize Peking was used on national interest or on ideology. The policy itself does not take us very far toward an answer to the question; what must be known above all are the criteria, motives, and thoughts of the decision-makers that went into making the decision. 1

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on the basis of ideology; such a policy would be one of self-abnegation and would run the risk of suicide. But neither do states act only on the basis of national interest; even if they do not have an ideology, they are unlikely to avoid the influence of domestic politics, culture, external or other pressures. Since most states act for a confusion of reasons, an attempt to strain the mud out of the waters does not necessarily help an analysis of the currents.

22.1

Insecurity

The old order has changed. During the last three-quarters of a century, Africa was part of the Europe-centered world system of international relations. African territories were not members in their own right, but only as colonial appendages to European states. The colonial system of international relations played two important roles in African relations. Besides introducing modernization to Africa, European states served as Africa’s policemen, keeping order within vast expanses of colonial territories. They also governed Africa in their own interests; when their order-keeping functions broke down, the wars that they sponsored were extensions of European power conflicts, of little interest to Africans. Now the colonial system is gone, and with it the security and interest roles that the European states played. Africa is responsible for its own order and security; its states can consider their own interests as a guide to their policies; they also have a role to play in determining the new system of international relations. In regard to the latter role, a number of possibilities are open. African states can seek full membership in the old, but expanded, multi-state system. They can participate in a world-wide bipolar bloc system structured on competing foreign ideologies. They can aspire to a new universal system of world government, based either on a new concept of equality of members or on the old rules governing competition between powers. Or they can seek to create a new system that will assure the values of dignity, justice, and well-being of all members. Yet Africa is in a poor position to play any of those roles. In the new states, formal independence has been achieved, the legal myths of sovereignty have been donned, and national elites are now in the position of making their own decisions for their own reasons. But there is no structure behind the legal facade. The nation is inchoate, the territorial extent of government control is indefinite, political skills are rare, and elites are small. The population has been led to expect the good things of modern life (including security, well-being, and national identity), but the absolute number of people in the state, the relative proportion of the people that have raised their expectations, and the expectations themselves are all growing faster than the means—public or private—of satisfaction. The governmental elites are under pressure to fill in the structure behind the facade of sovereignty, lest the facade come tumbling down and their heads with it. Unfortunately, the inadequacy is compounded by the fact that underdevelopment includes not only material insufficiency and dissatisfaction but also the means of

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Insecurity

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overcoming them. The absence of effective authority is a major characteristic of underdevelopment. States lack not only the elements of national power but also the capacity to build up these elements, at least in the short run. Without authority and control, development cannot be accomplished; without development, the basis of power is largely absent. The absence of effective authority is felt at every turn. It is hard to perceive and plan opportunities for development; where such opportunities are visible, the means of exploiting them are scarce. It is hard to make decisions under conflicting pressures and harder to execute and enforce decisions when made; the writ of the government of ten shades into ineffectiveness outside the capital and sometimes even outside the presidential palace. It is hard to defend the external interests and security of the state when one’s voice is small and when one is listened to only for the sake of politeness or sentiment, in a world arena where, ultimately, the clangor of powerful sabers makes small voices hard to hear. In sum, in their moment of greatest need and opportunity, as the old order shows signs of crumbling, African states have little control over their own security and environment. With few exceptions, the new states of Africa have been in no danger of attack. Yet, in a general sense, their very existence and stability are far more tenuous than the small number of incidents and symptoms of their early life would indicate. Insecurity is endemic, if not always specific. The threats are not external as much as internal. Yet the threats—whether they be political, economic, or social—are troublesome for governments to admit publicly, difficult to combat effectively or to identify precisely. Although some leaders may face up to the internal problems realistically, the magnitude of the problems and the elusiveness of their sources constitute a temptation to view the insecurity in external terms. The temptation and the confusion are compounded in Africa by another characteristic of the insecurity: It refers to the political more than to the territorial aspect of the state. The country is not in danger of attack or conquest as much as the government is in danger of overthrow or collapse. In such a situation, the African states are primarily preoccupied with development and nation-building. If the nation itself can be defined as “a group of people who feel themselves to be a nation,’’ nationalism can be characterized as the efforts of men striving to build a nation. Although the task is unending, a beginning must be made. On the one hand, there is a pressing need to solve problems, essentially technical in nature, that deprive the state of its power to act independently. The state seeks to protect, augment, and diversify its internal economy and its foreign trade, protect its frontiers, educate and employ its people, and conduct the many other activities that allow it a freedom of choice and a variety of means to carry out its policies. It must satisfy its growing population’s rising expectations, lest that revolution turn instead into a revolution of failing satisfactions. In brief, it must turn to the task of constructing a state, with a possibility of choosing among alternative actions that makes independence a reality. On the other hand, there is an equally pressing need to create solidarity, in order to keep the state going while the problems await solution. State leadership must justify its claim to authority by legitimizing its own position. It must unite its people in a feeling of nationhood, create a spirit of dignity and a mental emancipation to replace the colonial past, and nurture the enthusiasm that will make the efforts and sacrifices of development

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bearable. In sum, it must turn to the task of building a nation, with the feelings of identity that also make independence a reality. Optimally, the two tasks go hand in hand. But because of the pressures of the moment and the limited attention and resources available, priorities must be established. Criteria for the problem-solvers and the solidarity-makers differ, and even conflict in somecases.3 The problem-solvers seek to overcome directly the problems of underdevelopment, which they see as the main cause of their country’s weakness, instability, and disorganization; their view has been patterned after modern governmental ideas, in which the state is a problem-solving mechanism, rather than after the traditional view of government employment as something merely to be enjoyed. The solidarity-makers seek to consolidate their position and unite their nation, for they regard disunity and disorganization as the biggest barriers to development and complete independence; they feel their view was vindicated by their experiences in achieving fonnal independence, when they organized their people to political action —the only means of power available against the colonial rulers—and conquered a state. Both problem-solvers and solidarity-makers, then, are reacting to the needs and pressures of their situation, as they see it. Such reactions to insecurity can be analyzed as being adaptive or maladaptive; that is, the state can accept the general environment and attempt to find its place within it, or it can reject the environment and try to change it. One response seeks security within the present state system by overcoming internal weaknesses and increasing state power; the other sees only insecurity as long as the present order continues. (Note that “adaptive” and “maladaptive” as used here are not synonyms of “good” and “bad,” but merely indicate an attitude toward the environment within which the state finds itself.) The first attitude uses national interest as its criterion for action, the second is ideological. Both seek an answer to the insecurity of the state.4

22.2

National Interest

The extreme case of national-interest foreign policy is Realpolitik, by which foreign relations are carried out among states seeking to maximize their security, regardless of ideological considerations. In this case, the state uses its policy to secure values

3

The two categories come from Herbert Feith, The Decline of Constitutional Democracy in Indonesia (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1962), and are extended by Donald E. Weatherbee, “Indonesia’s Revolutionary Ideology” (Columbia, S.C.: Institute of International Studies, 1965; mimeographed Colloquium on Political Strategy paper). Lawrence Radway’s “goal-achievement” and “system-maintenance” are less clear; see K. H. Silvert (ed.), Discussion at Bellagio (New York: American Universities Field Staff, 1964), p. 86. 4 Many examples in the following discussion draw on events in North and West Africa. An excellent case study that applies similar concepts to another part of the continent is Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Pan-Africanism and East African Federation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965).

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National Interest

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or objects that form the basic components of its definition of itself. While in past eras and other areas, this ‘self’ may have been conceived simply in terms of the physical integrity and territorial independence of land and people, in the twentieth-century Cold War world, other values have been added. In a schematic sense, the image of the self includes three elements: the physical state (territory and people), its way of life, and its standard of living (welfare). These elements make up the national interest. The concept of national interest, however, has never been susceptible of a definition so precise that it tells the state exactly where its security lies, how its component elements should be defined or determined, or what particular policies to adopt. It does not provide a complete description of the process of policy-making and execution; it cannot, therefore, tell anything about the success of a policy, and, conversely, the outcome of the policy does not determine the reasons for its choice. The concept can only provide a general criterion for action. Nevertheless, with the use of the national-interest criterion, there is an attempt to account for the economic and physical needs of the society. It is the response to reality of the nationalist who above all seeks to solve the material problems of his state. National-interest policy is geared to the perceived good of the state; it does not seek to transfer allegiance and justification to a larger unit, such as region, race, creed, or continent. “A nationalist is one who gives the Nation first place in the hierarchy of political values and who, in doing this, evaluates political events as a function of the national interest”—the definition of a 1962 Ivory Coast study group. To some extent, the national-interest approach is a product of the situation in which African leaders find themselves. No matter how narrow its real base, African national leadership is under pressure to justify its actions in terms of national considerations. The necessity is in part self-imposed, since the ruling party lives by the myth that it acts in the name of all the people, that its goals are for the good of all the people, and that its leader incarnates the new nation as the tribal chief incarnated the traditional one. However, at the current stage of development of national-interest ideas, the accent is primarily on the first word of the term. The focus is national, with little conception of the specific interests involved. National interest has mainly a negative implication, i.e., that policies shall no longer be decided on the basis of colonial, metropolitan, regional, tribal, or class interests. Thus, the very use of the phrase and its implied meaning push the concept onto a high level of generalization, away from having any specific content or useful value as a guide for action. Appreciation of the national interest depends on both awareness and perceptionawareness of the need of policy to consider the well-being and security of the state and to find opportunities to do so, and perception or interpretation of the state’s concept of itself and of challenges to it. There is no single “correct” perception of the national interest (although there is a presupposition that state decision-makers have a more valid perception of these components than their critics or their analysts, just as a man knows better than his doctor when he is hungry). Furthermore, it is in the nature of states’ interest to clash. The national interest of both Somalia and Ethiopia may or may not cover Ogaden, depending on equally Ivoirien context,

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from which it will be possible to establish rational, objective criteria of evaluation and judgment as a valid basis for action.” Although African leaders are highly knowledgeable about the politics of their country and its social characteristics, many of the ‘valid’ supporting arguments adduced by either side; Dahomeyans and Mauritanians have consistently followed foreign policies that preserve their ‘personalities,’ while their neighbors have sought to assure the same value by offering policies of integration and amalgamation; Felix Houphouet-Boigny and Sekou Toure obviously put welfare on very different levels in their hierarchy of foreign-policy criteria in 1958 and 1959, and Houphouet-Boigny and Kwame Nkrumah differed widely on the best way to attain development since 1957, when they wagered on which economy would show the greatest growth in the following decade. Policy-makers agree only on the fact that certain components are the minimum values to be secured by foreign policy. They do not agree on the relative position of one value vis-a-vis another—that is, which value shall be sacrificed in a pinch; there is no consensus on how the values are to be interpreted. Finally, they cannot be expected to agree on the nature of the threats to the national interest or, a fortiori, on the means of combating them. The members of the French-allied regional defense councils, the government of the Congo (Leopoldville), and the eighteen associate members of the European Common Market see in ties with European states a means of assuring the territorial, way-of-life, and welfare components of national interest; Ghana, Algeria, and Egypt disagree. Perception and awareness depend, in turn, on two interrelated elements that may be termed informational input and intake. The information that is brought to the attention of decision-makers and the degree to which it is integrated into the policy-making have much to do with the effectiveness of national-interest criteria. In the Ivory Coast, a 1962 party seminar held a discussion on “A Methodology for Action by Men in Posts of Political Responsibility” and outlined three objectives: “(l) to learn the rational use of materials; (2) to prepare an inventory of political, institutional, economic, and social data; and (3) to define the specifically Ivoirien context, from which it will be possible to establish rational, objective criteria of evaluation and lodgment as a valid basis for action” Although African leaders are highly knowledgeable about the politics of their country and its social characteristics, many if them are uninformed about its potential resources, its developmental possibilities, and the ways of meeting its material needs. Frequently, such information does not exist. There is little information and less agreement on methods of agricultural improvement, on designs for transportation systems, on the location of some raw materials, and on possibilities of market development. Yet, both information and agreement are necessary for rational cooperation toward common exploitation of resources and toward effective aid projects, as well as for building up the power base and establishing policy alternatives of states. Basic political economic information about foreign-policy operations areas is also lacking. Foreign ministries generally are small, and their desk officers usually depend on a newspaper-clipping file; since the desk officer usually covers a continent and not a country, his territory is as vast as his sources of information are meager. The situation is complicated by the political nature of information in some

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National Interest

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countries. Many of the better foreign newspapers are regarded with suspicion because of their European origins; often a party line on the interpretation of events prevents information from a large number of varying sources from being fully assimilated. Ghana, with a peculiar relation existing between the press and the government, is a striking example: Newspapers present a narrowly orthodox interpretation of African events; Ghanaian leaders feel that they speak for the “true African” interpretation of policy, and they become prisoners of their own misinformation. Policy papers are little used in West Africa; telephone communication and personal conversations are preferred to written memoranda. It is doubtful, too, if the few studies that do exist arc always carefully read by those who need to act on them. Moreover, technical intelligence that is available is put in a bad operating environment by the penchant of African heads of state for handling foreign policy personally, inviting all the dangers of misinformation on details that are inherent in summitry. Intra-African relations tend to be personal relations among heads of state, where personal reactions prevail. Any observer will perceive facts in the light of his own experience, but the great diversity in Africa—and, indeed, in the world— makes this frame of reference inadequate for an understanding of foreign-policy problems even within Africa, the myth of African cultural unity notwithstanding. Another reason for (and result of) the absence of national-interest criteria is that policies often are adopted on an ad hoc basis, with decisions made only as problems are posed and with little consideration given to future consequences or to the implementation of details. The many important suggestions for policy made in conferences and communiques—African common market, African assembly, common Saharan or riverine exploitation, common diplomatic representation, coordination of legislation and services, to name a few—have for the most part remained not only unrealized but unstudied. Several of the African alliances and groups themselves have appeared and disappeared without any real attempt to set up institutions, make them work, and attack common problems. All these weaknesses have hampered awareness and perception of the importance of national interest. Even if input sources and intake channels are open, however, there are other barriers to action in national-interest terms. It is difficult to attain an end if the means are absent. In Africa, the classical elements of state power are noticeably weak. Area is especially illusory, since the largest states are largely desert or rainforest and the land is generally poor. Population figures must be tempered by considerations of illiteracy, heterogeneity, underemployment, iuralism, and apathy; the 55 million people of Africa’s most populous state, Nigeria, both 1 cause problems and represent potential but do not yet give power. Military strength is low in both absolute and relative terms, and is further depleted by domestic preoccupations, inefficiency, and terrain. Economic development is the goal, not the reality, of African politics; the fact that several states have per capita incomes between $150 and $225, while the incomes of most of the rest are between $40 and $85, does not give the richer states enough of an edge to provide durable power. Of all the classical elements on which state power is based, only access to means of communication plays some importance. Coastal states that control inland

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countries’ outlets to the sea and states that lie astride rivers or rail lines enjoy a certain position of influence. However, power and susceptibility to pressure are two sides of the same coin in this case; inland states or states with eccentric, regions— Tindouf in Algeria, Nzerekore in Guinea, Katanga in the Congo—need good relations with a maritime neighbor, but port states need good relations with a hinterland area. In addition to the elements of state power, the channels for exercising power are only rudimentary. Power can be exercised in many ways: directly between individuals, on the basis of personality or pleas; indirectly between individuals, through threats, slogans, purchase, or reason; indirectly between decision-making elites, through public opinion or pressure groups; or directly between states, through use of sanctions and force. All but the first category involve the use of real or implied gratifications or deprivations. In Africa, the instruments of power and policy by which gratifications and deprivations can be exercised are slim indeed. Approbation can be extended or withheld (justifying slogans can be used to condemn or to condone); trade routes can be cut and products can be withheld; military threats can be made, with varying degrees of credibility. But the list stops there. Sanctions and force are either disallowed or impractical; public opinion and pressure groups have little weight in the decision-making process and foreign leaders frequently have little access to them; purchase and reason, in a bargaining process, are rarely used, in the absence of national-interest criteria to which they can be applied, making compromise a rarity. Decision-making tends to be an uncomplex, personal process, and channels of communication between decision-making elites are not rich in diversification. Even if the national interest is perceived, it is pursued only with difficulty.

22.3

Ideology

Ideology is also a response to reality. In the new African states, the lack of consensus, legitimacy, authority, and unity is often the most pressing problem, and the one that the problem-solvers cannot handle. The old order—tribal and colonial— and the old myths have been destroyed or have proved inadequate to handle or explain the new situation. Specifically, the nation in search of its identity, the people in search of material satisfactions, and the state in search of its security, all want to know why power to achieve their goals is lacking, how the necessary means can be attained, and what will be the shape of the future order that they can expect. Ideology attempts to answer these questions when old explanations have failed. This characterization brings out three important aspects of the phenomenon. First, it suggests that ideology is a situational phenomenon, associated with societal change. Ideologies do not create revolutions; if a new ideology appeared upon a scene where stability and harmony existed within the society and polity, where no drastic changes threatened the established order, and where existing myths were adequate to support that order, it would be a seed on stony ground. Instead, ideologies appear when the breakdown of a society and its myths has

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already begun. It is the intellectuals’ response to the situation, designed to help further the breakdown and guide society into a new order. During the revolution, the ideology is under pressure to remain pure. It is the ideal that is to guide the change, and as such it dare not compromise with the reality it seeks to alter until it has accomplished its purpose. Since, at this stage, it is prescriptive, ideology is anti-reality, and is under continual internal pressure, imposed by its own nature, to remain so. As time passes, the situation changes. The revolution is over, either won or worn-out, and a new order has been imposed. If the upheaval has resulted in an order that differs from the one prescribed by the ideology, and a new equilibrium has been created by forces that are stronger than the ideology, the prescriptive ideals remain under pressure to retain their purity, but they become voices in the wilderness, unable to find support. If, on the other hand, the ideology has so influenced the current of events that it becomes the dominant myth of the new order, it loses much of its purity and its anti-reality nature. It becomes a conservative influence instead of a force for change. In such a situation, however, reality usually approximates the ideal; and the ideal shapes itself to fit the new reality. A compromise is achieved. The ideology “accepts” the reality, cutting corners that its proponents deem minor, correcting errors where its advocates see the inadequacy of their former descriptions. Now, the ideology is under pressure to compromise if it is to achieve the position of an official myth. (Rarely, in fact, will all the goals prescribed by the former ideal be achieved by the new order.) Conversely, it is under less pressure to retain its militancy and its insistence on orthodoxy, since a new stability has been found and opposing forces have been defeated or have met in truce. Purism tends to be dropped. Descriptively, ideology now deals with a situational reality that it approves and supports, and must change its revolutionary-idealist nature if it is to continue to receive credence and acceptance in the new situation. The second implication of ideology’s character, then, is that eventually it must grapple with reality and that it generally gives way in the encounter. The third point concerns ideology’s role as an explanation. Ideology both prescribes and describes, as seen, its twin functions intertwined to provide satisfying answers to the political and psychological needs of the society. It answers those needs in three ways: it consolidates, it identifies, and it assures. In consolidating, it fills the needs of the solidarity-makers, who are looking for a way to legitimize their authority and unite their nation. The ideology provides something in which to believe, a plausible explanation of events as old myths are destroyed. The element of faith is important: The pressure of the revolutionary situation does not allow time for experiments and demonstrations, but rather obliges the ideology to explain by logic and symbols; on this basis it must be believed. To the propagators, it gives authority, for they have the correct interpretation of events; their power is legitimized by their ability to explain. To the true believer, it gives a sense of unity and solidarity, as it creates a community of faith. Once this solidarity is posited, it becomes a value to def end, thus legitimizing not only authority but also its ultimate attribute-the use of force-to assure adherence to the ideology. (More frequently,

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however, ideology is an alternative to coercion, since compliance is achieved by indoctrination and solidarity, instead of by compulsion and obedience.) Furthermore, if ideology provides the correct interpretation of events, it also justifies the formulation of policy based on its tenets and creates ties of solidarity and means of communication outside the state with other communities of believers, in power or out of power. Since the ideology legitimizes but also transcends the state, it becomes the value to be defended in foreign policy, as indeed in domestic politics. In identifying, the ideology reinforces its consolidating function. Analyses of the new nations have often been based on the preoccupying search for identity. In the absence of other senses of belonging, particularly the sense of nationhood, which is longer in developing-ideological solidarity provides an answer to this search. Furthermore, ideology expresses the resentments and rejections of its adherents-its correctness in isolating these feelings and its plausibility in explaining their cause and remedy enhancing its claim to being the true faith. The identity function of ideology tells not only who I am but also who are, and who are not, my brothers. Internally, it permits the identification of the enemies of society, a prelude to their destruction. Externally, it distinguishes friend from foe with the neatness of a password. It tells who can be trusted, since it examines their objective situation as well as their subjective reactions. This aspect of identity in turn is vital to the solidarity function and to the whole strength of the ideology. As long as enemies exist, solidarity is necessary; as long as the enemy is common, solidarity is possible. As long as a plausible source of evil can be identified, the ideology retains its claim to correctness and the solidarity-makers their claim to authority. Finally, the identification function justifies policy. The existentialist exhortation to define oneself through action expresses the pressure on the ideologues to take the initiative, promote the faith, test the enemy, help the brothers, and generally carry out a policy of activism and leadership in domestic and foreign affairs. In assuring, ideology maintains solidarity and identity and promotes its own durability. Ideology not only rationalizes, explaining the reasons for the present situation; it also points the way to the future goal. In a time of uncertainty and upheaval, ideology serves both as a lifebuoy of stability in a maelstrom of change and as a chart that promises safe arrival at the desired goal. It can sanction the rejection of present reality because it assures the way to an acceptable new order, and it can do both because it has identified the wave of the future: It can say things will get worse before they get better because it “knows” they will get better. Assurance of victory justifies both sacrifices and failures. Ideology fills the psychological needs of its adherents by making the present time of crisis livable. “As for us, we stay calm, decided, firmly attached to principles,’’ said Mohammed Yazid in 1959, during the dark days of the Algerian war. “Do you know why? Because we are tomorrow!” As long as the assurance remains credible, the ideologues can impose discipline and even force, demand compliance and even enthusiasm, and create morality. More important, they can justify their own failures and make them bearable, for failure is not the fault of the ideologue, riding the wave of the future; it is the doing of the enemy, who is still powerful enough to divide,

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delay, and deflect, although of course not destroy, the inevitability. Even an unbroken stream of failures need not be fatal to ideological assurance, at least over the short run; it can convince the believers of the need for greater effort and push them to fanaticism. A few successes, not even at home but among other communities of believers, can increase longevity tremendously. A value of examining ideology’s explanatory role through these three functions is that certain aspects of ideology which have hitherto been viewed through the analyst’s own value pattern as aberrations can now be seen as natural and even necessary parts of the phenomenon. An understanding of the consolidation function can avoid the interpretation of ideology as merely a cover for a power struggle among men or among states. Ideology is believed, before it is used. There is simply no evidence that any African leaders are such skillful actors or total liars that they cynically use their ideologies without believing in them5; where they to attempt to do so, they would soon find themselves prisoners of their tactics, forced to follow or to break ideological ranks. Of course, disclaiming the interest theory of ideology, according to which beliefs are only “a mask and a weapon” in the struggle for power, does not imply that ideology is the sole motivation. Such single-mindedness is rare, even among believers. Personal interest can well be a motivating factor, frequently disguised with care under ideological slogans. Problems of analysis in such cases are admittedly difficult, particularly since the solidarity-maker may— indeed must—sincerely feel that the fate of the ideology, on which the fate of the society depends, hangs on his own success. An even more perplexing ethical dilemma is posed when the leader is required to make an anti-ideological decision in order to save his own power, which he (let us say, sincerely) believes necessary for the ultimate preservation of the ideology and the society. Such dilemmas are characteristic of any ethical system. Painful as they may be to the subject, they are useful to the analyst in showing that both ideological and personal considerations can come into play in a decision. An understanding of the identification function of ideology can avoid belittling the need for enemies as a mere search for scapegoats. Certainly the enemy has a scapegoat role, but he is not a haphazard object of irrelevant blame; he is crucial to the ideology. The scapegoat is the external source of frustration on which the whole theory is built. He has a satanic role: The single cause of evil, he adopts many forms but has one substance. His nature, correctly identified, prescribes the proper counter-tactics. If he is an encircling capitalist, the response must be to pierce his lines and divide his forces. If he is a dividing, conquering colonialist, the response is to unite, to remove his armies, to control his merchants. From the outside, the enemy infiltrates his agents and utilizes his unregenerate hangers-on. But they are also easily identified, not just by their anti-ideological attitudes, but because they are the ones who are responsible for the troubles and failures. The enemy is not 5

An exception appears to be Hassan II, who once told U.S. representatives that the American Government would do best to find the most radical leaders in Africa and back them; the superficially and temporarily radical turn of Moroccan foreign policy between 1960 and 1962 reflected this thinking.

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simply an innocent bystander whose name is sullied by the troubled leader as he tries to get off the hook; rather, the ideologue believes that problems are prima fade evidence of the enemy’s presence. Hence Modibo Keita felt that there had to be colonialist agents among the rebellious Tuareg in northern Mali, not that the revolt resulted from a clash between partial national consolidation and traditional society. Similarly, Nkrumah felt that Tshombe had to be a neocolonialist agent, not a man with a different but legitimately African view of interest and world order. Again, it must be remembered that the ideology and its explanations are believed, and the enemy, more than a mere scapegoat, is central to these myths. Finally, an understanding of the assurance function elucidates ideology’s clash with reality and avoids equating ‘unscientific’ with ‘bad.’ Ideologues do confuse ideology with science by confusing systematic with experimental, goals with givens, and promises with premises. Their theories are literally working hypotheses, which, however, they follow instead of testing. From the point of view of the scientific method, this is indeed a mistake. But to ideologues, consciously or unconsciously, scientificalness has an instrumental value, enabling them to consolidate, identify, and assure a state that is unstable, insecure, and weak. Such things science never purported to do, and to condemn ideology as being unscientific in such a situation is as meaningful as condemning opera or poetry for its lack of objectivity. The same thing is true of ideology’s unreality. How could it be otherwise? Ideology is an ideal, a satisfying explanation, a societal myth, an assurance of things to come. It analyzes reality, not as an end, but as a means to political goals. It seeks to change reality, by throwing its influence against the course of events. Crane Brinton has shown that “the normal social roles of realism and idealism are reversed in the acute phases of a revolution.” To say ideology deals with reality means only that it must come to grips with events if it is to maintain its authority. Ideology does not have to be true; it need only be effective. Lastly, to say that ideology is extrarealistic does not deny that ideology is itself a reality, a force among many, a cause of action. So-called realistic explanations of situations and events which omit ideology because its basis is extrarealistic are ignoring a real ingredient of the problem. Against this attempt to outline the nature of ideology, what is its role in African foreign policy? There are six distinct functions with reference to external relations, some of them taken directly from the previous description and others representing specific applications. Most important is the general use of ideology to perceive events and explain their meanings. To Algeria, the Cuban revolution is a revolt against American imperialism,6 and the Congolese Committee of National Liberation (CLN) is a people’s uprising against Belgian-American attempts at 6

A judgment, of course, that contains some truth, as do many myths. It is interesting to note that the Algerian public literacy campaign instructions took pains to warn against “a too-hasty analogy between that counny [Cuba] and Algeria,” particularly in regard to Cuba’s “(even relatively) long-standing independence …” Dossier d’lnformation (mimeographed; Algiers: Commission nationale d’alphabetisation [n.d.]), “Index des questions,” p. + In this document, Cuba was referred to as “semi-colonial.”

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domination. To Ghana, a critical editorial in a British newspaper is not a discussion of specific events in Accra, to be refuted by reference to facts or even justifications; it is rather a colonialist attempt to discredit the Ghanaian regime and so weaken the forces of unity in Africa, and can be properly answered only by exposing the motives of the newspaper. Sometimes the interpretive role of ideology gets in, the way, however, and leaves the viewer more perplexed than enlightened. Guinea could not understand how, as Afro-Asian states and ideological brothers of Guinea, India and China could go to war; since, from Guinea’s point of view, the conflict must have arisen from a misunderstanding, the matter could be resolved by a cease-fire, withdrawal to positions, and recognition of a convenient line (which happened to be the Chinese proposal). More specifically, ideology helps identify friends and enemies as a basis for policy. Members of the Union of African States (UAS) could agree on a list of principles, even if largely unimplemented, because they had regimes based on similar ideologies. The three states of the Maghrib were able to concert their plans and actions only to the extent and at the time (1958) that their ideological orientation included common, predominant values (single nationalist movement, accent on liberation, regional unity); ideological similarities and the basis of cooperation fell apart when internal developments and external circumstances changed and affected the three countries differently. Even among the four states of the Entente, there was an ideological element in the choice of partners, reinforced before the establishment of the alliance by the installation of sympathetic regimes in the Ivory Coast’s three allies and afterward by the promulgation of constitutions and legislation reflecting the same points of view. Considerations of principle, rather than considerations of interest, are also invoked in the choice of enemies. In nearly every case of bad relations, ideological reasons are cited, although they may or may not be decisive. After their first meeting, in 1957, when Nkrumah and Houphouet-Boigny went home, Nkrumah was convinced that Houphouet-Boigny was a colonialist agent and Houphouet-Boigny was convinced that Nkrumah was a local imperialist; subsequent relations between their two countries proved each to be correct in his own mind. Colonel Christophe Soglo and President Hamani Diori, and their followers, exchanged insults during the half year of bad relations between Dahomey and Niger in 1963–64; each called the other “colonialist” and “revolutionary.” Further examples could be given in every instance of bad relations between two countries. Ideology can be used for justification. Even where motivation is unclear, ideology serves to legitimize policy choices and make them more palatable to other states (as well as rendering them more acceptable to the internal audience). The very ambiguity of ideological criteria makes the myths all the more useful. The mechanics of justification are complex.7 It appears to strengthen the ideological base at least as much and perhaps more than it strengthens the policy; that is, each

7

Much more research needs to be done on this theoretical problem, probably most helpfully along lines suggested by Cliff ord Geertz in David Apter ed.), Ideolog y and Discontent (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1964).

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successive use of a myth enmeshes that myth into the current web of beliefs, yet if a state felt a policy necessary but unjustifiable in ideological terms it would still execute the policy. Algeria’s inaction on French atomic explosions and Mali’s dependence on Abidjan are cases where “counter-ideological” decisions were made for other, stronger reasons. But such cases appear to be rare. The more states justify a policy for a certain reason, the harder it becomes to break ranks (a point discussed in greater detail below), and states become prisoners of their justifications. However, the ambiguity of the myths and the emergence of new—or differently perceived—situations make escape possible. Ideology is power. Just as it legitimizes authority and creates solidarity inside states, it also creates solidarity among states and gives international influence to the ideologues. Employed this way, it helps the new African states to overcome their powerlessness by using symbols and values as a more readily available and more rapidly constructed power base than material elements of national power. If power is the ability to produce intended effects, the state which can pose as the Rome, Mecca, or Moscow of the belief-system, and thus which can decree orthodoxy and appeal for solidarity, is in a position of power. Africa still has no shrines and sacred sites, but it does have contending prophets. (Perhaps Addis Ababa may in time grow into its title of “the capital of Africa,” and certainly the commitment of the King of Kings’ prestige at both the Addis Ababa summit and the Bamako truce meeting was more influential than would have been the commitment of, say, David Dacko of the Central African Republic or even simply Keita.) Guinea, Ghana, and Algeria all suggest that they have the authority to decree what is truly African conduct. Algeria effectively wielded revolutionary and African unity symbols to gain neutrality or support from other African states in the Algerian-Moroccan border war. By propagating ideas of colonial reparations, coinciding with French feelings of noblesse oblige and mission civilisatrice, Algeria strengthens its otherwise weak hand in aid negotiations with France. Ideology also indicates possibilities for action. The matter is delicate. Ideology does not tell what to do in a particular situation, in the sense of how to carry out a policy. Rather, it creates limited options. Guinea had a range of options in foreign policy at the time of its independence—including, at least, an alliance with Liberia, and splendid isolation—but in choosing union with Ghana and a special relationship with the U.S.S.R., it acted in an ideologically natural and approved fashion. This is not to ignore other important factors influencing Guinea’s choice, but it does show the influence of myths in affecting policy. When Soudan (now Mali) was left as the only member of the Mali Federation, it would have been more in its interest to join the Entente, assuring an outlet to the sea, a further slap at Senegal, and a reconciliation with its former Rassemblement Democratique Africain (RDA) partners. But it could not bring itself to do this. Instead, it joined the UAS, where its benefits were slim but its ideological myths untainted; it was only through the initiative of Houphouet-Boigny, who was untrammeled by ideological considerations, that Mali was assured a satisfactory supply port. Even at the loss of several million dollars, Ahmed Ben Bella proclaimed that if, in the seizure of French land, revolutionary socialist morality contravened diplomatic commitments, he “couldn’t care less.”

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Tanganyika favored an African army because national armies were considered to be useless except as instruments of divisive Cold War imperialism When Ghana coveted Togo, it could pursue its policy by insults: claims, threats, and diplomatic pressures, but not by military means, as much because of the “un-African” nature of state use of violence in such a case as for any other reason. Ideology affects policy choices, above all by limiting alternatives. Even more important is the function of ideology in limiting others’ policy choices, a function that combines the two preceding points. Although the current myth maintains that African states wrested independence from the colonial powers by mass action—a good example of the use of ideology to explain events—African leaders in private conversation frequently admit that an important, we would say, the major factor in independence was the acceptance of the myth of self-determination by both the colonial powers and the African leaders. The colonial pact was broken, and once it was broken—but only then—force could not hold the colonies.8 Colonialism has become unthinkable. An essential role of ideology is to decree the unthinkable, and thus tie the hands of the enemy with his own inhibitions. Thus, when Ghana claims that its security is endangered by the presence of Belgians and Americans in the Congo, it does not mean that Western troops are going to invade Accra from a base in Leopoldville; it means that any form of colonial return weakens the myth that colonialism is unthinkable, for this myth— and hence the security of Africa—is indivisible. Guinea’s non-vote in the 1958 referendum made any policy but independence difficult in French West Africa, and the independence of the Mali Federation made it impossible. The notion that ex-colonial states should give aid to their former colonies as reparation for the exactions of past decades that furthered European development is at the same time an ideological explanation of events that makes acceptance of aid compatible with newly independent dignity, a means of strengthening African states’ hands in aid negotiations, and an attempt to make the cessation of aid unthinkable-thus insulating it from the Cold War vagaries and the danger of a Russo-American agreement made without consulting the developing nations. Algeria, Egypt, and Ghana have worked to make the continued presence of colonial troops and the existence of postcolonial defense agreements unthinkable. In North Africa, they have been aided by the Moroccan left and by Tunisia, which shares this view; Libya then became the target of their pressure. In Black Africa, Ghana was helped by the Nigerian opposition, its ideological ally; the Anglo-Nigerian treaty was abrogated, a projected treaty with Sierra Leone was never signed, and British troops were withdrawn from East Africa. It is interesting that Guinea and Mali have not been able to impose this ideological 8

This is a major thesis of Stephane Bernard, Le Conflit frrmco-marocain 1943–1956 (Brussels: Institut de sociologie de l’Université libre de Bruxelles, 1963). An extreme statement supporting the opposite view is made by Y. A. Yudin, in Thomas Perry Thornton (ed.), T/Je Third 1Vorld in Soviet Perspective (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1964), p. 254. In a speech to the third National Congress of the Parti Democratique de la Guinee (PDG), Sekou Toure is equivocal; The International Policy of the Democratic Party of Guinea, VII (Conakry: PDG, n.d. [1963]), 21.

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limitation of alternative policies on other former French African states (with the limited exception of Upper Volta). In each case, ideology, by interpreting past events and indicating future dangers, has created international myths that give African states greater power and protection than they could otherwise obtain. It is in keeping with the nature of ideology that another important function is to outline the new order or political culture toward which foreign policy moves. Because of the assurance function of ideology, this world order is both a goal and a promise. Safe landing on the shores of the promised land depends on correct perception of the direction in which the wave of the future moves; hence, belief in correct explanations of past events and future dangers is necessary for the ideal to be attained. For this reason, foreign policies based on ideology show great activity. The state has a broader task than simply defending its interests; it must not only change its relation to other states or its place in the state system, but also change the system itself. “We are a totally committed state, and ours are revolutionary objectives, aiming at fundamental changes, radical transformations. Accordingly, our diplomacy must have a militant character, constantly in keeping with the nature of our political commitment,” said Toure (original emphasis).9 To the ideologue, the external environment must be revised in order to secure domestic goals and support the internal system. This visionary and revisionist aspect also makes plain the total nature of ideology. The new order is not only internal, it is above all external, indivisible, universal. The minute it starts to lose these characteristics, it begins to compromise, loses its purity, and weakens its solidarity function. Here lies the greatest difference between national-interest and ideological policies. The foreign policy based on interest seeks to achieve a place within the state system; it accepts its environment and seeks to fit within it. The ideological policy works to create a new environment because it can find no secure place for itself within the extant state system. “Our interests, the interests of our people,” said Toure, “are subordinate to a new definition of international relations that should respect: the personality of each people, the freedom of each nation, the territorial integrity and property of each state.”10 Algeria and Ghana cannot be secure in an Africa where colonialism still exists, no matter how far away, whereas Gabon and Madagascar have been less concerned by colonies, particularly where distant. Similarly, Ethiopia and Liberia have not always regarded colonial rule in Africa as incompatible with the existence of independent states but merely as a threat to individual state security. Thus, Algeria and Ghana feel they must eradicate colonialism and the exploitation of one state by another from the system of international relations. Less ideologically oriented states feel only that they must eliminate the danger of conquest to their own frontiers.

9

Toure, op. cit., p. 8. Ibid., p. 59.

10

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Reconciling the Two

The picture presented up to this point has been of two contrasting criteria for foreign-policy-making, each slightly overlapping but each representing a basically different and distinct approach to foreign policy. Ideology is idealistic, activist, combative, revisionist, visionary, purist, maladaptive, and deductive; national interest is realistic, modest, constructive, conservative, evaluative, compromising, adaptive, and inductive. Such descriptions, of course, are stereotypes; they are far more clear-cut than reality. Thus far, a somewhat unreal distinction has been maintained between ideologically motivated states and those whose policy is determined by considerations of national interest. In fact, in Africa, all states are revisionist and all share some attachment and susceptibility to ideological myths. All Africa bears an antipathy to colonialism as a force and as a system for international relations, even if states vary in their response to it. All Africa accepts the newly independent state as the working unit, whose continuing existence is both the guarantor and the beneficiary of the ideology. Like any state, the new countries of Africa adopt a status quo attitude toward what they have and a revisionist attitude toward what they seek. Instead, ideology and national interest are two extremes of a range of foreign-policy criteria. Between the extremes are three more common but less clear situations: those states that speak ideologically and act according to interest, those states that mix their motives for the same end, and those states that contribute to a sort of situational dialectic in which their ideological policies, confronted by the pressures of reality, produce a new environment that is different from the status quo ante but that falls short of the ideal. These way stations on the motivational range are not neat cubbyholes that states occupy with any constancy. A particular state’s policy may fit one category at one time and another later on. No complete listing and categorization of all Af rican foreign-policy actions can be made, but characteristic examples can be given. Purely ideological policies do exist. One group of examples includes the support revolutionary-idealist regimes give to subversion against other African states and territories. In almost all cases, there is no direct state interest involved, particularly where the target states are distant from the agent states. Instead, ideology is used to identify the friend and the enemy, give support to the friend on the basis of an accepted view of the forces of history, and justify the action. Ghana’s support of the Sawaba against the Niger Government, of the Union of Cameroon Peoples (UPC) against the Cameroon Government, and of the CNL against the government of the Congo (Leopoldville), resulted from ideological policy decisions, as did Algeria’s support for liberation movements in the Portuguese colonies and in Portugal itself. Another, broader case concerns the ideological phase of African alliances and counteralliances, between late 1960 and early 1963, and the issues on which the various groups based their split. During those years, impelled by the Congo issue (Lumumba vs. Kasavubu), the Algerian issue (unconditional war and recognition of

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the Algerian Provisional Government vs. negotiations), and the lesser Mauritanian issue (presumably precolonial unity vs. successor-state legitimacy), African states channeled their search for unity into a search for ideologically compatible allies. The group founded at Casablanca was the response to the Brazzaville Group and the stimulus to the creation of the Monrovia Group. Although there was not total ideological homogeneity in any of these groups, the split remained as long as the ideological issues lasted. A new and similar split arose under the impact of the new Congo issue. Although no new groups were formed, the revitalization of the Brazzaville Group (Union Africaine et Malgache-UAM) as the Organisation Commune Africaine et Malgache (OCAM), and the Conakry-Bamako meetings of the insurgency supporters, were ideological reactions to the situation. Algerian friendship with Cuba and Ghanaian animosity toward the European Common Market are also ideological choices. Meetings are also often sponsored for ideological reasons. Ghana’s self-identification in ideological terms gave it the role of calling both the Conference of Independent African States and the All-African Peoples Conference in 1958, and Algeria’s revisionist view of international relations, coupled with its revolutionary mission to implement that view, led it to host the abortive second Afro-Asian Conference in 1965. The ideological element is clearer in such cases of strong initiative than in more routine cases, such is the site of UAM or Casablanca Group meetings. In a broader sense, Ghana’s view of African unity, erected into an ideology, gives it a mission to propose, pressure, reiterate, and experiment in order to foster this policy. Such action is an ideological imperative, not a policy serving the interest of one state. Finally in the list of ideological examples, foreign-policy actions have been carried out, in response to pressure, in terms of the unthinkable. Nigeria’s cancellation of the Anglo-Nigerian defense pact and Libyan moves under Egyptian pressure to terminate American and British base agreements are such cases. Although the prestige element in the case of meetings may be an exception, ideological policies generally answer the question “Will it help the ideology?” not “Wil it help the state?”. National interest has also been invoked in similar situations, although with different resulting policies. Dahomey’s hesitation between the Mali Federation and the Entente, action during the Togolese revolt, and sporadic initiatives toward a Benin Union, all closely related to economic needs and political threats, were decided with national interest in mind. Ethiopia’s reaction to Somali incursions, the Kenyan–Ethiopian defense pact, and Ethiopian closure of the Haud border— although a policy of debatable wisdom—were designed to defend the national territory. The Moroccan reaction in the Algerian-Moroccan border war was both a defense of the national territory and an attempt to pressure Algeria into settling the problem of territorial limits. Libya’s and Liberia’s defense pacts with Great Britain and the United States, and the West and Equatorial African Regional Defense Councils with France, also provide for defense of the national territory. A number of cases of national-interest policy can be drawn from African relations with European countries. Not only do they serve to enhance the economic well-being of the state, but they ignore the ideological rejection of the policy. The

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broadest example is that of the association of the Eighteen with the European Common Market, but a bilateral relationship such as the Franco-Moroccan agreement, is also a case in point. A particularly pointed example is Tunisia’s 1958 agreement to receive the pipeline from Ejele, ending in La Skhirra, a policy to its own economic benefit, despite protests of a break in solidarity from fighting Algeria. A similar case of a national-interest policy, with an African, not a European, state, is the Sudanese-Egyptian Nile agreement of 1959. The Liberian approach to African unity, first developed in conversations with Toure in late 1958, and embodied in parts of the OAU charter, appears to be a good example of a way to approach the problem from a nonideological, national-interest point of view; state sovereignty and territorial integrity are maintained and ways are envisaged to enhance the economic well-being and individual personality of participating members. In sum, policies in the national interest are designed as a response to the question, “Will it help the state?”. However, it is seen that there is much in the current African scene that reinforces the need for at least ideological justification of a policy, even if the decision is made on the basis of other criteria. A striking case was the Algerian-Moroccan war, which was justified in Algeria, not as defense of the national territory, which it was (if it was defense at all), but as defense of the revolution against the backward forces of the Moroccan monarchy, which it was not. The war was simply used by the Algerian solidarity-makers as a means of creating national cohesion, defined in ideological terms. Colonel Soglo acted the same way in Dahomey’s quarrel with Niger, perhaps with slightly greater justification. On occasion, the state may adopt a national-interest policy while proclaiming an opposite policy in ideological terms, another way of bridging the ideology-national-interest gap. The policies of Ghana and other states toward the Republic of South Africa are good examples; trade continues, while the tropical African countries continue to call for economic boycotts for ideological reasons. Ghana adopts a similar policy toward foreign aid, balancing its acceptance of financial assistance with vigorous attacks on the neocolonialist donors for their aid policies, a clear case of verbal compensation to preserve dignity compatible with ideological values. Mali acted similarly in accepting transshipment of goods through the Ivory Coast and Upper Volta after the breakup of the Mali Federation, even making the commercial arrangements through the Bamako Chamber of Commerce in order to avoid state involvement. Such actions maximize the advantages of both interest and ideological criteria. Frequently, the pressures of need and the complexity of motivations go beyond the point where the policy can simply be dismissed as two-faced or dishonest, although on occasion the result is to tighten the ideological inhibitions to the point where future actions of the same type in the national interest become impossible. What may once be face-saving justification may later become a prison, at least temporarily. More frequently, the state simply reverses itself or continues to say one thing in order to do another. An example is Nasser’s rejection (quickly retracted) of American aid. A more common way of reconciling ideology and national interest is by mixing motives. When considerations of national interest coincide with the recommendations of ideology, no false justifications or inconsistencies are necessary. It is

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impossible to separate the two motives in the formation of the Entente. A similar political point of view brought the four states together, but complementary economic interests in sharing the Solidarity Fund and the Abidjan-Niger and Benin-Niger trade routes was of equal importance. Algeria’s friendship with the U.S.S.R. is clearly dictated by ideological affinity between regimes that have a common revolutionary experience and have similarities in their world views, but, as long as this relation does not scare away French aid and assistance, it is also in the interest of Algeria to diversify its trade and aid sources. A similar relation with the United States would satisfy only the interest criteria (although it might do it better). In the end, ideology bows before reality; the state acts in its own interest or it runs the danger of disappearing- or at least its government runs the risk of being overthrown by a counter-elite that places problem-solving before ideology. Ideological policies appear to have given way before policies with a more direct relation to the interests of the state. The UAS has gone; the Entente remains and grows. The Casablanca Group has dissolved; the Brazzaville Group has restored its solidarity and increased its membership. The ideological splits among the seekers of African unity have been replaced by an Organization of African Unity that is compatible with, if not always beneficial to, the interests of the states; the ideologues of unification have been shunted aside. The revolutionary-idealists have twice threatened the national sovereignty of the Congo, and twice failed. Ideological objections to any association with Europe have crumbled, while the ideologically based coalition between the nationalist revolution and the Communist revolution has not (yet!) materialized. Perhaps Africa is only proving the truth, long proclaimed by students of international relations, that a state acts in its own interest, for its own self-preservation, to maximize its own security; other considerations eventually give way. Whatever the truth in this summation, it is only a caricature. On one hand, it has been seen that ideology has a role to play and a need to fulfill; like national interest, it is a response to reality, and especially to the reality of frustration and insecurity that characterize the place of African states in the present state system. This situation is likely to continue. In fact, it is likely that the search for ideology will intensify, and that ideology will continue to hold an important place in the perception of the states’ national interests. Africans are a long way from accepting the reality of their situation, the revolutionary-idealists being furthest away. If, as present trends and conditions indicate, rising expectations will not be satisfied, reality will become less, not more, acceptable and ideology will become more necessary (in the minds of the Africans). Furthermore, if present ideologies are incapable of explaining, ordering, and prescribing satisfactorily that is, if they lose almost all touch with reality—they will only contribute to the increase of dissatisfaction, rejection, and likelihood of revolution. In such a case, for both incumbent and opposition ideologues, there is pressure to resort to means of violence and coercion to keep their following, something that is not necessary if the ideology is satisfying and thus voluntarily accepted; foreign scapegoats and external distractions are foreign policy corollaries that have frequently been used at such times.

22.4

Reconciling the Two

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On the other hand, out of the confrontation of ideology and national interest, the victory of realism has not been clear cut, even if the new order assured by ideology has not been attained. The collapse of the Casablanca Group did not lead to the reemergence of unity on the colonial pattern, but to a universal African organization which can serve as a framework and even on occasion as a problem-solving institution in a mobile African subsystem. Commonly, if not universally, a whole series of actions and conditions are regarded as unthinkable (at least for the present): not only colonial rule and legal inequality of states, but also colonial land ownership, postcolonial military bases, direct Cold War alliances, extra-African military intervention, termination of foreign aid, unaltered commercial bilateralism, etc. States may return to close cooperation with the former metropole, but they do so with a new mentality, with complexes replaced by a sense of dignity. The process of creating a new political culture for the state system is slow, but so is the process of creating awareness and developing perception of national interests. The process of using ideology as power until the substantive elements of national power can be built up, and the process of decreeing equality on the basis of ideological rationalizations until states that are equal in sovereignty become more nearly equal in power, are both inventive responses to the powerlessness of new states. When aspirations and reality at least come in sight of each other, when means become commensurate with state ends, when African states find that they can def end their interests within an extant state system—in sum, when the frustrations induced by insecurity reach a more ‘normal’ level, where they can be lived with-then, African decision-makers can think more in terms of their interests and less in terms of idealist, revisionist ideologies.11 Obviously, Africa is not yet at this point.

11

In addition to references cited, particularly useful material has been found in Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1952); William Friedland and Carl G. Rosberg, Jr. (eds.), African Socialism (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1964); Leonard Binder, Tbe Ideological Revolution in the Middle East (New York: Wiley, 1964); John H. Kautsky, Political Cbange in Underdeveloped Countries (New York: Wiley, 1962); Carl J. Friedrich (ed.), Tbe Public Interest (New York: Atherton Press, 1962); and Pierre Bonnafe and Michel Carty, “Les Ideologies politiques en pays en voie de developpement,” Revue fran faisel de science politique, June, 1962, 417–25. Some of the arguments in the present discussion on national interest have come from the author’s International Relations in tbe New Africa (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966).

Chapter 23

Self and Space

Identity and territory are inseparably linked. Indeed, in a topologist’s puzzle, they can be said to underlie each other.1 We are where we came from, recently or originally, and we were there in the first place because of who we are. Who and where we are in turn determine our place in the world, and our ability to maintain or to challenge that place. Space and self are thus the basic ingredients of international (and many other) relations, with ideological relations providing the fourth dimension to the standard three geographic dimensions, both types of relations subsuming the time dimension through which they derive and project their meaning. Both space and self are fixed and essentialist entities: we are something and somewhere. Even if we may be a little vague sometimes about what and where that is, that vagueness is (or can be seen as) not a characteristic of the thing and place itself but of our awareness of it. As bounded attributes, territory and identity are the building blocks of relations, with clear edges and sharp corners. But they can also be the vectors of expanding universes, so that being gives way to becoming and locating is turned into transporting. If there is a meaning to modernization, applicable in any era to the process of change, it lies in the transformation of building blocks into motor blocks.

23.1

Zero- and Positive-Sum Worlds

Both space and self are concepts, relating to the fixed and tangible element of territory in one case and somewhat more precise, even if not tangible, traits or characteristics in the other. Fixed and essentialist though these concepts are, our awareness of self and space can be more or less precise and unbending, more or less hard or soft. Hard identities and territories are well defined and coherent; soft ones I William Zartman, “Self and Space: Negotiating a Future from the Past,” in José V Ciprut, ed., The Art of the Feud (Praeger 2000), reprinted with permission.

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loose and accommodating. Types can harden on contact; previously soft notions of space and self can become exclusivist and unforgiving when they run up against a neighbor or new neighbor, or what the French term the Other. There are two types of relations within each of the concepts. One is zero-sum and distributive: my space and my identity stop at yours, expanding and contracting only in relation to yours. In regard to territory, this is a classical notion of bounded ownership: Lines separate possessions, both holding their contents and hindering their contest. When the meeting of two possessed spaces at one line would be too explosive, boundaries-in-depth, such as marches, buffers, no-man’s-lands, neutral zones, and demilitarized zones, attenuate the confrontation (Kratochwil 1986). Territorial disputes are archetypically zero-sum in nature. Although space need not be disputed, it tends to be, from within and from without, particularly under pressures from exploring individuals and expanding populations. Identity, like territory, is often an exclusive possession, differentiated from others and bounded by the differences. It is frequently a quality quite independent of neighboring identities but it too can be zero-sum, when identity is defined as “not them” or when the realization of one depends on the abasement of the other. The identifying characteristics of one become not only different but superior to those of the other, and the zero-sum relationship is clear. Even where qualities are shared by neighboring identities, a zero-sum relationship can emerge when one of them claims to be the most or the best. Conflicts can also arise, in a most zero-sum sense, when one identity denies another “Who are the Palestinians?” asked Golda Meir, response to the Palestinians’ denial of Israel’s right to exist) and their refusal to show it on schoolbook maps. There is a limited number of ways, termed distributive, in which zero-sum conflicts can be handled. They can be won by one side, in court or in combat, when one party’s claim to space or identity is sustained at the expense of the other’s. Parties in international relations have long settled such matters by combat, and it is seen as a sign of progress that they have occasionally been submitted to judicial determination. But adjudication is still an adversarial process because it generally creates a winner and a loser. The conflict can be negotiated, by exchange or by division, either traded off against another claim or split according to some principle of justice or according to some salient feature (Zartman et al. 1996; Schelling 1960), or by reframing, so both parties can achieve a higher value. Negotiation is considered a more civilized way of handling the conflict, preferable in comparison to the costs of war, and may be either a zero- or positive-sum exercise (Walton/ McKersie 1965). Division (concession) is still zero-sum, except for the additional value of ending the conflict, but exchange (compensation), even if it involves the loss of something to gain something else, presumably involves things that have different values to the exchanging parties (Nash 1950; Homans 1961). The model of spatial and identity relations that is positive-sum is and integrative, whereby possessions can expand, penetrate and overlap without doing so at the expense of each other. Identities are the easiest to conceive of in these terms. Nested identities allow people to be several things at the same time, even contradictory things, without fear of conflict or incoherence. Furthermore, the nests themselves

23.1

Zero- and Positive-Sum Worlds

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are not fully self-contained; they may spill over and overlap. Conflicts are resolved by establishing priorities but these priorities are only rarely a matter of crisis. Multiple identities allow for broader relations and larger empowerment, a truly positive-sum situation. Thus, a Frenchman can also identity as a European, and in addition as (for example) a Catholic, a Parisian, a French-speaker, a businessman in electronics, and so on, and can think and act along each of these parameters. When such thought or action is inconsistent with the dictates of a competing identity, a choice is made without destroying either’s identification. In regard to space, the same image allows for a similar positive-sum conception. Thus, while there can be only one territory at a given place, there can be nested senses of territorial ownership and usufruct as well as permeable boundaries, unbundled territoriality (Kratochwil 1986; Ruggie 1993). While one cannot be in several places at the same time, one can be in several spaces or in a severally-owned space, provided that, as in the case of identity, the notion of space-possession, like self-possession, is soft enough to permit non-exclusive ownership, or shared usufruct. In that case, conflicts are resolved by establishing priorities, and exclusive jurisdictions are merely the means of avoiding conflict in a situation of overlapping and penetrated possession. Like the idea of nested identities, the notion of layered (or mille-feuille) space makes room for comparative advantage, economies of scale, cross fertilization, and multiple use, all of which are positive-sum concepts (Lefebvre 1991; Niemann 1996). Many people live and operate within the nested jurisdictions of a city, county, province (state) and country (state) at the same time, and also within a parish, diocese, commercial “territory,” customs zone, telephone exchange, delivery area, currency zone, and so on. While these spheres are of varying importance and they cover varying amounts of activity, they share two main characteristics: they nest or overlap, and they involve constraining regulations that coexist (except where prohibited by law). These regulations can be seen by either face: they restrain or they allow, enabling what happens within their boundaries and excluding it from happening outside.

23.2

Remembrance of Sums Past

It is meaningful caricature to attribute the zero-sum image to the Cold War era and to assign the positive-sum image to its future evolution. The world emerged from a system of global order governed by a single overarching conflict of self and space. It was deeply concerned about the lines that separated one side from the other in identity and on territory. Where the two sides’ territory met, boundaries were fought over and readjusted so as to be more defensible—in Korea, in Berlin, in Vietnam, on the quarantine perimeter around Cuba, to name the most notable crises, but also over Ethiopia, Angola, Nicaragua, and Afghanistan, where the Soviet Union appeared to be breaking out of its assigned space. Indeed, it was the death-rattle triumph of the Soviet Union that it finally got its territorial conquests in Europe

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recognized at the Helsinki Conference as the price for including eventually intrusive baskets in the Conference (later Organization) for Security and Cooperation in Europe (Ghebali 1988; Leatherman 1996). There is no doubt that the Cold War was a conflict over fixed and defined territories. Notions of identity, on the other hand, were less well established, although the rhetoric on either side sounded as if they were. In their most Manichean moments, representatives of each side accused their own deviants of thinking like the opponent. But more deeply, each side knew who it was–the West was pluralist, the East unitarian, and the unitarians had a more standard vocabulary to express their identity than the pluralists. The best test of the separate space and selves under the Cold War was the way in which intermediate territories and identities were conceived. Countries of the Non-Aligned Movement rejected not only alignment on either of the two blocs but also identification with capitalism and communism, across a wide spectrum of policy stances. Given the pluralism that was characteristic of Western philosophy and identity, it is more accurate to think of these countries as a non-aligned part of the Free World, a notion which only reinforces the territorial and identity boundary of Eastern self and space. This is a generous interpretation in some notable cases such as Ethiopia, Angola, Syria and Cambodia (Kampuchea), but even these children were not acknowledged as legitimate by Moscow and Beijing, despite enormous debates on the subject. Among themselves, new nations of the Third World also had very strict notions of their own identity and territory. Arabs and Israelis, Indians and Pakistanis, Greeks and Turks (between themselves but also on Cyprus, where they cohabited), and Somalis and Ethiopians lived out historic myths about their separate and antagonistic existence (despite the fact that they actually lived quite peacefully together for long periods), and proved that historic mythology by present-day practice. Beyond these exemplary cases, many other neighbors also invented past history and present ideology to justify separateness and hostility, and to overcome these traits’ absence in objective reality. Such inventions are highly functional in that they buttress separate state existences where, in their absence, nothing else would justify an interstate border. Thus, to take one example, Moroccans and Algerians attributed their different political systems to a long history of antagonisms and a deep current of ideological incompatibilities, marked by two wars over undelimited boundaries. Similar stories could be told of Argentina and Chile, China and India, Zaire and Angola, and even Italy and Austria. Border conflicts are both a harmful byproduct and a functional adjunct of nation-building. Conflicts of self and space in this context were handled in a number of ways. As expected, they were often decided in battle, both in the crises of the Cold War and in the more frequent contests of the Third World, some of which were both abetted and restrained by Cold War attentions. For the most part, such territorial conflicts accomplished little except to turn a status quo ante into a hardened stalemate. After 1949, the only significant interbloc boundary move was in Vietnam, testimony to the effectiveness of containment, another word for the zero-sum relationship. Similarly, throughout the Third World, large investments were made

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Remembrance of Sums Past

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in interstate wars, not to achieve permanent gains of territory but to maintain the status quo. In some cases, it took a long period to prove that point, as in the up to fifty years of occupation of the Israeli borderlands. The only major change in the shape of states was the separation of East and West Pakistan in sovereignty as in geography, but of course East Pakistan was true to its recast identity and did not become part of India. Identity conflicts are a more subtle matter. As noted, identity has often been an artificial construction, to give meaning to territory. This was particularly important during the Cold War, itself a structural conflict justified by ideology (Gaddis 1993). This does not mean, as some have suggested, that identity differences were false claims: The distinction between a pluralist, open society and a unitarian, closed society is enormous and fundamental. Yet the conflict between the two societies’ spokes countries in international relations was structural. It was a contest of rank and rivalry rather than simply a clash of ideology and identity. Once that structural confrontation between the superpowers was won, the Cold War was over, even though the contending ideas and identities remain. In such circumstances, resolution of identity conflicts was typically a military exercise. Mechanisms such as conquest, conversion, displacement and subordination were used rather than cohabitation, submergence, reframing, and others. The forced population movements of the Ostländer as Poland was moved westward, the rigorous nonintegration of Palestinians in UNRWA refugee camps, the governments-in-exile of first the Poles and then the Baltics, and the identity as well as territorial splits of Germans, Koreans, Vietnamese, and Chinese were all distributive responses to identity conflicts around the Cold War world. In the rest of the world, the postwar era was predominantly the age of insurgent nationalisms and anticolonial liberation. Colonial leaders rejected the notion that they were fellow moderns along with the colonizers, and, turning their backs on achievemental identity, made common cause with fellow nationals in search of ascriptive identity as the colonized (Memmi 1967; Fanon 1961; Cary 1952; Brown 1964; Zartman 1980 in this volume). Initially but often lastingly, such identity was only negative, with a positive content still open to definition; Abdulhamid ben Badis’ formulation—“Algeria is not France, cannot be France, does not want to be France”—was the negative clarification of the original declaration, “Islam is my religion, Arabic my language, and Algeria my fatherland.” (Gordon 1966: 32–33). Thereafter, it took Algeria a number of decades and a series of Charters (Soummam in 1956, Tripoli in 1962, Algiers in 1977, revised in 1986) to define what it really was, and the country is still searching. It would be erroneous to imply that such identity dialectics remained forever in the confrontational stage and did not move on to a synthesis between national form and modern (Western) content, but at this point it is important to emphasize the initial and prolonged confrontational stage (Zartman 1985, 1992). The dominant effort of the period was to assert sovereignty over self and space. To be sure, there is a certain déjà vu in portraying past and future in such manichaean terms; it has been done before and the new is often only relatively newer, not essentially different (Laidi et al. 1995). The difference of the future will

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be dealt with below, but it can easily be noted that the past was not as uniformly compartmentalized as suggested. But, since the focus of this discussion is on future evolutions, it is not necessary to debate the details of the past. It is only necessary to note in passing that eras (already a loose and overlapping concept) are marked by characteristics, not uniformities, and that the fixed, bounded, and rectified nature of the past era is characteristic enough to permit some comparisons with the likely characteristics of the future.

23.3

Making Soft and Open Space

In contrast, it is an integrative world that the 1990s opened up to the ensuing millennium. If the distributive characteristics of the Cold War period were sharply evident, even if not exclusive, the positive-sum manifestations of the new era have also already been identified. The permeability of the territorial state, already noted at the height of the Cold War as an emerging phenomenon (Herz 1957, 1968), has been taken up in many forms to indicate a conceptual change in the “billiard ball” model of international politics. Permeability was carried to the introduction of a new and challenging nation of “Sovereignty as Responsibility” to Protect populations of state that does not chose to do so, a doctrine rising through think tanks to the UN itself and challenging states and lawyers for interpretation (Deng et al. 1995; Evans/Sahnoun 2001; UN 2004; Evans 2008). Permeability now frequently appears as the economic face of international relations and boundedness as their political face, but neither of these characteristics is exclusive. In environmental as well as economic matters, international regimes impinge on territorial sovereignty. Non-state actors penetrate state space and add new layers to citizens’ identity. “Nonterritorial functional space is the place wherein [current] international society is anchored.” (Ruggie 1993, 165). Much has been written and discussed about the reach of economic activities across boundaries and about the imperviousness of ecology—and more broadly, of nature—to manmade lines on a map. But less attention has been given to the overflow of political space. Despite the passing of the Communist International and of the regional links of various nationalist and anticolonialist movements, many countries’ political space—the territory on which its politics is played—far extends its state boundaries (Zartman 1989: ch. 4). A number of democratic parties— Christian democrats and socialists in Europe, republicans and democrats in the US– help like-minded parties in other parts of the world; leaders in the US and elsewhere endorse candidate leaders in other countries; not only do French leaders support African leaders but African leaders fund French parties; exile and refugee populations contain opposition parties and leaders that are often more politically active than official organizations operating on home soil. While examples of each of these types of extended political space could be found in the Cold War era and even before, their continuation and multiplication is a salient characteristic of the contemporary period.

23.3

Making Soft and Open Space

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Territorially, the post Cold War era has seen the rise of a new breed of ‘entities,’ semi-sovereign units which have not (yet?) attained state status. The Palestinian Autonomous Self-Governing Authority not only has a solid existence and a disputed future outcome; it is also a fully non-contiguous unit, intracommunicating only across hostile territory. The Kurdish entity is governed autonomously within Iraq, fights for recognition against the Islamic and Asad States in Syria, and terrorizes Turkey. Somaliland is unrecognizedly independent from an imperceptible state of Somalia. A sovereign but unrecognizable entity of Republican China is castigated for wanting to “declare its independence” from People’s Republican China, breaking the agreement of both sovereign units that they are part of a single (but which?) China. Bosnia, a new state for the moment, contains two entities for the moment, one of them a federation of two more entities. The sovereign state of Russia and the sovereign state of Belarus have united into a sovereign union, yet unidentified. Proponents both of a Afrikaner Volksstaat and of kwaZulu want their identity-based territories to be sovereign entities within the sovereign state of South Africa. All of these anomalies may well be only transitional but most have a lasted for a number of years, somewhat comfortable in their protracted transition. In regard to the increasing number of territorial entities that are recognized as states, the concept of sovereignty to which they have acceded is eroding and evolving. Where sovereignty formerly meant protection from interference, permission for internal autonomy, and formal standing among sovereign equals, it has now come to mean only putative jurisdiction, neither exclusive nor unaccountable. Boutros Boutros Ghali, secretary general of an organization for which sovereignty is a qualification for membership, has indicated that absolute and exclusive sovereignty is a thing of the past (Boutros Ghali 1995: 44), whereas in the past sovereignty was claimed to be indivisible, that is, absolute and exclusive (James 1986). Although not zero-sum, indivisible sovereignty is a hard concept and cannot be shared. Instead of license, sovereignty is increasingly regarded as responsibility, in two directions (Deng et al. 1996; Lyons/Mastanduno 1995; Elkins 1995). First, states are primarily responsible for the domestic welfare of their citizens, not just for their protection against other states. If they are overwhelmed by the task, they can call on outside help, from other states, from international agencies, or from nongovernmental organizations. Also, states are responsible for aiding their states in the pursuit of their responsibilities, responding to other states’ invitations for assistance or to their populations’ calls for help. In this view, sovereignty is specifically neither absolute nor exclusive nor unaccountable. This notion is fraught with enormous difficulties, and it returns the concept of sovereignty to pre-Westphalian days where the strong states had the right, in the name of responsibility, to help the weak states even against its will. There is as yet no standard to govern the exercise of responsible interference in another’s internal affairs, and the restraining organization of higher responsibility, the United Nations, is merely the agent of its strongest members. Yet it is also imbued with more creative potentialities. The threat of justified intervention removes the possibility of a state’s neglect or repression of a part of its population with impunity. Such a

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threat can well return the state’s attention to its responsibilities, knowing it cannot ignore them so lightly any more. In theory, like any good threat, this one may never have to be used, once its seriousness is demonstrated. The very threat of a standby force ready to intervene in Burundi in March 1996 caused the Burundian government to deal more constructively with internal tensions, and the decision to intervene in Zaire in November 1996 to provide relief and repatriation for 2 million refugees led various agencies in Zaire and Rwanda to do the job themselves. Similarly, the justification of responsible intervention can create a larger community of nations, pooling resources and helping each other in emergency, as is already done. Both military and mediatory NATO intervention in Bosnia in 1995 brought a multilateral sense of responsibility toward a country that both the US and the EU had earlier considered to be outside their area of concern. This is the theory; the practice will surely be a mixed picture. Currently, it is not the intrusiveness of the strong as their neglect that plagues the question of responsibility. In addition to permeability and responsibility, there are other characteristics of space in the emerging era. Over large surfaces of the world, boundaries have ceased to be a problem. Within the security communities of North America and Europe, boundaries are only loosely tended and their location is uncontested. Even within Africa, there have been remarkably few boundary wars and even fewer negotiated boundary changes; the most common source of dispute in recent years has been the extension of boundaries offshore across submarine oilfields (Tunisia-Libya, Senegal-Guinea Bissau, Nigeria-Cameroon). Indeed, African boundaries tend to be extremely permeable, outside of the main roads, and ordinary activity and large population movements alike sweep back and forth across them. Boundaries are also rendered less important for most of the world by subregional free trade zones, even if the FTZs are not always fully respected (Lancaster 1995). Some Third World boundaries do matter, such as borders that keep boat people in and out, or the sudden and unprecedented claim of China over the whole South China Sea. The boundaries that are important and carefully controlled are those between North and South. Even Westerners with Third-World looks are scrutinized at European passport controls, whatever their citizenship. The southern internal boundary in the North Atlantic Free Trade Area, between the US and Mexico, is more tightly controlled than the northern internal boundary, between the US and Canada. All of these features of the emerging era indicate that political and economic self-sufficiency is inadequate for an expending world. Unlike the Western Hemisphere after the half-century of independence (1775–1825), the newly independent countries of the postwar world cannot throw a doctrine around themselves and temporarily withdraw from the world to consolidate their polities and economies. Indeed, as the Northern protections against immigration suggest, Southern populations are determined to join the developed world on their own if their countries do not do it for them first and fast enough. For their part, the industrialized countries of the North, which have long penetrated the South, are themselves also penetrated. Those Southerners who manage to penetrate the North impose identity

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Making Soft and Open Space

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crises on their new country of welcome; they remain in close contact with their countries of origin and with their families left behind, while, as new citizens of the host country, they seek to be both what they would like to remain and what they would like to become. They bring Arabic, Turkish, and Islam to French- and German-speaking Christian Europe, Spanish to English-speaking America, and Singhalese and Buddhism, Filipino and Catholicism to Arab Muslim Saudi Arabia, among others. Because these multiple locations and locations enjoy different degrees of nestedness; some immigrants are literally Gastarbeitern, whereas others become new citizens and social pluralizers, with multiple overlapping identities.

23.4

Building Integrative Identities

The integrative features of such multiple selves are mixed. The sense of identity as a Free Worlder or anti-Communist that the common external enemy used to provided during the Cold War has receded, leaving the various components to stand out on their own. Since there is no differentiated Free World to lead, Americans fall back on their own identity. Similarly, for the East, the unifying effect of identification as communists, whatever its operational shortcomings, has also dissolved. Yet there are other cases of nested identities in the political sphere, without even invoking professional and social identifications. Whereas the European movement of the immediate postwar period sought to overcome separate nationalities with pan-Europeanism (Boisdeffre 1952), European identity half a century later now contains the component national identities. Similarly, although the death of a pan-Arab identity has been announced (Ajami 1986), popular reactions to the second Gulf War show the sense of the Arab self to be quite alive, containing component national identities, just as Islamic identity also cuts across national allegiances. Yet undeniably, in many places, strong indivisible identity claims have risen in salience to counter the integrative effects of transactions across territory. In some areas, there are no overarching identities. Both nationalisms and identities formerly described as subnationalisms are on the rise. An earlier headline on China read: “Maoism, Confucianism Blur Into Nationalism” (Washington Post, 19 March 1996), and yet analysts continue to be concerned whether an entity as large as China can hold together, not because of its territorial extent but because of the strains on the unity of its single identity. In large parts of the world, following the break-up of the Soviet Union, the move is toward demanding smaller identity units: South Sudan, Scotland, Catalonia, Somaliland, Kosovo, various Kurdestans, and even Britain out of the EU with other members eying the same option; although this trend is not yet marked by success, it is strong enough to be considered worth dying for by many, and worth making many others die for as well. Reverse effects are also produced, where clashes of specific identities produce a flight to broader, often ideological identities, sometimes to fanatical extremes. Turks fighting Kurds to the point of elimination, and Kurds reacting in kind, turn to

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Islam as a newfound identity and ideology. French, Britons, and Germans confronted with a foreign national and religious presence (ironically, in the first two cases, from their own former colonies, and in the third from their former ally) turn xenophobic, even fascist, as do Americans fresh out of the melting pot when faced with new and unfamiliar ingredients in the stew. Students of internal conflict have aptly taken over the term “security dilemma” from international relations to indicate internal situations where one identity group’s attempts to realize themselves and be secure only makes others (who formerly had no security problems) more insecure too; in the process, those who formerly lived together in harmony now sort themselves out in hostility (Posen 1993; Lake/Rothchild 1996). Southern Sudanese who long aspired to a regional autonomy that would allow them to be themselves while still being Sudanese now discover that Northern Sudanese can only be themselves by putting down Southerners and eliminating them as an identity group; Southerners (who have no collective name) now claim their own sovereignty but immediately pursue a murderous and corrupt security dilemma between the two dominant ethnies (Deng 1995). Tamils in Sri Lanka once occupied a favored position in Sri Lanka and benefitted strongly from the education system; now radical Tamil leaders and their followers feel they could not be Tamils while still in Sri Lanka have fought to the finish and were massacred in 2009 (Kapferer 1994). Northern Somalis, once an integral part of an irredentist movement seeking more territory for the single identity group, now claim that years of neglect has made it impossible for them to live with other Somalis in the same state and have declared an unrecognized independence (Adam 1995). Croatians, now independent from a South Slav (Yugoslav) state, aspire to a maximum territory, including that inhabited by Eastern Slavonian Serbs and by Bosnian Muslims, whereas Serbs want to constitute a single state composed of the places where they live (not necessarily predominate), including Kosovo, Eastern Slavonia, and the Serb Republic of Bosnia, as well as Serbia itself; having gotten the most they could, they persisted in refusing recognition of Kosovo. Russian leaders fear the Chechen independence movement, not because it would cast off a rebellious minority, but because its success would serve as a bellwether for other similar movements (Lebedeva 1996). These examples are illustrative, not exhaustive. The idea of an overlapping integrative notion of identity in Ulster, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, Bosnia, Palestine, Western Sahara, and Ogoniland, seems far away. Yet the same ideal is being realized in Euskadi, Alto Adige (Südtyrol), Bavaria, Wales, South Carolina, Lancaster County, and Hokkaido. The location of these examples in the developed North of the world suggests that in the South a phenomenon of breakaway identities is ripping the state apart into small nationalist pieces, in deep contradiction to the breakdown of territorial autarky and the spread of penetrating communications and overlapping jurisdictions in the modern, Northern world. Yet there are many times more nested identities within Third World states than in the North, potential cases of mininationalism which have not risen up and broken away. It is the nation-building efforts of new state-nations which, in specific case, have triggered a reaction among parts of the population to enhance mini-identities. The

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Building Integrative Identities

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glass is indeed more than half full: It is remarkable that there are not more breakaway reactions to Third World efforts to create a state nation and to the collapse of the once-unifying communist ideology.

23.5

Negotiating Space and Self

Yet it is not the filled part of the glass that is interesting, except to establish a baseline for normalcy. What is more compelling is rather the unfilled part and the challenge it places to the resolution of future conflicts over space and self. Integrative conflict resolution can reach out to combine competing values or to create new ones, if the parties can be brought to see the situation in positive-sum terms. Conversely, in a zero-sum situation, one or more sides must abandon their initial position and break their resistance in order to fit into a single outcome (Nicolson 1964; Zartman/Berman 1982; Ury 1991). The hardening of a conflict into zero-sum positions not only escalates the conflict; it also eliminates potential integrative solutions. For example, while federation or regional autonomy was a likely meeting point between demands for national unity and for self-determination in Sudan, this solution was used up and voided by president Jaafar Nimeiry’s reneging on federation in the early 1980s. This devaluation of potential solutions even made local autonomy unacceptable to southerners, who insisted either on being part of an integrated national regime and not merely recipients of a local dispensation, or else being independent. The minimal trust required for contingent agreements to be established was absent, much more than the potential solutions themselves. In the end, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005 spelled out both options: either true implementation of the first, or else the second, which in the event then occurred, in 2011. In the end, a dynamic era in an expanding universe requires soft space and soft identities to overcome the necessarily conflictual and distributive nature of hard bounded territories and self-senses with an awareness of self and place that is flexible and permeable. A positive-sum solution among intransigent sides depends either on the establishment of complementary tradeoffs through cooperation (Lijphart 1977, 1984) or on the elimination—the total softening—of the sides through integration (Horowitz 1985). The one means reinforcing identities so that they can exchange preferred roles and outcomes with each other; the other means merging or submerging their conflicting selves in a higher, superordinate identity or goal. The first is easier to inaugurate, since the identities come first, the tradeoffs are negotiated, and the integrative payoffs come later. If it fails, the parties can fall back on their zero-sum notions of themselves, hardened by the failure of cooperation. The second takes longer to achieve, since separate identities have to be put on hold to give the overarching process a chance to prove itself. If it fails it will fail early rather than late, a victim of the parties’ inability to suspend their conflicting identities.

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The option based on reinforced identities and complementary tradeoffs was the essence of the independence of Eritrea and its continued economic union with Ethiopia: Distributional identity needs were met by a separation of the two countries (neither of them nations) and territorial integration by a free trade zone and a common currency. But the experiment, begun in 1993, was torn apart in Africa’s bloodiest interstate war in 1998–2000. The option based on a superordinate identity is the story of America, of the Western alliance, of the Soviet Union, or of Tito’s Yugoslavia. The openness of the identity is embodied in its achievemental nature, designed to melt any ascriptive hard edges. Hard notions of the former selves were overcome, in these experiments, by an open and integrating ideal that made room for many. In the first two cases, in addition, soft identity was reinforced by soft space, an expanding territory in search of a frontier (which, after all, was no frontier at all but an open space); the second two examples failed. Intermediate examples do exist, however, where soft territory and soft identity are combined. For example, the reorganization of Spain into 17 autonomous regions after the early 1980s allowed for both regional and national identities, while preserving a national economy capable of fostering regional specializations (Linz\l \1989); over the first half of the 1990s, 40–50% of the population identified as equally regional and Spanish while only 30% identified themselves as predominantly or solely Spanish (Moreno 1994). Again, the five autonomous provinces of Italy allow for regional identities within a national economy. A different mix of solutions, involving both cooperation and integration, is seen in the construction of Europe. There it is not yet clear whether existing and reinforced national selves are involved in a selfish tradeoff that diminishes the chances of war and increases the economic payoffs but is limited by the preserved component identities (de Gaulle’s Europe des patries, or whether the drag imposed by separate selves can only be overcome by their dissolution in a new European identity as well as security and economy. In the seventh decade since its launching, the reaction against an overly technocratic integration rose to the point of challenging the whole European concept, much like the American civil war 150 years earlier (except for the technocratic role) but without the possibility of a war to settle the matter. The world still tends to seek fixed or definite resolutions, pacta which must be servanda, referenda which determine the self, solutions which are final, treaties which are measured by compliance (Weiss-Brown/Jacobsen 1995), in a word, conclusive hardness of space and self. The contrasting view is one of continual process, dynamic solutions, periodically revisable agreements, mechanisms for handling disputes (Spector 1995; Spector/Zartman 2003), in a word resilient softness of territory and identity. This view pushes the current world levels of tolerance for ambiguity and revisability, even with the attitudinal dynamism that comes with modernism. As in many things, the most successful solutions are often provided by a combination of the two, setting a firm standard with room for trimming change that precludes the need for total revisions. Examples in diverse areas of activity are found in a broad constitution composed of core values with room for amendment, or legal or religious principles that evolve through interpretation or international regimes operating as recursive negotiations and periodic review, or even

23.5

Negotiating Space and Self

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demarcated boundaries with provision for permeability and adjustment. It is more difficult to see the middle ground that would provide for periodic review of identity and territory. Other courses are less promising. Current calls for hardened space and self through autarky, nationalist secessions, economic protectionism, and enhanced identity groups run counter to the current efforts toward increased territorial integration, to which they are a reaction. Yet identity is a more elusive entity than territory, since it exists only in the mind. The reaffirmation of identities, even their reinvention, is a frequent compensation for the current softening of space. Overcorrecting can lead to its overhardening in turn. One school, focusing on “basic needs,” maintains that it is better for all the proclaimed selves to be allowed to achieve their own determination, so that all the energy now spent in making separatist voices heard be liberated for more constructive use–hard identity to permit soft territory (Burton 1990). But this is poor advice drawn from a misreading of current conflicts. It portrays identity as the highest need and assumes that it can be identified as a distinguishable absolute. As a result, it actually runs the moral hazard of encouraging additional entities to turn wasteful energies into asserting the need and claiming the right (Kuperman 2008). Seeking a positive-sum outcome by promoting zero-sum conflicts is a circuitous and ultimately inefficient path to cooperation, if it works at all. Worse yet, states claiming other states’ territory as ‘theirs’ in the name of identity based on elastic definitions of identity—such as Russian claims on eastern Ukraine based on the presence of “Russian-speakers”— confuse hard territory with soft identity. Another alternative which may see its day again is the end of the modern territorial state and the reappearance of the pre-modern social state. In many parts of the world during pre-colonial times, land was governed by usufruct codes, not ownership laws, and the state was a polity based on an identifiable population wherever it was located (Kopytof 1987; Flory 1957; Lattimore 1962). Members of several states, each with its own jurisdiction, could inhabit the same land. The most formalized version of this structure in recent times was the Ottoman millet system, the ultimate soft self in the soft space, where nested and overlapping identities cohabited across loosely sovereign spaces (Davidson 1963). In the modern era, political control over dispersed populations is made even easier by global communications technology, but the territorial state still stakes its claims. The Islamic Community, as portrayed by two multinational corporations, The Base (al-Qaeda) and The Islamic States (al-Khilafa) is to be united into a single world-wide polity of believers under an overarching authority, less tolerant of islands and individual exceptions and facing a much greater conceptual and operational challenge than that addressed by the Sublime Porte. Instead, a widespread if not universal reaction beats the effort back into being merely protostates territorially established at most and subversive criminal networks inside other states at least. Space and self, territory and identity, hard and soft, zero- and positive—sum, distributive and integrative—is this all merely an intriguing interplay of concepts of no practical significance to a world condemned to be populated by selfish identityterritories, i. e., states, cooperating only at the margin and reverting to conflict (even

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while cooperating) whenever they run up against another’s notions of self and space? In the absence of the idealism, however illusory, which underlay the manichean world of the cold war, is there anything in the successor era that can generate a comparable commitment toward easing such these entities into soft, positive, integrative interaction—anything except for the need to operate in a context of technological penetration, economic vulnerability, and environmental interdependence? Nothing in recent state conduct suggests so, except the hope for vision in leadership, the aspirations of supporters, the opportunity of dynamic rather than static constructions—motors rather than bricks—and the need to expand productivity and capability faster than the rate of growth of the population. All the concepts of international relations can do is offer a choice, elucidate the consequences, and then, after the fact, evaluate the reasons and wisdom of the path taken.

References Adam, Hussein 1995. “Somalia: A terrible Beauty Being Born?” in I William Zartman ed., Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority (Lynne Rienner). Axelrod, Robert 1970. Conflict of Interest (Markham). Badie, Bertrand & Smouts, Marie-Claude, eds. 1995. L’international sans territoire. PUF. Boisdeffre, Pierre 1952. “La jeunesse européenne veut-elle faire l’Europe?”, Hommes et Monde 67:268 (February), 68:43 l (March), 69574 (April). Boutros Ghali, Boutros 1995. An Agenda for Peace (2nd. ed) (United Nations). Brown, L Carl 1964. “Stages in the Process of Change,” in L Carl Brown, Clement Moore, & Charles Micaud, Tunisia: The Politics of Modernization (Praeger). Burton, John W, ed. 1990. Conflict: Humans Needs Theory (St Martin’s). Cary, Joyce 1952. Mister Johnson (Michael Joseph Ltd). Davidson, Roderick 1963. Reform in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton U. P.). Deng, Francis 1995. War of Visions: Conflict of Identities in the Sudan (Brookings). Deng, Francis, Kimora, Sadikiel, Lyons, Terrence, Rothchild, Donald & Zartman, I. William 1996. Sovereignty as Responsibility: Conflict Management in Africa (Brookings). Elkins, David 1995. Beyond Sovereignty: Territory and Political Economy in the Twenty-First Century (Toronto U.P.). Fanon, Frantz 1961. Les damnés de la terre (Maspero). Flory, Maurice 1957. “La notion du territoire arabe et son application au problème du Sahara,” Annuaire français du droit international 3:73–91. Gaddis, John Lewis 1993. “The Cold War, The Long Peace, and the Future,” in Geir Lundstad & Odd Arne Westad, eds., Beyond the Cold War (Scandinavia U.P.). Ghebali, Victor 1988. La diplomatie de la détente (Bruylant). Gordon, David 1966. The Passing of French Algeria (Oxford U.P.). Gottlieb, Gidon 1993. Nation Against State (Council on Foreign Relations). Herbst, Jeffrey 1992. “The Challenges to Africa’s Boundaries,” IIIL Journal of International Affairs 1:17–31 (Summer). Herz, John 1957. “Rise and Demise of the Territorial States,” World Politics 473–93 (July). Herz, John 1968. “The Territorial State Revisited,” Polity 11–34 (fall). Horowitz, Donald 1985. Ethnic Groups in Conflict (University of California Press). Jackson, Robert 1990. Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World (Cambridge U.P.).

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James, Alan 1986. Sovereign Statehood: The Basis of International Society (Allen & Unwin). Jacobsen, H K & Weis-Brown, Edith 1995. “Strentheneing Compliance with International Environmental Accords,” Global Governance I 2:119–148 (May-June). Kapferer, Bruce 1994. “Remythologizations of Power and Identity: Nationalism and Violence in Sri Lanka,” in Kumar Rupesinghe & Marcial Rubio C, eds, Culture of Violence (United Nations U.P.). Kopytoff, Igor, ed. 1987. The African Frontier (Indiana U.P.). Kratochwil, Friedrich, 1986. “Of Systems, Boundaries, and Territoriality,” XXXIV World Politics 1:27–52 (October). Kuperman, Alan 2008. “The Moral Hazard of Humanitarian Intervention: Lessons from the Balkans,” International Studies Quarterly 52, 1:49–80 (March). Lake, David & Rothchild, Donald, eds. 1996. Ethnic Fears and Global Engagement (Princeton U. P.). Lancaster, Carol 1995. “The Lagos Three: Economic Regionalism in Sub-Saharan Africa,” in John Harbeson & Donald Rothchild, eds., Africa in World Politics (Westview). Lattimore, Owen 1962. Studies in Frontier History (Oxford U.P.). Leatherman, Janie, 1996. Principles and Paradoxes of Peaceful Change (Syracuse U.P.). Lebedeva, Marina, 1996. “Why Conflicts in the Former Soviet Union are so difficult to Negotiate and Mediate,” International Negotiation l, 3. Lefebvre, H 1991. The Production of Space (Basil Blackwell. Lijphart, Arend 1977. Democracy in Plural Societies (Yale). Lijphart, Arend 1984. Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Government in Twenty-one Countries (Yale). Lustig, Ian 1994. Unsettled States, Disputed Lands (Cornell U.P.). Lyons, Gene & Mastanduno, eds. Beyond Westphalia? State Sovereignty and International Intervention (The Johns Hopkins U.P.). McCreary, Scott & Szekely, Francisco 1987. “Applying the Principles of Environmental Dispute Resolution to International Transboundary Conflicts,” American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Program on Processes of International Negotiation, WP-5. Memmi, Albert 1967. The Colonizer and the Colonized (Beacon). Moreno, Luis 1994. “Ethnoterritorial Accommodation and Democratic Development in Spain,” paper presented to the XVI Congress of IPSA, Berlin. Nicolson, Harold 1964. Diplomacy (Oxford U.P.). Niemann, Michael 1996. “Space and IR Theory, paper presented to the International Studies Association (San Diego). Posen, Barry 1993. “The Security Dilemma in Ethnic Conflict,” in Michael Brown, ed., Ethnic Conflict and International Security (Princeton U P.). Pruitt, Dean & Olczak, Paul 1995. “Beyond Hope: Approaches to Resolving Seemingly Intractable Conflict,” in Barbara Bunker & Jeffrey Z Rubin, eds, Conflict, Cooperation and Justice (Jossey Bass). Ravenhill, John 1988. “Redrawing the Map of Africa,” in Naomi Chazan & Donald Rothchild, eds, The Precarious Balance: State and Society in Africa Westview. Rupesinghe, Kumar & Marcial Rubio C., eds. 1994. The Culture of Violence (United Nations U. P.). Ruggie, John G 1993. “Territoriality and Beyond,” International Organization 1:139–74 (Winter). Schelling, Thomas, 1960. The Strategy of Conflict (Harvard U.P). Sowell, Thomas 1995. Migrations and Cultures (Basic). Spector, Bertram, ed. 1995. The Evolution of Regimes (US Institute of Peace). Spector, Bertram I & Zartman, I William, eds. Getting it Done: Post-Agreement Negotiations and International Regimes. (USIP). Spruyt, Henrik 1994. The Sovereign State and its Competitors (Princeton U.P.). Stares, Paul 1996. Global Habit: The Drug Problem in a Borderless World (Brookings). Ury, William 1991. Getting Past No (Bantam).

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Walton, Richard & McKersie, Robert 1965. Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations (McGraw-Hill). Weiner, Myron 1993. The Global Migration Crisis (Publisher). Young, Crawford 1991. “Self-Determination, Territorial Integrity, and the African State System,” in Francis Deng & I William Zartman, eds., Conflict Resolution in Africa (Brookings). Zartman, I William 1985. “The Political Dynamics of the Maghrib: The Cultural Dialectic,” in Halim Barakat, ed., Contemporary North Africa (Croom Helm). Zartman, I William 1992. Democracy and Islam: The Cultural Dialectic,” Annals AAPSS 524:181– 91 (November). Zartman, I William, ed. 1995a. Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority (Lynne Rienner). Zartman, I William, ed. 1995b. Elusive Peace: Negotiating an End to Civil Wars (Brookings). Zartman, I William & Berman, Maureen 1982. The Practical Negotiator (Yale U.P.).

Chapter 24

Putting Humpty Together Again

Once ethnic conflict has broken out and has then proceeded to a stage of violence, how can stable substantive solutions be found? While negotiations for a solution depends on the evolution of the conflict to a point of ripeness (Zartman 1989), the acceptability and durability of the solution depends on finding an appropriate formula made of identities and institutions for handling ethnic relations in the future (Zartman in Montville 1990).1 While temporary outcomes can be patched together and may well gain signatures from fatigued combatants, more lasting arrangements need to incorporate both an identity principle to motivate, identify and provide political community and a working regime to manage ethnic relations. Most writing to date has focused on the causes and processes going into the conflict; more attention needs to be directed toward getting out of it (see however Horowitz 1985, 1991, who has the better part of the argument; and Lijphart 1977). There is much discussion, more muddying than clarifying, about the notion of “solution.” Conflicts as deep and complex as ethnic disputes have, of course, no solution. Solutions apply at best to legal divisions among consumables, or at least among possessables, that can be used, marked, carted away, or cut up. They do not adequately cover human feelings, memories, and relations, particularly when new generations can regenerate the conflict, using past histories to color current situations and current grievances to stain historic settlements. “Solutions” here will be used merely to indicate outcomes to which conflicting parties agree. Thus, “durable solutions” is not a redundancy but rather a quality to be enhanced, and outcomes need to be evaluated for durability, even if the sense of infinite permanence implied in the idea of solution is not to be found. It is curious that some of the criticism leveled against the notion of solutions proposes its own criteria for permanence, decreeing that when basic human needs are satisfied by the intervenors, then the conflict will be so transformed as to I William Zartman, “Putting Humpty-Dumpty Together Again,” in David Lake and Donald Rothchild, ed., The International Spread of Ethnic Conflict. Princeton University Press, 1998, reprinted by permission.

1

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 I. W. Zartman, I William Zartman: A Pioneer in Conflict Management and Area Studies, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06079-4_24

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disappear (Burton 1987, 1990; Burton, ed. 1990). Yet human needs are only ever temporarily satisfied: The sated today may be hungry tomorrow, the people who know who they are today may wonder tomorrow, those who have found dignity today may lose it tomorrow, and so on. Only time resolves, and time can also invent or revive conflict. If human agents can help time resolve by providing outcomes which at least address the question of durability, they will have made a respectable contribution to the well-being of the inheritor generation, which thereafter is on its own. They do this by producing solutions that are processes and mechanisms, not judgments and awards.

24.1

Identity Principles and Conflict Solutions

A state, the authoritative political institution that is sovereign over recognized territory (Dawisha/Zartman 1988: 6–7), is an identity concept as well as a functional organism. These two natures are interdependent and they contain the requirements for a solution to ethnic conflict. A state needs an institutional arrangement or regime that enables it to manage conflict and handle the demands of its population (Zartman 1996a, b, c). It also needs an identity principle to hold its people together and to give cognitive content to the institutional aspects of legitimacy and sovereignty. Without such a regime, it will fall apart in continuing and renewed conflict; without an identity principle, it becomes merely a bureaucratic administration with no standard terms for expressing allegiance. The standard modern answer to the identity problem is the nation-state, a historic and historiographic myth which claims that the political community and the political institution are coincident and that the first precedes the second. The historic falsity of the proposition need not be demonstrated here; generally, the two have moved forward in a parallel and uncoordinated way, ratcheting their relation into that of the modern state, as defined. When postcolonial self-determination after World War II succeeded postimperial self-determination after World War I (Cobban 1944), the relation between state and nation had to be reversed and the state-nation was instituted (Zartman 1987: 50). Here the new successor state attempted to construct political community through a process of nation-building (Deutsch and Foltz). The process was necessary, since the legitimacy and capability of new states to hold onto their territory and people by military means alone was absent. That nation-building often worked to cause ethnic conflict, either by being practiced well or by being practiced badly, does not diminish its necessity for the state. Nor does it hide the fact that states wracked by ethnic conflict will have to begin a process of nation-building all over again. Thus neither basis for the state as an identity principle has proven conflict-free. Ethnic nation-states are faulted for being “backward-looking,” weighed down by history and tradition, exclusionary in their effects, ascriptive rather than achievemental in their criterion. Furthermore, despite their apparent solidity, they tend to be inherently unstable, since the national self is not uncontestably predetermined and

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Identity Principles and Conflict Solutions

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subgroups can break away by the same principle as the original group that sought to take control of its own destiny. But just as ethnic solidarity can break down, new national solidarity can break up. Although nation-building allows for mobility, social promotion, tolerance and harmony, and the construction of a modern polity, these very values can also actually create conflict, exacerbate preexisting identity feelings, cause real or perceived discrimination, mobilize opposition, and break down modernizing institutions (Zartman 1995a, b, c). It should be no wonder that the nation-building emphasis of the 1960s and 1970s is followed, in theory and in practice, by the ethnic conflicts of the 1980s and 1990s. Is stability to be found only in riding the wave, or are there elements of durability to be achieved? Unfortunately and ultimately, the conflict between the two types of identity principle is decided only by force and violence, and these means in turn have an important impact on the durability of a solution. The two identity concepts (nationor ethnic-state, and constructed state) cannot merely be debated, or the debate becomes truly academic (in the commonly perverted sense of the word). It would be hard to sustain a claim for the absolute superiority of one concept over another, since both have their drawbacks. While both law and philosophy have sought to resolve the issue, they have not been able to decree or define away the use of violence as the final arbiter—the ultima ratio regis, as a sixteenth century canon had stamped on its maul. International practice and law has devised the referendum as the final sanction of that right (Western Saharan Case 1975; UNGA/R 1960) but the claim by a nation or territory to have the right to hold a referendum has thus far required a serious use of force, the new Ethiopian constitution notwithstanding. Independence is the highest political value of humankind, and it is worth the fight. The price is high and it should be, for the value is supreme, not to be taken lightly. Conflict, usually in its violent form, is usually required to assert the self that can claim its own determination.2 It is also needed in order to mobilize and consolidate the self-identifying group that it is about something, and that for all the perverted forms it may take, it stems from grievances and causes that must be considered if solutions are to be durable. Violent ethnic conflict arises from the breakdown of normal politics; grievances can no longer be brought to the government in a process of petition and redress. The grievances that trigger ethnic conflict are essentially those of perceived discrimination: A group feels that, because of its ascriptive (ethnic) identity, it is denied something to which it has a right. Hence, it is not merely an abstract choice between

2

While I have pointed out in many other places that conflict in ubiquitous and inevitable but not always violent, the discussion here focuses on formulas for restoring normal politics and eliminating violent conflict. For earlier phases, see (Zartman in Deng/Zartman, eds. 1991: 299 et passim; Zartman in Montville 1990; Zartman 1995a, b, c). For a good discussion about the possibilities and effects of managing ethnic conflict at the consolidation phase, see Rudolph/ Thompson (1985). Apparent exceptions to the need for violence are Slovakia and Quebec, which were able to take advantage of its pre-existence as a province to impose votes on self-determination without major violence; Quebec failed, several times.

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two identity principles which is being decided by violence but an underlying grievance over perceived discrimination which makes one principle or the other inadequate for the situation. Thereafter, the rebellion may be in one of a number of stages in the life cycle of the conflict (Zartman 1995a, b, c: Chap. l). There are other interesting notions of phases, not totally irreconcilable with the above progression. On identity, legitimacy, distribution and participation, see (Rudolph and Thompson 1985); on equality, cultural rights, institutional political recognition, and secession, see (Coakley 1993: 6–7); on reform group, nationalist movement, and revolutionary force, see Zartman, in Zartman (1980a). Since these stage are functional phases, not periods of history marked by clear dates, they may well overlap or shade muddily into each other. Nonetheless, they do represent identifiable times in the evolution of the conflict. The second stage is that of consolidation, where the attention of the rebels is turned inward in mobilizing their population, uniting their diverse organizations, challenging the legitimacy of the government, and building the means of combatting it. This is usually not a time for solutions. Significantly, the cases where conflict management at the consolidation phase has worked show that success involves government responsiveness but also an ability to coopt the leadership in a national process, pulling it away from its followers. It may also be significant that such cases tend to come from the developed world, where political processes are better established; see Rudolph/Thompson (1985). In fact, any attempt at finding a solution tends to be viewed as hostile and inimical to the consolidating purposes of the movement. The movement is consolidated by finding ways into the confrontation, not ways out of it. Only when the movement has completed its own consolidation can it turn to direct confrontation of the government, in an effort to raise its rebellion to a level of equality so that it can deal with the government on an even plane This third, or confrontation, phase too is not a time of solutions, since the movement’s aims now are in preparing for its own recognition, not in coming to a premature agreement from a weaker position. Again, it is only when the confrontation phase has reached its goals that ethnic conflict is ready for a solution. By the nature of the conflict and the stage at which solutions can be sought, a return at this point to normal politics and redress of the original grievances will no longer suffice. A formula for a new political system needs to be created, one that will provide new governing structures and will handle the newly aroused population. Institutions and identity principles are the crucial ingredients of those formulas. Force and violence, however, have their cost. They obviously take their toll of human lives in the course of the conflict, but more importantly for the present purposes, they mortgage future relations among the combatants. Once the war is over, relations are no longer the same among the parties; it is hard to live together as before, both because of the effects of the violence and because of the identity mobilization that the conflict has required of the parties. Thus, conflict management does not merely need to address the course of the conflict to find an appropriate ending for it; it needs to take into account the effects of the conflict on potential solutions if they are to meet the test of durability.

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Another ingredient of durability is viability. The one notion is inherent in the other, although curiously viability is often considered an inappropriate outsider to the debate. Notions of identity alone are generally considered to be trumps in the establishment of units for self-determination, and the criterion of viability is pushed aside with citations of the numerous examples of UN members which are patently unviable. (Solarz 1980) But viability is more important to the matter of identity conflict than is usually recognized. To begin with, material fortunes are crucial elements in the cause of ethnic conflict. When the pie is large enough to go around, demands tend to be negotiable and satisfactory allocations can generally be found. (Rothchild 1997). It is when the pie shrinks and tough distributive choices need to be made that the specter of discrimination appears and groups emerge with the common cause of ascriptive deprivation relative to other groups (Zartman 1980). The goal of the rebels is the end of discrimination against them. (But not necessarily to end all discrimination. One of the wisest and most encompassing things ever written in political science is Aristotle’s Motor (1948: 242): “Inferiors become revolutionaries in order to be equals, and equals in order to be superiors,” after which the cycle starts again). When ethnic groups are mobilized and new political units are created on the basis of ethnic identities, there is an implicit promise to satisfy the group’s needs that relies on available resources. While Sekou Touré (1958) may well have proclaimed, “We prefer independence in poverty to servitude in riches,” that was a better mobilizing slogan than a sound political analysis; Guinea’s problem was not that it enjoyed riches in its colonial status, but that the Korean-war boom of the 1950s produced benefits unequally distributed between colonizing and colonized society. Colonized peoples have aspired to a better life, not just their own life, but they feel that the better life is only possible when they have the levers of allocation in their own hands. The problem with viability as a criterion is twofold: it is a future consideration with no guarantees, and it has no definitive measure. The collapse of once-rich states well endowed with potentialities like Guinea makes the debate over the threshold of viability academic, just as the presence of islands and enclaves among the well-to-do of the moment shows easy measures to be inaccurate (for the moment). But the difficulty of establishing the boundaries of a concept should not be taken as a test of its validity. Like the other absolutes already in the debate, viability is a necessary if imprecise ingredient, whose absence will make itself felt on the matter of durability. In sum, a number of criteria go into the formulation of a durable solution that both ends the violence and provides a salient outcome that replaces violence with politics. These include a useable identity principle—either ready-made or makable, a promise of viability, support from the conflict process itself, and an institutional arrangement. The formula indicated will take different forms in function of the context and the conflict, and cannot be found in one shape alone dictated by some external criterion. Therefore, the qualities of competing formulas for identity and territory and for regimes and institutions must next be examined.

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Formulas for Identity and Territory

The initial element in determining the form of appropriate solutions is the simple geography of the conflict. If the rebel ethnic group is congregated in a contiguous area, it lends itself to more types of territorial solutions and different identity principles than if it is scattered around the country. Like many elements, this one is not an immutable given. If the rebellious area is not homogeneous, it can be made so, by taking “foreign” populations and moving them out or doing them in by forced migration or ethnic cleansing. Both leave deep wounds. In conflicts where territorial contiguity obtains and by providing a definable homeland contributes to the sense of identity of the rebellious group, it is only natural that territory will play a more important role in the solution. If the ethnic rebellion has an identifiable territory, a number of territorial solutions are available, principally variations on two types: regional autonomy or federation. There is no such thing as confederation. If sovereignty does not remain with the overarching unit, then the outcome is secession, whatever friendly relations may be established afterward. Divorce is divorce and secession, even if we remain good friends (Lund 1994). There is a line, the Crest of Sovereignty, that has no passes and one is on one side of it or the other. It is not necessary for present purposes to go into the differences and workings of these various forms. The purpose here is to evaluate the determinants of their appropriateness as a solution for ethnic conflicts. Although both autonomy and federation can contain varieties in the degree of self-rule, they differ from each other mainly in the relation between the sub-state units.3 In the first, autonomous regions usually enjoy separate status from the rest of the country, whereas in the second, federated regions make up the entire country and have similar internal governance structures. Opinion and practice since at least World War II has favored the maintenance of existing sovereign states, if only because they themselves are the units in charge of the international community. But beyond that conservative consideration, maintenance of established units works against balkanization, the creation of ever smaller and weaker states less and less capable of meeting the needs of their people and of combining the regional complementarities that create internal trade and markets for goods and labor.4 Finally, it has been felt that accepting existing units reduces the danger of border disputes, irredenta, territorial wars, and so on; it favors a stable status quo. Even in the case of ethnic conflict, where violence has already broken 3

State will be used here to refer to the sovereign unit, and province or region to the autonomous or federated sub-state unit, even if in specific reality the latter are termed states. 4 It can well be argued in the current era that poor regions receive more attention and assistance as independent states than they would as parts of a larger state. Gambia does far better as a Gambia than it would as part of Senegal and lives as a parasite on the Senegalese economic—and perhaps political—system; see Ka (1992). Independent Swaziland and Lesotho and perhaps the bantustans get more attention from South African than they would as an undifferentiated part of South Africa. But the argument does more to explain why such microstates do not want to integrate into a larger unit than it does to prescribe a desirable and universal criterion for practice.

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Formulas for Identity and Territory

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out, a status quo ethos limits the damage caused by the conflict, working to keep it internal and containing its demands and effects. Practice has confirmed this prescription. With a few exceptions to be discussed below, no contiguous state has broken apart in the postwar period. One of the most important norms which has worked to reinforce this condition is the uti possidetis juris doctrine operating in post-colonial Africa and inherited from post-colonial Latin America, which protects not only boundaries but the units they contain (Zartman 1996a, b, c: 55–56). Thus, Latin American has settled down into constant units, after some initial rearranging, and its conflicts have been limited to boundary disputes over where the uti properly is and to social unrest, but not to territorial secessionist movements. Similarly, Africa has seen no successful breakaway units that do not fall under uti possedetis; even Eritrea and Somaliland were colonial units whose independence falls under the doctrine (Zartman in Keller and Rothchild). Salim Salim, Secretary General of he Organization of African Unity (OAU), indicated in 1994 that the line stops at Eritrea and that secession attempts by southern Sudan or other regions would not be allowed by the OAU under the doctrine, although secessionism has risen since then among southern Sudanese. (Salim; Deng 1995a, b). In Cyprus, the ethnic cleansing of the northern part of the island and its secession as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus has not received international recognition (beyond Turkey). Three exceptions do occur under this norm. One involves non-contiguous states, and thus confirms the criterion of territorial contiguity. Pakistan is the best example. The second concerns two- or three-member federations. It is relatively well established in practice and solidly based in theory that few-unit federations do not work. Two-unit federations are an institutionalized confrontation, leading either to the takeover of one by the other or to stalemate between two units seeking to defend themselves against the other’s takeover attempts. Ethiopia, Mali, and Czechoslovakia are cases in point (Sherman 1980; Erlich 1983; Foltz 1965; Kirschbaum 1993) and the strains in Tanzania and Cameroon (no longer a federation) are a further illustration. Three-unit federations are a similar case of continual and unstable alliance politics of (any) two against one, leading either to takeover or breakup; even when the original units are themselves subdivided the old shadows tend to remain. Libya is a case of the first and Nigeria of the second and third effects. Cases of federal breakup tend to come from the early histories of states, as they experiment with new institutional forms, testing their durability. The third set of exceptions comes from communist states that have broken up. This category has many sui generis cases, but collectively it is a situation where ideology has proven insufficient as a functional equivalent of the identity principle; when ideology breaks down, (sub-)nationalisms rise again to provide more compelling and durable identity principles on which new states are constructed. It must be emphasized that the ideological glue broke down before the rise of nationalism and contributed to it, not the reverse. The examples are the breakup of the former Soviet Union (FSU), the former Yugoslav federation (FYF), and former Czechoslovakia (itself a case of the non-durability of two-unit federations, as noted).

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If the existing state provides a status quo claim to being the acceptable framework for a solution, then the acceptable solution comes in the form of autonomy or federation = separate legal control of one’s own destiny within the boundaries of a sovereign larger unit. Federations and autonomies work, when they are honestly applied, and contrary to many rulers’ beliefs, they are not a prelude to secession. Secession comes when they are not honestly applied. The history of ten years of federation and thirty years of war in Eritrea is a case in point, and the wrenching evolution of attitudes in southern Sudan over 40 years from autonomy to revolution to secession is another. (Strictly, Eritrea should be considered an autonomous region rather than a federation because of the two-unit nature, but the same judgments apply). The cases show that the fragility of federation is not at the hands of the region but of the central governors. Once federation or autonomy has been granted and despoiled, the trustworthiness of the granting government has been weakened and the formula loses its value as a solution. There are no absolute guarantees to federation or autonomy except for the good faith of the government. The examples of Nigeria and Yugoslavia are more complex, but both vividly illustrate the same lesson—the need to handle distributive grievances within the framework of the federation, equalizing both allocation and the allocative mechanism itself, if the federation is to be maintained (see Gboyega 1996; Woodward 1994). Regional autonomy has gone far to relieve the particularist notions—even those of the Basques—that the unitarist regime of Franco fostered, and autonomy of the five special regions of Italy—which deserves to be far better known than it is— dampened some previously strong secessionist tendencies (Clark 1995). This rapid discussion shows that autonomy and federation are better solutions that usually considered, if they are honestly applied and carefully tended. It also should indicate that as a solution to ethnic conflict, autonomy and federation need to provide high degrees of self-rule to be acceptable and durable. It must be remembered that, as a negotiated solution, they come after the consolidation and confrontation phases of the conflict, when the rebellion has arrived at some sort of equality with the state and may be close to demanding formal equal—that is, sovereign—status as a result. That extreme outcome can only be precluded by its functional near-equivalent, a high degree of autonomy that is the tradeoff for the preservation of the larger unit. Later, that autonomy may soften, greater integration occur, and the identity principle of the constructed nation take greater prominence. But for the moment, the price of maintaining state sovereignty and its identity principle is the granting and respect of effective autonomy. The ambiguity of the federal and autonomous solutions lies in the conflict of identity principles. Regional —frequently ethnic—identity is elevated to a level competing with the state principle, producing tension and perpetuating conflict. But that conflict as already present in the ethnic conflict to which autonomy is proposed as a solution; autonomy harnesses identity to regional tasks of self-government, and proves the broader identity by showing its breadth and tolerance. Seventy percent of the Spaniards in autonomous regions declare themselves to be both regionalists and Spaniards (Moreno 1994). Southern Sudanese after 1972 knew they were finally effectively Sudanese when hey took control of their own affairs as an autonomous

24.2

Formulas for Identity and Territory

425

region (and learned their error by 1983 when they found that control to be an illusion). It is sometimes suggested that ethnic regions in conflict need to be given their own independence, after which they will return to the larger unit when their symbolic needs have been satisfied. But giving independence is like introducing the sharia: Once established, it is hard to renounce. There is no example of voluntary return after secession. If return is the goal, it is much easier to accomplish from autonomy than from independence. Yet in some cases, secession and independence are unavoidable. When autonomy solutions have been sullied and exhausted, when a government has proven its untrustworthiness, when the legitimacy of the central government to speak for and rule over the dissident region has been lost, when the conflict has built such a record of wrongs and hatreds that living together is no longer possible, when identity is conceived by the center in zero-sum terms in regard to the dissidents—in any of these cases, even autonomy is an unlikely solution. It may be striking that these conditions all refer to dissidents’ perceptions of the central state, not the reverse. That is because the central state is the unit which must integrate or from which the dissident region must secede, quite obviously, and because it is the state that is fighting for unity and the region for self-determination. Dissidents are fighting to show that their identity principle can only be protected in independence from the larger state. Nonetheless, it must be recognized that there are cases, such as Yugoslavia, where the central government, or major parts of it, tries to be accommodative and is rebuffed precisely because subnationalist units’ leaders arouse ethnic feelings of discrimination in order to build solidarity behind their rebellions (Woodward 1995). Domestic and international reinforcement of the accommodative government is then needed, to show that separatism is not a viable option. Other than in ideological terms, which decree a priori that ethnic identity may not furnish a state with an identity principle, it is hard to see why secession should not provide durable solutions when the conflict has gone too far, in terms defined above. Ethnic states are nation-states, and their independence should release energies that can be profitably harnesses for the welfare of its people. But states newly created on an ethnic identity principle must faces four challenges to their cause, and they had better face them before than after achieving independence. One question is about viability. As has been already noted, small or poor states may provide momentary psychic satisfaction but they are dangerous responses to the challenge of self-determination. When the people’s movement for national self-determination finds itself locked into a territory bereft of resources, it is likely to find itself under authoritarian control to keep its ruler in place and to prevent renewed rebellions of risen expectations against fallen satisfactions. If there are no examples to cite as yet, it is because the international community has held the line against secession, but not because of the inappropriateness of an ethnic identity principle.5

5

[Since the original chapter, South Sudan, Eritrea and Timor Leste provide examples].

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The second question is about further secessions, addressing directly the implications of ethnic identity. No ethnic group is without its subgroups, and many ethnic groups are held together principally by the common external enemy. When it goes, as a threat, their national unity and cohesion go with it. Justas military rulers fear military coups, knowing from personal experience that coups topple governments, so ethnic secessionists should be wary of sub-group secessions. The cases of Somalia and Sudan are sadly eloquent on all these counts. When the Ethiopian danger receded in the late 1980s, the unity of the Somali nation dissolved. The clan-centered tactics of President Mohammed Siad Barre accelerated the process, but only confirm the point, since they were facilitated by the Ethiopian collapse. The long-vaunted national unity of the country was broken by the secession of Somaliland in 1992. But Somaliland in turn was rent by clan warfare by 1995, as lesser clans rose against Isaak domination. When the northern Sudanese danger to the south was removed by the Addis Ababa agreement in 1972, smaller tribes in the south began to fear domination by the largest tribe, the Dinka. It was easy for President Ja’far Nimeiry to play on these divisions and undermine the 1972 agreement. The national liberation war broke out again in 1983. Newly independent African states in the 1960s and newly independent states from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s were plagued by sub-national independence movements. The third question, also on ethnic identity, is about ethnic minorities. Few territories are populated exclusively by one ethnic group. Sometimes there are mixed populations living together in harmony before the ethnic awakening. Most ethnically aroused countries, including Cyprus and Yugoslavia, had long periods in their recent past where populations mixed freely, lived in peace, and even intermarried. Sometimes there are pockets of minority populations living in enclaves with larger lands of the majority. The Bosnian safe havens have their parallels in minority clan enclaves in Somalia, “southern” tribal groups in northern Sudan, and Igbo and Yoruba neighborhoods in northern Nigerian cities, among others. Other times populations are stratified by altitude or divided into urban and rural habitats. This is why ethnic maps are so hard to draw in Yugoslavia as in Algeria, Liberia and Nigeria, or why the borders in the Fergana valley among Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan are so gerrymandered. Indeed, one practical barrier to sub-national secessions is the difficulty of drawing a line between “us” and “them.” One of the reasons for the failure of the Somali offensive in the Ogaden War of 1977–78 was the Somali inability to find a line where they could claim to have liberated all Somalis from Ethiopian rule and declare victory (See Zartman 1989: 107–108). The fourth question, also relating to ethnic identity, concerns exclusion. Newly-built identity principles are by their nature inclusionary, since they are no sub-group’s property. But ethnic identity principles repell citizens who are in the state and its territory but out of the ethnic group. Making these principles inclusionary is a challenge. Traditionally, African tribes did so by making strangers “honorary” members of the collectivity in identity as well as in habitation; in the longer run, some ethnic groups do so by marriage, although the foreigner may not always be fully accepted and may still have to live as a foreigner before meeting the future spouse. If the identity of the strangers is as aroused as the identity of the

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ethnic nation, inclusive identity on an ethnic basis will be hard to achieve and the conflict will be perpetuated within the new state. Minorities may move to more hospitable surroundings—to the fomer larger unit, to their “own” ethnic state, to a third land of opportunity. These are classic solutions, and are preferable to forced expulsion or genocide. Viability, sub-secession, minorities, and exclusion are problems inherent in new states that are based on an ethnic identity principle. They are comparable to the problems in established states caused to continually repressed ethnic groups trying to live under a broader identity principle that denies their own identity and dignity. Before secession, the responsibility for resolving these challenges lies in the hands of those who arouse ethnic identities through discrimination and who make life unlivable for them by refusing to accommodate ethnic identities under the constructed identity principle. After the fact, it lies in the hands of those who need to take into account the implications of constructing an ethnic state. There is no good answer to the search for a proper and durable identity principle. The real solution comes in proper implementation of whichever principle is adopted, so that old discriminations are eliminated and new discriminations do not appeal to revive the old and cause new ethnic conflicts.

24.3

Formulas for Regimes and Institutions

Ethnic conflicts are not ended by some belated attention to the original grievances or discriminations, as noted; they require a new political system (Zartman 1995a, b, c). The institutional arrangement or regime whereby the state manages its ongoing conflicts and makes its policy decisions is the other fundamental component of a solution besides its identity principle. Just as an identity principle comes in one of two forms—ethnic or constructed—so an institutional regime for ethnic relations comes in one of three forms—integration, separation, domination. This applies whether the rebellion is contained within a contiguous territory or not and whether a new state is being established or not. Most ethnic conflicts—South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Liberia, Rwanda, Burundi, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Afghanistan, Peru, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Lebanon, among others—do (or did) not involve a contiguous territorial base or a new state, and so ethnic conflict is over the control and structure of an existing entity. For those with contiguous territory, one component of that regime is the provision of autonomy, federation, or independence, but even then, as seen, minorities in the autonomous, federated or independent unit have to be handled in some way as well. Indeed, it is the minorities, not the majority, who are the challenge to the institutional stability of the new regime. The majority—whether the former rebels or the state—has won; the challenge for durability is to keep the minority/ies from losing. Minorities institutionally condemned to a second-class position are merely the seeds for new ethnic conflict. But victorious ethnic nationalism is in a poor position to recognize the problem: It has prevailed on the identity principle of homogeneous solidarity and is not about to compromise on its integrity. In the short

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or the longer run, however, its minorities will cause it grief if not handled equitably in the new institutional order, as the Israeli ethnic democracy has learned and the Ethiopian guided democracy is learning. Two generic formulas—democracy and consociationalism—are usually posed as the solution, but both are inadequate (Sisk 1995). Democracy is not the best mechanism for such solutions, for it either will reinforce a majority domination or will have to be so contrived, engineered, and gerrymandered as to be a caricature of its spirit. Democracy can be turned on its head in times of ethnic conflict. The Bosnian referendum of February 1992, boycotted by the Bosnian Serbs, created an independent Bosnia without Serb representation, allowing the Serbs to refuse to live under Bosnian Muslim rule. The Serbian elections of December 1990 allowed Slobodan Milosevic to use ethnic appeals to delegitimize his rivals and win control of the state (Woodward 1994: 121–22). Democracy is fine under a neutral state control, to assure fair use of the mechanisms and honest application of the rules, but no neutral state controls the democratic exercise in Burundi, Rwanda, Nigeria, Liberia, Somalia, Algeria, or even Tunisia. Foreign election observers provide some neutral control at the time of elections, but they have to go home thereafter, leaving the political system to its own devices. Consociationalism (powersharing) is often presented as the answer (Lijphart 1985, 1988, For critiques, see Horowitz 1991: esp. 137–45; Laitin 1987) but it is only one, and in reality (as opposed to theory) it is as hard both to define and to apply as it is to pronounce. Consociation has been used narrowly to mean a specific system with identifiable characteristics, corresponding essentially only to Belgium and Switzerland (and some express doubt about Switzerland because of its use of direct democracy) or loosely to refer to any system which includes component group representation at the top, with examples coming from many countries in the world. In the narrow sense, it works only where there are cohesive self-governing groups who can send trusted central authority with limited powers, and it does not handle the minority problem. In the broad sense (which does not deserve the name of consociation), some mechanism for self-rule in the component communities and for representation at the top is a necessary characteristic of durable solutions. Ethnic conflicts can be settled only by the joint creation of a new political system and institutions, so that the handling of grievances and the management of conflicts are both autonomous and shared exercises in which the aggrieved community now has a hand. Autonomy is located at the local level, shared responsibility at the national level. As the motor of the state institutions, political parties built on the principles of interest aggregation and articulation, not of ascriptive representation, are required, although prohibitions against ethnic or regional parties are difficult to obtain when the parties are emerging from an ethnic conflict. Yugoslavia’s—and in microcosm, Bosnia’s— problems with new institutions stemmed from the fact that the participant organizations were necessarily ethnic parties, the same bodies who were the cause of the conflict.

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Formulas for Regimes and Institutions

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The best answer to the problem is not a pat formula but rather a process, a negotiation among the parties that not only translates their power in the conflict into positions in the new system, but that also provides both protection to the parties whatever their position, and trade-offs and incentives for all to preserve the regime. This sounds idealistic, to be sure, but so must any constitution-making process be, and it contains less of an assurance of failure than does consociation without the necessary reconditions or democracy in the hands of the demagogues. There are a few examples—the 19 August 1995 agreement on Liberia, the 1991 and 1993 constitutions in Colombia and South Africa, respectively (Mutwol 2009; Eisenstadt/ Garcia, in Zartman 1995: 285, 164; Sisk 1995), at two extremes—and many failures —the many loya jirgas in Afghanistan, the previous accords in Liberia (Lowenkopf 1995), the Arusha agreement of August 1993 in Rwanda, and on and on. Because of the difficulty in negotiating ethnic conflicts (Zartman 1993a, b; Stedman 1995), a mediator is usually necessary, a concerned party with longrange interests in a durable outcome to put in charge of the process of finding a solution. This explains the importance of Dayton for the Bosnian talks in 1995, Addis Ababa in 1972 for Sudan, Lancaster House for Zimbabwe in 1979, Brazzaville and Governor’s Island in 1988 for Namibia, Djibouti in 1991 and Addis Ababa in 1993 for Somalia, Yamasoukro in 1990, Cotonou in 1993 and Abuja in 1995 for Liberia, Arusha in 1993 for Rwanda, Geneva in 1983, Lausanne in 1984, Damascus in 1985 and Taif in 1989 for Lebanon, Rome in 1992 for Mozambique, Bicesse in 1992 and Lusaka in 1994 for Angola, and other locations for other conflicts where a third party could keep negotiations on track and heading toward a durable solution. That some of these meetings were failures only shows that external mediation is a necessary but not sufficient condition for success. In some rare cases, such as Colombia and South Africa, the state is in constrained enough control that it can watch over the fair implementation of the agreement, with an articulated civil society watching over its shoulder. In most others, there must be continuing international observation or even participation to keep the mechanism balanced until its component parts can be trusted by each other. The mediator may come from many different levels—the United Nations as the Secretary General’s special representative, an external state’s foreign secretary or ambassador, the relevant regional organization’s conflict management mechanism, or a neighboring state’s president or minister. (See, among others, Bercovitch/ Rubin 1992; Mitchell/Webb 1988; Zartman 1989; Touval/Zartman 1985; Myers 1991; Rothchild 1996). The mediator’s role, ranging from communicator to formulator to manipulator (Touval/Zartman 1985; Zartman/Touval 1996), varies according to its power in the process and indicates whether the mediator is merely a passive catalyst or a major influence. In ethnic conflicts it is more likely that mediation will need to play the latter, more intrusive roles in ethnic conflicts. The parties do not need merely a communicator; since they are from the same country, they generally know how to communicate with each other. What they do not know is how to provide the necessary balance in the parties’ power or input and in the eventual outcome or output, for them to construct an agreeable regime. Often, the mediator will need to play both roles, finding a formula and also maintaining the

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power balance. The dynamics of the negotiations usually involve parties’ competing efforts to make a winning coalition with the mediator and mediator’s efforts to play parties’ incremental agreement to parts of the package against each other. These dynamics came out particularly clearly in Lord Carrington’s role in Lancaster House in 1979 (Davidow 1984) and in UNTAC’s role in Cambodia in 1993. However, it is unlikely in the future that solutions will be able to depend on the integral participation of the mediator’s forces in the transitional government as practiced in these two examples. This type of involvement is too costly for individual states or the world community to sustain; the colonial system is no longer present to provide candidates and the world organization is not yet equipped to take up the task repeatedly. Instead, the mediator needs to use its position in the power relations to help devise and set in motion a mechanism that will run on its own. Whatever the source of mediation, the regional constellation of states in which the conflict occurs needs to be brought along. (See Lyons 1996; Wriggins 1994; Midlarsky 1993; Brown 1996; Zartman 1995a, b, c). Ethnic conflicts never stay within their internal limits; neighboring states are inevitably concerned, and even involved. Since they too are touched by the conflict, they need to be involved in its resolution, lest they be agents of its perpetuation. The lack of attention to regional stabilization has allowed the Rwandan and Burundian conflicts to perpetuate themselves, and the Sudanese conflict has become a constant element in the regional system of northeast Africa, as Cyprus is part of the Aegean conflict system, and so on. The role of neighboring states in stabilizing the ethnicized conflicts in Mozambique and Angola and the ethnic conflicts in Sri Lanka and Spain has been important, if not always determinant. That role is primarily one of facilitator and supporter; it must reinforce but it cannot replace the establishment of an internal regime. Two elements determine the course of these negotiations over a regime to end ethnic conflicts: the input or results of the conflict—the current power relations between the parties, and the output or projection of the conflict—the prospective institutional relations between the parties. Although sometimes forgotten, both elements—where the parties are coming from and where the parties are going–are necessary to the durability of the solution: Simply dividing the spoils without providing for future mechanisms for handling the conflict—as happened at Geneva and Lausanne for Lebanon in 1983, for example—is no solution, and attempts to set up a new regime without taking current power relations into account—as happened in Cotonou in 1993 for Liberia or Bicesse in 1992 for Angola—are doomed to failure. The first matter to be decided in connection with power relations is, Who is to be included in the negotiations, and How are their positions in the conflict to be translated into the new state institutions (Stein 1993). More specifically, Are the aggressors, repressors and rebels to be rewarded for their role in the conflict, and Are new institutions handed over to the old villains, the new villains, or to new civic actors in an effort to bring in a reformed leadership? Parties to the problem should be parties to the settlement, a settlement which is made with them, not against them. This does not mean that no settlement should be concluded until

24.3

Formulas for Regimes and Institutions

431

every splinter faction is included, for that would be an invitation to factions to splinter and to splinters to turn to spoilers (Stedman 2000). It does mean that the widest net possible should be thrown to include parties to the conflict, coupled with a demonstrated willingness to go on without them: They should be given a vote but not a veto. Afonso Dhlakama’s ReNaMo in Mozambique, Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA in Angola, and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia were scarcely perfect partners to the agreements they signed, but those agreements gave a standard to use to bring them back to a peace process and would have been meaningless without them; the great weakness which destroyed the Yamoussoukro Accords on Liberia in 1991 was the absence of ULiMo, judged unworthy of inclusion in the negotiations. It is hard to exclude the parties and leaders who have pursued the conflict but it is important also to include political figures who tend to be more flexible, have a stake in the establishment of a workable system, and can make and implement a negotiated settlement. Durable settlements to end ethnic conflicts would not meet their purposes if they only provide a handover of power to the next despot; they should be doing something more, and a new type of political system better equipped to handle its grievances is provided by conflict management mechanisms but also by the inclusion of new sectors and leaders who will keep those mechanisms in working order. Power distribution at the time of negotiations takes the form of a mutually hurting stalemate reflecting several types of relations (Zartman 1995a, b, c, 2000): rebel predominance with the government coming to terms or most frequently, as in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Liberia, Rwanda, Lebanon, and Namibia) (Stedman 1991; Davidow 1984; Zartman 1989, 1995a, b, c; Sisk 1994; Crocker 1992), government predominance with the rebellion coming to terms (as in the Basque country or the Philippines (Clark 1995; Druckman/Green 1995). or a real draw in which an ethnic group wins a place in the system without destroying the government (as in the Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972 on Sudan, the Lusaka Agreements on Angola, the Rome Agreement on Mozambique, and the 2016 agreement in Colombia. These differing relations determine the degree of newness in the new political system, either as a totally new regime, as in the first case, or as a basic modification of the existing system, as in the latter two cases. Power relations should not be frozen in the new regime; indeed, they produce an artificial arrangement with pressures for change if they maintain a temporary power relation longer than warranted. Such is the weakness of permanently entrenched seats, unlike those for a limited time in the Lancaster House Agreement in 1979 Zimbabwe, or exclusionary pacts, as in the National Front of 1960 in Colombia, or fixed apportionments, as in the Lebanese National Pact of 1943. Rather, they should be flexible, providing mechanisms for handling both shifting relations among the parties and the disappearance of the ethnic conflict entirely, by blending ethnicity into a new identity, either national or constructed. Institutional arrangements for governing future relations and determining future payoffs—or outputs—vary among formulas based on integration, separation, and domination. Each contains many different forms: Integration can range from a powersharing arrangement that preserves the parties’ integrity but makes then

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cooperate, to institutions such as national issue parties that cut up the sides and create new identities; separation can range from complete autonomy to the ingredients of consociation (where it overlaps with integration); and dominance can range from temporary mechanisms like elections to permanent arrangements like single-party status. In fact, these are rarely absolute systems but ingredients of a mix. Yet they do represent different outcomes and different bargaining positions. At Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in November 1995, the Bosnians and Croats came in with a position based on integration and the Serbians with separation (Washington Post, 2 Nov 95: A23). Different positions can be bridged on the level of formula or of detail, but they require reconciliation rather than simply juxtaposition for an agreement to be durable. There are many types of challenges to the task of institution-building and constitution-making, but the specific challenge in overcoming ethnic conflict is to prevent feelings of discrimination and provide mechanisms of conflict management on ethnic grounds, and this in the aftermath of wounding and mobilizing ethnic violence. Meeting this challenge involves incentives and constraints “built by constitutional engineers into the structure of the selfish calculations of politicians” (Horowitz 1991: 155). This challenge hangs on two dilemmas. One dilemma behind such provisions stems from the clash between the future and the past— outputs and inputs: durability comes from the gradual elimination of internal ethnic differences, yet ethnic discrimination and consciousness is the cause and result of the conflict. The other dilemma relates to the need for the parties to judge each mechanism from the point of view of the beneficiary and the victim, on the assumption that they could find themselves in either position. While this is the underlying assumption of democracy—the right (indeed, likelihood) of the majority to become the minority, the assurance of the ins that they will not be punished when they become the outs—it is by no means the automatic consequence of either victory or accommodation in ethnic conflict. Thus, one guideline for durability is that ethnic distinctions should be phased out, not reinforced, even though ethnic compensation—measures such as affirmative action—may well be needed initially. Ethnic distinctions and compensation can work against as well as for defined groups, as indicated by Aristotle’s Motor, noted above. Even where an ethnic group has won a settlement based on separation—as in the creation of Israel, for example—internal distinctions are likely to raise the same problem—as in the case of the Sephardim and, even more, the Falashas, for example. Or, toward the future, institutions of a new political system in Somalia should not reflect a clan confederation but should foster integration and cooperation of clans. Another guideline is the encouragement of multiethnic or transethnic coalitions, to overcome the effects of purely ethnic parties, ethnic majorities, and ethnic outbidding, even though coalition may actually reinforce component group discipline. The complex provisions of the Nigerian constitution to provide for cross-regional majorities, the provision for minority participation in the interim South African constitution, and the permanent provisions framing the Namibian constitution are examples, as were the unsuccessful arrangements of the Vance-Owen federal plan in Bosnia.

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Formulas for Regimes and Institutions

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A third guideline is the provision of checks and balances, to prevent ethnicity from being reinforced by authoritarianism, even though such provisions may raise the possibility of inter-institutional paralysis. Structures that promote bargaining and accommodation are helpful to promoting openness and flexibility in the new system. The extraordinary structural complexity of the democratic regimes in Niger and Benin after 1992 were an antidote to the previous authoritarian regimes and their ethnic base, yet they contributed to the blockage that (coupled with ethnic rivalry and personal ambition) led to the military coup of January 1996 in Niger and the reappearance of Mathieu Kerekou in the presidential campaign of March 1996 in Benin. A fourth guideline calls for revisable and flexible rules, marked by period review and provisions for amendment, even though too much of the same good thing becomes instability and uncertainty. The regular revisions of the 1960 Cyprus regime in 1964, 1967, and 1973 were stages in the conflict, not in its resolution; the 1943 National Pact in Lebanon would have been more durable—and perhaps prevented the 14-year civil war—if it had been subject to regular revisions. As both the guidelines and the examples show, every measure has its excess, and the challenge in each instance is to find self-enforcing mechanisms whose durability depends on the enlightened self-interest of the parties and not simply their goodwill. Finally, mediated negotiations on outcomes to ethnic conflicts need to cover three projections of agreement: the constitution or longterm regime, the transitional arrangements, and the ceasefire or shortterm regime. Constitutions involve procedures for government selection, minority protection, and indemnities, pardons and judgments; transitions require a neutral administration and provisions for keeping the parties in the process; and ceasefire contain provisions for regroupment and monitors. The three steps are interrelated and build on each other, and again the most important requirements for durability are that all three be present and that they be consistent with each other. Ceasefires alone that do not provide for longterm institutionalization of relations are unlikely to last, and constitutions without the prior steps for getting there are unlikely to be attained. Similarly, an important tactical question concerns sequencing. Much diplomatic experience suggests the appropriateness of a reverse order, putting the constitutional goal first and then providing for the more immediate steps. This was the pattern in the Zimbabwe negotiations in 1979 and, in modified form involving early constitutional principles and then negotiating principles, in the Namibian negotiations in 1983;8; it is the pattern sought in the IGADD initiative on Sudan in 1994 and thereafter. At the same time, as this entire discussion emphasizes, there is no magic formula and no position among the three that is guaranteed to be superior.

24.4

Roles for Insiders and Outsiders

How does this work out in Sudan, Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, among others? It means that external parties should help internal parties work for solutions of autonomy within existing states as long as possible, meeting ever increasing

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pressures for ever greater separateness by ever more forthcoming measures of self rule. Only when the central state becomes so untrustworthy that it cannot provide a legitimate framework for its component units should breakup and secession be considered legitimate. At that point, enforced marriage, even living in separate rooms, would be a more acrimonious solution than any kind of divorce, and divorce becomes the only solution. In terms of identity principles, generous conditions of cohabitation within a single state can actually restore and reinforce the perceived value of the overarching principle, up to a point. When that point is past and the overarching identity is emptied of its value, the only remaining principle for the dissidents is that of ethnic identity, with all its problems. Getting rid of the infected member can be used to help restore—it does not necessarily do so automatically— the cohesion of the remaining members under the overarching identity principle. Through diverse policies and actions, the international community is contributing to the preservation of Sudanese, Sri Lankan and Nigerian unity (Wriggins 1995; Nigerian Conference 1995); it failed miserably on Yugoslavia (Zimmerman 1995; Woodward 1994) and is confused—understandably so—on Bosnia. Tactical flexibility on identity principles also allows more creative trade-offs and solutions than does adherence to absolute criteria of either ethnic or non-ethnic states. In Yugoslavia, for example, maintaining a multiethnic Bosnia within inherited borders allows for pluralist interactions among different ethnic or confessional groups and reduces the possibility of a Muslim and hence potentially Islamicist state. But it locks together people who have some very real and recent reasons to hate each other and who have very little promise of living in harmony. The alternative—to buy Serb agreement to a solution with an agreement for Bosnian Serbs to join Serbia which may be more of a punishment than a payment to Serbia), even though this may provide a precedent for Bosnian Croats to join Croatia and Croatian Serb to join Serbia, leaving a small Muslim Bosnia and a Croatian Croatia a more durable outcome—is precluded more by geography than by principle. In Sudan, in a reverse example, a separate southern state would be landlocked with few resources to assure its viability, and, more serious, would leave northern Sudan free to pursue its Islamicist policies at home and abroad; maintaining a multiethnic and multiconfessional state would work to curb such extremist tendencies, provided that the two communities have not already drifted too far apart into zero-sum forms of identity. Adherence to an absolute principle of either ethnic or multiethnic identity would not permit either tactical flexibility or choice of an identity principle that fits the evolution of the conflict. External states have a powerful weapon that minimizes the instrusiveness of their interest, and that is the ability to recognize states and set standards. Such standards of course need to be clearly stated and followed; the European and American attempts to tell various Yugoslav entities about the criteria and preconditions for recognition were a parody of diplomacy. On the other hand, the international community’s efforts to rule irredentism and secession in the Horn of Africa (except for Eritrea) illegitimate were clear and successful. Holding the line on

24.4

Roles for Insiders and Outsiders

435

criteria for lifting sanctions on Rhodesia and South Africa was important to their success. It is particularly important in a time of shifting rules and collapsing orders to affirm and reaffirm standards. Beyond verbal policy, external states have a clear role before them in the need for third party assistance in finding solutions for ethnic conflicts. If mediation is as necessary as described to the achievement of resolution in situations where conflict clouds the field and obstructs the vision of the parties, external actors must be willing to take up the role. There is no alternative, or rather the alternative is either a belated awakening of national consciences over inhuman bloodshed only after the fact, or a dulling those consciences so that bloodshed is no longer troubling and national publics opt out of a common sense of humanity. There were identifiable points where ethnic or confessional conflicts in Lebanon, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Somalia, and Liberia could have been prevented by some direct and low-cost action by specific states—notably the U.S.—in the international community and the opportunity was lost (Zartman, Preventing Collapse). That opportunity was lost in part because of a lack of responsibility and leadership, a failure of foreign policy. But some opportunities were also lost because of a lack of skill among those who did try to devise solution. An absence of patience, a lack of preparedness, an ignorance of alternatives, and a shortfall in perseverance undermined demarches even when an initial effort was launched. Training and further research in formulating appropriate solutions is needed to increase the chances of success for positive intervention when it does occur.

24.5

Conclusion

This study has focused on the ingredients of durable solutions to ethnic conflicts, as conflicting parties grapple with the problems of finding a formula to end conflict and to provide the basis for workable relations within a new political community. It has sought to carry the requirements of negotiations to manage conflict beyond the contextual conditions of ripeness and conflict cycles into the substantive components of a durable solution. In so doing, it has tried to steer between notions of absolute requirements for stable outcomes and ad hoc processes determined only by power relations, by concentrating on the two fundamental components of such a formula. These are the identity principle, relating either to an ethnic nation or to a nation abuilding, and the institutional regime. While specifics need to be tailored to the situation, that regime should observe several important guidelines. Protect those out of power (non-incumbents and minorities), Phase out fixed (ethnic) distinctions, Promote interethnic coalitions, Install checks and balances, and Be flexible and revisable.

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References Agence France Presse-Guinée 1958. 19 November. Aristotle 1948. Politics (Ernest Barker ed., Oxford University Press), p 242. Bercovitch, Jacob and Jeffrey Rubin, eds. 1942, Mediation in International Relations (St Martin’s). Bokhari, Imtiaz 1995. “Internal Negotiations among Many Actors: Afghanistan,” in I William Zartman, ed., Elusive Peace (Brookings). Brown, Michael, ed. 1996. The International Dimensions of Internal Conflict (MIT Press). Burton, John Conflict: Resolution and Provention (St Matin’s). Burton, John, ed. 1990. Conflict: Human Needs Theory (St Martin’s). Burton John (1987) Resolving Deep-Rooted Conflic. University Presses of America, Lanham. Clark, Robert 1995. “Negotiating with the Basque Separatists” in I William Zartman, ed., Elusive Peace (Brookings). Coakley, John 1993. “Introduction,” in Coakley, ed., The Territorial Management of Ethnic Conflict (Cass). Cobban, Alfred 1944. Nationalism (University of Chicago Press). Crocker, Chester A 1992. High Noon in Southern Africa (Norton). Davidow, Jeffrey 1984. A Peace in Southern Africa (Westview). Dawisha, Adeed & I William Zartman, eds. 1988. Beyond Coercion: The Durability of the Arab State (Croom Helm). Deng, Francis 1995a. “Negotiating a Hidden Agenda,” in I William Zartman, ed., Elusive Peace. (Brookings). Deng, Francis 1995b. War of Visions (Brookings). Deutsch, Karl & William Foltz, eds. 1963. Nation-Building (Atherton). Druckman, Daniel and Justin Green, Negotiations in the Philippines,” in Zartman, ed., Elusive Peace (Brooking). Eisenstadt, Tod and Daniel Garcia 1995. “Colombia” in I William Zartman, ed., Elusive Peace (Brookings). Erlich, Haggai 1983. The Struggle over Eritrea (Hoover). Foltz, William 1963. From French West Africa to the Mali Federation (Yale University Press). Garten, Jeffrey and Stephen John Stedman 1995. “Mediation in Civil War” in Michael Brown, ed., The International Dimension of Internal Conflict (MIT Press). Gboyega, Alex 1996. “Nigeria: Unresolved Conflicts” in I William Zartman, eds., Governance as Conflict Management (Brookings). Horowitz, Donald 1991. A Democratic South Africa? Constitutional Engineering in a Divided Society (University of California Press). Horowitz, Donald 1985. Ethnic Groups in Conflict (University of California Press). Ka, Samba 1992. Trade in the Senegambia (Washington: The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies doctoral dissertation). Kirschbaum, Stanislav 1993. “Czechoslovakia: The Creation, Federalization, and Dissolution of a Nation-State,” in John Coakley, Territorial Management of Ethnic Conflict (London: Cass). Laitin, David 1987. “South Africa: Violence, Myths and Democratic Reform, World Politics 2:258–279 (January). Lijphart, Arend 1988. Ingredients for a Viable Power-Sharing System in Angola, paper presented to a Conference on Prospects for National Reconciliation in Angola (Department of State, 20 April). Lijphart, Arend 1985. “Power-Sharing in South Africa,” Policy Paper in International Affairs no. 24. (University of California, Institute of International Studies). Lijphart, Arend 1977. Democracy in Plural Societies. (New Haven: Yale University Press). Lowenkopf, Martin 1995. “Liberia: Putting the State Back Together,” in I William Zartman, ed., Collapsed States (Lynne Rienner). Lund, Michael 1994. Preventing Violent Conflicts (US Institute of Peace, l994).

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Lyons, Terrence 1996. “The Regional Dimension,” in Francis Deng et al., Sovereignty as Responsibility (Brookings). Midlarsky, Manus, ed. 1993. The Internationalization of Civil Strife (Macmillan). Mitchell, Christopher and Keith Webb, eds. 1988. New Approaches to International Mediation (Greenwood). Moreno, Luis 1994. “Ethnoterritorial Accemodation and Democratic Development in Spain,” paper presented to the XVI World Congress of the International Political Science Association, Berlin. Mutwol, Julius 2009. Peace Agreements and Civil Wars in Africa. (Cambria). Myers, David, ed. 1991. Regional Hegemons (Westview). Naldi, Gino 1989. The Organization of African Unity: An Analysis of its Role (Mansell). Nigerian Conference 1995. (Washington: National Endowment for Democracy). Richarte, Marie-Pierre, 1995. La partition de Chypre (Sorbonne, doctoral thesis in Geography). Rubin, Barnett, 1995. The Search for Peace in Afghanistan. (New Haven: Yale University Press). Rudolph, Joseph, Jr. and Robert Thompson 1985. “Ethnoterritorial Movements and the Policy Process: Accommodating Nationalist Demands in the Developed World, Comparative Politics 3: 291–311 (April). Salim, Salim Interview. Sherman, Richard 1980. Eritrea, The Unfinished Revolution (Praeger). Sisk, Timothy 1994. Democratization in South Africa (Princeton University Press). Sisk, Timothy 1995. “Living Together? International Intervention and Power-Sharing in Ethnic Conflicts”, report for the Carnegie Commission on the Prevention of Deadly Conflicts, 13 October. Solarz, Stephen 1980. Arms for Morocco. Washington DC: House of Representatives, Committee in Foreign Affairs, (January), appendix. Stedman, Stephen John 1996. “Mediation in Civil War,” in Michael Brown, ed., The International Dimension of Internal Conflict (MIT Press). Stedman, Stephen John 1991. Peacemaking in Civil War (Lynne Rienner). The Western Sahara Case, International Court of Justice Reports l975 (ICJ, l975). Touval, Saadia and I William Zartman, eds. 1985. International Mediation in Theory and Practice (Westview). Washington Post 2 Nov 1995. Weiner, Myron & Ali Banuazizi, eds. 1994. The Politics of Social Transformatiuon in Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan. (Syracuse University Press). Woodward, Susan 1994. Balkan Tragedy (Brookings). Wriggins, Howard 1995. “Negotiating with the Tamil Rebellion,” in I William Zartman, ed., Elusive Peace (Brookings). Wriggins, Howard, ed. 1994. Dynamics of Regional Politics (Columbia University Press). Zartman, I William “Conclusion: The Last Mile,” in Zartman, ed., Elusive Peace (Brookings). Zartman, I William “Negotiating the South African Conflict,” in Zartman, ed., Elusive Peace (Brookings). Zartman, I William 1980a. “Toward a Theory of Elite Circulation,” in Zartman, ed., Elites in the Middle East (New York: Praeger), in this collection. Zartman, I William, ed. 1980b. The Study of Elites in the Middle East (Praeger), in this collection. Zartman, I William 1987. International Relations in the New Africa (Lanham: University Presses of America), 2nd ed. Zartman, I William 1989. Ripe for Resolution: Conflict and Intervention in Africa (Oxford University Press). Zartman, I William 1990. “Negotiations and Prenegotiations in Ethnic Conflict: The Beginning, The Middle, and the Ends,” in Joseph Montville, ed., Conflict and Peacemaking in Multiethnic Societies (Lexington: Heath). Zartman, I William 1993a. “Prenegotiation: Phases and Functions,”” in Janice Stein, ed., Getting to the Table (The Johns Hopkins University Press).

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Zartman, I William 1993b. “The Unfinished Agenda: Negotiating Internal Conflicts,” in Roy Licklider, ed., Stopping the Killing (New York University Press). Zartman, I William 1995a. “South Africa,” in I William Zartman, ed., Elusive Peace (Brookings). Zartman, I William, ed. 1995b. Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority. (Boulder: Lynne Rienner), in this collection. Zartman, I William, ed. 1995c. Elusive Peace: Negotiating an End of Civil Wars. (Washington: Brookings), in this collection. Zartman, I William 1996a. “African Regional Security and Changing Patterns of Relations,” in Edward Keller & Donald Rothchild, eds., Africa in the New International Order (Lynne Rienner). Zartman, I William 1996b. African Regional Security and Changing Patterns of Relations,” in Edmond Keller and Donald Rothchild, eds., Africa in the New International Order (Westview). Zartman, I William, ed. 1996c. Governance as Conflict Management (Washington: Brookings), in this collection. Zartman, I William & Saadia Touval 1996. Peacemaking in the New Era (United States Institute of Peace). Zartman, I William, ed. 2001. Preventive Negotiation (Rowman & Littlefield). Zimmerman, Warren 1995. “The Last Ambassador to Yugoslavia,” LXXIV Foreign Affairs 2:2– 20 (March).

Chapter 25

The Diplomacy of African Boundaries

Four disparate but vicious conflicts have soiled Africa’s soil as the twenty-first century begins, all involving territorial or boundary questions in a continent that is otherwise territorially stable.1 The oldest, Western Sahara, currently in remission but since 1975 pitting Algeria and the Polisario Front against Morocco, entered a new phase in 2007 when the UN Security Council dropped the idea of a referendum for a negotiated solution and Morocco officially proposed the solution of autonomy. Two border wars, in 1998–2000 and 2011 and counting, declared and undeclared, respectively, followed state self-determination when Eritrea broke away from Ethiopia and South Sudan broke away from Sudan. Finally, an army mutiny freed the northern part of Mali to declare independence under the National Liberation Movement of Azawad (MLNA), which was then pushed aside by various Islamist movements under the control of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghrib (AQIM), in 2012. African boundaries and territorial allocations are artificial, we hear, and are the root of all evil. “Colonial partition had inserted the continent into a framework of purely artificial and often positively harmful frontiers,” wrote Basil Davidson.2 African academic and diplomats alike inveigh against the evil wrought against the continent by cutting it up in 1895 and thereafter. Yet most boundaries around the world are artificial, in that they separate people from each other. “Borders separate the me from the non-me,” wrote the famous geographer Vidal, begging the question of how separate the two identities are. African anthropologies generally contribute to the misunderstanding by showing tribal areas as homogenous and bounded by a line, whereas their populations usually intermingle around the edges. They ignore the fact that Africa states or political entities were generally population states rather than territorial states; the

I am grateful to Kwaku Nuameh for his fine research assistance, and to Mark Levy and Bryan Frederick for furnishing important statistics. 2 Basil Davidson, The Black Man’s Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation-State (1992). 1

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 I. W. Zartman, I William Zartman: A Pioneer in Conflict Management and Area Studies, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06079-4_25

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state was where its people were rather than the reverse, and the units were often unsettle as to their territory. In fact, no one has ever indicated a “natural” set of lines to bound Africa states, or any other way to define African political entities physically.

25.1

Artificiality and Naturalness

Although boundaries separate people, “natural frontiers” are usually thought of in terms of physical geography. Mountains, rivers, lakes and deserts form the natural walls and moats that help define and defend the territorial state. Yet physical feature are not stable boundary-makers in and of themselves but in relation to the people they separate. When they cross areas of low population and thus divide fewer people, they contribute to stability. Rivers are uninhabited and may provide good defenses, but they are also the backbone of economic basins and populous regions, whereas mountains tend to decrease in population as they increase in altitude, offering both defense and stability. Caesar’s crossing the Rubicon was a symbolic moment of decision, but Hannibal’s crossing the Alps was an exceptional military feat. Half of Africa’s boundaries are formed by rivers (generally in the thalweg), most of them serving both as transportation arteries through their region and as circulation systems for their economic basins. Cross-river traffic tends to be heavier than down-river traffic. Only a small percentage of Africa’s boundaries follow crest lines because the continent’s mountains tend to come in clusters rather than in folds; most of the “crests” that do provide the basis for Africa’s boundaries are low watersheds or drainage divides rather than elevated ridges, marking no population gradients. About a fifth of the continent’s boundaries run across relatively unpopulated deserts without visible topographic features where stable divisions are best provided by the most unnatural of boundaries: straight (geometric) lines. Many of Africa’s 110 boundaries run through sparse populations. Half of the boundaries cross 100-km-wide border zones with a population density of less than 20 per km2, and three-quarters of the African boundaries cross border zones with a density of less than 40. The 12 least-populated border zones, with densities of less than 1 person per km2, run through desert areas mainly along geometric lines. Only 9—less than a tenth of Africa’s boundaries—cross border zones with a density greater than 100, all of them in the Great Lakes region of central Africa, where at least three-quarters of the lines are determined by rivers and lakes, which unite as much as they divide. Thus, except for this last group, Africa’s boundaries divide relatively sparsely inhabited areas (Fig. 25.1).

25.1

Artificiality and Naturalness

441

Fig. 25.1 African population density. Source Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) Columbia University, with permission

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The Diplomacy of African Boundaries

Africanization

But beyond its referents in physical and human geography, the debate over artificiality refers to another dimension, that of historic ownership. African boundaries were established by foreign occupiers, the colonial powers. To be naturalized, like citizens, they need to be Africanized, to be reestablished by the African states themselves. This process can be accomplished in two ways, by war and by diplomacy. War has not worked to change boundaries in Africa; at best, its failure has served to Africanize inherited boundaries. African states have tried to change boundaries by military action many times: Morocco and Algeria, Ethiopia and Somalia, Mali and Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), and Dahomey (now Benin) and Niger in the 1960s; Uganda and Tanzania, and again Ethiopia and Somalia, and Mali and Upper Volta in the late l970s; Nigeria and Cameroun, and Chad and Libya in the early 1980s, and Senegal and Mauritania, and again Mali and Burkina Faso, and Nigeria and Cameroon in the late 1980s; Nigeria and Cameroun again in the early 1990s; Eritrea and Ethiopia, and Egypt and Sudan in the late 1990s; and DRC and Uganda, CAR and Cameroun, and Burundi and Rwanda in the first decade of the 2000s. None of these war resulted in boundary changes, and not all of them have succeeded in naturalizing the inherited borders to both sides’ satisfaction. There is a positive, even if costly, aspect to military attempts in that failed efforts to change Africanize the boundary by confirming it as unchangeable. Diplomacy has done better in Africanizing foreign-drawn boundaries. Continental efforts began with the Organization of African Unity (OAU) Charter in 1963, whose article III made territorial integrity a basic norm of inter-African relations. The norm was renewed more specifically in a resolution passed by the OAU at Cairo the following year, to leave no doubt that inherited, artificial boundaries were generically naturalized and legitimized. Only two countries— Morocco which never had a southeastern border with Algeria, and Somalia whose border treaty with Ethiopia was not only contested but lost—objected to this blanket legitimization, although some other countries agreed with silently crossed fingers, as the subsequent wars testify. The two initial actions provided a blanket multilateral Africanization of the inherited boundaries. Given this deliberate and conclusive effort by the founding members of the OAU, it is odd to hear African diplomats criticize their boundaries later on. Some OAU members Africanized their boundaries bilaterally, by diplomatic agreements either sanctifying or rectifying the status quo. Before the founding of the OAU, in 1902 Egypt and Sudan, and in 1963 Mali and Mauritania, made rectifications in their border to fit transhumant patterns; the former changes were finally resolved in 2008. Algeria and Morocco drew a common border for the first time in 1972; both states ratified the agreement in their fashion but bad blood still exists between the neighbors. Zaire and Zambia rectified uncertainties in their border in 1989 with small alterations to accommodate local populations. After a bloody war, an international boundary commission established a firm border

25.2

Africanization

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between Eritrea and Ethiopia in 2003, to the dissatisfaction of the latter. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) confirmed the independence borders between Libya and Chad in 1994, between Cameroun and Nigeria in 2003, between Botswana and Namibia in 1999, between Benin and Niger in 2005. A number if these cases—such as Benin-Niger over Lete island that appeared on at Niger River low water—concerned islands (Darak between Nigeria and Cameroun, Kainasara and Tewa between Nigeria and Chad, Rukwanzi between DRC and Uganda, Singabezi between Zimbabwe and Zambia, Kasikili between Namibia and Botswana) or shifting rivers (as between Uganda and DRC, Zambia and DRC, and Senegal and Mauritania) that resulted from changing watercourses on which the boundary had been hung, and sooner later were resolved by diplomatic attention. While most of these agreements went through their states’ normal ratification processes, other means of accepting inherited or rectified boundaries include simple declarations by the head of state. President William Tubman accepted the hitherto-disputed frontier with Ivory Coast, even though it ran on the right (west) bank of the Cavally river to Liberia’s disfavor, in a speech in l961.3 King Hassan II ratified the new border agreement with Algeria by royal declaration, in the absence of a parliament to ratify, in 1973, repeated in 198l.4 Presidents Gowon and Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria accepted border agreements with Cameroun, unfavorable to Nigeria, in 1975 and 2003, and Guide Moammar Qadhafi accepted the ICJ ruling on the border with Chad, unfavorable to Libya, in 1994. Rather than naturalize colonial boundaries by acceptance, some African states have proposed “African” criteria for new boundaries, generally without success. Idi Amin started the war that overthrew him by claiming that the Kagera river was a more natural frontier with Tanzania than the colonial straight line; his African neighbor did not share his view and invaded. Morocco’s historic claims over western Algeria, northern Mali, and Mauritania on grounds of past conquest and religious allegiance have been withdrawn. Interestingly, in the ICJ case between Nigeria and Cameroun, while Cameroun argued the sanctity of the 1913 colonial treaties, Nigeria argued the prior sanctity of the domains of the Kings and Chiefs of Old Calabar, recognized in 1884 by a protectorate agreement with the Queen of England.5 The Mali-Mauritanian and Egyptian-Sudanese rectifications were made to bend straightline borders to conform to customary grazing patterns, but accepted only in the first case. The relation of secession and unification to boundaries is unclear. Obviously the appearance of a new state or the disappearance of an old one involves boundary “changes,” although these are usually considered territorial changes rather than changes in an established line. The OAU/AU doctrine of uti possedetis, i.e.

3

Fraternité (Abidjan), 1 December 1961. I William Zartman, Ripe for Resolution (New York: Oxford, 1989), 76. 5 Timothy Daniel, “Trans-boundary Co-operation and Territorial Dispute Resolution: The Experience of Nigeria,” paper presented to a State Department Conference on African Boundaries, 28 May 2002, p. 20. 4

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established boundary inviolability, has generally been interpreted to allow the unification of existing entities, such as in Tanzania (Tanganyika-Zanzibar); this is usually accomplished by a referendum, as advised by the ICJ in its 1974 opinion on the Western Sahara, although no referendum was held in Tanzania. As a prelude to independence, a number of referenda, notably in Togo, Cameroun, and Kenya, helped determine territorial allocation. Unification generally would pose little difficulty but there are no examples other than Tanzania, although the unification of Western Sahara with Morocco is still contested. It is secession that continues to pose boundary/territorial challenges. The extension of uti possedetis is the doctrine of state—not national— self-determination, in which the referent or self of the self-determination is a previously existing (colonial) territory. Thus, two elements are involved in secession: the state (constitution of a colonially-established unit) and determination (popular expression of the will for independence). Like anything in law, international or not, these precisions solve nothing at all; they merely kick the contest down the road. Thus, on the first (the state self), among prospective newcomers, Eritrea and Somaliland were both separate colonial units, the first now recognized and the second shunned by the international community; South Sudan and Biafra were both administrative distinctions within a single state but nothing more, the first now recognized by the international community and the second shunned. It’s all politics, which uses law for its own purposes. On the second element (determination), all four of the territories mentioned fought for their independence; Eritrea and South Sudan duly held their referenda, Biafra did not, and Somaliland passed a popularly supported declaration of independence confirmed by a referendum in 2001. Azawad (northern Mali) has declared its independence, which was then hijacked by a number of Islamist groups and Casamance has tired of its independence struggle; neither territory was a separate administrative unit before independence.

25.3

Problems and Prospects

Yet many border problems remain, with boundaries not yet fully Africanized by their states’ acceptance. Three types of problems persist. In some cases, large pieces of territory are still contested. In others, small rectifications are needed to make user-friendly for contemporary populations the boundary that was often drawn in ignorance of the actual terrain or under conditions now changed. And in a still large number of cases, borders delimited on paper have not yet been demarcated on the ground. Many of the territorial contests in the continent have faded into history, although they could be revived at any time that would fit a worsen state of relations between the countries concerned. Prime examples are the two major irredentist issues, the Moroccan and the Somali. The Western Sahara remains the major

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Problems and Prospects

445

territorial issue of Africa in the twenty-first century, and despite the fact that “any African state can have an boundary issue if it wants one,”6 there is no apparent basis for any other claim of importance. Morocco has recognized (even if not always officially pictured) its borders with all its neighbors but retains its claim over the Western Sahara, which it administers with UN recognition. The degree of conflict over the territory is directly related to the state of relations between Morocco and Algeria, and Algeria holds the key to the resolution of the conflict. The Somali Transitional Government has a hard time enforcing its writ beyond the boundaries of Mogadiscio and so cannot pursue its claims to the Ethiopian Ogaden, although a boundary has never been official settled between the two countries; Somaliland, Puntland and the al-Shabab-held territories elude its grasp. The likelihood in even the middle term of an irredentist claim’s being pursued is slim in the absence of a strong, coherent Somali state and a unifying external enemy. Other transborder irredenta are less active, despite the role of ethnic disputes in African states’ domestic politics. Rwandan irredentist claims on undefined parts of northeast Congo were internationally decried when intimated by Rwandan president Pasteur Bizimungu in 1996 and have not resurfaced, officially; the Nigerian claim over the Bakassi Peninsula of Cameroun, several times withdrawn, could always be revived. Ugandan claims over the Kagera salient of Tanzania and the western region of Kenya vanished when Idi Amin was overthrown in 1979. In the longer run, slivers and enclaves like Gambia, Cabinda, Lesotho, Swaziland, and even Djibouti may rejoin the neighbors of which they are “naturally” a part, but there is no such pressure at present.7 The era of large territorial claims in Africa, the aftermath of decolonization, appears to be slowly passing as states realize the difficulties of expansion and become more comfortable in their skins. However, the cultivation of distinct national identities—often the only thing that distinguishes neighbors from each other—makes national property lines the subject of conflict. Large national identities can be aroused by small border incidents, even along clearly demarcated lines, and border incidents can be triggered by sharpened national identities. When Mauritania expelled some of its Senegalese-like citizens —the Hapular—along the Senegal river boundary in 1995, Senegalese attacked Mauritania traders with whom they had always worked peacefully in Dakar 200 kms away. When Morocco and Algeria tout their historic distinctions from each other, skirmishes and incidents break out along a border a century and a half old. Africa’s bloodiest interstate war broke out in 1998 when Eritrea and Ethiopia, in search of mutually exclusive identities after their recent “friendly” divorce, discovered that their boundary was undemarcated. In Mali, land of paradoxes in 2012, the army mutinied because it was not given the means to defeat the Tuareg National Liberation Movement of Azawad (MNLA), whereupon the MNLA declared

6

I William Zartman, 1969, International Relations of the New Africa (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall), p. 79. 7 The Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC) which operated with support from Kinshasa, lost its steam with improved relations between Congo and Angola.

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independence for northern Mali. Somaliland, declared independent in 1992, has been proceeding with relative stability despite its non-recognition, and Puntland maintains its autonomy. The territorial state and the identitarian nation make an explosive mix. Raw materials are often cited as a cause of competing border claims, although they are weak as a justifying reason. A desire to control their own resources was certainly an element in the secessionist efforts of Biafrans, Casamançais, Western Sahrawis, Southern Sudanese, and Cabindans, and a desire to share more equitably in others’ resources was—paradoxically—in part behind the rebellion of the Tuareg. A relatively new category of boundary disputes, however, concerns maritime boundaries across offshore oilfields, as between Guinea and Guinea Bissau, Nigeria and Cameroun, Ivory Coast and Ghana, and Tunisia and Libya, generally susceptible to resolution by the ICJ.8 In sum, the issue of irredenta, secession, and territorial disputes is minimal in Africa, with the notable exceptions of different types (Western Sahara, Azawad, Somaliland) standing out because of their rarity. The near-absence of irredenta can be explained about all by the uselessness and illegitimacy of claims compared to the cost: it’s not worth it. Similarly, as the Tuareg are discovering, secession too is costly and illegitimate; the first country to break the uti possedetis norm, South Sudan, shows that it takes over a half century to do so (as noted, both Eritrea, which took three decades of war, and Somaliland are not exceptions to the rule). It is hard to make a conclusive choice between two causes, but the norm of stringent illegitimacy of territorial changes in Africa is a powerful deterrent.9 The second type of problem, the major issue in current African border relations, concerns border rectifications. Many African boundaries can stand a good second look after years of use to make sure that they are user-friendly. There are several causes for a need for minor rectifications. First is the ignorance of the original boundary-makers. Numerous are the cited terrain features that simply do not exist; equally numerous are those of multiple or otherwise ambiguous existence. For example, the Mali-Mauritanian border follows the Wadou “River” at one point, and one can well imagine the colonial administrator asking his interpreter the name of the watercourse in question, with the response, “C’est le wadou, M’sieur.” However, “wadou” means intermittent river (wadi) and the area is crisscrossed by such but only when it rains; finding the right wadou poses a challenge. We have been engaged in drawing lines upon maps where no white man’s foot ever trod; we have been giving away mountains and rivers and lakes to each other, only hindered by the small impediment that we never knew exactly where the mountains and rivers and lakes were,10 said Lord Salisbury at the signing of the

8

Maritime boundaries are more complex because criteria open to a great range of interpretation. Bryan Frederick, Territorial Disputes. PhD Dissertation, SAIS-Johns Hopkins University 2012. 10 Quoted in J C Anne, The International Boundaries of Nigeria 1885–1960: The Framework of an Emergent African Nation (London: Bristol, 1970), p. 3. 9

25.3

Problems and Prospects

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Anglo-French Convention of 1890 on the boundary between present-day Nigeria and Niger. Second, imprecise and transient features are often chosen as boundary indicators. Rocks, promontories, even trees, and otherwise features prominent at the time give way to wear and weather, so as to be no longer visible. Human geographic features fall in this category as well; transhumant patterns for grazing and watering that are often used as a basis for African boundaries can change over time, as a consequence of climatic, topographic and demographic changes. These were the elements used to define the Ethiopian-Somali boundary, such as it is, and their transience is notable. Indeed even boundary markers established for demarcation need maintenance and renewal with time. Third, often even correctly identified and well established geographic features change. Rivers change their course, islands emerge and submerge, mountain crests wear away, wandering into neighboring states’ territory as humans have tried to define it.11 When after three years’ study, the ICJ in 1999 decided that an island in the Chobe river toward the end of the Caprivi Strip, not far from the Botswana-Namibia-Zambia-Zimbabwe quadripoint, was the Sedudu south of the thalweg in Botswana and not the Kasikili north of the thalweg in Namibia, it left the nationality for five more intermittent islands in the Chobe in doubt.12 Finally, human settlements, movements and activities introduce a new element not taken into account a century ago. New villages and town spring up and grow, new roads are traced between them, new bridges and ferries cross rivers, new activities from airports to mines spring up and require more new roads to connect them. Where state control is weak in border regions, they often find themselves incorporated into trade networks and even currency zones of their neighbors, in disregard of established borders. In sum, areas formerly comfortably separated by boundaries now find them an increased nuisance. The importance of roads in the context needs to be highlighted: Many African boundaries were drawn to follow pre-existing roads, keeping transportation flows on one side of a border, as seen notably in the border between Algeria and Libya. These are not only imprecise and transient features, similar to geographic landmarks already noted, but they also reflect changing patterns of human relations, both in their course and in the larger socio-economic areas through which they pass. In sum, for reasons of imprecision at the outset and of change since then, borders need to be revisited, reviewed and revised as necessary. The basis for such reviews is the colonially inherited border. The work is done by bilateral boundary commissions, as have been established among a number of countries. However, many African borders remain unvisited, often in very inhospitable terrain and often in the midst of very incompatible relations between the two border states. Unrevisited, the borders can be an ingredient in already bad relations or a pretext for worsened ones.

For an adventurous tale, see James Workman, “‘Drawing a Line’ in the Water Breeds African Border Disputes,” ICWA Letters JGW-14 (April 2003). 12 James Workman, “Curse of the Thalweg: Islands in the Stream,” ICWA Letters JGW-14 (Hanover NH: Institute for Current World Affairs, 2003. 11

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25

The Diplomacy of African Boundaries

Thus, the work of border commissions and border rectifications is part of normal diplomacy conducted between states with positive relations. The third type of problem deals very specifically with the absence of physical border demarcation on the ground, even if the line has been established in documents for delimitation.13 Three decades ago, with the northern two-thirds of Africa independent, four out of every ten African boundaries were defined on paper but not demarcated on the ground. Most of the undemarcated borders separated states previously under the same former colonial ruler, where demarcation had been considered unnecessary. Since then, some of these lines have been marked while relations between the neighbors were good, in order to reduce the danger of future conflict. For example, Algeria has made the establishment of border markers with its neighbors an article of its policy for normalized relations.14 However, recent eruptions of border wars between Eritrea and Ethiopia and between Sudan and South Sudan highlight the fragility of borders in the special case of secession or state separation. Unless borders are demarcated before secession, the split is certain to bring about a border war. Territory and lines are not the problem; it always lies deeper in the bitterness of secession, but the bitterness is triggered into action by border disputes. The cause of the Eritrea-Ethiopia war lay deep in the psyche of the two countries’ leaders; the issue in the inter-Sudanese war, undeclared but active, was oil, among other things. Demarcation makes borders visible, but it is only half the process. Rigid borders can be as much a cause of incidents and bad relations as uncertain borders, particularly in more densely populated or heavily traveled areas. Even in the absence of conflicts over borders, conflicts across borders are likely to occur and need to be prevented from escalating.15 Border regimes need to be established to render the clear borders permeable under controlled conditions and to forestall incidents that are certain to occur in the normal course of life along the borders. By establishing clearly marked yet permeable borders, African governments can reduce the likelihood of boundary disputes and also the chance that low-level human activity across borders will provoke high-level conflict between states. Good fences—with gates— make good neighbors. The rest of African could do well by following the Algerian, Nigerian and Congolese (among others’) examples, and establish border commissions to rectify and demarcate boundaries during times of stable relations. It is in this area that the dynamics of boundary relations in the twenty-first century in Africa lie, and no in the search for new types of boundaries or the pursuit of territorial conflicts. That is

I William Zartman, “Bordering on War,” Foreign Policy 124:66–67 (May/June 2001). Algeria demarcated its borders with Mali, Niger, and Tunisia in 1983 and with Mauritania in 1985, and defined its border with Libya in agreements signed in August 2001. 15 Kjell Åke Nordquist, “Drawing Lines: Boundary Disputes,” in I William Zartman, ed., Preventive Negotiations (Lanham MD: Rowland and Littlefield, 2001); Ajamu Olayiwola Owolabi, “Nigeria and Cameroun: Boundary Disputes and the problem of Border Security,” African Notes XV 1/2: 39–47 (1991). 13 14

25.3

Problems and Prospects

449

the message that emerges from this team of specialists from inside and outside the continent. But for some problems facing Africa increasingly, borders do not matter at all, the fourth type of problem. The Insurgent religious movements of the Sahel, such as Boko Haram mainly in Nigeria, al-Qaeda in the islamic Maghreb (AQIM) originally in Algeria, the Unity and Justice Movement of West Africa (MUJOA) and the Combatants of the Religion (Ansar al-Din) and others centered in Mali, are transborder movements by nature and anti-border causes by design. They seek above all to destroy state institutions and to install a borderless fundamentalist Islamic community (umma). Irredenta, demarcation, secession, and rectifications are meaningless and in fact impediments to them. Whereas the other three border issues seek to strengthen or correct borders, the transborder movements by working in the opposite direction make the other problems more difficult to resolve.

25.4

Conclusion

Africa is territorially quite stable, despite persistent claims to the contrary. This stability can be attributed largely to the authority of the uti possedetis norm that the African states are willing to enforces diplomatically. Only in rare cases is it worth the cost and trouble to break the norm. But the norm cannot cover all ambiguities, which come above all from undemarcated boundaries. More broadly, they come most often either from large issues such as secession or small issues such as inconvenient turns. The former run to high politics, as the four twenty-first century cases testify. The latter are easily resolved by normal diplomacy and study of human effects. The most important measure to take to reduce conflict is to demarcate the borders at times when conflict is low, and particularly when secession is in process but before it is finally consummated. The challenge is to make these lines as user-friendly as possible. In the process, African states are learning to live within their skins and are getting used to the fit, so that irredenta and territorial ambitions are fading into history and the experience of living with newness.

Chapter 26

Middle East Boundaries

Turkey shoots down a Russian plane that crosses into its airspace.1 Algeria closes its border with Morocco. People know what state they belong to, even when they are refugees away from home. Israeli border police subject incoming travellers to demeaning interrogation, and Palestinian workers undergo daily delays at border checkpoints. The daily evidence is that borders matter in the Middle East. Sovereignty is exercised routinely, at the edges of states and in their interior, at tax time and in the courts. The state takes its model, if not always its daily practice, from Weber and Westphalia. Moroccans slip across the border to trade despite control points, Palestinians tunnel under the border to bring in supplies, Libyans run across the Egyptian border to play politics on both sides. The ISIS2 wilaya of Sinai, the Polisario fringe on either side of the border in the Sahara, the various forms of putative Kurdistan, and even the Palestinian territories elude the sovereignty of Egypt, Morocco, Iraq, Syria and Israel without having any of their own. Effective income taxation throughout the area is patchy and governments run mainly on trade and tariff revenue. States, sovereignty and borders in the Middle East are as debatable as the concepts themselves. This article addresses the contradiction between these two pictures.

I William Zartman, “States, Boundaries and sovereignty in the Middle East: Unsteady but Unchanging,” International Affairs VIIC 4:937–948 (July 2017). 2 Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria. 1

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 I. W. Zartman, I William Zartman: A Pioneer in Conflict Management and Area Studies, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06079-4_26

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26.1

26 Middle East Boundaries

Territorial States, Sovereignty, and Borders

Henry Kissinger has characterized the current world order as involving three levels of sovereignty.3 The middle level is the state, struggling to claim its assigned characteristics of territory, population and recognition.4 Above it hover international organizations such as the EU, encroaching on the state’s claim to hold the highest level of political authority. Below it lie subnational groups with or without territory of their own but working to emerge on the second level. Beyond the matter of borders alone, the Middle East has contributed its own forms to this analysis of sovereignty. International constructions have little autonomous purchase on Arab states’ policies, and meetings of the Arab states in the form of summits, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Arab League serve as state policy forums. ISIS has introduced a new form of putative supranational organization, with a firmer claim to sovereignty than any of its closest competitors such as the international Communist Party or the Catholic Church. Similarly, ISIS wilayat and Al-Qaeda franchises act as subnational aspirants, mainly independent from the ethnic base that usually characterizes subnational rebellions. The notion of the territorial state may not be new to the Middle East, but it is not native there. Without spending fascinating time in the vast historical record of the area, a pertinent starting-point is provided by colonial rule in the nineteenth century, which (re-)introduced the notion of bounded territorial delimitation of the state. According to this notion, those people who were within the state’s boundaries were subject to its sovereign control. This was different from the idea of a population state, where the state’s writ ran wherever its people were. Morocco was all the people who said their prayers in the name of the caliph of the West, the sultan of Morocco, Commander of the Faithful (amir al-mu’minin), wherever they were. It took French colonial control of Algeria to draw a line limiting at least the northern part of Moroccan lands in the Treaty of Lalla Maghnia of 1845; south of Figuig, the treaty stated, border delimitation was superflue because there were no people there. The territorial state and the population state meet at some point of population density, because after all the people live on a specific land and the land holds specific people, but the distinction is nevertheless as important as, for example, that between jus solis and jus sanguinis. The Sublime Porte of the Ottomans claimed sovereignty over all Sunni Muslims, at least within the Maghreb and Mashreq, and kept other confessions within its borders as dhimmis, operating under their own customary legal systems. As an empire, the Ottoman entity was a sort of compound state, but with boundaries and sovereignty. Colonization, consummated by the end of the First World War,

3

Henry Kissinger, inaugural speech to the opening of the Kissinger Center for Global Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 6 Oct. 2016. 4 Giacomo Luciani, ed., The Arab state (London, Routledge, 1990); Mehran Kamrava, ed., Weak states in the greater Middle East (Washington DC: Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar, 2014).

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Territorial States, Sovereignty, and Borders

453

installed proto-states, deprived of sovereignty by the colonizer (who held it) but endowed with borders and state-like apparatus. These characteristics they kept when they achieved independence after the Second World War. Vignal’s article in this issue describes Syrian efforts at the ‘consolidation of the territorial state’ after independence.5 Boundaries for the most part were not only delimited but also demarcated with hard boundary markers. When newly revised in 2004, as Vignal points out, even the Jordan–Syria border was demarcated, while refugees camped on either side. The region’s longest disputed border, between Morocco and Algeria (west of Figuig), is signed, ratified, delimited and closed, albeit not yet demarcated. To this, as Adraoui points out,6 political Islam has revolutionized the border situation by putatively reverting to the notion of the population state, and, more significantly between peoples than between lands, has installed one single boundary between dar al-harb and dar al-islam, the land of war and the land of submission. Within the Land of Islam, boundaries do not exist—or, if they do, it is only for administrative convenience. As in the Islamic Republic of Iran, temporal administration is a practical necessity but subject to the Islamic primacy of the Ayatollah. Whether it is also for ethno-national convenience as well remains a debated question. Like Stalin,7 Rachid Ghannouchi and indeed Muhammad the Prophet were troubled by the ‘national question’; Ghannouchi came to terms with national identity and Muhammad with tribal identities. It is a minor irony that the self-assigned full title of ISIS (or ISIL) refers to the colonially established entity of Iraq as well as Syria or the Levant/Lebanon. Political Islam also presents itself as an antidote to state collapse (and all the more so to states in the lesser categories of failed, failing or fragile). It purports to bring coherence, rectitude and internal authority—qualities inherent in sovereignty —to currently weak, corrupt, arrogant, alienated states—la hogra in Algerian slang. If it draws popular support, it is as a protest movement against current conditions more than as a religious revival movement. The states that collapsed in the Arab Spring—Libya and Yemen (if it could ever have been called a state8)—were already hollow on the inside before the popular uprising,9 and the states where the uprising both gave impetus to and took it from a religious movement—Tunisia and Egypt—quickly lost their presidential symbol of arrogant corruption while holding firmly to the notion of the state itself.10 But none of these states fell apart, giving Leïla Vignal, ‘The changing borders and borderlands of Syria in a time of conflict’, International Affairs 93: 4:809–828, July 2017. 6 Mohamed-Ali Adraoui, ‘Borders and sovereignty in Islamist and Jihadist thought: past and present’, International Affairs 93: 4917–936, July 2017. 7 Joseph Stalin, On the national question (Moscow: International Publishers, 1942). 8 Abdullah Hamidaddin, ‘Yemen: negotiating with tribes, states and memories’, in I. William Zartman, ed., Arab spring: negotiating in the shadow of the intifadat (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2015). 9 Fawcett, ‘Title to be completed’, International Affairs 93: 4, July 2017, pp. 000–00. 10 Robert S. Snyder, ‘The Arab uprising and the persistence of monarchy’, International Affairs 91: 5, Sept. 2015, pp. 1027–46. 5

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rise to smaller sovereign pieces; both the weaknesses of the rulership and the popular reaction to them have taken place within the confines of the state itself, which in the latter two cases showed its resilience—or at least was held in place by its neighbours, as in the former two. Even collapsed states have boundaries, kept up by neighbours who work to see the collapse contained. Syrians seeking refuge by crossing the border into Turkey or Jordan, let alone Israel, know very well what a border is. This is not to deny fissiparous tendencies in a number of these and other states— Yemen and Libya but also Iraq. It is said that Tripolitania belongs to the Maghreb, Cyrenaica to the Mashreq and Fezzan to Africa, but they haven’t gone there yet, even though they play on their neighbours’ politics.11 The Shi’i Houthis and the Yemeni Sunnis may each be looking to return to a state separate from the other, but at the same time they each want to rule over the other, or at least to have a role in the other’s state.12 More significantly, as is generally the case in regions other than the Middle East, it is the collapse of responsible government in their state that led to the rise of subnational awareness and to identity claims at self-rule in the absence of self-role. Thus, the other side of Middle Eastern governments’ self-centredness is their neglect of their excluded subnations, usually minorities but sometimes majorities. Recent Iraqi history has been a seesaw of exclusion—governance by a Tikriti minority of the Sunni minority gave way to governance by a Shi’i majority, leading to Sunni welcome of the Sunni ‘caliphate’ generated in part by the leftovers of the former Iraqi regime, while the Kurdish minority moves gently towards more accentuated forms of autonomy. Turkey’s shifting policy towards Asad in Syria is a contradiction of its policies towards its own and other states’ Kurds, where negotiations have been an off-and-on affair over the past decades. Bahrain’s and Yemen’s policies towards their majority and minority Shi’is, respectively, have relied on aggressive Saudi intervention. In Syria and Egypt, religious minorities have been sheltered by an otherwise repressive regime. Before any collapse comes, the Middle Eastern state is fragile and brittle. The striking exception is the integrative attention paid, in various ways, to the Berber portion of the population in the Maghrebi states. Conceptually, between the border and the state is the borderland, an area (watan) defined by being around a border, a ‘boundary in depth and in motion’,13 with its own identities, functions and legitimacies. To call it a tribal area misses the fact that it is indeed cut by a state border; moreover, a borderland is cut by many borders. As Hüsken notes,14 the tribal borderland carries a moral border between smuggling and Thomas Hüsken, ‘The practice and culture of smuggling in the borderland of Egypt and Libya’, International Affairs 93: 4:897–916, July 2017. 12 Simon Henderson, 2016. ‘How to end Saudi Arabia’s war of paranoia’, Washington Institute of Near East Policy, 20 Oct. 13 I William Zartman, Understanding life in the borderlands: Boundaries in depth and in motion (Athens GA: University of Georgia Press 2010). 14 Hüsken, ‘The practice and culture of smuggling’. 11

26.1

Territorial States, Sovereignty, and Borders

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trade, and then within the latter between several subtypes. The borderland further holds a social border between the young and fearless and the elders, and another between lineages and various ‘a’ilat (families). It carries an economic border between urban Bedouin and the better-off in the countryside, and a political border between Arab Spring factions. Like any borderland, its inhabitants have their own compound identity, citizens of each country and both. The excellent descriptions of the ‘grey’ border could be placed in many borderlands of the area, including the Lebanese–Syrian borderland,15 although there are also some black-and-white cases with their fences and tunnels.16 Syria’s borderland with Turkey is black-and-white with spots in space and time, analysed by Okyay as a complex case of border management.17 If Turkey aims to be a Westphalian state, its motto is cuius regio eius natio (‘whoever rules defines the official ethnicity’), the Kurds being defined as ethnic Turks or not Turkish at all.18 So nearby Kurds in the borderlands on either side of the border are bad but Kurds in Iraq further away—indeed, out of the way—and divided in their politics are good; indeed, in a sense Turkey’s borderland goes from to Diyarbakir to Kirkuk. Unlike the Egypt–Libyan case, here it is the centre that decides the border relations, and the nature of the border—and the borderlanders—changes dramatically according to the government’s domestic policies towards its ethnic groups: a contest between Kissinger’s second and third levels of sovereignty. Just as important in those policies as the control of the national definition has been the control of the political definition of the state. Sovereignty at the lower level is best displayed by the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq.19 No other Middle Eastern minority has edged so close to the second level of sovereignty, and no other minority has grasped so well the elements of territoriality and state structure; all it needs is sovereignty. That said, it is striking how badly riven transnational Kurdistan is by fragmentations along the national boundaries that it contests, and even the Iraqi Kurds are split into rival parties: the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Party of United Kurdistan (PUK), dogged by Gorran, a PUK breakaway. When rebellion was the name of the game, the Iraqi rival parties vied for control of the movement, falling back (as is customary) on traditional family factionalism. When autonomy came into view on the road to outright sovereignty, the parties learned cooperation, with a little pressure from their friends. In Syria the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its Vignal, ‘The changing borders and borderlands of Syria’; Simone Tholens, ‘Border management in an era of “statebuilding lite”: security assistance manifested in Lebanon’s hybrid sovereignty’, International Affairs 93: 4:809–828, July 2017. 16 Zartman, Understanding life. 17 Asli Okyay, ‘Turkey’s post-2011 approach to its Syrian border and its implications for domestic politics’, International Affairs 93: 4:829–846, July 2017. 18 Bill Park, ‘Turkey’s isolated stance: an ally no more, or just the usual turbulence?’, International Affairs 91: 3, May 2015, pp. 581–600. 19 Johannes Jüde, ‘The formation of Iraqi Kurdistan’s de facto state’, International Affairs 93: 4:847–864, July 2017. 15

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militant arm, Local Defence Forces (YPG), are on the same road, but independently from the Iraqi Kurds, and in support of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Latent factionalism among Syrian Kurds has been kept under control by the pressures of militancy and the distance to the goal. An examination of the conditions of state, sovereignty and borders in the Mideast brings to light not only on the transparency of the emperor’s clothes but on the immaturity of the emperor himself. As Fawcett and many others point out, the tendency to look at the Middle East as a region inhabited by strong states left observers surprised when a number of the governments fell and states collapsed in the Arab Spring.20 With a few exceptions, Middle East states are hard states, not strong states, and hard states crack and crumble if subjected to a great enough shock.21 A strong state lives on a social contract of participation and accountability. The hard state has a social contract too, limited to self-protection in exchange for support; but when self-protection shows weakness in this uneven exchange, it can come down in a great crash. Thus, in the Arab Spring, those states where the autocratic ruler was overthrown in short order (Tunisia and Egypt) survived and re-emerged in the same historic forms: party state and military state, respectively. In those where overthrow took time and violence (Libya and Yemen), the brittle state was destroyed and its carcass was up for grabs among the conflicting rebel warlord factions. In those where the uprising was limited and recognized the legitimacy of the state and ruler (Morocco and Algeria), a strong state existed, skimming demands off the top of the protests as reforms to strengthen itself. Finally, in those cases where the hard state resisted, with external intervention (Bahrain and Syria), it too persisted—over the graves of up to several hundred thousands of its people. All these variations exist in the springtime of the Arab state.22 One aspect that joins the lower two levels of sovereignty is the division of Middle Eastern states into autonomous regions. Rather than a collection of new states, the area is seeing a collection of regions that wave independence as a goal but settle into autonomous governance in the meantime, while the goal is left hanging on the hook to be available when needed. The advantages of self-governance within a larger state are numerous: claims on public goods such as national wealth and defence while protecting claims on local resources, and national self-determination without the need for wars of national liberation, among others. For the contentious politics of Syria, Iraq and, possibly Libya and Yemen, temporary stability may well take the form of de facto federation or confederation,

Louise Fawcett, “States and Sovereignty in the Middle East,” International Affairs 93: 4:789– 808 July. 21 Joel Migdal, Strong societies and weak states: state–society relations and state capabilities in the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988); Kamrava, Weak states in the greater Middle East. 22 Luciani, ed., The Arab state (London: Routledge 1990); Zartman, ed., Arab spring. 20

26.1

Territorial States, Sovereignty, and Borders

457

without formalization in any treaty or constitution.23 Belgium, Somaliland, Spain’s 17 regions, Saharan autonomy within Morocco, Bangsamoro in the Philippines, and Bosnia and Herzegovina stand as comparable current examples outside the region, with varying degrees of stability. Boundaries in these cases would be established either in the time-honoured way of medieval Europe, as ceasefire or conquest lines, or along accepted provincial borders.

26.2

Regional State Order

As noted above, the upper level of sovereignty wielded by intergovernmental or international organizations is weak in the Arab world. There is little chance here of an experiment like the EU or even the Russian Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), despite some fervent longings in the past as espoused by the pan-Arab movement and embodied in the Union of Arab States of Syria and Egypt or the Ba’ath movement of Syria and Iraq. Instead, the upper level is truly anarchic, a Go game among more or less sovereign governments running more or less territorial states, as skilfully dissected for the 1950s and 1960s by Malcolm Kerr.24 Nasser at that time analysed the prevailing dynamics as the result of two competing notions of unity: unity of ranks and unity of forces.25 The first saw all Arab states rallying about a common identity that they strove to institutionalize against the common foreign enemy, an ethnic version of dar al-islam against dar al-harb. The second reflected a familiar ideological division between right and left in the form of retrograde and enlightened wings within dar al-arab. There is nothing as divisive as ethnic unity. Half a century later, the same dynamics were rampant in the region, but on a different dimension. The dimension of course is not new—the split between the Shi’a and the Sunnis is some 1,400 years old—but it came to the fore only recently as the dominant political fault-line and fissure in Islam. Its resurgence can probably be dated at the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and it now undergirds the dynamics of the Arab state order, firing the internecine animosity to an extent not seen since the Christian wars of religion from the Reformation to the peace of Westphalia. There is nothing as divisive as religious unity. In the flux of combat it is hard to draw a border, as the battle line surges back and forth. On the Shi’i side, Iran supports the Yemeni Houthis, the Lebanese Hezbollah, and the rump state forces of Bashar al-Assad in western Syria. The Sunni side is fragmented, unable to decide who the real enemy is: Turkey supports

23

Nicholas Heras, The potential for an Assad statelet in Syria (Washington DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2013); Karim Mezran, ‘Libya: thinking the unthinkable’, Atlantic Council MENASource newsletter, 25 Feb. 2016. 24 Malcolm Kerr, The Arab Cold War 1958–1967 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967). 25 Gamal Abdul-Nasser, Philosophy of a Revolution (1952) (Cairo: Government of Egypt, n.d.)

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the Iraqi Kurds’ peshmerga while fighting ISIS and the Syrian Kurds, Saudi Arabia intervenes destructively against the Yemeni Houthis, ISIS has dwindling outposts in northern Iraq and coastal Libya, and Al-Qaeda still has its wilayat in the Sinai and the Sahel. But the regional order that looms in the future is made up of a Fatal Crescent of Shi’i control circling from Iran through Iraq into Syria and Hezbollah’s Lebanon, faced on the north by Sunni Turkey and Syrian Kurdistan, on the south by Jordan and Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Gulf, and to the west by Egypt and the Maghreb. Behind (or involved in) the Shi’i Crescent is Russia, working to win over the historic wariness of Turkey in between, while the western supporters of the Sunni side are far away. This new configuration of the regional state order has not yet come fully into being and is only being formed through heavy combat and a sorting out of parties and sides. Already, however, it cuts apart both the old Arab Cold War triangle of Egypt, Syria and Iraq and the Gulf triangle of stability of Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. It returns Russia to its Cold War position—and more—as supporter of Syria and Egypt, though of course it shares none of the ideological tenets of the Shi’i Crescent.26 To the extent that this configuration works through states, borders and sovereignty, it compromises the last of these through the hierarchical structure of the Shi’i, leaving state and border otherwise intact.

26.3

The Shape of Things to Come

A process of ‘settling down’ in the region assumes the emergence of Westphalian, Weberian states with established, recognized, demarcated borders. Will they represent a consolidation of the current states, or will there be a reconfiguration of the Middle East to incorporate the underlying ethno-religious realities and finally reject the impositions of the San Remo conference in 2910?27 The answer is clear, for many reasons: as in the rest of the formerly colonized world, from Latin America through Africa into south-east Asia, the borders conferred by the recent historical past have shaped states and national identities, and are likely to remain in place. To begin with, people of the region think of themselves today in state-national terms—a sense, perhaps paradoxically, heightened by the damage to the political structures wrought by the current conflicts. The Arab Spring began as national uprisings; the irony of citizens of little Tunisia shaking the state structures of the Egyptians was felt in national terms, the Syrians demonstrated under the slogan

Derek Averre and Lance Davies, ‘Russia, humanitarian intervention and the Responsibility to Protect: the case of Syria’, International Affairs 91: 4, July 2015, pp. 813–34. 27 Joel Migdal, ed., Boundaries and belonging: states and societies in the struggle to shape identities and local practices (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 26

26.3

The Shape of Things to Come

459

‘We are all Syrians’, the systemic rivalry between Moroccans and Algerians holds their national identities firm, Yemenis know they are not Saudis if they known nothing else. Most impressively, Jordanians know they are Jordanians even though two-thirds of them are Palestinians, and in the other countries of refuge where they have not been admitted to citizenship, Palestinians know they are Palestinians wherever they are; Lebanese know they are Lebanese and not Syrian even if Syria thinks they are. Refugees identify as nationals of their country, even despite ethnic ties across the borders. While subnational identities are undoubtedly strong and often functional as well as sentimental, there is no subnational group that has the necessary characteristics to qualify as a new state. These qualifications consist of a territorialized population with a sense of ethnic or other identity galvanized by a consolidated nationalist movement, capable of attracting international recognition. The exception is of course Palestine, which despite qualifying after more than half a century has still not been able to obtain recognition as a state. The sole other ethnic group even close to being an exception is the Kurds, who do have a territorialized location—in fact, they have at least three, all in established states, Turkey, Syria and Iraq, not to mention Iran, the Syrian one cut to a narrow waist along the Turkish border. All three Kurdish populations have called for independence, although they are not united in a single consolidated movement. Any progress in that direction would be anathema to Turkey, whose government has not even been able to hold to negotiations with a view to acceptance of the Kurds’ ethnic identity, let alone their autonomy. The furthest likely extent of recognition is greater regional autonomy, separately, in Iraq and Syria. No other ethnic group in the region comes near to being able to claim proto-state qualities. Beyond simple secession, the break-up of existing conglomerate states could provide more coherent successors, again assuming that the pieces qualify as states. A break-up of Syria has been mooted, and also of Iraq. The action responds to the characteristics of some of the pieces but not to others. A Shi’i mini-state in western Syria would continue to provide protection for Christian minorities, but the area between the Kurdish east and the west is not a clear contender for statehood, landlocked and lacking much by way of population, resources, or identity other than simply the Sunni leftover. Much the same situation exists in Iraq, where the Sunni population would be left in the middle between the oil-endowed Kurdish north and the Shi’i south. One might then fantasize about a Syro-Iraqi Sunni state between a Kurdistan to the east and a string of coastal states—Shi’i Syria and Lebanon, Israel—to the west; but this would require some dedicated political engineering. Another break-up would see a return to the two Yemens that existed with a recognized boundary between them until 1990, presumably with a Shi’i Houthi-dominated north and a Sunni south (the north would have some 22 million people, equal to more than two-thirds the population of all of Saudi Arabia). Since the two regions did exist as independent units for half a century (south) and a century (north), they would not have to be reinvented; this case, then, would seem a

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more likely break-up, although neither formerly functioned as a Weberian governing unit.28 There are also a number of territorial claims rooted in ancient history that could easily be revived. As an example, Syria still lays claim to the Alexandretta sanjak that hangs south into its north-western corner and was attributed to Turkey after the rest of the Turkish border was established at San Remo, though it would take a much stronger Syria and a much weaker Turkey to get it back. More threatening is the reverse: Turkish claims on areas to its south based on a revived identification with the Ottoman empire (which Atatürk declared dead with the creation of modern Turkey). The issue has arisen over the participation of Turkish forces in the liberation of Mosul from ISIS, with the US Defence Secretary indicating ‘our respect for Turkey’s historic role in the region’.29 If former Ottoman territory is to be considered Turkey irredenta, the door is opened for major territorial changes and disputes. No other current state has the potential for claims of a similar magnitude. The San Remo boundaries, often attributed to Sir Mark Sykes and François-Georges Picot, are also reasonably stable in terms of physical as well as human geography. Perhaps a third of the borders are geodesic (straight-line) boundaries, the most natural way to designate a border across uninhabited and physically undesignated areas. Often, these inexorable lines have been jogged slightly to encompass salient human and geographical features: the Halfawi on the Upper Nile and coastal populations in the Egyptian Mediterranean, and Jebel al-Maqrah on the Gaza line and a wadi for Kuwait, among others. In Egypt’s south-east, the latitudinal line was moved north-east for reasons of ethnic accommodation and now leaps from mountain top to mountain top in small, straight segments. Many others follow geographic features: the Lebanese border follows a number of crest-lines, the Syrian border follows a river to the south and some wadis (where available) to the east, the southern Moroccan border follows some hamada and wadi lines. Other borders wiggle across features of human and physical geography with no obvious criteria except to get to the next place; in many areas, such as the southern Turkish or western Iranian borders, the line cuts across mountain ranges and water streams with no nearby features to justify a different course. There is little in this patchwork quilt to suggest more appropriate lines, since neither human geography nor physical terrain lends itself to more appropriate lines (the matters of Palestine and Kurdistan excepted). The norms for boundary stability —demarcation, permeability and rectification—suggest that states should always be alert to the need for small changes to accommodate physical changes and shifting human patterns; a shift of this sort occurred recently in respect of the Lebanese border. But at the present time, the pressure of civil war on the borders generally provides an inappropriate setting for such adjustments.

Hamidaddin, ‘Yemen’. Tom Aragno and Michael Gordon, ‘Turkey treads on Iraq’s toes’, New York Times, 25 Oct. 2016, p. A1. 28 29

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The Shape of Things to Come

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Another consideration for the ‘rebordering’ of the Middle East is the agency for change. Border changes, other than minor adjustments as discussed, constitute major challenges to the established shape of a sovereign state. States do not give up territory gently or acquire it easily. Territorial change results from a major military effort, led by an active militant organization bearing a convincing justification following an extended campaign. The struggles of the Kurds, based on an ethnic demand for self-determination and the culmination of what at present amounts to over a century of effort, and the Palestinians, with a similar rationale over a similar period of time, are examples. The response to these campaigns must come from the international community, both regional and global, in the latter case from the United Nations Security Council (the General Assembly is not enough). Today’s counterparts of Sykes and Picot would have to come from the region, either as agents of neighbouring states redrawing their own borders or as commissioners of the regional community as embodied in the Arab League or the Arab Summit. The shape of the settlement would also have to come from within the Middle East itself.30 New borders might indeed be imposed, but this would have to be done by the states of the region and at a time when the conflict was ripe for a settlement, much as the Taif agreement ending the Lebanese civil war in 1989 was mediated under the auspices of the Arab League. At the same time, an external involvement is still required, again much as the United States was discreetly involved at Taif. Another relevant example is the Paris Conference of 1990, which provided an end to the Cambodian civil war through the participation of the world powers involved in supporting Cambodian factions as well as representatives of the Cambodian parties. These conferences at Taif and Paris did not involve border changes directly but concerned the positions of the states concerned—Lebanon and Cambodia—within their regions. Once a regional reorganization was reached, the settlement would then have to go to the UNSC for approval. If the settlement emerged from a conference of the nature described here, such acceptance would not be difficult to achieve. However, if the change were of a more unilateral nature, international and even regional acceptance would be more uneven. The standoff around Morocco’s incorporation of the Western Sahara against Algerian opposition is an example of the difficulties that can arise. A Turkish annexation of pieces of the Ottoman empire beyond current Turkish borders would face a bumpy road to acceptance, possibly taking on the neo-Cold War dimensions of the Russian annexation of Crimea or the independence of Abkhazia or South Ossetia. Another possibility might be a unilateral declaration of independence (UDI), as practised in contemporary times by Kosovo or Eritrea. In both cases, the event was preceded by a bloody conflict and accompanied by international efforts to smooth the process; in the case of Kosovo, international recognition has been widespread but is not yet universal. Again, the huge hesitations of Palestine about announcing UDI and its only gradual efforts to improve its status illustrate the difficulties of new state creation. The obstacles to

Ellen Laipson, ‘A century after Sykes–Picot’, World Politics Review, 17 May 2016.

30

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international recognition, or even selective sponsorship, of new members of the Middle East states-system are enormous. One actor has made a concerted effort to change the whole system and its membership—ISIS. It represents, contradictorily, both the ultimate attempt to institutionalize the Islamist movement by creating a state of its own to recall the Golden Age of the new Muslim political entity thirteen centuries ago, and at the same time the extreme form of carrying the struggle between dar al-Islam and dar al-harb into the territory of the latter by selfishly committed agents of the former. While ISIS has claimed that it is not a territorial institution but a people’s movement, it soon learned to function as a proto-state, organizing services for its people, instituting its form of justice, providing security, even creating social classes. Its record at these tasks is at best uneven, and it seems to be losing the battle for security as a territorial state. It has had more, if scattered, success as the ultimate form of violence against the West. After the failure of Islamic movements as subversive parties against Muslim states (such as the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria or the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt) and as organized attacks against western states (such as the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington), it has turned to sponsoring the efforts of individual jihadis in a widespread terrorist network.31 Organizationally, this stage is the antithesis of the territorial or even the population state, a new rhizome—as it is referred to—running on inspiration and secret linkages and animated by spiritual and material alienation and the conviction of immediate salvation. It is indeed a new form of action coming out of the area. Fortunately, it is at worst a Zika virus and certainly not an institutional health system, dedicatedly destructionist but incapable of building a new structure.

26.4

Conclusion

The collection of articles presented in this issue of International Affairs shows by careful analysis that states in the Middle East have an existence that matters and at the same time is characteristically vulnerable, and that the imperfect Middle East states-system is not on the brink of any major change, either in its components or in the regional order among them. Those components are imperfect states, still growing to extend their authority to their borders but commanding a sense of identity that is larger than their own operations. Weber’s ideal is a long way off, but most states are working at it. That is, indeed, probably the case with most aspiring states in the world; but while the Middle East may trail behind some more developed cases, in their several ways, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, 31

Abdu Musab al-Suri (Mustafa Setmariam Nasar), Call for world Islamic resistance (n.p., 2005); Brynjar Lia, Architect of global jihad: the life of Al Qaeda strategist Abu Mus‘ab Al-Suri (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009). Gilles Kepel, 2015, Terreur dans l’hexagone: Genèse du djihad français (Paris: Gallimard, 2015).

26.4

Conclusion

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Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran and probably even Iraq are undeniably states of various types, with recognized, often demarcated, though frequently very permeable, boundaries. Their imperfections may enjoy a good deal of penetrating analysis, but Middle Eastern states are undeniably states, not something else (Libya, Yemen and Syria aside), as the various contributions to this collection amply illustrate. These states are not likely to be rearranged into new shapes, for the reasons discussed above. The system of which they are all part is going through a new hot and cold war of its own on all three levels of sovereignty, divided by a struggle for religious authenticity that is itself animated by a struggle for rank and relations among the states. The entrance of Iran into the relations of the Mashreq under the banner of Shi’ism, the collapse of Syria and Iraq as poles (with Egypt, which remains) of the old ‘Arab Cold War’, the brash ambitions and wavering position of Turkey, and the uncertain evolution of the Gulf states (including Saudi Arabia) are major movements in the regional order of the area. More broadly, the diminishing role (up to the present) of the United States and even Europe, elbowed out by Russia elbowing its way into the region, reflects important change in the regional drama. But the sovereign, bordered state actors are likely still to be recognizable. “Once things settle down,” in the long but foreseeable future, the only way to provide a dynamic stability and fairly peaceful relations will be through the establishment of a community of states that tolerate one another’s existence and provide regional order through their mutual relations. An imposed order is not of this world. Imposition of order by a single state or collaborating group of states— regional or external—is not possible, given the antagonism between the two sides of Islam and the feisty nationalism within all the separate states. The age of colonialism in which sovereignty and order are imposed and sustained from abroad is long past; and even the age of the Cold War, in which sovereignty held at home was wielded with the connivance of foreign powers, has lost its sheen. Russia is no more likely than the United States to turn the Fatal Crescent and its Sunni opponents into satellites; rather to seek support from them, in a role reversal. But a self-contained regional community without violence other than boundary frictions, in which the upper level of sovereignty takes on its primary role, is at least as far distant into the future as these past systems of imposed order are into the past.

References Adraoui, Mohammed-All 2017. “Borders and sovereignty in jihadist and Islamist thought,” International Affairs VIIC 4:917–948. al-Suri, Abdu Musab (Mustafa Setmariam Nasar) 2005. Call for World Islamic Resistance. n. p. Aragno, Tom & Michael Gordon 2016. “Turkey Treads on Iraq’s Toes,” New York Times, 25 October, A1. Fawcett, Louise 2017. States and sovereignty in the Middle East: myths and realities,” International Affairs VIIC 4:789–808.

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Hamidaddin, Abdullah 2015. “Yemen: Negotiating with Tribes, States and Memories,” in I William Zartman, ed., The Arab State; Negotiating in the Shadow of the Intifadat (University of Georgia Press). Henderson, Simon 2016. “How to End Saudi Arabia’s War of Paranoia,” (Washington Institute of Near East Policy, 20 Oct.). Heras, Nicholas 2013. The Potential for an Assas Statelet in Syria (Washington Institute for Near East Policy). Husken, Thomas 2017. “The practice and culture of smuggling in the borderland of Egypt and Libya,” International Affairs VIIC 4:897–916. Jüde, Johannes 2017. “Contesting borders? The formation of Iraq Kurdistan’s de facto state.” International Affairs VIIC 4:847–864. Kamrava, Mehran, ed. 2014. Weak States in the Greater Middle East (Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar). Kepel, Gilles 2015. Terreur dans l’hexagone: Genèse du djihad français (Gallimard). Kerr, Malcolm 1967. The Arab Cold War 1958–1967 (Oxford). Kissinger, Henry 2016. Inaugural speech to the opening of the Kissinger Center for Global Studies, The Johns Hopkins University, 6 Oct. Laipson, Ellen 2016. “A Century after Sykes-Picot,” World Politics Review, 17 May. Lia, Brynjar 2009. Architect of global jihad: The life of Al Qaeda strategist Abu Mus’ab Al-Suri (Columbia University Press). Luciani, Giacomo, ed. 1990. The Arab State (Routledge). Mezran, Karim 2016. “Libya: Thinking the Unthinkable,” Atlantic Council MENA Source, 25 February. Migdal, Joel 1988. Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World (Princeton University Press). Migdal, Joel, ed. 2005. Boundaries and Belonging: States and Societies in the Struggle to Shape Identities and Local Practices (Cambridge University Press). Nasser, Gamal Abdul 1952. Philosophy of a Revolution (Cairo: National Publishing House Press). Okyay, Asli 2017. “Turkey’s post-2011 approach to its Syrian border,” International Affairs VIIC 4:829–846. Peters, LtCol Robin 2006. “Blood Borders: How a better Middle East would look,” Armed Forces Journal, June. Stalin, Joseph 1942. On the National Question (International Publishers). Tholens, Simone 2017. “Border management in Lebanon in an era of ‘statebuilding lite,’” International Affairs VIIC 4:865–882. Vignal, Leïla 2017. “The changing borders and borderland of Syria ibna time of conflict,” International Affairs VIIC 4:809–828. Wolff, Stefan 2010. “Approaches to Conflict Resolution in Divided Societies: The Many Uses of Territorial Self-governance,” Ethnopolitics Papers 5, at: http://cebtres.exeter.ac.uk/exceps/ downloads/Ethnopolitics_Papers_No5_Wolff.pdf. Zartman, I William, ed. 2010. Understanding Life in the Borderlands: Boundaries in Depth and Motion (University of Georgia Press).

Chapter 27

Identity, Movement and Response

Borders run across land but through people. On maps they appear as fine one-dimensional lines, whereas on the ground they have many dimensions.1 In human terms, it is impossible to understand borders, and indeed the peripheral relations between the states and societies they contain, without understanding how it is to live along them. Borderlands are boundaries-in-depth, a space around a line, the place where state meets society and “where no one ever feels at home” (Simons 1995). They are a terra de pas (footlands or steplands) to Catalonians and “the third country” to Mexican-Americans. The academic definitions (since academics rarely stick to one definition) are “sub-national areas whose economic and social life is directly and significantly affected by proximity to an international boundary” (Hansen 1981), or, more extensively, “zones of varying widths, in which people have recognizable configurations of relationships to people inside that zone, on both sides of the borderline but within the cultural landscape of the borderlands, and, as people of the border, special relationships with other people and institutions in their respective nations and states” (Donnan/Wilson 1994: 8). They are inhabited territories located on the margins of a power center, or between power centers, with power understood in the civilizational as well as the politico-economic sense. But, like the sea at the edge of the land (and the reverse), they are continually in movement, both fast and slow, and any static depiction of the moment contains within it the elements of its change—Kokoschka in motion, to build on the image of Gellner (1983: 140). It is that dynamic quality that is the message of this collective interdisciplinary study. Borderlands need to be understood, not as places or even events, but as social processes. There is an enormous literature on interstate boundaries as lines, and much literature on secessional territories bounded by lines. But until relatively recently there was little attempt to understand the nature of the land and people abutting on I William Zartman, “Identity, Movement and Response” and “Keeping with the Change,” in I William Zartman, ed., Understanding Life in the Borderlands: Boundaries in Depth and in Motion (University of Georgia Press, 2010), 1–20, 245–250. Reprinted with permission.

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© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 I. W. Zartman, I William Zartman: A Pioneer in Conflict Management and Area Studies, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06079-4_27

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and divided by the boundary—the boundary-in-depth or borderlands. The collective work edited by Barth (1969) on ethnic groups and boundaries launched the field of study and led scholars to investigate the human condition in regions split by state sovereignty. The focus was above all on ways of maintaining identity under challenge from other identity groups or changing situations (Barth 1969: 127, 132). Whereas previous studies in the social sciences tended to focus on communities within states, so as to hold one variable constant, or on comparisons of different communities in different states, so as to analyse the differences, the new field of inquiry concerned transborder communities affected by a political line imposed on them. In most cases, these studies (such as the larger studies behind the individual chapters in this volume) concentrated on one locale, exploring and developing concepts on the basis of a single community; edited works (such as the present study) brought together a number of such studies to compare cases and construct concepts. “Regardless of theoretical orientation or locale, however, most of these studies have focused on how social relations, defined in part by the state, transcend the physical limits of the state and, in so doing, transform the structure of the state at home and its relations with its neighbours.” (Wilson/Donnan 1998: 5). The presence of borderlands is not dependent on the existence of a particular type of power center or state. Borderlands have existed from all times. Whenever there have been political communities so large that distinctions could be made between the power center and a periphery far enough away from it to be able to enjoy some degree of difference and autonomy, relations between center and periphery tended to be counterbalanced by relations between neighboring peripheries or by relations within the autonomous periphery. Empires both ancient and modern, cultural blocs and civilizational areas, and modern states from the post-Westfalian era all have had their borderlands. The phenomenon is sharpened by the territorial state, a Western invention, established by the Romans and revived after 1648 in the Westfalian system. But borderlands can also be found on the edges of a communital state, whose writ runs wherever its people are, not where its territorial limits end, but whose people mingle with other communital states’ people as minorities. In the communital state, the social and political boundaries coincide, at least in theory, although even the purest community can contain sub-communities within it or give rise to forces that seek to define the pure community in a way offensive to another part of the same community. In the territorial state, the political boundary is imposed on the population regardless of their social structure—in a process sometimes termed “territoriality” (Winichakul 1994: 14)— and has an important influence on that structure as a result. The phenomenon is further heightened by the nation-state. The broadest socio-political structure or community is called a nation, marked most strongly by a sense of identity and more loosely by other structural and cultural characteristics. Since the rise of nationalism at the end of the eighteenth century, there is a presumed coincidence between the state and its nation, but this coincidence can run in either of two directions. Originally the presumption has been one of a nation-state, in which the pre-existence of the identitarian community defines the existence, legitimacy and limits of the political institution. However, more recently, new states

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have been created, usually as a result of anticolonial nationalist movements, with the need to unite a number of component traditional nations into a state nation, a new identity community that coincides with the political unit. In both directions, however, the coincidence of state and nation is a best approximate, and nowhere more approximate at their edges, where the official presumption is quite the opposite—one of sharp distinctions with neighboring nations and states. Social communities can exist in relation to the political border in other forms than as coterminous nation and state—as majoritarian communities that spill over as majorities into a neighboring state, as majoritarian communities that spill over as minorities into a neighboring state, as communities that exist as minorities on both sides of a border, and as minority communities that do not hang over across a political border (cf. Wilson/Donnan 1998: 14). The political border may or may not contain or correspond to a “social boundary,” defined as a “criteri[on] for determining…and….signaling membership and exclusion,…for judg[ing] value and performance,…[and for] mark[ing] difference in behavior” (Barth 1969: 15) or a “zone of contrasting identity, rapid transition, or separation” (Tilly 2004: 3; Abbott 1995). But not all border and transborder activities are performed by ethnic groups or other social units, whether as local minorities or as the dominant community within their state. Transborder activities and the general dynamics that they produce can be performed by socio-economic categories, such as professions, occupations, or classes, with little sense of identity and membership in diverse communities or identity groups. Indeed, some of these activities, such as smuggling, taking refuge, or guarding borders, create their own agents and would not exist were it not for the border. Although studies may focus on one sort of group or another for analytical purposes, full reality can be a jumble of actors, understandable only as a mesh. All social life is of course such a mesh, but such a mixture of levels, actors, activities and identities may be most pronounced when activated by the intrusion of the division constituted by a state boundary line. As a result, the rising study of borderlands has been undertaken by several disciplines. The most active has been anthropology, which claims Barth as its scoutmaster, orienting its analysis on social and cultural borders and on the bounded units’ efforts to maintain their identity. Much of the anthropological work showed borderlands to be area where the sharpness of ethnic and other cultural limits and differentiations clashed with the groups’ need to interact with other groups on the other side of the dividing lines. As a result, moats and walls tend to dissolve into marshes, with their own syncretic characteristics. Such understanding has come to replace the initial study of boundaries, in line or in depth, as conducted by geographers, whose focus was on the moats and walls themselves. Human geographers supplemented the work of physical geographers by broadening the notions of natural and artificial boundaries to relate to social criteria as well as topographical criteria. Political scientists have added a concern with the state as the defining agent of boundaries and of relations of authority, identity, transaction and organization behind them. The state however is not a featureless terrain, but rather itself a set of relationships between center and periphery, where the functional

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features of the latter often coincide with the physical location of borderlands. On the other hand, some borderlands are conceived by their inhabitants as proto-states, peripheries seeking to break off from the center to form their own center (with its own peripheries). All of these features have been woven through borderlands’ analytical chronologies supplied by historians of specific areas, bringing to light the diachronic characteristics of world events on the fringes of states, empires and civilizations. The purpose of the Borderlands Interdisciplinary Project (BLIP) of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC) is to draw out conceptual characteristics of the human condition in borderlands across enormous variations in time, in development, and in history. These characteristics involve such dimensions of life as identity, socio-economic relations, power exercise and relations, security, and culture. While the technology of the times has its effects, it is not likely to affect the basics of these dimensions, which are at least relevantly comparable across time. Such multi-dimensionality of the human condition in borderlands, however, demands an equally multifaceted analytical approach, an interdisciplinarity that sets this collective enterprise apart from most other borderland studies. While individual studies have often originated in a particular discipline, the whole is broader than its parts and thereby richer, since the parts are obliged to take into account elements that are prominent in other chapters in the work. Anthropology, history, political science, religious studies, and archeology join in their particular contributions to the subject and authors have multi- or inter-disciplinary identities and points of view. The result then is not undisciplined but truly multidisciplinary, with different analytical approaches enriching the combined understanding by building on each other.

27.1

Borders and Borderlands

The nature and conditions of the borderland is affected, first, by the nature of the border itself. The border is an artificial—i.e. man-made, political—line running through the region. Borders can be sharp, clear, deep lines where the political line is reinforced by “natural” distinctions in terms of physical and human geography, that is, where populations are clearly different on either side of the line and where they are thinned out by clearly marked less inhabitable distinctions such as natural walls and moats, mountain ridges or water bodies. Or they can be indistinguishable on the ground, corresponding to no natural features, penetrable, uncontrolled; indeed, in the extreme, the border can be the region itself, a buffer state or neutral zone controlled by neither side and tolerated by both. [Borders] divide and unite, bind the interior and link with the exterior, [as] barriers and junctions, walls and doors, organs of defense and attack. Frontierareas (borderlands) can be managed as to maximize either of such functions. They can be militarized, as bulwarks against neighbors, or made into areas of peaceful interchange. (Strassoldo 1989: 393)

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Borders and Borderlands

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Two characteristics of the border are salient, its political nature and its depth. Political means its relation to the power center, the strength of the force and authority behind it, the degree of enforcement that sustains it, the will and capacity to maintain the artificial division running through a populated area. Borders can be backed by weak states, undemarcated and unadministered, or can be strongly asserted and maintain by a strong central authority running its writ to the ends of its earth, or some condition in between these two extremes. Depth refers to the degree of difference occurring in that area between the two sides of the border. Again, the line can be merely a political imposition, resting lightly on an undifferentiated population that largely ignores the attempt to separate their sameness, or it can correspond to pre-existing or rapidly adopted distinctions of identity, based on language, religion, culture, ethnicity, history, race, and other things that make people think themselves different from the Other. The US-Canada border is not very deep; it does not divide much except customs officials and tax forms, whereas the Iron Curtain was much, much deeper. Interestingly, even borders that purport to be very deep, such as the Israeli or Cypriot Green Lines, the Korean DMZ or the Kashmiri LOC, the US-Mexican border, or the border between apartheid South Africa and the Front Line States, turn out to be more disruptive than separative for the borderlands and less deep than authorities might wish. The deepest boundaries are places where civilizations meet, clash and then draw a truce, between historical, religiously backed empires. The nature and conditions of the borderland are affected, secondly, by its own nature as a region. No standard dimensions identify a borderland; they are self-defining and can even be multiply defined for portrayal or analysis, containing themselves in larger or smaller regions like Russian dolls. Perhaps confusingly, the lessons of the analysis can vary with the focus within the same region. Is the best subject for understanding the Cerdanya valley in Catalonia (Sahlins 1989, 1998) or Catalonia itself (Douglass 1998), a neighborhood in Cyprus or Cyprus itself (Schryver 2004), Transnistria or Moldova (Dawisha/Parrott 1998; Hopmann 2001), (Trans-)Jordan or Cis-Jordan (West Bank)? Borderlands can be simply the regions on either side of the borderline, or a region that itself serves as a border, or an outpost region with “nothing” on the other side. In fact, any borderland will embody characteristics of all three conditions, displaying internal separation, external differentiation, and component integrity at the same time. People in borderlands are living on the edge, meeting people living on the edge on the other side of the border, in constantly—if gradually—changing relationships. These three conditions comprise the defining characteristics of borderlands—a population on the margins of power centers, traversed by a formal political boundary, living dynamic relations internally and externally (with the power center). But change is within something, from something to something, not unidentifiable chaos, and it is the further task of this study to identify some of these patterns. The situations that frame the dynamics of change can be expressed in three possible spatial models for social relations in borderlands: black and white, grey, and some intermediate types—spotty, buffered, and layered, as well as mixtures of the three (cf. Barth 1969 at 19–20; Strassoldo 1989; Martinez 1994)

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1. The Black-and-White model pictures a sharp distinction between two different peoples along a clear borderline running through the borderlands, the closed border with alienated borderlands in Martinez’ (1994) terms. The “different” people are self-defining; whether they are “really” (objectively) different is less important than their feeling different, although there is likely to be some objective fact on which subject feelings are based. The separation in the situation requires some sort of border, although it can be formal or informal, externally or internally drawn. In this model, borderland populations are cohesive outposts of the respective power center, inherently hostile in their transborder relations, lacking crossborder interaction, knowledge and communication, and protected in their security and self-image by the hostility between the two power centers. The situation in contemporary Cyprus is a good example of this model, as were relations along the Iron Curtain. Images and in some periods reality along the 19th century Ottoman Balkan border are also examples. 2. The Grey model is quite opposite, with the different populations fully intermingled, whether they feel “different” or not. This is a model of integration, producing an intermediate population and culture composed of a combination of traits and people from the two sides. Borders may still exist but they are permeable, making cultures permeated too. The Tex-Mex border, Schleswig-Holstein between Germany and Denmark, and Alsace, where German and French cultures overlap, are examples marked by hybrid cultures. Balkan reality in periods of the 19th century often took a Grey form in reaction to the official Black-and-White policy. 3a. The other three models fall between the two extremes. The Buffered model is an extreme form of the Grey model: A different culture is located between the two main cultures/populations to insulate them from one another, distinct in its characteristics and established for the internal or external purpose of keeping the two populations separate. Hybrid cultures have evolved or third groups strategically placed separating opposing power centers. Serbs who were placed in the Krajina by the Austrians to separate the Croats from the Ottoman Muslim populations constitute one example among many. 3b. The Spotty model has islands of one culture/population within the other, separated by internal boundaries and living in ghettos or enclaves, but still with diverse contacts and influence across the borders. Doubtless, the surrounding culture will rub off on the islands, but they try to maintain their own integrity. Jewish ghettos in Europe and the Arab world (e.g. Morocco) and Afro-American populations living in segregated America are examples, although not borderland cases; Jewish settlements in Palestine are “reverse” examples, in which the “ghettos” or enclaves are implanted to displace and control the majority. Lusignan Cyprus in the first half of the second millennium is a softer example. 3c. Finally, the Layered model espouses horizontal rather than vertical separations, imposing a dominant population from one culture over another of a different culture. Colonizations, especially settler colonies, are examples, as in the

27.1

Borders and Borderlands

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Maghrib between the European and the Arab world; Apartheid South Africa is a fine example, but only a borderland in the extremely symbolic sense, since it did not lie geographically between two power centers. But these models—Weber’s ideal types or Barth’s (1969 at 20, 1964) gross simplifications—are only snapshots of a doubly dynamic reality that never stays still. At best, they refer to one side of the border or assume a symmetry that is not likely to exist. Even in the strictest approximations of the models to reality, the fit is never tight and the components never impermeable, hermetically sealed from each other, unproductive of crossings and interactions. Borderlands are always in movement from here to there and within the here and there of the moment. Borderland reality is a moving machine at any moment and it changes its movements as it moves through time, in motion both synchronically and diachronically: Because of the complexity of the machine, it is tempting to revert to a picture of incomprehensible chaos, a seemingly endless number of factors locked together, describable but unordered. Once the characteristic dynamic of relations has been recognized, the analytical challenge is to apprehend its dynamic forms and directions. An initial variant in the efforts to order data is the perspective offered by various levels of analysis, beginning with time. The picture of a borderland over a five hundred year time period will naturally different its detail from a picture of a decade, and the depiction of a span of time will vary from a comparative analysis of two time periods at either end of the span, just as the examination of a machine will differ from the study of a mill and that from the analysis of an industry. A second aspect in the dimensions of analysis is constituted by the level itself. Borderlands involve local interactions as a primary focus, but they in turn are affected by relations with and between the power centers (generally, states) that purport to govern them, and these in their turn are affected by the larger regional or global order, often reaching directly into the local interactions themselves. While the levels of analysis in time and in focus should complement each other, they may also reveal tensions that are part of their dynamic. Since it is not only the nature but the source of the dynamics of borderlands that is sought, these analytical relationships will be important and elucidating. Another type of variable concerns the nature of the interaction that is the focus of the analysis. While social science contains a vigorous rivalry over competing claims for decisive terms of analysis, a number of facets of life in the borderlands stand out as particularly important. On the local level, these involve various dimensions of participation such as economic production and exchange (trade), land ownership, social ownership (identity), rule, geographic location (fixed and migratory), communications (language), and security. On the national level, they involve particularly pressures to “modernize” (in the meaning of the times) and to centralize power; the first involves relations between the external/global level and the regional level, whereas the second is internal to the regional power centers. Hanging over all is the mythological level, the way borderlands are perceived from either side of the

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dividing line. While different apperceptions of the dynamics of borderland life may emphasize different terms of analysis from this list, the others need to be kept in sight to keep single factor analysis under control. However important a single term of analysis may be and however necessary it may be to emphasize its role to restore an analytical balance or introduce a new perspective, it is the balance and interaction among variables that provides a full understanding of the borderland dynamics.

27.2

Dynamics and Reactions

The epistemological result of these sets of components of borderland life and analysis is a Rubik’s cube of interactions, complex but limited, spinning its own planes and traveling through time (there are limitations to any analogy). A number of salient variables as identified interact internally, among themselves, and between levels, to constitute a dynamic that characterizes the historic subject. However, this fluid structure only sets up the possibility of identifying some salient interactions that stand out in determining the dynamics of borderland life. No claim can be made for universality, but only for windows that permit better informed observation and understanding of the dynamics of life in borderlands. There are doubtless examples and perhaps universes beyond the cases presented in Life in Borderlands: Boundaries in Depth and in Motion (University of Georgia Press, 2012). But the examples, ranging over 4 millennia from the twentieth century BC to the twentieth century AD, show at least that the three defining characteristics—a population on the margins of power, traversed by a political boundary, living internally and externally dynamic relations—encompass an area of human activity and scientific analysis that continues across history, and is therefore relevant to understanding events yet to come. One major source of dynamics in the borderlands derives from the evolution of power centers controlling the borders. When a power center (state) seeks to grow, consolidate its authority, or modernize (in the understanding of the times), it is likely to harden its borders, centralize economic supplies and exchanges, inhibit local border control mechanisms and transborder cooperation, and introduce conflict between the two sides of the borderland. The result is a heightened sense of differentiation and identity on either side, an augmentation of migration and relocation, and nostalgia for the territorial expression of identity. A strong power center bent on controlling its side of the borderlands is bound to send “foreign” populations to confirm its consolidation. These populations can be military and border guards, administrators, and settlers, whose authority depends on their ability to resist assimilation (in either direction) with the local population. Such foreign implantations work to create the very opposite of the separation, homogenization and control that they were sent to achieve.

27.2

Dynamics and Reactions

473

However, if this physical, economic and identitarian separation is not achieved completely, as is likely, the old habits of transborder communication, the need for economic exchanges, differentiation within the unhomogenized population, and reactions against the efforts to create a Black-and-White borderland are likely to produce new groups working to tie the two halves of the borderland together. These include dayworkers, smugglers and bandits, traders, indigenous minorities, among others. Their activities will prompt further conflicts within the borderlands, and will either be reduced if the power center is effectively consolidated or will create a new type of relations within the borderlands, further weakening the state. A weak power center will tend either to leave its borderlands on their own, or to make compensating efforts to assert what little power is left to secure its borderlands. It may delegate security and other functions to local authorities, as along the 19th century AD Ottoman borderlands, or may make preemptive raids along the border to keep potential adversaries off balance, as in 19th century BC Egypt. If the opposing power center is weak too, the internal characteristics of the borderland, whether harmonious or conflictual, become dominant, local groups become salient and dominant, the border becomes very Grey, and functional specialization gives rise to local purveyors of products and activities that the power centers still require. If the opposing power center is strong, local autonomy in the borderland and indeed the border itself may be in danger; security means either bandwagoning with the stronger neighbor or finding a balancer from outside. A Grey area between two weak power centers is a vacuum that requires that the region either rise to the challenge of handling its own internal coherence and external security or call in assistance from an external protector, not too close but not too distant. A Grey area between two strong power centers is either the result of a protective pact or the preparation for an impending battlefield. The first contributes to the internal coherence of the area; the second tears it apart into union and rebel sympathizers in the border state. Stepping down from the level of power centers, a second dynamic is triggered by sudden attempts to impose a new boundary on an old borderland, in the form of a ceasefire line, green line, or line of control. Typically, such a line attempts to arbitrate between competing claims from rival centers and overlapping loyalties within the borderland population, and is often accompanied by a physical or virtual “national cleansing,” in which populations homogenize either by taking on the newly imposed loyalties or by moving. The Israelo-Palestinian and Cyprus Green Lines, the Kashmir Line of Control, the Korean 38th Parallel corrected to the Ceasefire Line, the German Iron Curtain, the various Ottoman Balkan borders, and many others are diverse examples. The cases immediately recall that the imposed homogeneity is not only artificial but also incomplete and unstable in its attempt to construct identity and meaning. Competing with the state efforts to create new identities and their supporting social structures are the borderland peoples’ efforts to overcome the line, and this competition is the basis of the new dynamic. “Green lines” create physical and social mobilities, quite the opposite of their intent. New refugees transport their territorial identity on the backs, and refugee camps become little homelands on the wrong side of the border. Left-over islands

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from either side reach back in space and memory across the new line. New professions, such as middlemen for commerce and communications and smugglers of goods and people, poke holes in the border, that other new professions, such as guards and administrators, try to close. The authorities seek to overcome the new artificiality of the border by giving it civilizational meaning as the end of the world, with nothing on the other side, loading it with significance that would not be necessary if the border were more natural. Pressures to soften the border only became reasons to harden it. Against these tensions, artificially imposed borders tend to be dismantled as dramatically as they were imposed, rather than gradually eroding. The flood released when the wall is torn down, however, does not wash away its traces; just as the field of the previous borderland was hard to fence definitively, so the imprint of the wall and the differences they created are difficult to erase. A third source of dynamics and change is found in horizontal divisions of class and other stratifications that arise in the borderlands and interact across the frontier. Most writing about borderlands, beginning with the anthropological tradition and the idea of social boundaries, has been a two-dimensional analysis emphasizing the vertical or ethnic divisions and relations within society. Much less attention has been paid to a three-dimensional analysis of horizontal or class divisions within the borderlands, and then to their interaction with the vertical divisions and relations; Barth (1969: 27–28) treats “stratification” as a given, like geography. But all cannot be subsumed within vertical relations; to the contrary, it is often the horizontal position that gives role and meaning to the vertical divisions. Borderlands have their own social stratification, one that typically incorporates some ethno-national elements in particular places in the strata. A three-dimension analysis is needed to comprehend change and dynamics. Local relations in the borderlands frequently replicate in the small Barrington Moore’s classic dynamic between central authority (monarchy), land-owners (barons), and commercial forces, adding a fourth force of labor to replace peasantry in modern times. An additional element to complete the array of players is the military, who are particularly important actors in borderlands; regime overthrow by dissatisfied military forces stationed in the borderlands is a frequent phenomenon, as experiences from Caesar in Rome to Franco in Spain illustrate. In this schema, it is the particular alliances among forces that determine the social evolution and create particular reactions in the next round of history. Local dynamics can be quite independent of the larger national dynamics, but can also be the tail that wags the national dog. There are a number of possibilities for these dynamics. If the borderland elites or upper strata do well in relation to the power center, they can invade the capital, either to take over or to be assimilated. These were the outcomes for the Oranais in Algeria and Texans in the US, respectively. Or they can stay at home, raising rivalries with the center and eventually notions of autonomy and secession, usually because they feel they are not getting their due from the center and want to keep their own resources for themselves. This is what happened in recent times in Kurdistan, Slovenia and Croatia, and the Baltic States. Horizontal relations can also

27.2

Dynamics and Reactions

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determine the ways in which the borderlands themselves will swing in relations to competing—bordering—power centers. The civil war in Northern Ireland is as much as class conflict as an ethnic or religious conflict, ultimately pitting demographic and against economic power to decide whose borderland the territory will be. Socio-economic changes through development raise the power of the workers; vertical consolidation through nationalism or ethnic solidarity comes as a natural reaction to the introduction of class consciousness and warfare, although lower class ideological leaders may then seek support from excluded ethnies. This is what happened in Catalonia at the end of the 19th century (Douglass 2002: 68–73). In another aspect of the modernization process, the classical struggle between the herders and the farmers, reinforced by social boundaries separating ethnic groups dominating each occupation, can escalate into genocide in the borderlands, as in the American West, Darfur (Haaland 1969), and Kivu, among many others. In all these cases, among others, it is the interaction between vertical and horizontal divisions that provided the dynamic of socio-political relations within the borderland, a process of movement that could not be accounted for by one dimension of divisions alone. These three sources of action and reaction—power center relations, artificial boundaries, and horizontal stratification—are not the only causes behind borderlands dynamics, but they are major ones, illustrated by the subsequent cases. They are also the bases for a policy-relevant understanding of appropriate way of dealing with the borderland condition.

27.3

Objects and Policies

An understanding of borderlands as dynamic social processes has policy relevance, for human organisms and powers centers alike will have to deal with the moving phenomenon, and need to have a full appreciation of it to participate in it and react to it appropriately. The first lesson for policy is to appreciate the changing nature of borderlands rather than trying to conceive of them or impose on them a fixed reality. Sharp impositions create their own reactions, making impositions even more difficult and starting new dynamics. The second lesson is that policy needs to anticipate the consequent reactions and not just address the present situation, whatever it is. Policy tends to think now (if at all), whereas borderland policy needs to think ahead, dealing with the current challenge but also anticipating the impact of the policy and the changes that ensue. The third lesson is that demarcation and permeability are the two requirements for an effective border. People on both sides of the border need to know with certainty where the line is, and they need to be able to cross it. The two theses of this work—that movement rather then any particular model as the characteristic of borderlands, and that in that characteristic movement, borderlands always prepare for the next move at the same time as they respond to the last one—pose both problems and bases for a policy-relevant understanding of

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appropriate way of dealing with the borderland condition. It would be easier to handle borderlands if they would only hold still, and if there were one appropriate policy to deal with them once and for all, two conditions that stand at the opposite of borderlands defining characteristics. Yet policymakers have to deal with the situation in their borderlands at any particular time, resolving its problems and handling its challenges. Whether in Pharaonic Egypt, Ottoman Balkans, contemporary South Asia, Israel-Palestine, or Southwest USA, policies have to be devised to meet the challenges of the moment. But this needs to be done within a recognition that the situation reflects characteristics of fluidity and direction, that solutions have their consequences, and that policy needs to look ahead as well as behind. An understanding of borderlands as dynamic social processes (both active and passive) has policy relevance, for human organisms and powers centers alike will have to deal with the moving phenomenon, and need to have a full appreciation of it to participate in it and react to it appropriately. The prime lesson for policy is to appreciate the changing nature of borderlands rather than trying to conceive of them or impose on them a fixed reality. Sharp impositions create their own reactions, making impositions even more difficult and starting new dynamics. Given these characteristics, previous millennia and present dilemmas do not indicate specific policies but rather afford general insights that can serve as a context for policymakers dealing with the problems of the moment. Many of these insights simply emphasize the importance of paying attention to borderlands in their own right, as a subject of policy; other refer to more defined characteristics of the regions. 1. Borderlands have as much socio-political meaning as borders. Political attempts to end a state at its geographical limits create a transborder socio-economic area or borderland whose nature has to be examined and understood if the boundary itself is to be maintained. The fact that there is so much literature on boundaries and so little on borderlands can easily mislead policymakers into thinking that it is the line rather than the space that matters and that the line can be defended without consideration of the space on either side. Although the preceding chapters focused on borderlands as their topic, their discussion makes it clear that the line had an impact on the region and the region gave meaning to the line. Whether the policy of the state is to impose a hard line—a black-and-white model—or a soft zone—a grey model—or some mixture in between, it meets the reaction of the borderlands and the ensuing dynamics determine whether the border “works” or not. Regardless of the central or national view of things, the borderland will continue to pursue its ways and reassert itself, like water seeping under the door. It is generally better for the state to give such local tendencies some room, lest they turn directly subversive to the policies that try to inhibit them. Sometimes, it is important for the states to simply let go and let the local level administrators and border guards have autonomy and flexibility in border affairs. They know the area better

27.3

Objects and Policies

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than imported officials, and given leeway, they can also then be coopted to be better agents for the state. Centralization of border guards tends to encourage escalation of events rather than giving cross-border conflict resolution a chance. Borderland control of borderland affairs undermines the simplistic understandings of ethnicity and political participation and contributes to a more sophisticated understanding of the overt and subtle meanings of ethnicity and nation. Relationships between ethnicity, nationalism, imperial systems and local cultures, and statecraft/state capacity are complex anywhere, but arguably more so in borderland regions. 2. The second lesson is that policy needs to anticipate the consequent reactions and not just address the present situation, whatever it is. Borderland policy needs to think ahead, dealing with the current challenge but also anticipating the impact of the policy and the changes that ensue. While this may be true of any policy, it is more strongly characteristic of borderlands that problem-solving solutions are also problem-creating solutions. The nature of the region, more or less artificially divided between two (or more) evolving power centers, bears a continual evolution from one stage to another. Faced with a hostile neighbor, are the two sides sharply divided? Commercial and other transactions will leak across the divide, challenge it, and create a group or class of middlemen. Faced with traditional transborder movement, is the separating line made an open door? The richer or stronger side will become saturated or subverted and will feel a need to close the door. Faced with local life and identity far away, does the center hold the periphery loosely, keeping control by allowing local identities and transactions to flourish in the borderland? When the center weakens, the borderland will spawn pressures to become its own center. Faced with assertions of borderland identity, does the center occupy the borderland and hold it tight? The guards may make common cause with the periphery, or the periphery may move to the center and take it over. Policymakers cannot be expected to avoid such policies because of possible later consequences, or else they would be able to make no policy at all. But they should be aware of likely consequences down the road where dealing with one situation creates a new one that needs to be dealt with, keeping an eye out for signs of consequences’ appearance, and lighten the weight of the present solution so as not to provoke the anticipated backlash. The land of the Jordan is unfortunately rich with examples. Israeli policies toward the Palestinian-occupied borderlands in the 1970s and 1980s after the June War of 1967 consisted of carrots or employment opportunities for cooperative Palestinians and sticks or imprisonment for rebellious others; but by 1987 employed Palestinians saw the disparity with employed Israelis and the unchanged distance to their goal of liberation, and so erupted into the first intifada in 1987, a foreseeable reaction of relative deprivation in an improved but stymied evolution. One borderland policy had created an unanticipated reaction that the initial policy had sought to deter. Policies must be flexible enough to change with the changing (as we say, fluid) boundaries that they affect and effect. That

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these boundaries are changed by these policies is also an eventuality that they must consider. 3. The third lesson is that demarcation and permeability are the two requirements for an effective border, what Friedman (2006) has called “high fences, big gates.”. People on both sides of the border need to know with certainty where the line is, and they need to be able to cross it. If not they will make their own way, and the process will take on a life outside of the proscribed policy. States need to create a border that balances security with openness. The two are not obvious complements, but they need not be mutually exclusive. Uncertain, contested, and undemarcated boundaries constitute the largest single cause of interstate wars, and they play havoc with the already-fluid dynamics of their borderlands. But impenetrable boundaries sharpen the artificial nature of the lines that separates neighbors; borderlands need to breathe, outside the political restraints of the line of sovereignty. If undemarcated boundaries cause wars, impenetrable boundaries cause incidents. People will risk their lives to cross them, and the borderlands become a bastion of refuge. Obviously the pressure is one sided: Americans do not cross the desert to get to Mexico, and Spaniards do not scale accordion wire fences to get into Morocco. But there is traffic going both ways—south to spend money, north to earn it—and that traffic links the borderlands on both sides in their heterogeneity. While demarcation and permeability are undisputed values, they also pose their own contradictions. Pursuit of both in the extreme can cause incoherence and undercutting. As the Marquez-Romo chapter points out, US policy at the Mexican border seeks to encourage, or at least facilitate, traditional as well as touristic movement between the two countries, while at the same time tightening border controls against smuggling of people and goods. In the end, because one policy demands active measures over the other’s passive measures, the US overemphasizes border enforcement at the expense of border crossing. The smuggling is an unintended consequence of the free flow; the hardening of the border creates new and larger tensions in US-Mexican relations that the two friendly capitals do not seek, but can lead to a backlash creating a new situation to be resolved. A four-pronged policy measure of enforcement, a guest worker program, closer cooperation with Mexico, and improved efficiencies for legal transit was repeatedly introduced in Congress in the 1990s and early 2000s but still awaits adoption. Similar analyses can be made of other borderlands.

27.4

Change

Globalization reaffirms and changes all this. Borderlands will continue to exist, as they have since the Early Kingdoms, showing the same characteristics as before, and evoking the same sort of policy responses and recommendations. But they will also

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Change

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be leapfrogged, so that in important ways the centers will be “borderlandified” while at the same time keeping their distinctiveness and relationship with their peripheries. Since borderlands are socio-political or socio-economic phenomena, they are essentially local reactions to past and present stimuli, and their memories are long. Traces of the Marches between the Dukedoms of Normandy and Brittany in France or of the Border States between North and South in the US can still be found, on the ground and in people’s behaviors, even though the causes and powers relations which formed them are long gone. Some borderland behaviors may be outmoded in some places—it is unlikely that borderlands will break away from the center in many parts of the world, notably Europe and the Americas—but that is not the only eventuality for borderlands and it still remains a possibility among others in some areas—notably Southern Sudan, Casamance, Nagaland, Tamil Eelam, among others. As remarkable a measure as Schengen, the 2001? European Union convention that moved customs and immigration to the outer limits of the Union for 12 countries, certainly weakened the importance of some borderlands within its boundaries but it did not eliminate them, and it merely moved full-force boundaries to the Union’s rim, pushing out borderlands along with it. NAFTA has certainly not eliminated the Tex-Mex borderlands, to the contrary, and NAFTA is not the EU. On the other hand, globalization makes borderlands of us all, as it pokes through sovereignty, leaps over boundaries, implants peripherarians in the center and centralites in the peripheries. The Global South struggles not to become simply a borderland of the North, as the North outsources many of its basic functions— manufacturing, services, peacekeeping—to economic, communications, and military mercenaries. The South repays the Northern invasions under the colonial era with a reverse flow that moves North African and Anatolian borderlands to the suburbs of Paris, Bruxelles, Berlin and Vienna, just as the Mexican borderlands have moved to sections of Washington and New York. Globalization means interpenetration but not homogenization (not yet and probably never). It makes for a lumpy stew, and some of these lumps are borderlands. Some are along borders, as noted, where they always were, as far back as the Middle Kingdoms of Egypt. Others have broken loose and floated to the center, where they anchor themselves on the outskirts or even on the inside of the city, with all that characteristics of social organization, identity, commerce, functional differentiation, and outpost occupation that they had when they were borderlands. It is here that the first policy lesson reaffirms itself, that borderlands, wherever they may be located, need to be understood in their complexity. Treating the floating borderland in the globalizing world exclusively as merely an ethnic enclave or a class ghetto or a homeland extension or any other of the many elements in its nature is to ignore the lesson of Lusignan Cyprus, Ottoman Moldovia, or migrant Kashmiris that borderland populations are many things. Rather than a simplistic understanding of ethnicity and political participation, a more sophisticated understanding of the overt and subtle meanings of ethnicity and nation and of the relationships between ethnicity, nationalism, imperial systems and local cultures, and statecraft/state capacity is necessary for dealing with the challenging phenomenon of globalized borderlands.

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In that situation, the same sources of dynamics—evolution of power centers, imposition of new boundaries, shifts in horizontal and vertical social divisions— operate on the borderlands people, wherever they are. The analysis has not been outmoded but extended. In this situation, the borderlands effect still acts in relation to power centers, situated in neighborhoods around cities rather than being contained in territories around states. Like the townships on the edges of apartheid South African cities or the Palestinian ghettos on the edge of Israel, they act as borderlands affected by shifts in power, boundaries, and social divisions.

References Abbott, Andrew 1995. “Things of Boundariesm,” Socual Research LXIV 4:857–882. Alvarez Jr, Robert R 1995. “The Mexican-US Border: that making of an anthropology of borderlands,” Annual Review of Anthropology XXIV 447–470. Barth, Frederick, 1964. “Competition and Symbiosis in North East Baluchistan,” Folk VI 1. Barth Frederick, ed. 1969. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Difference (Little Brown). Dawisha, Karen & Bruce Parrott 1998. The End of Empire (London: Sharpe). Douglass, William 1998. “A Western Perspective on an Eastern Interpretation of Where North Meets South: Pyranean Border Culture,” in Wilson & Hastings, eds., Border Identities. Friedman, Thomas, 2006. “High Fences, Big Gates,” International Herald Tribune, 6 April, p. 7 Gellner, Ernest 1983. Nations and Nationalism (Cornell University Press). Hansen, Niles 1981. The Border Economy (University of Texas Press). Hastings, Donnan & Thomas Wilson eds. 1994. Border Approaches: Anthropological … Perspectives on Frontiers (UPA). Hopmann, P Terrence 2001. “Disintegrating States: Separating without Violence,” in I William Zartman, ed., Preventive Negotiatio (Rowman & Littlefield). Lavie, Smadar & Ted Swedenborg, eds. 1996. Displacement, Diaspora and Geographies of Identity (Duke University Press). Martinez, Oscar 1994. “The Dynamics of Border Interaction,” in Clive H Schofeld, ed., Global Boundaries (Routledge). Michaelsen, Scott & David Johnson 1997. Border Theory: The Limits of Cultural Politics (University of Minnesota Press). Nolutshungu, Sam ed. 1996. Margins of Insecurity: Minorities and International Security (University of Rochester Press). O’Leary, Brendan, Ian Lustick, & Thomas Callaghy, eds. 2001. Right-sizing the State (Oxford University Press). Sahlins, Peter 1988. Boundariees: The Making of Frace and Spain in the Pyrenees (University of California Press). Schryver, James 2010. “Colonialism or Conviviencia in Frankish Vyprus?,” in I William Zartman, ed., Understand Life in the Boirderlands. Simons, Chaim 1988. International Proposals to TransferArabs from Palestine (Hoboken NJ: Ktav). Strassoldo, R. 1989. “Border Studies: The State of the Art in Europe,” in Anthony Asiwaju & P O Adeniyi, eds., Borderlands in Africa (University of Lagos Press). Tilly, Charles 2004. “Social Boundary Mechanisms,” Philosophy of the Social Sciences XXXIV 211–236. Wilson, Thomas & Hastings Donnan, eds. 1998. Border Identities: National State at International Frontiers (Cambridge University Press). Winichakul, Thanchai 1994. Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation (University of Hawaii Press).

Chapter 28

Maghreb Matters

28.1

The Concern

North Africa (the Maghreb) is a strategically important region for the United States.1 Its location at the mouth of the Mediterranean, on the southern shore of Europe’s “Rio Grande,” and at the Western end of the Arab world, and its prominence as an area of US interests in security, democratization, stability, development and cooperation make the Maghreb a region worthy of serious attention by the US Administration. Unfortunately, North Africa has often fallen through the cracks of US Middle East, African and European policies. Domestic constituencies concerned with the Middle East tend to focus on oil, the Middle East peace process, and Iran. Those concerned with Africa policy tend to concentrate on conflict issues affecting sub-Saharan Africa only. Those concerned with the Mediterranean tend to look to the northern shore and are content to leave the south to the European Union (EU). The absence of vocal domestic constituencies on Maghreb issues has contributed to the lack of a clear US policy focus. Yet the US Government should have a profound interest in North Africa because developments in the region impact significantly on our national interests. As the new Administration prepares its portfolio of foreign policy priorities, immediate attention should be given to a review of US interests and opportunities in North Africa. The countries of the Maghreb—Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia—face problems and provide opportunities that have immediate regional and global implications. The head of the UN Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate has called North Africa the most worrisome area of the world in regard to terrorism because its slow development, unemployed youth. Unlike intractable conflicts of the Middle East, however, the challenges in North Africa can be

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Why the Maghreb Matters: Threats, Opportunities, & Options for Effective US Engagement in North Africa. SAIS Conflict Management Program and Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, March 2009.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 I. W. Zartman, I William Zartman: A Pioneer in Conflict Management and Area Studies, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06079-4_28

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addressed best through a coordinated, communicated, comprehensive political, economic and social strategy led by Washington working in partnership with regimes in the region and in Europe.

28.2

The Interests

The Maghreb is the garden and the guardian of the Mediterranean. Maintaining friendly relations with nations of the southern shore, just across the straits from NATO Spain and Gibraltar and Italy and Malta, is a necessity for the US Sixth Fleet’s access to the Mediterranean. Morocco’s newly modernized and expanded TanMed entrepôt port, like its elder sister at Algeciras, provides immediate transshipment for all commercial traffic to and from the Mediterranean Sea to the East. Wartime has underscored the importance of that strategic location, from Moroccan cooperation in efforts to combat the Barbary pirates to the Allied landings in Morocco and Algeria in 1942 that provided the base for the liberation of Italy and then southern France in 1944. At a time when the Russian navy is wandering into and out of the Mediterranean and China is assiduously building ties in the region, secure access to and cooperation with North Africa is vital to US interests. At the same time, since Roman times it has been a breadbasket and fruit and vegetable garden for Europe. Today, the most immediate security issue concerns the land rather than the sea, as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and other salafist/jihadist groups spread subversive terrorism along the shores (sahel in Arabic) of the Sahara and then north into Europe. Loose-knit groups of terrorists from the Sahel and the Maghreb itself bring stabs of insecurity to the major cities of the region and into European capitals such as Madrid, carried by the pressures of illegal trade and immigration. A review of international databases including the National Counterterrorism Center and Lawson Terrorism Information Center reveals a startling spike in terrorist attacks since 2001 in the Maghreb nations and Mali—up by more than 430 percent from only 21 incidents in 2001 to 113 in 2007. The leading countries of the Maghreb—Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia—actively cooperate with the United States in military and intelligence matters to combat terrorism bilaterally and through the US-led Trans-Sahel Initiative for regional security, working to check the western extension of al-Qaeda and related activities; but they seldom cooperate directly with each other. Rivalries, distrust and mutual suspicions among the states of the region continue to hinder cooperative efforts to work collectively against the terrorist threat, even when it is clear that the degree of cross border activity is increasing and becoming more deadly. The southern flank of the Maghreb is the capstone to the programs of the new US Africa Command (AfriCom). Above all, security depends on more than military and intelligence

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cooperation; it requires stable, developing societies and economies to undercut the recruiting capabilities of the terrorists. The Maghreb is the western extension of the Arab world, a region where a number of countries take seriously their Western as well as Arab orientation. Countries like Morocco and Tunisia share concerns with the greater Atlantic Community and provide cooperative access to the West in joint activities and interests. Tunisia continues to be a leading entrepreneurial center in the region through its private sector-led economic growth. It cooperates with the U.S. in security programs, continues to upgrade its trade and investment regime with the US, and has the broadest penetration of European investment relative to the size of its economy. Algeria enjoys a position of leadership in the Arab World and is a major supplier of gas to the US markets. It has survived a horrific civil war, has begun to welcome more foreign investment in key sectors, cooperates with the U.S. in sharing security intelligence, and has moderated its aggressive diplomatic behavior towards France and other members of the EU. Morocco has a free trade agreement with the US and a unique Associate status with the EU, and enjoys a special relationship with the North Shore through several partnership programs. It also enjoys a special status as a Non-NATO ally of the United States. Morocco has been an invaluable link in past rounds of the Middle East Peace process and has contributed troops to peacekeeping forces in the Balkans, Haiti, the Congo and the Gulf. It has been an outspoken supporter of the West in 9/11 and post-9/11 solidarity. Mauritania has held relatively open elections in the past, allowed for the growth of the private sector, and legally outlawed slavery while promoting women’s rights. While these are all welcome developments, Libya has collapsed as a state as it struggles bloodily to find itself. In short, North Africa represents opportunities and challenges that in large part will contribute to the diplomatic agenda for the new administration. As the northern shore of Africa, with a long historic connection with West Africa across the Sahara, the Maghreb represents a potentially important strategic ally for US interests in sub-Saharan Africa. North Africa offers the US an opportunity to feature its relations with a moderate accessible Muslim region, where, in Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, loyal Islamist parties participate in electoral and parliamentary governance and where violent extremism is roundly rejected by the population. Most notable is the way Tunisia and Morocco have handled the popular uprisings for dignity, bread, jobs and civic participation that marked the Arab Spring of the early 2010s and have emerged stronger in their steps toward responsible and accountable governance. Enhanced cooperation can help shore up moderate regimes in the region, support policies favoring an open tolerant society, and encouraging measures to protect women’s rights, secular education, press freedom, and judicial independence. Arguably, it constitutes the most open region in the Muslim world, with longstanding ties with the US and political systems making the greatest progress along the road of democratization.

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Like other Arab (and African) countries, the countries of the Maghreb struggle with the challenge of progressive political reform. All of the countries, to varying degrees, are continually defining and redefining their commitments to more open and democratic governance, human rights, and rule of law. Yet as the coup in Mauritania, the erratic nature of the regime in Libya, the intolerance of dissent and hankering for a longer-then-life presidency in Algeria, a struggle to preserve the best of the past while repeating old habits, and Morocco’s lukewarm embrace of press and political progress demonstrate, the momentum for transparency and rule of law progresses according to different rhythms in each country. Under the stability provided by its historic monarchy, Morocco and Tunisia have made more progress along the road toward democracy than other Arab countries. Their multiparty systems, moderate Islamic party, increasingly free and fair elections and growing attention to civil liberties and the principles of rule of law are constrained within socio-cultural rules that emphasize stability and loyalty. Assessments of the other three countries point to similar concerns with security, stability and regime maintenance that dilute or inhibit more progressive political development. It is important to US interests to keep democratization moving, civil rights protected, and the rule of law promoted, and to help the countries guard against the instability that the transition process often entails. Fostering better inter-regional cooperation, contacts, and networks, especially on issues of social development, and establishing stronger ties to the region as a whole could prove significant in helping to stabilize the various nations of the region as they continue to adapt to a globalizing economy and increasing demands for broader political participation among their populations. Much of the Maghreb touts the benefits of an open economy of free enterprise, with some exceptions. The challenge of modernization has been accepted by Morocco and Tunisia in their trade agreements with the US and Europe. Countries of the region have moved from family enterprises to competitive companies and from a centrally-controlled economy towards open markets. The shift has been neither easy nor perfect; the lures of Arab socialism and highly protectionist internal markets are sometime difficult to dispel. Opening local production to foreign competition comes at a heavy cost to traditional marginal producers and the workforce and must be accompanied by dynamic modernization within the companies and measures to strengthen workers’ insurance and retooling by the government. The U.S. and the West have a strong interest in facilitating this conversion, not just by opening markets to their products but by helping to build local industry and to modernize agriculture, and by providing aid for a smooth transition. Reversion to a protected centralized economy or reduction to a commodity-based, non-value-added market would not be in the interest of local development, or of domestic Maghrebi stability, or of the expansion of US markets. While Morocco and Tunisia have grown economically through offshore export production, Algeria and Libya have become major sources of oil and gas, which drive their budgets. Diversifying US energy supplies is an important national interest, although rentier economies that rely heavily on oil and gas income provide an erratic base for growth, stability, and democratization. Economies heavily

28.2

The Interests

485

dependent on oil and gas need to focus capital investment outside the hydrocarbon sector for the sake of longer term employment, stability, and development.

28.3

The Needs

These many-sided interests come together in a number of important considerations. One is the need for inter-Maghrebi cooperation and unity. The North African countries created a regional economic and security cooperation organization in 1989, the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA), encouraged by a plan of the UN Economic Commission for Africa for regional groupings in the continent. The UMA has been “frozen” since 1994, largely because of political tensions between Algeria and Morocco. It has not met at the decision-making level for nearly two decades, and sectorial commissions on various aspects of cooperation have made little progress. The countries and the region have lost out as a result, with the possibilities of gains through intra-regional trade frozen as well. Intraregional merchandise trade has languished at 1.3% of the region’s total trade, one of the lowest rates of any region in the world. The countries compete with each other in many products, and comparative advantages, economies of scale, and region-wide investment possibilities are in near-total neglect. Annual per capita GDP growth from 1997 to 2007 was only 4.4%, much lower than the rate experienced by the countries of ASEAN (excluding Indonesia) and the countries of Central America that are parties to CAFTA-DR. Unemployment is high, often above 20 percent, and, unless action is taken, promises to increase because of a burgeoning demographic bulge in the region. Extremism threatens to further limit economic growth and foreign investment in the region. Economic integration in the Maghreb can help address these challenges by capitalizing on economies of scale, attracting increased investment, and turning the region into a more prosperous and stable economic zone that provides an improving standard of living to its inhabitants. The loss is not only in economic terms. Many interregional activities pass through the US or Europe rather than through the North African countries. In security, there is more cooperation with the U.S. than among the Maghrebis themselves. Instead of constituting a security community, where war is not a policy option and military cooperation is pursued, the countries’ arm themselves against one another and discuss the dangers of attack. The US military has been trying to encourage direct anti-terrorist cooperation among the states of the region for the last several years through training and direct operational cooperation, but little progress has been made on a regional level because of mutual rivalries and distrust. Each country has opted to negotiate a separate agreement with the EU since gaining independence, rather than collectively negotiating for better terms, an option favored by the Europeans. This likewise compares unfavorably to the experience of the countries of Southeast Asia and Central America, which have realized increased political bargaining power derived from regional integration. In transportation, it is still easier to fly through Paris than directly between countries.

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Maghreb Matters

Academics in the same field often have little contact with each other except through meetings in Europe or the eastern Mediterranean or those sponsored by foreign organizations. News coverage of other countries in the region is biased and wary. It is in the US interest to help overcome such wasteful divisions and diversions from a common attention to common problems. Another cluster of needs is for regional stability, growth and popular participation. The three are intertwined. Unless socio-economic development is accelerated and jobs are produced in greater quantity, the other parts of the triangle are endangered. A substantial increase in employment opportunities is necessary to keep youth off the road of alienation, desperation, emigration, and al-Qaeda terrorism. This is not just a domestic need for a few distant countries; it is a vital American need to ensure stability in a region where both terrorism and demographic pressures pose an increasingly direct threat to the interests of the United States and its European allies. If conditions in Morocco and Tunisia were to reach the levels of even current insecurity in Algeria—where the UN headquarters in the middle of Algiers was blown up, the president nearly assassinated, and travel to parts of the country is no longer safe—a vicious circle of government crackdowns and escalating terrorist attacks would be the likely result. The lack of regional stability and security is abetted by the governance issues in the Maghreb countries. The governments are in various states of transition: going haltingly forward and slipping backwards, sometimes threatened by domestic apathy, alienation and opposition, and stymied in the search for an elusive regional consensus on common problem solving. The gradual and uneven movement toward greater political freedoms and respect for human rights; the erratic implementation of steps for economic diversification, modernizing reform, and growth; and the absence of opportunities for personal development contribute to a growing uneasy relationship between the region’s governments and peoples. While a combination of repression and energy dollars have temporarily eased the pressure for reforms in Algeria and Libya, the basic fabric of governance is eroding under domestic strains. Even where elections are free and fair, as in Morocco and Tunisia, participation is alarmingly low. A third cluster of needs is closer regional economic integration with economic linkages to the US and EU. It is unfortunate that up until now, concerns such as illegal immigration, local unemployment, drug trafficking, and smuggling are perceived as European issues, on which the U.S. has remained relatively aloof. As a consequence, the American foreign policy machinery has failed to develop the fabric of networks with its European allies necessary to weave a more coherent and coordinated multilateral approach to a region where serious mistakes in policy or a continued unraveling of the status quo threatens consequences as serious for America as for Europe. Security and economic issues are closely intertwined. AQIM has specifically, repeatedly and openly targeted the regimes of the Maghreb with the explicit goal of creating as much instability in the region as possible in order to open prospects for its own benefit in its continuing campaign against the West. The very substantial increase in terrorist incidents in the region make clear

28.3

The Needs

487

enough, in a post-9/11 world, the perils of a laissez-faire attitude about such threats in North Africa. Economic model analysis suggests that a full-fledged free trade area among the Maghreb countries would yield a gain in total merchandise trade of some $1 billion.2 Even this modest figure would almost double the extent of commercial relations within the region and might pave the way for a future deepening of ties. FTAs between the EU or the US and the major Maghreb countries would generate even larger gains. Based on gravity model (GM) calculations, total Maghreb trade would expand by $4-to-$5 billion (3.0-to-4.5 percent) if the EU and the US separately establish free trade areas with the UMA countries, and by nearly $9 billion (nearly 8 percent) if both establish regional FTAs with the UMA countries. In terms of a possible EU-US-Maghreb free trade area, total Maghreb inward FDI stocks would increase by $5.8 billion (75 percent), and total Maghreb outward FDI stocks would rise by $3.9 billion; both the US and European economies stand to benefit as well from enhanced integration with the Maghreb region. If the agreements depicted in these scenarios are implemented, the trade and FDI impacts of Maghreb economic integration can be expected to materialize over horizons of 2-to-5 years. While these projections are theoretical, they convey the promise in reducing trade and investment barriers for the Maghreb. The fourth need, and key to the door of regional cooperation, is for a resolution of the Western Saharan conflict. This is a running sore between Morocco and Algeria that prevents regional cooperation in all areas. For the Moroccans, this former Spanish colony, administered for over three decades as Moroccan territory, was returned to Morocco as a result of a 1975 decolonization agreement with Spain. The issue is regarded as an existential matter by the Moroccan public and government. For Algeria, the territory must achieve independence as the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) through a confirmatory referendum organized by the UN. The only current proposal for a compromise between these two positions—full integration into Morocco or complete independence for SADR—has been a compromise offered by Morocco in 2007, which proposed a special status of autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty. Morocco would get the “outside of the box;” the Sahrawis—all of them—would get “the inside of the box.” The Polisario Front, the national liberation movement operating out of Algeria, has thus far refused to accept autonomy and has failed to proffer an alternative compromise solution. Morocco now governs the majority of the disputed area as an integral part of its territory with regular participation by the population in both local and national elections, but the Western Sahara is officially designated by the United Nations as a “non-self-governing territory” pending final determination of its status. Some tens of thousands of Sahrawis also live under Algerian and Polisario authority in refugee camps near Tindouf in southwestern Algeria.

2

Developed in a study by the Peterson Institute of International Economics: Gary Clyde Hufbauer & Claire Brunel, eds., Maghreb Regional and Global Integration.

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Maghreb Matters

The current stalemate, which began in 1991 following a UN and AU negotiated cease-fire, is enormously costly to both sides and costly too to the possibilities of interregional cooperation. Yet, for each side stalemate is preferable to the preferred solution of the other side. The compromise solution of autonomy should solve this impasse, and the official US government policy is that autonomy presents the only realistic option for the population of Western Sahara, given the nature of the territory and its population. If it were to become fully independent, it would have a population of only 200,000 to 400,000 people, making it the smallest non-island state in the world. It would likewise be among the poorest, since it has no arable land and few natural resources (phosphates, the price of which has been low for a longtime, and fish). With substantial land area, a small population, and extremely limited resources, the Western Sahara could fall prey to subversion and terrorist groups now operating in the region. It likely would remain a source of acrimony and tension between Morocco and Algeria as well as the other bordering states of the Maghreb. It is in the interest of the U.S. to see that this conflict does not continue, and to avoid an outcome that produces another Somalia on the Atlantic coast of North Africa. The view that the current situation is manageable and/or sustainable over the longer term is an illusion. The ease and ostensible seriousness of UN-based attempts at moving a resolution of the conflict forward give a false impression of stability to the stalemate. Morocco and Algeria keep a watchful eye on their delicate relationship (“Enemy brothers,” one commentator termed it) and they share an interest in not letting that relationship explode. But things have a habit of getting out of hand on occasion, as Arab-Israeli and Indian-Pakistani relations have demonstrated in recent years. In these latter areas, it was often a third party rebellious movement—Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad in one case, and Lashkar-e-Taiba in the other—linked with internal factions on one side or the other that triggered explosions and dragged the confronting states beyond their sober policies. Any worsening of bilateral Maghrebi relations would strain relations with Europe, Russia and America, and could lead to a crisis in relations at an inopportune moment. The Polisario Front has recently stepped up its threats to return to hostilities unless its own preferred solution is enforced. While it may seem unlikely to some observers that the Polisario would make good on these threats without Algerian support, neither can the dangers of the tail wagging the dog in these circumstances be ignored. It is in the interest of the U.S. to help the parties to recognize that the current stalemate is mutually harmful and potentially could become even more so.

28.4

The Options

Policy analysts agree that the single most effective option in North Africa for improving stability and security, promoting prosperity and opportunities for economic and personal growth, ensuring effective counterterrorism measures, and

28.4

The Options

489

broadening the capacity of the North African countries to govern, to enhance the rule of law, and to overcome citizen apathy and alienation is the implementation of regional integration among the countries. Greater integration in economic policies, commercial relations, engagement with global markets, and security and military programs will enable North Africa to chart a steady and pragmatic course and deal with the significant challenges to domestic security and regional stability—goals of interest to the countries involved, of course, but also of great importance to the United States. The presidential campaign brought out the need for a renewal of American leadership through multilateral diplomacy and closer cooperation with America’s global and regional allies. President Barack Obama has stated that America must start “looking around the corners” to provide leadership in cooperation with our allies to head off problems before they reach crisis stage. North Africa is certainly one of those regions where “looking around the corner” should persuade American policy makers that the time to act is now, before the region becomes an even more serious problem for the United States and its European allies. In this approach of farsighted multilateral cooperation, the US can pursue three major policies that will stimulate cooperation among the Maghreb countries—a vision deferred for half a century since the 1958 meeting of Maghrebi leaders in Tangier. First of all, the US should re-launch an initiative that will reward a dynamic, functioning Arab Maghreb Union with economic, commercial, and technology partnerships and will encourage greater economic growth, political reform, and social development. The United States, working with the European Union, should work to draw the nations of the region into closer networks of cooperation and to demonstrate to the leadership and populations of the Maghreb that progress and stability in the region will come through cooperation rather than conflict. The current economic downturn makes this action even more timely. The instruments exist or can be created. The core element for success requires the United States and European Union to begin to deal with the region as a region, complementing current bilateral relations with an overarching coordination. Within the US foreign policy structures, the creation of a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for North Africa would facilitate that coordination and elevate the attention given to the region by the State Department. In the field, US ambassadors to the North African countries hold regular meetings together to coordinate policy actions and information exchange in the region. In implementing all aspects of this policy, it is important to operate within the capabilities of each country in the region, helping each to move toward a common goal but not in lockstep. Incentives need to be created through the renewal of the US-North Africa Economic Partnership, first launched under Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in 1998 and favorably received at the time by Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. A focused policy to encourage Maghreb economic integration will have multiple components. As a means of promoting regional integration, the existing US-Moroccan FTA calls for discussions to take place between the United States and Morocco on the extent to which materials that are products of countries in the region can be counted for purposes of satisfying the rules of origin under the

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Maghreb Matters

Morocco FTA. The US should begin these talks with Morocco, and explore creative ways to use the Morocco FTA to promote regional integration, including through regional cumulation or “economic integration zones,” which could be modeled on the successful Qualifying Industrial Zones (QIZ) in Jordan and Egypt that are tied to the US-Israel FTA. The US can build upon its trade and investment framework agreements (TIFAs) in the region (as done with the Asian Pacific economic region) and bilateral investment treaties (BITs) with Tunisia and Morocco to promote regional trade and investment liberalization. Maghreb partners of the United States and the European Union should also be encouraged to eliminate their own tariffs and non-tariff barriers on products imported from other Maghreb countries and reduce barriers to intra-regional investment and trade in services. The US can re-focus US government action to create mandates for regional projects in North Africa for the Trade Development Agency (TDA), Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) and the Ex-Im Bank. The United States also can create regional, private sector initiatives through instruments and programs such as the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), and promote foreign direct investment that focuses on the region as a whole, instead of simply on a country-by-country basis. The United States should embrace existing efforts at North African economic integration and ensure that its policies are consistent with these efforts. It can cooperate with on-going EU initiatives such as the Barcelona Process for Euro-Mediterranean cooperation, the eastern Mediterranean 5 [European]+5 [Maghrebi] efforts at handling common challenges, and the French-sponsored Union for the Mediterranean designed to promote exchanges between the north and south shores, all of which can benefit from some external energizing. By emphasizing reform, the EU has done much to improve the business climate in Eastern Europe and can do the same for the Maghreb. One example would be US support for systems for independent administrative and judicial review of customs determinations. The US and the EU should encourage harmonization of regulatory regimes throughout the region to the highest possible standards, as is being done for ASEAN in Southeast Asia and APEC in the Pacific area. In the Maghreb, where both the US and European countries have common interests, the two side of the Atlantic can find a common cause for cooperation and overcome the temptation to see each other as competitors and to be played off against each other by old habits. This requires focused dialog, measures of collaboration, and attention to mutual benefit, as we work to revive the spirit of trans-Atlantic common interest. The most dangerous future challenge to the region concerns its water supply. The Maghreb is now a water threatened area (WTA) where water is in scarce supply, and will soon become a water deficient area (WDA) where water supplies are seriously inadequate to human, agricultural and industrial needs. A coordinated international effort to support research, investment and infrastructure development to meet the threat before it crunches agriculture and urban life in the region is a critical confidence building measure. As in any areas, collaborative research can have important spin-off effects on the improvement of R&D capacities in North Africa. Another major focus of this collaboration should be to bolster the capacity

28.4

The Options

491

of the UMA through funding and technical assistance to promote Maghreb economic integration. As a leading member of the IFIs, the U.S. can work to encourage and support coordinated efforts to promote North African regional integration, including current efforts at high-speed train and motorway construction and crisis stabilization in the region. Other sectors that may be ripe for greater regional cooperation, including energy, agribusiness, and the banking industry. The United States should encourage Libya to take an active and responsible role in efforts at regional economic cooperation, and should provide assistance and incentives as necessary. In addition to promoting regional integration, the US should take concrete steps to strengthen its own economic relationship with Libya, including through a formal Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA), or other measures that will help integrate Libya into the world economy. Because Libya has close ties with Algeria, comprehensive engagement with Libya will be important to realize the promise of regional integration and to ease tensions between Algeria and Morocco. Libya has expressed an interest in increased regional integration, and it would benefit from enhanced ties with its neighbors. In particular, strengthening economic ties with Libya is an achievable first step. At the same time, U.S. policymakers should adopt a pragmatic approach, keeping in mind that Libya is emerging from many years of political and economic isolation. The United States also should launch a major complementary initiative to promote regional social development, to create an institutional framework for further democratization. This would include an extension and further development of regional bilateral social development programs with the objective of creating regional cooperative networks for health, environment, education, women’s issues, human and civil rights. Programs to foster political participation, societal openness, rule of law, and public dialog, as now offered through the NED network (IRI, NDI) among others, are a necessary part of socio-economic cooperation and need expansion; progress in one country can help pace and encourage progress in its neighbors. The US can also encourage and support regional programs for Trans-Atlantic university cooperation and research conferences, such as the regional programs of grants and workshops of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC). There is untapped space for Trans-Atlantic regional inter-faith dialogues to further cross-cultural understanding among the peoples of North Africa, Europe and the United States, developing and strengthening capacity for political and cultural pluralism and modernization to encourage the timid efforts in this direction throughout the Arabo-Muslim World. Second, the US can promote expansion of security cooperation among the countries of the Maghreb. Security rests above all on the improvement of socio-economic conditions and the development of a healthy society and economy, so that youth are not drawn down into the pit of despair and rebellion. This is the demand side of insecurity, with the unemployed seeking outlets for their despair. Programs to bring insecurity under control also need to deal with the supply side, the expansion of terrorism, jihadi groups, drug networks and smugglers. Without greatly increased levels of cooperation and coordination among the Maghreb countries and with the US and the EU, the sahel region will continue to be the

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Maghreb Matters

Achilles heel of any efforts at regional security. The unregulated and ungoverned areas, including those populated by the Polisario refugee camps, are real threats to cooperation and stability in the region. Moroccan security services have been more effective against jihadi groups since the deadly attacks on Casablanca in 2003 and Madrid in 2004, and within the past year several major Moroccan terrorist cells with roots and connections in Europe have been dismantled before they could carry out their attacks. Although security has improved in Algeria since the series of AQIM attacks in 2007, the attacks continue and Algeria could benefit from increased regional cooperation. It would be far more efficient in meeting these threats to complement the “vertical” cooperation with the U.S. with “horizontal” cooperation between Maghreb countries. Cooperation requires sustained efforts. It can be promoted by the development of a regional counter-terrorism clearinghouse center within the trans-Sahel anti-terrorism initiative and another clearing-house for information and coordination on measures against drug, illegal immigration and trafficking in persons. It requires regional training programs on anti-terrorism, drug smuggling, trafficking in persons, illegal immigration through existing multilateral programs (like NATO’s Med Initiative) or through bilateral efforts of both the United States and European allies. The US can help the countries adopt confidence- and security-building mechanisms (CSBMs) as a step toward the development of a security community in the region, defined as an area where war is no longer a conceivable arm of intra-regional state policy. The most obvious measure to promote regional integration is to reopen road and rail services between Morocco and Algeria (which would take only a few weeks’ work) and extend them from Casablanca to Cairo, and to increase direct flights between the Maghreb capitals. The countries of North Africa face no threats external to the region, and they know that a war in the region would be costly and unproductive. Security cooperation is a better option that the U.S. can facilitate, and would help forestall an accidental escalation of tense relations between neighbors. Removing the single largest issue in the way of security cooperation by resolving the Western Sahara conflict would allow Morocco and Algeria to turn coordinated attention to the security problem to their south, permit them to reduce their forces level and halt their arms race and free them to devote more of their budgets to civilian needs. Finally, the U.S. can help broker resolution of the Western Sahara conflict, which is the major obstacle to regional integration and the central impediment to effective coordination of efforts to combat terrorism, illegal immigration, smuggling, drug trafficking, and to promote economic cooperation and other regional initiatives. If regional integration is the goal, then a solution to the Western Sahara issue will remove the prime barrier to cooperation. For those who feel that the Western Saharan issue is merely a symptom, not a cause, of ill relations, its removal can eliminate a specific instance and clear the way for other measures of cooperation and confidence- and security-building (CSBMs) that can chip away at bad neighborly relations. It should also be obvious that the Saharan problem will not be “solved” in any absolute sense in the near future, but that a new compromise status,

28.4

The Options

493

as contained in the autonomy policy currently on the table at the UN, will put the region in a new institutional framework where attention can be focused on specific components of the situation without remaining stuck in the larger principled deadlock. The problem of the Western Sahara is not “low hanging fruit” waiting to be picked. Algeria continues to insist that the Sahara issue will never be settled on terms or a timetable other than one of Algeria’s choosing. Russian support of Algeria in the Security Council has made it difficult for Western allies to bring greater pressure to bear on Algeria at the United Nations, although Saharan independence is not a model case for Russia’s own interests. Nevertheless, if the United States provides active leadership and works closely with its European allies, there are good prospects for creating an environment for action toward a solution based on the compromise expressed in the UN-favored sovereignty/autonomy formula, which is the only compromise solution on the negotiating table. Such a leadership role on the part of the United States would benefit the entire Maghreb and the interests of the United States as well. In this regard, the United States needs to begin immediately to treat the Western Sahara itself—and encourage its allies to do the same—in a manner consistent with the declared policy of successive US Administrations that the only feasible solution is to be found in the autonomy compromise. First, the U.S. should adjust its policy on development assistance and investment support to offer direct assistance and development programs in the Western Sahara for the benefit of the local population and to provide better opportunities and more hopeful future for the people of the region. The U.S. should encourage its European allies and the EU to join in this effort. Successive American Administrations, both Democrat and Republican, have made a clear policy choice to promote a compromise political solution through a formula granting a large measure of autonomy for the region, under Moroccan sovereignty. A bi-partisan consensus in the US Congress has endorsed the policy choice and have openly urged the US Government to pursue this path more vigorously. Failure to pursue this policy choice through concrete actions sends mixed messages to the parties involved and provides the kind of false hope for a policy reversal that perpetuates the stalemate and the dangers inherent in it. Second, the United States and its allies need to bring pressure to bear on the UNHCR to ensure that the population of the refugee camps under Polisario control in western Algeria enjoy the rights guaranteed them under international refugee law, especially with regard to freedom of movement, the right to documentation, the right to voluntary repatriation, and the right to free association. Firm actions to ensure that human rights are respected under international law in the Saharan area could improve the climate for achieving the compromise political solution that is favored by most members of the Security Council. These steps need to be accompanied by the completion of a conclusive process to resolve the legal status of Western Sahara. Thirty-five years of conflict, 18 years of stalemated truce, and four rounds of motionless negotiations on a compromise offer of autonomy are all too long. The people of the region must be given an opportunity for self-determination, which according to UN resolutions can take the

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Maghreb Matters

form of autonomy (as occurred from Zanzibar to Aceh). That acceptance can be expressed in a referendum confirming the option offered. The process would begin with a formal endorsement by the interested Western states—U.S., UK, France, Spain—of the principle of autonomy, with a limited period of time for final negotiations over its details. At the end of the upcoming round of UN-sponsored negotiations between the parties, whatever its outcome, the US should pursue an effort among Security Council members to recognize autonomous status within Morocco and invite others to follow suit, much as was done for a similar option for Aceh, Iraqi Kurdistan, or Bosnia and for the reverse option for Kosovo. To be complete, the resolution of the Saharan question should include the agreement of Algeria and special efforts should be made to secure its acquiescence. Excluded, an aggrieved Algeria will find ways to oppose the United States, Morocco, and economic integration initiatives. Although Algeria is important to the US for its oil and gas supplies, this fact should not be allowed to block a positive outcome for the Saharan question. While it is not clear what Algeria seeks to gain from continued conflict, there may be several ways to motivate its agreement. If, for example, Algeria could be seen as obtaining concessions for the Tindouf Saharans, such as generous resettlement assistance from US/UK/France/Spain, that could help. Offering Algeria a clear path toward eventual free trade status with the U.S. might be attractive to Algiers. A common position and firm hand at the back by the U.S., U.K., France, Spain (and Italy?) on autonomy, including encouraging both Algeria and Morocco to enter negotiations with a positive and forthcoming spirit and seek win-win solutions, will set the right tone for productive talks. Maintaining some kind of UN association with the process could make eventual Algerian acquiescence easier. Morocco could also provide a formal parliamentary ratification of the 1972 boundary treaty that Algeria ratified immediately after its signature and was publicly acknowledged by the late king Hassan II but not ratified in the absence of a parliament at the time. Morocco could also retract its government and public maps showing the border to be in dispute. In the end, if incentives do not work, the U.S. should move ahead with its Saharan initiative nonetheless and urge the states of the Maghreb to set the problem aside and focus on other aspects of cooperation, as they did when they established the UMA initially in 1989.

28.5

Conclusion

As the new administration considers its priorities in the Middle East and North Africa, it is critical to break the habit of viewing North Africa as composed of a number of separate countries of secondary national interest. The countries of the Maghreb represent vital interests for the United States, from supplying energy and economic opportunity to removing a growing terrorist presence with real potential for threatening American lives and facilities. Regional integration in North Africa

28.5

Conclusion

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will support a range of US interests that are central to the strategic pursuit of the region’s stability, security, and economic goals. But regional integration cannot be realized without resolving the Western Sahara conflict. Given the current position of the US government—that broad autonomy for the Sahrawi people under Moroccan sovereignty is the only realistic solution—the platform is in place to move proactively and successfully to bring an end to that conflict, to increase counter-terrorism cooperation, and effectively to encourage regional economic integration that will bring greater prosperity and opportunity to the peoples of North Africa and greater security for US interests.

Chapter 29

The Ubiquity of Prevention

Despite all the challenges, so much conflict has been prevented that something must be different in the many situations of potential or passive conflict that have not turned active and violent.1 It is important to learn the lessons and mechanisms of its success in order to apply them to the instances of conflict that continue to appear. Most discussions of prevention have been generalized, as if there is one approach and one type of conflict to be prevented. Yet prevention of climate disasters can scarcely be studied in the same way as prevention of boundary disputes, and prevention of ethnic conflicts is different from prevention of global arms races. To become applicable, investigation of prevention must cut up the subject substantively and address different issue areas where prevention has been achieved. The issues considered here are security, territorial, and ethnic conflicts. Conflict is an attitudinal problem; prevention is more readily a structural challenge. Converting attitudes of conflict requires a long and deep effort; the operative aim of conflict prevention is to create and maintain structures that inhibit the activation of conflict and channel activity into paths of management and resolution, whereby attitude change is then made easier. These structures constitute the framework of a World Order system, shaping the attitudes of the parties living in the structure. Overly escalated conflict becomes unthinkable because the inhabitants of the system collectively declare it undoable and make it so. Obviously this approach is not absolute: for structures to work on their own, attitudes need to change to fit, so there is a relation between the two, and there may even be some occasions where preventers can work on attitudes directly. For this, external efforts are best positioned, although not alone. It is easier for agencies not involved in a conflict to change the structures in which the participants operate, and changing structures is the best way to change attitudes. But for external preventers to intervene effectively, the goals and behaviors they pursue must be condoned by the international community, including the conflicters and the bystanders. Therefore, 1

I William Zartman, Preventing Deadly Conflict, chapter 2. Polity, 2015. Reprinted with permission. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 I. W. Zartman, I William Zartman: A Pioneer in Conflict Management and Area Studies, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06079-4_29

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The Ubiquity of Prevention

discussion will begin with the question of agency. Whether the prevention acts as a self-inhibition on the conflicting parties or as a legitimizer of third party efforts, the impact derives from shared notion of acceptable behavior that holds the World Order together.

29.1

Who Done It?

The ultimate actor in escalation prevention is the state or other body involved in the conflict, but parties to a conflict need help. So the actors necessarily follow the R2P gradation: the state first but third parties as necessary. Established conventions and practices are best buttressed by collective consensus, even if the actually actor is the individual state or person. World Order institutions, such as the UN, regional organizations, multilateral fora and protocols, NGOs and IGOs all help formalize and authorize standard ways of handling conflicts (Cohen 1999; OSCE 2012). It is states working together who create such institution and they depend on implementation by individual actors, states and people. Thus it is difficult to separate the collective from the individual agent. When a state of the UN mediates, the collective contribution is authorization to act, including threats and promising in cases of non-compliance and compliance. But the actual agent of mediation is the individual(s) authorized to carry the message and engage in the crucial exercise of persuasion. The mandate is capital; the persuasive skills are crucial. It was UNSG Kofi Annan—even without authorization—who convinced Saddam Hussein in the first rounds to allow in inspectors (by another name); it was Alvaro deSoto in the name of the UN who persuaded Salvadoran authorities and guerrillas to come to a peace agreement; it was Finnish former president Martti Ahtisaari, with the authorization of his own organization, the Conflict Management Institute (CMI) who convinced Acehnese and Indonesian leaders to settle their conflict. On the other hand, it was deSoto who resigned as SRCG to the Palestine conflict because of an inadequate mandate and Ahtisaari who failed to convince the Kosovar not to declare independence because of the mandate (of his own formulation) given to him by the EU and NATO. Examples are endless of the need for collective standards and individual interaction to work in harmony for prevention to be effective. The following presentation will identify measures that states themselves can take to prevent serious conflicts from arising and then from running away with them. These measures include structural barriers that inhibit action and set up attitudinal change. But it is primarily addressed to outside agencies that can help states and other conflicting groups take actions to prevent, resolve without escalation and deescalate when necessary if they are not inclined to do so on their own. The UN Security Council is a cumbersome organization for taking action and delivering clear and appropriate mandates, and other coalitions of the willing and intergovernmental organizations may be more capable of taking action (Touval 1994; Hampson/Malone 2002). It should be noted that there is a real place for NGOs as

29.1

Who Done It?

499

well. They can be most helpful in identifying and helping to legitimize best practices, in gaining entry and dealing unofficially with conflicting parties, and is keeping attention and implementation on track when official agencies have lost interest after an agreement has been signed. The most important counsel in such cases is respect and coordination: each agency has its role, their contributions should be recognized, but all actions should be coordinated so that they support each other and avoid the trap of shopping and outbidding among third parties. Other remarks on agency will be made where appropriate in the course of the following analyses.

29.2

Security Conflict

It is especially in regard to the prevention of conflict over state security that the World Order operates. Were it not so, the anarchy of the state system would be expressed in characteristic wars and aggressions as in the European (and particularly Italian) scene during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Yet, as in other conflict settings examined below, the number of escalated and violent conflicts is minimal compared with the possibilities of threats to security of one state by another. Perhaps nothing better than the international (and regional) security system illustrates the contention that situations endemically prone to conflict are nonetheless characteristically prevented from escalation. Exceptions are exceptions. It may be suggested that nothing more complicated than cost explains the phenomenon; aggression is expensive, and the results are usually not worth it, a common explanation for similar social behavior. But there is more to it than that. Conflicts over state security have been prevented by the evolution of structures and understandings operating under the basic mechanism of international politics, the ethos of reciprocity; each member will act in a certain way because it expects the others to act that same way, or will avoid acting in a certain way because it expects the others to retaliate (Zartman/Touval 2007). In the Cold War, reciprocity covered cost as the deterrent effect of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), (popularly termed the Balance of Terror), with lesser understandings negotiated under its shadow as the occasion arose. The record illustrates the conflict prevention capabilities of even the loosest set of behavioral standards and expectations even among the most powerful adversaries. Following the repeatedly catastrophic results of alliances as an attempt to set up behavioral rules for a system of World Order, a comprehensive system as a universal alliance for preventing global conflicts was established at San Francisco in 1945 in the UN Charter, strong in procedural principles although often lacking in details. These principles were institutionalized in the United Nations and then in a gradually created network of other international organizations, including the 1975 Helsinki Agreements’ principles and Organization. Collective security was to replace collective defense; instead of relying on temporary, competing alliance to hold a rising power in check, the new system depended on the entire international

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The Ubiquity of Prevention

community of states turning against one of its members to out in its place if it should get out of order and cause conflict (Haas 1968). Before it could be tested and developed by much application, the system was pushed aside by the emergence of the superpower competition and a return to alliances in the Cold War. The two blocs proceeded to enlist the largest number of allies possible into their camps, leaving another third of the world non-aligned. The development of norms for the prevention of direct conflict escalation between the USA and the USSR proceeded through tests of the emerging system in the Berlin blockade in 1948–49 where the two blocs were contiguous, the Hungarian rebellion of 1956 where they were not, and the Cuban missile crises of 1964 where one bloc impinged on the other. Each case confirmed the understanding not to challenge the territorial status quo and to pull back from direct conflict. Regime change failed in the first two cases and was eschewed in the third, and the system emerged strengthened as a result. Deterred by cost, the principals worked out their relations in such a way to prevent their state security conflicts from escalating out of hand. The spread of colonial liberation from NATO members raised new opportunities for conflict over old and new state security. Rapidly, by 1960 the right of former colonies to achieve independence was accepted, and expressed in UNSCr1541. As a result, much conflict was prevented by a change in notions of appropriate behavior, and few colonies (Algeria, Angola, Mozambique, Portuguese Guinea, South West Africa [Namibia], Vietnam, and Zimbabwe) had to fight for independence. In Africa, the Cold War dimension of the anticolonial struggle was laid to rest for the moment in the “Congo Convention” of 1961, a tacit understanding that Africa would be part of the Free World economically but non-aligned politically, preventing competing bloc attempts to take over new territories and change regimes. Either bloc was expected to support its allies and its bloc area from an attack by the other, and so the reciprocal dissuasion of Mutual Assured Deterrence to prevent escalation was extended to the Third World as well. The preventive norms were broken by the US in Vietnam, 1964–1973, and the preventive “truce” in Africa by the USSR in 1974 with the introduction of Soviet and Cuban troops into Ethiopia (following regime change) and Angola, opening up a new period of uncertainty over the prevention of further escalation in the Third World. In all three cases, war was not prevented but its extension beyond the immediate theater was. Turning to the most dangerous element of conflict between the two superpowers, the international community led by the Nuclear Weapon States (NWS), unable (after a few tries) to find agreement on banning the atomic bomb that was its own prevention measure, negotiated the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1970, an agreement to freeze competition from any new nuclear powers. The USA and USSR then turned for the next decade and beyond to arms limitation measures for the NWS, resulting in the 1972 Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I), then the 1979 SALT II, the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) agreement, the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) I, the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty (SORT), and eventually the 2010 New START (Melamud et al. 2014). New Nuclear Weapons Capable States (NWCS) (India, Pakistan, Israel, then

29.2

Security Conflict

501

North Korea) operated with greater uncertainty under their own MAD deterrence to prevent escalation of their conflicts into nuclear confrontation. Under this umbrella, minor encounters between the US and the USSR such as naval incidents in the Mediterranean or cooperation as in the Mideast during the 1967 and 1973 wars or negotiations over Korean denuclearization after 1989 were used to build up conflict preventive procedures of coexistence (Kanet/Kolodziej 1991). The evolving system of World Order received its first formal expression in the West (“from Vladivostok to Vancouver”) in the 1975 Helsinki Principles, which recognized the Soviet bloc’s territorial status quo in exchange for a formalization of human rights norms, and established the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), later to become an Organization (OSCE). An understanding of the World Order as prevention of direct conflict took more time and conflict to be worked out with the other nuclear power, China, after the experience of the Korean War 1950–1954 (unsuccessful in regime change) and the Vietnam War 1964–1973 (with regime change). The US hastened to establish relations with China and has been remarkably successful in promoting behavior regarding direct conflict over the China-Taiwan dispute. Preventive conventions, as in the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), have then come to be tested in the South China sea. The collapse of the Soviet Union left this understanding of World Order in uncertainty. Conventions on acceptable behavior that had prevented conflicts from erupting and escalating in previous decades fell with the collapse of the bipolar order. Nothing prevented Iraq from invading Kuwait in 1992; Saddam Hussein expected Russian support as under the previous regime, but instead he met a US-led UN-authorized military response, but with no regime change, as indication of a “New World Order.” The regime change came a decade later with another US-led but ambiguously authorized attack and occupation of Iraq. But a new world disorder was sown by the al-Qaeda attack on the US in 2001, returned by an UNauthorized coalition and occupation of Afghanistan, home of al-Qaeda. Military assistance was used to provide national self-determination from Serbia (but without regime change) for Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1993 by NATO with UN authorization and for Kosovo in 1998 by a coalition of the willing without UN authorization, and to assist a regime change uprising in Libya in 2011 by NATO with UN authorization but mission creep. Direct military intervention without UN authorization was used by Russia to detach puppet states of Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia in 2008 and Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. Under the circumstances of the second decade of the new millennium, the structure, agents, and norms for conflict prevention are very uncertain, and World Order is reeling. Contrary to the previous era, the West, emboldened by its Cold War victory, has appeared as the revolutionary (pro-regime change) power and the loose ad hoc coalition in formation of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) has protested as the status quo pro-sovereignty group, until Russia then returned to good old nineteenth century conquest of neighboring territories. It is hard to see how the so-called Islamic State or the Khilafa (known as ISIS or Da’esh) fits into this idea of world order. It is perhaps striking that in a matter so marked by naked power as state security conflicts over the past half century, there were clear if evolving regimes that

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The Ubiquity of Prevention

governed behaviors and expectations and at the same time was consolidated by occasional tests of a high magnitude (Avenhaus et al. 2002). As in other issue area, the exceptional cases have been exceptional because of the widespread prevention of escalation and violence that has occurred in general (Goldstein 2011). Despite some striking exceptions and the challenges they pose, the system of World Order has operated with clear principles and structures to prevent endemic escalation and habitual breach of accepted behavior. In sum, security conflicts are routinely prevented by some standard structures and understandings that are basic to the system of World Order. • Over the long term: a preventive system of structures and understandings has been created and recreated as configurations evolve, based on such components as cost and reciprocity; • In the medium/short run: when exceptions arise to challenge the preventive effects of institutions and attitudes, the system closes around them like a foreign body and institutional and individual states’ diplomatic intervention has worked to help the parties climb down from the slopes of escalation to manage if not resolve the conflict. When reciprocity breaks down and cost is not imposed as a response, the conventions of Order break down. If this has worked in many cases, the goal of improved prevention need be to strengthen the mechanisms and plug the holes. Since the World Order mechanism depends on tightening do-don’t structures and attitudes, and providing alternative avenues for managing and resolving the legitimate concerns and conflicts, international community responses should be regularized and reinforced. This means more responsive, responsible and rigorous action by members of the UN Security Council. It means states’ seeing their interest in a common interest in reducing conflict escalation. And where minority blockage serves narrow breaches of World Order, it means facilitating means of response by legitimizing and activating coalitions of the willing when established institutional structures and consensual attitudes fail.

29.2.1 Territorial Conflict Territorial conflicts over the lines between two states and over the territory that the lines enclose have been the major source of conflict and violence for millennia (Holsti 1990; Vasquez 1993). The subject has a tremendous potential for conflict, and yet the actual number of new or salient disputes has diminished considerably since World War II (Frederick 2012). Despite the fact that the phrase “neighborly relations” suggests that neighborness is the epitome of conflictlessness, any body’s first line of conflict is with its neighbor, in urban and rural communities as on continents; “My neighbor is my enemy; my neighbor’s neighbor is my friend,” wrote Kautilya (1960: 293) in 4th century BC India, giving a locational dimension

29.2

Security Conflict

503

to the even older adage, “My enemy’s enemy is my friend.” Often the border dispute is almost an excuse, a tip of the iceberg of a collection of pent-up, emotional grievances or the most visible manifestation of a rivalry of rank and relation. Yet of the 250 land boundaries in the world at the beginning of the 21st century, only a dozen are the subject of active hostilities and perhaps a similar number are at worst latent (Nordquist 2001; Vasquez/Valeriano 2009; Diehl 1998).v The summary answer to the decline in border disputes is that by and large, states have learned to live in their skin by acceptance of a number of historical and geographic criteria and by tinkering at the margins. New boundary disputes are in steep decline and those that remain are low in significance. Over history, states have used both human and physical geographical features to determine their natural limits, augmented by past military (not always violent) and diplomatic efforts to define their exact lines. Boundaries off in the wilderness or up across mountain tops have a greater potential for stability than boundaries running through inhabited areas. Where there are no physical features handy on which to hang a boundary, the bounded states draw straight lines (geometric boundaries) which are even more stable because of their agreed artificiality. What is perhaps striking is that the military and diplomatic results have come to be accepted and are not the subject of repeated efforts of the same kind in new eras of power and relations after they had been established. This is true even when the borders are touted—however artificially—as “artificial,” as in Africa. All borders are artificial, in that they separate human beings and call them “me” and “non-me.” Stable borders, as in much of the world, have come to be adopted as “nationalized,” by diplomacy, history and social accommodation. Socially, politically, and economically, populations have increasingly come to come to terms with the idea that where they are determines who they are. Territory and boundaries are the subject of international agreements based on domestic political considerations, a mixture that accounts for their large potential for conflict and also for the recognized standard of firm agreements. The obvious fact that any boundary dispute necessarily affects both sides and creates a costly situation for both of them opens an incentive for joint interest in conflict prevention, weighed against the comparative value to both sides of their claims. Major border changes become unthinkable because undoable, as a result of the counterweight of the neighbor and the international opprobrium for unilateral changes, but minor rectifications become possible when in the interest of both sides of the border. Occasionally even accepted skins cause inconvenience (such as Geneva’s bifurcation between France and Switzerland or Kaliningrad’s separation from the rest of Russia or Iquitos’ isolation from the rest of Peru). When the inconvenience has become too great, the neighbors negotiate rectifications to accommodate changing riverbeds or grazing patterns or even winding roads (as between the US and Mexico, between Mali and Mauritania, and between Congo and Zambia, respectively). World Order allows for such rectifications as an amicable alternative to escalated conflict. Such acceptance is facilitated by specific practices in addition to rectification, such as demarcation and reglementation. Demarcation, the physical marking of

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The Ubiquity of Prevention

delimited (agreed on paper) borders, is an important measure that has consolidated boundaries and prevented conflict. Borders tangibly indicated are easier to accept than lines that are hard to see on the ground, when there can always be debate about where they really are. Algeria’s insistence on demarcation solidified its border with Tunisia that had long been in dispute and with other neighbors (except Morocco, where delimitation is agreed to but demarcation has been interrupted by conflict). The measure is particularly important in regard to new states. The complement to demarcation is reglementation. A border regime that allows traffic across it under specified and reasonable conditions works to prevent conflict from escalating out of the countless incidents that occur over lines separating people. Particularly in traffic corridors and populated areas, borders disrupt normal human intercourse that needs to be governed appropriately to minimize conflict. Even where neighbors have good relations, border incidents require management by a mutually satisfactory border regime to prevent escalation. Conflict prevention requires minimizing inevitable minor disputes so that the outbreak of resulting major conflict can be prevented. These measures of attention to the potential for escalation are powerful tools of prevention, and they have lessons for further prevention in the rarer instances of remaining border conflict. Where states are unable to learn to like their given skins by themselves, external structures of World Order for conflict prevention are available to aid in social learning (Nordquist 2001). States need to be urged to come to terms with their skin, even if it does not fit their dreams. Permanent or ad hoc multilateral institutions assist conflicting states to find solutions for their dispute without escalation and so prevent continuing and even worsening conflict. Sometimes it takes so long for institutions’ attention to produce results that it stretches the notion of prevention but illustrates the value of persistence. To prevent impending war, three states of the Hemisphere—Argentina, Brazil, US—helped Ecuador and Peru come to agreement on a status quo border line in 1936; renewed war in 1941 revived mediation to establish a demilitarized zone, and the following year a new peace and border protocol was mediated by the three states plus Chile; when fighting again broke out in 1953, 1977–78, 1981 and 1995, multilateral mediation rose to the level of the Organization of American States (OAS) and then back to the four guaranteeing states who finally produced an end to “Latin America’s last border conflict” in 1998 by settling a newly discover piece of mountain jungle that occasioned the last war. (Simmons 1999, 2005; Nordquist 2001). The case was just one of the 22 boundary cases since the late 1800s that Latin American states submitted to peer-state arbitration (ten times more frequently than other continents’ use of arbitration). The most important international institution of World Order for the settlement of border disputes has been the International Court of Justice (ICJ), whose intervention has usually been accepted and decisive in preventing conflict escalation. The ICJ has no bias and no interest in the disputes, whereas mediated prevention—especially in Latin America—is very often suspect to one party or the other. The great achievement has been the willingness of states to submit their disputes to the ICJ where they will not be assured of a favorable judgment.

29.2

Security Conflict

505

The other type of territorial dispute concerns claims over whole pieces of land beyond simple disputes over lines. The same statistics obtain: over 400 pairs of states are next to each other and perhaps only 45 harbor territorial covetings. Of course, contiguity alone does not establish a prima facie potential for conflict as it does in regard to boundaries; in addition, a state must have a specific reason to claim another’s territory. A more relevant statistic would indicate how many states have ethnic population overhang, how many occupy another’s natural resources, how many sit on another’s holy land, and so on referring to the main causes of covetousness—statistics nearly impossible to acquire without long disputes over the statistics themselves. They would show, however, that the potential for territorial conflict has been prevented from leading to war in most instances. A few conflicts, from Sudetenland to Kivu, have been pursued rather than prevented in the name of protecting oppressed minorities that are related to a bordering population. As relations between Rwanda and its neighbors show, tribal overhang can serve as a too-convenient justification for interference for a neighboring state, particularly where citizenship has been denied longtime settlers. Suffice it to note that many states’ ethnic or national majorities have a minority component in a neighbor’s population, rely on energy or raw materials resources from a neighbor, and some even contain sites or lands that are significant in their neighbor’s history and mythology, without any of these constituting a cause for conflict. How do they do it? How is conflict prevented in such cases? Again, the summary answer is that open intercourse that allows the neighbors access to lands of importance to them prevents conflict over the details of ownership, or, put otherwise, responsible ownership that meets the substantive concerns of neighbors minimizes the occasions for conflict (Ayissi 2001). As in the case of territorial lines, the longer the management of territorial relations has been done with responsibility and concern for both sides’ interest, as long as conflict prevention has been practiced when tested, the more routinized prevention becomes. As in any relation, routines can be broken and broken habits are often harder to reinstate than they originally were to establish, so that prevention must be a subject of constant attention rather than a historical assumption. Preventing eruption of territorial conflict based on national overhang draws its inspiration from such historical practices. If minority populations are allowed open contact with their majority neighbors and are allowed to maintain practices of their national identity, the formal distinctions of state citizenship can gradually become acceptable; the two demands must be kept in a delicate balance, so that minorities can be themselves within their “host” country in order not to provide a reason for the neighbor to seek to unite their territory with the land of their “home” folks. The limits of the balance are shown in the contemporary cases of Kosovo and Cyprus. Since its independence in 2008, Kosovo has sought to reduce conflict with its former owner, Serbia, by allowing various levels of self-government and self-expression to its Kosovar Serbs, as long as they do not contest their membership in Kosovo and as long as Serbia drops its claim on Serb-inhabited regions. The European Union (EU) urges Serbia to accept its separation from Kosovo, using the incentive of EU membership if it does so (among other conditions), to prevent

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The Ubiquity of Prevention

continuing conflict that can escalate through incidents to violence. On the other hand, because the government of (southern) Cyprus has not been able to recognize sufficient self-government and expression to the Turkish community and the land it occupies, nearby Turkey has felt justified in occupying (protecting) and all-but-annexing the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) for some forty years; the conflict has indeed been managed during this time by UN peacekeeping forces (UNFICYP), removing the pressure for settlement, but the prospect of EU membership for Cyprus in 2004 without settlement of the territorial question removed an incentive for settlement. There is plenty of space between the two countries’ type of self-government demanded by and offered to their minority populations and the incentives for prevention offered by an international institution through which to find a solution. Even sacred territories—as in Kosovo, Israel, India, possibly Ukraine—may not be as much of a different matter as may appear. In a few areas, one national religious group’s sacred shrines are found in another state’s territory and are cited as the basis for claims on that territory. To be sure, the claims are strident, but in the last analysis, prevention of conflict may be a matter of access—even privileged access—rather than ownership, or rather enough ownership to secure privileged access rather than the symbolic value of total possession. The key to conflict prevention is balanced and respectful dosage. Somewhat miraculously, Christian access to the holy sites of Israel and Palestine has been maintained despite lack of sovereignty, as has Muslim access to the Noble Sanctuary (Temple Mount) in Jerusalem, and when conflict has erupted it is because balance and respect are not preserved. Prevention of conflict requires both a general formula adapted to the case, and also continuing attention to its maintenance, World Order in a small and delicate instance. Resources were once a frequent cause for territorial conquest; they are currently more commonly a matter for commercial competition. States want to have assured supplies of raw materials by commercial means and not direct possession. Potential conflicts have been mediated by market competition rather than military conquest. States and companies make commercial contracts, build production, develop economies of use, and create substitutes. On a few signal occasions—Angola in the 1980s, Kuwait in 1992, Iraq in 2003, Sudan in 2012, Ukraine in 2014—oil and gas can become a stake of the conflict itself. In such cases the methods of prevention address the nature and means of the conflict but are not particularly effective in dealing with the object itself. Similar considerations govern conflicts over lootable materials such as diamonds, coltan, timber, and gold in rebel areas. Major international legal and commercial efforts are expended over the control of export markets for such “blood goods” as a means of dampening the resources of conflict groups; the rules of World Order are tightened to deprive violent groups the use of resources. Sometimes it takes a rather high level of conflict before the territorial claims can be finally buried in a settlement. The explanation lies in the fact that the costs of repeated escalations and of the consequences of prolonged bad relations outweigh the value of the claimed territory, but that this balance sheet takes time and—like

29.2

Security Conflict

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any arithmetic—repeated exercises to sink in. The calculation is easier to make when the object of covetousness is a material resource rather than populations. Two examples from Africa illustrate the effect. A series of small wars in inhospitable territories over limited resources between Mali and Burkina Faso (1963, 1975, 1985) and between Nigeria and Cameroun (1963–67, 1995–1998) finally ended in a settlement, by the ICJ in 1986 and 2002, respectively, and by direct (and repeated) negotiation confirming the settlement in 2008. The examples show the cost of unprevented conflict and the contribution of repeated conflict costs to the final prevention of further conflict on the issue, and the assistance of an institution of international order in preventing further violence and conflict. After four decades of independence, Africa, like other areas, has learned that territorial claims are not worth the cost and the opprobrium, and prevention is a matter of painful learning. It took Latin America over a century and a half to learn the same lesson in prevention, as seen in the territorial conflict between Ecuador and Peru. The situation is similar concerning the conflict potential of basic goods such as water, already in short supply in countries of the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. Many internal bodies of water, both flowing and stable, have become the subject of local treaties that make up an international system of water regimes and institutions to provide the guidelines for preventing and settling conflict over the riparian water systems (Zawahri/Gerlak 2009). As a few examples among many, conflict was prevented by the Aral Basin Agreement of 1991, the Zambezi River System Action Plan (ZACPLAN) of 1987, and the Okavango River Basin Water Agreement of 1994 which were negotiated to avoid disputes in their region foreseeable if a regime were not to be provided (Elhance 1996; Trolldalen 1992; http://www.fao.org/docrep/w7414b/w7414b0j.htm). When conditions change, conflict is bound to appear and the parties rise to devise an agreement that forestalls conflict escalation. Nile and Mekong basin countries, parties to longstanding agreements of 1929 and 1959, and 1995 respectively, entered a period of instability at the turn of the century when upstream countries sought a redistribution of the water and built dams of their own that raised conflict with the downstream countries—Egypt and Sudan, and China, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam, respectively; lengthy negotiations have been underway to prevent conflict escalation (Waterbury 1979). India and Pakistan, in re-escalated conflict over overuse and dam construction beyond what the 1960 Indus Waters agreement was designed to handle, have revived difficult negotiations to restore a mutually satisfactory water regime. “History bears witness to the fact that cooperation, not conflict, is the most logical response to transboundary water management issues,” judged Pakistani Environment Minister Afridi (Bagla 2010). The Caspian Sea became the subject of conflict with violent moments after 1991 when the original signatories of an agreement on its regime, the USSR and Iran, were joined as littoral states by three other former members of the USSR— Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan; although a formal new regime on the lake/sea was unattainable over the following quarter century, deft diplomatic and maritime maneuvering provided some practical understandings over access to the oil and gas deposits of the region. Under the pressure of necessity, parties in areas

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The Ubiquity of Prevention

of potential conflict over the use of common water resources work out their own order to regulate and prevent conflict, revising as necessary when change or conflict appears. For the most part, as with territorial relations, countries learn to live with their maritime neighbors, and after occasional ruffles feathers and rattled arms, they settle down again to the status quo, the incidents shelved and the conflict prevented. Worse is not worth it. In sum, habits, institutions and costs have discouraged territorial claims on land and sea in modern times, against a historical record of territorial covetousness as the major cause of war (Vasquez/Valeriano 2009). States have become used to their skins and their neighbors, established rules and bodies provide standard ways of handling situations of potential conflict and for dealing with those conflicts that do become activated, and material and reputational costs work to prevent those less frequent behaviors that break through the systems of World Order. Prevention is made possible when land claims are reframed into population welfare, and state control is mitigated by respect for minorities. A history of humane attention to implementation also helps. Perhaps the most insightful lessons comes from the cases where the conflict has been redefined and constructed in terms of real issues related to population welfare rather than symbolic issues of possession and sovereignty. The shift accompanies the rise in human security alongside state security in evolving international relations. In sum, territorial conflicts are routinely prevented by some standard practices and expectations that contribute to the system of world order. • In the long term: “political learning” as boundaries become “nationalized” and states learn to live with their skin; • In the medium/short run: conflicting boundary demands, not worth the cost of war, are handled through negotiation; • In the short run: boundaries are adjusted and boundary regimes maintained to avoid inconveniences and incidents. Such measures have been largely successful, although recent events, notably of 2014, show that the success of prevention is not total and established habits can be suddenly upset. Indeed it is both the widespread shock over the Russian expansion into Crimea and the threat to the rest of Ukraine, as well as the lassitude over Israeli expansion into conquered Palestinian territory, that brings home the needed for firmer structures and stronger attitudes for prevention. Particular attention is need after new states and new boundaries have been established; where nations have not yet had the time to learn to live in their new shapes, added efforts and reasserted principles, with sanctions to bring home the lesson of cost, are required to accelerate the learning process, to avoid the Eritrean and South Sudanese experience. At the same time, in territorial disputes over great divides between blocs and culture, it is well to recall such useful historic devices such as neutral zones, buffer states, demilitarized corridors, and bridging arrangements that attenuate the friction and decrease the challenge that creates conflict.

29.2

Security Conflict

509

29.2.2 Ethnic Conflicts As territorial conflicts diminish in salience, ethnic conflicts have risen in current importance (Themner/Wallensteen 2014).vi Yet the numbers of these conflicts too pale against the literally innumerable ethnic groups that could contest their status and claim the right to rule themselves in sovereignty. Ethnic sources of territorial conflict through claims upon states by neighboring nations have already been examined; the focus here is on conflicts arising from claims within states by internal “nations.” The first concerns a conflict between states, the second a conflict inside states, with different measures of prevention applying as a result. In the first, the conflict focuses on territory, whereas in the second territory is incidental to population. In reality the two often overlap, with secessionists seeking external allies in their fight for independence and annexers seeking internal support. However, in fact, until the Russian border ventures, no secessionist movement had then turned to annexation by its cousin-neighbor, although a few decolonization movements have joined a neighboring state upon attaining independence. The precepts and practices of World Oder operate differently in regard to ethnic conflicts than to territorial disputes. The basic notion is that the sovereign state is the guarantor of order and the manager of conflicts within its boundaries; even the new doctrines of R2P begin with that principle as its first pillar (Ban 2010; Evans; Zartman 1995). As a result, international principles are not friendly to internal ethnic conflicts. The closest they come to the subject is through the right of national self-determination, which merely puts off resolution of the conflict to a prior determination of the “self” that claims that right, usually through the use of violence, and which is itself in conflict with the principle of territorial integrity. However, ethnic relations are handled by most states most of the time well short of the threshold of self-determination. Given the potential for conflict far greater than the number of actual incidents, what are people—and states—doing right? In two words, conflict is prevented by lowering exaggerated ethnic awareness and by assuring unhindered access to political and economic participation. Inclusionary societies prevent ethnic conflict. Most national communities in the world fit into their state more or less comfortably, probably with some loss of their separate identities as assimilation occurs in a modernizing world.vii Most such groups make a compromise between their identity and assimilation pressures, and as long as their condition is deemed acceptable, conflict in other than isolated individual cases is prevented by avoidance. Human cultural species are gradually disappearing, along with other, biological species, and cultural groups have a greater power of resistance than biological taxa. Although many separate components of population diversity are weakening and disappearing, global or even national homogenization takes a long time, and the process itself can give rise to increased national or ethnic consciousness as a defensive reaction, as groups formerly tolerated feel their existence threatened by assimilation pressures. What ethnic communities want is recognition and the ability to be themselves and “do their own thing;” if this is actively denied, they will fight for it, and the need is

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made more pointed by its repression, or simply ignoring. The current Islamist movement with al-Qaeda in the lead is a particularly striking example of a reaction against assimilation in a globalized form, particularly in its socio-cultural manifestations, itself as global in scale as the threat to its existence to which it responds. Ironically, as identity conflict turns global, the Islamist awakening turns inward and is driven by internal divisions, between Sunnis and Shi’a, that undercut its existential reaction. In many countries, the composition of the population tends to be rather stable, giving communities time to become used to their place in society and their compromise between identity and assimilation, and thus preventing potential or latent conflicts from becoming more serious. However, population composition in some other countries contains the ingredients for possible deep challenges for prevention, and even stable relations contain their own conflict dynamics that set the stage for the exercise of preventive responsibilities. Research findings indicate that highly multi-ethnic (i.e. many groups without a majority) and essentially single-ethnic countries (such as Tanzania and Tunisia, respectively) tend toward stability, whereas pluri-ethnic situations (i.e. a few groups) with a dominant ethnic group (such as Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Cyprus, and Bolivia) foster accentuated ethnic awareness and are the most conflict-prone (Collier/Hoeffler 2000; Elbadawi/ Sambanis 2000; Sambanis 2002; Collier et al. 2003; Arnson/Zartman 2005). Studies also show that ethnic groups that share in active civic associations tend to be immune from interethnic violence, whereas separated ethnic communities are most likely to have violent relations, and groups that share neighborhood routines are less so (Varshney 2003). Further study indicates that within this situation, relations among groups tend toward conflict if one group is heavily favored in the distribution of benefits or if another group’s access is hindered by selectivity and repression, particularly when deprivations within the society become targeted on the community and become discrimination (Zartman/Aronson 2005). Social inequality and comparative deprivation breaks down social values, such as trust and support (Kawachi et al. 1997; Kawachi/Subramanian 2008). Such perceptions generate a dynamic where the powerful in-group fears retribution for its repressive policies, making it both particularly susceptible to fear mongering and prone to co-opt state structures for purposes of self-defense—a deadly combination. It is important to remember that ethnic conflict carried to the point of mass killings and genocide is essentially a reaction of high awareness perceived as defensive (Zartman et al. 2012; others). The majority group concocts a fear of the minority and acts to defend itself against the perceived existential threat, even when there is no objective danger. The Nazis justified their efforts to exterminate the Jews by the perceived threat that the Jews posed to Aryan society; the Hutu génocidaires justified their attempt to exterminate Tutsi by the expectation that, otherwise, the Tutsi would exterminate them. This dynamic takes the form of a security dilemma, operating even in conditions short of genocide. One group takes measures to assure its security against a perceived threat from another, which in turn cause the other to raise its own group awareness and take similar measures to protect its security, thus lessening security

29.2

Security Conflict

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of the first group and causing it to take further security measures, and so on (Posen 1993). The result is territorialization, when a community gives a spatial dimension to its group awareness and congregates in an identifiable space that then becomes a tangible element in its identity, so that conflict for greater self-defense and self-determination is fostered (Vasquez?, Toft). Such concentration may be an accident of history or may be deliberate, but it contributes to the development of a “rounding the wagons” attitude and a physical separation from the rest of the population. When it takes on symbolic value it becomes a barrier to integration. Such actions render the population vulnerable to the organization efforts of political entrepreneurs who seize on an opportunity to promote revolt. The record shows that political entrepreneurs for repressive groups who make disproportionate gains through economic appropriation or political violence acquire habits that lead to sharpened identity conflicts (Toch 1965; Staub 1989, Chap. 5; Tilly 2003: 31–41). Both head the values of access and accommodation in the wrong direction, and make them more difficult to promote. To these situations a range of structural approaches is employed to prevent activation of passive conflict and to foster integration when communities become restive (Gurr 1993; Ayissi 2001). Structures that assure access provide unhindered participation in the management of affairs, their own and the larger society’s. Successfully integrating states seek to guarantee access for the people of the community, involving national unity, non-discrimination and expressions of being “created equal…endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights…[of] Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” in the terms of the American Declaration of Independence, or “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” as expressed by the French Revolution, or “Dignity, Justice, Bread, and Citizenship” in the slogans of the Arab Spring. Job opportunities, location of schools, open communications, and voting rights need be equally and easily available. When full integration is not possible, accommodation may be used as the reverse of access, involving an emphasis on positive aspects associated with the community’s identity and well-being that are at the same time contributory to the general welfare of the whole population. As long as the ethnic group can find “its spokesmen” in government and more broadly in society, it can feel part of the whole, even when it feels part of itself. Accommodation in its most organized form is powersharing, where each ethnic community is guaranteed its portion of government (Lijphart 1977); the downside of powersharing is the solidification of ethic group membership and identity, on which it depends, to the detriment of integration and assimilation (Horowitz 1985). The prize phrase of the twenty-first century seems to be “ethnic diversity” rather than assimilation although ethnic diversity tends to reify the diverse divisions and identities, presaging ethnic awareness and conflict. In a sense, this aspect balances assimilation with multi-culturalism and pluralism. It includes not only a glorification of community identity but also a promotion of community prosperity, so that the community does not feel left out in either the cultural or the material benefits of being in the home state. When communities feel barriers of discrimination, employment opportunities, educational access, language promotion, and electoral facilities may require extra measures and

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affirmative action to prevent feelings that fuel conflict. “Separate but equal” in schooling has been outlawed in the US as an unconstitutional oxymoron, but attempts to mix either become very complicated or are decided by demographic patterns that load heavily for one race or ethnic group compared to others. Recognition of the place of Breton, Tamazigh, French and German languages constituted steps in dampening conflict in France, Morocco, Quebec and northern Italy, respectively. Measures must be taken carefully, les the antidote for discrimination involve reverse discrimination until the negative imbalance is redressed. As noted, rebalancing measures begin with structural improvements, with general attitudinal changes following behind. These general measures have had their particular applications in various states over time and go far to account for the innumerable communities throughout the world who are able to maintain some form of their identity with some form of comfort within their states and therefore prevent possibly passive conflict from reaching into activity. It is important to emphasize that these conditions are continually in movement and in need of continual reevaluation. Complacency with a given formula for prevention can lead to its wearing out. “Normal politics” in a functioning democracy offers the best prevention for ethnic conflict, followed close after by an attentive authoritative rule, also practicing normal politics. The distinction is that democracy is flexible and has the internal, inherent means to meet new situations, and authoritative rule dies with the ruler and is a tough act to follow. The American system has rolled with a number of punches in the post-War period and righted itself, whereas Felix Houphouet-Boigny’s stability in the Ivory Coast died convulsively with him in coups and conflicts after 1999. There is no doubt that the greatest goad to ethnic conflict is perceived discrimination; whether perceptions are correct or not, they can always be exploited, expanded and evidenced. Discrimination becomes rooted deep in the mind on both sides, even when tangible conditions are improved, but structural improvements are the sine qua non for changing attitudinal perceptions. The cycle is vicious, however, and attitude changes among key leaders are necessary to create the structural conditions that foster broader attitudinal changes. The importance for American race relations of the Brown versus Board of Education decision of the US Supreme Court in 1954 ending separate but equal education is illustrative of all these aspects. In sum, many potential ethnic conflicts are prevented by some standard mechanisms. • In the long term: “political learning” recognizes that the practice of inclusion as a political system and compensatory inclusion when necessary is the soundest insurance against ethnic conflict; • In the medium/short run: rising existential cycles are prevented by remedial inclusionary negotiations, including temporary separation measures as a step to direct integration; • In the short run: conflicting demands and grievances, not worth the cost of repression, are negotiated to provide greater self-determination.

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Security Conflict

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The recently increased salience of ethnic and other identity conflicts underscores the need to rethink the usual structures and attitudes for their prevention (Zartman et al. 2012). Identity conflict hides behind the mask of sovereignty and so is harder for established prevention mechanisms to get to. The world is becoming increasing aware of single-focus identities, especially ethnic and religious, and has not wanted anyone to get in the way of their newly asserted being. When these individual identities become groups and then movements, they overrun attempts at calm and compromise. Learning, inclusion and self-determination take on new meaning against new odds. There is no easy answer to their success, except a continuing quiet insistence that we can all be ourselves (and in the modern world, our plural selves) without impinging on the ability of others to do the same. Conflict prevention hangs on reinforcing that tolerance.

29.3

The First Line of Prevention

This section has emphasized the importance of established structures and behaviors as the elements of a system of World Order as the first line of prevention. They have provided standards for handling categories of conflict situations as an explanation for the widespread absence of conflict in many ostensibly conflict-prone situations. The discussion emphasizes the effectiveness of general principles in the prevention of conflict large as well as small, and also the use of negotiation and other conflict management and even resolution means to fill in the gaps where the global standards of behavior fall short. Furthermore, when conflicts do arise that fall between the cracks of a prevention regime, either because the situation is idiosyncratic (as all situations are) or because the parties have been able to ignore the constraints of the regime, the norms nonetheless provide guidelines for conflict prevention measures to take in individual cases. States, groups and individuals have for the most part learned to live with their security, territorial and ethnic situation and handle their problems as they arise. It is notable that this has occurred because of the prevalence of attitudes that condone conventional behavior and condemn deviation, much more than because of structures of prevention. When a state feels impelled to contravene the system of Order, physical intervention by the UN Security Council, a coalition of the willing, or a regional organization is slow in coming and is even more exceptional than the breach. But the opprobrium and normative judgment is more ready to be deployed and is powerful as a preventive deterrent (Finnemore/Sikkink 1998). All the while recognizing these effects, the attitudes and structures that produce them must continually be exercised, strengthened and expanded. Unconventional exceptions will always appear when a party thinks it is worth it to break the established rules of behavior. This will occur particularly when the structure of the global or regional system changes, shaking the established World (or regional) Order and opening opportunities for unconventional behavior. It is especially at such moments that the habits of preventive behavior need to be reasserted.

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References Avenhaus, Rudolf, Victor Kremenyuk & Gunnar Sjöstedt 2002. Containing the Atom: International Negotiations on Nuclear Security and Safety (Lexington). Ayissi, Anatole 2001. “Territorial Conflicts: Claiming the Land,” in Zartman, ed., Preventive Negotiation (Roman & Littlefield). Arnson, Cynthia & I William Zartman, eds. 2005. Rethinking the Economics of War: The Interface between Need, Creed, and Greed (Woodrow Wilson International Center). Bagla, Pallava 2010. “Along the Indus River: Saber Rattling over Problems of Security,” Science 328:1226–1227. Ban, Ki-Moor 2009. “Implementing the Responsibility to Protect: Report of the Secretary-General,” United Nations A/63/677, 12 January. Cohen, J 1999. Conflict Prevention in the OSCE (Clingendael). Collier, Paul, et al. 2003. Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War and Development Policy (World Bank & Oxford University Press). Collier, Paul & Anke Hoeffler 2003. “Greed and Grievance in Civil War,” World Bank Policy Paper 2355 (World Bank). Diehl, Paul, ed. 1998. A Road Map to War: Territorial Dimensions in International Conflict (Vanderbilt University Press). Elhance, Aron 1996. Conflict and Cooperation overwater in the Aral Sea (SSRC). Evans, Gareth 2008. The Responsibility to Protect (Brookings). Finnemore, Marsha & Kathryn Sikkink 1998. “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change,” International Organization LII 4:887–917; at: http://www.fao.org/docrep/w7414b/ w7414b0j.htm. Hampson, Fen & David Malone 2002. From Reaction to Conflict Prevention (Lynne Rienner). Horowitz, Donald 1985. Ethnic Groups in Conflict (University of California Press). Kanet, Roger & Edward Kolodziej 1993. The Cold War as Cooperation (Macmillan). Kautilya 1960/-320. Arthasastra (R. Shamasatry trans.) (Mysore Printing and Publishing House). Kawachi, Ichiro & S V Subramanian 2008. Social Capital and Health (Springer). Kawachi, Ixchiro, Bruce Kennedy, Bruce Lochner & Deborah Prothro-Stuth 1997. Social Capital, Income Inequality, and Mortality,” American Journal of Public Health. LXXX 9:1491–1498. Lijphart, Arild 1977. Democracy in Plural Societies (Yale University Press). Melamud, Mordechai, Paul Meerts & I William Zartman, eds. 2014 Banning the Bang or Banning the Bomb? Negotiating the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (Cambridge University Press). Nordquist, Kjell-Åke 2001. “Boundary Conflicts: Drawing The Line,” in Zartman, ed., Preventive Negotiation (Rowman & Littlefield). OSCE 2012. Guide to Non-Military Confidence-Building Measures (CMBs) (OSCE). Posen, Barry 1993. “The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict,” in Michael Brown, ed., Ethnic Conflicts and International Security (Princeton). Sambanis, Nicolas 2002. “Review of Recent Advances and Further Directions in the Literature on Civil War,” Defense and Peace Economics XIV 3:215–243. Simmons, Beth 1999. Territorial Disputes and Their Resolution. Peaceworks 27 (USIP). Simmons, Beth 2005. “Forward-Looking Dispute Resolution,” in Zartman & Kremenyuk, ed., Peace vs Justice (Rowman & Littlefield). Staub, Ervin 1989. The Roots of Evil (Cambridge). Themnér, Otto & Peter Wallersteen 2014. “Armed Conflicts 1946–2013,” Journal of Peace Research LI 4:541–554. Tilly, Charles 2003. The Politics of Collective Violence (Cambridge University Press). Toch, Hans 1965. Social Psychology of Social Movements (Bobbs-Merrill). Touval, Saadia 1994. “Why the UN Fails,” Foreign Affairs LXXIII 5:44–57. Trolldalen, Jon Martin 1992. International Environmental Conflict Resolution: The Role of the UN (UNITAR). Vasquez, John A 2010. Territory, War and Peace (Routledge).

References

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Zartman, I William, ed. 1995. Elusive Peace: Negotiating an End to Civil Wars (Brookings). Zartman, I William, ed. 2001. Preventive Negotiation (Rowman & Littlefield). Zartman, I William, Mark Anstey & Paul Meerts 2012. The Slippery Slope to Genocide: Reducing Identity Conflicts and Preventing Mass Murder (Oxford). Zartman & Touval 2007. “Mediation in International Politics,” in Chester A Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson and Pamela Aall, eds., Leashing the Dogs of War (USIP).

Part IV

Critique

Chapter 30

The Courage to Prevent Bruce Jentleson

With Cowardly Lions: Missed Opportunities to Prevent Deadly Conflict and State Collapse, William Zartman has added yet another phrase (“cowardly lions”) to what may well be the most extensive collection of well-turned images and phrases that has been produced by any scholar in our field.1 Zartman (1989) gave us ‘ripeness’ as a measure of whether the conditions of a conflict were sufficiently conducive to resolution. He talked about a “hurting stalemate” to describe a situation in which the parties to the conflict become convinced that they can not win (Zartman 2000). “Putting humpty-dumpty together again” expressed much more effectively than such euphemisms as “postconflict reconstruction” the profound dilemmas left by conflicts that were not prevented (Zartman 1998). These phrases are not just clever and colorful, they convey powerful and deep concepts that provide rich and often unique insights into the dynamics of conflict and conflict resolution. Thus, Zartman makes his message clear from the very start of Cowardly Lions. Opportunities existed to prevent deadly conflict and state collapse. They were there, but they were missed. They were missed because key external actors, with the power to act preventively, may have roared about their power, but, when the time came for real action, they were cowardly. As Zartman (p. 1) puts it: The terrible fact is that in major cases of state collapse in the post-Cold War era and its antecedents, specific actions identified and discussed at the time could have been taken that would have gone far to prevent the enormously costly catastrophes that eventually occurred.

Zartman positions Cowardly Lions within the broader conflict prevention literature with a particular focus on the role of external actors. He sees their actions as interrelated with but analytically distinct from internal conflict dynamics. In short, Cowardly Lions is “a book about the international politics of domestic conflict,

Bruce W Jentleson, “The Courage to Prevent,” Review of I William Zartman. Cowardly Lions: Missed Opportunities to Prevent Deadly Conflict and State Collapse. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2005. 281 pp. in: International Studies Review (2006) 8, 498–500, reprinted by permission.

1

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 I. W. Zartman, I William Zartman: A Pioneer in Conflict Management and Area Studies, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06079-4_30

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examining moments in the recent past when an arguably better response from interested third parties could have changed the course of events” (p. 2). Anyone who has written in this field, especially those who have edited books to which Zartman has contributed (see, for example, Jentleson 2000), will appreciate two aspects of the contribution that Cowardly Lions makes to the literature. The first is the very fact that another book, and one by such an intellectual leader on conflict prevention, has appeared on the scene. Work in this area has gone through an all too familiar cycle. It burgeoned in the early 1990s when, in the quasi-euphoria of the peaceful end of the Cold War and visions of what President George H. W. Bush called “a new world order,” so much seemed possible. Much of the work on preventive diplomacy at that time was, as Stedman (1995) critiqued it, “oversold.” But the pendulum swung too far in the direction of recognizing the limits of preventive action. Critiques such as Stedman’s even produced a cynicism about those who still argued and strove for preventing violent conflict and not just reconstructing societies after the fact. Coming out at this time, Cowardly Lions is an important part of a renewed push, intellectually as well as politically, to make the case for both the logic and the normative imperatives of conflict prevention. The second aspect of Cowardly Lions’ contribution lies in the particular insights contained in the book. Zartman recognizes the difficulties inherent in counterfactual analysis and develops an analytic framework that is geared to managing, even if not fully resolving, these methodological problems. He establishes four criteria for the validity of a claim of missed opportunity: (1) “minimal rewrite” of the history that played out, (2) “prior mention,” meaning information and options that were available at the time, (3) “relevant feasibility” of their doability and not just desirability, and (4) “contextual opportunity;” meaning overall assessment of the case and the array of crucial factors giving it its real texture (pp. 9–19). He then applies the framework to six cases (Lebanon, 1976–1984; Liberia, 1985–1998; Somalia, 1988–1993; Zaire, 1991–1996; Yugoslavia, 1989–1998; and Haiti, 1991– 1996) in a comparative case analysis consistent with the structured focused comparison methodology pioneered by George (1979) and George/Bennett (2005). It is inherent in this type of empirical and analytic work that some of the findings and arguments are more convincing than others. One of the most striking patterns is the refutation of the argument that early warning is a major problem. Early warning signs were “more than adequate” in all 30 instances across the six cases (p. 241). Another key finding is related to the feasibility of preventive strategies. According to Zartman, “the proposed measures had a good chance of succeeding, and their cost in lives and money was foreseeably much less than the final cost of unarrested collapse and conflict in reality” (p. 241; see also Brown and Rosecrance 1999). Missed opportunities—such as NATO’s failure to respond credibly to the shelling of Dubrovnik during the Yugoslavian case (October 1991), and the failure to implement economic sanctions in a concerted fashion in the Haiti case (1991–1993) could have been developed further.

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The scope of relevant third parties that Zartman considers is broadly inclusive: the United Nations, regional organizations, ex-colonial European powers, non-governmental organizations, and the United States. The case studies show varying relative roles for these actors, as well as others. Nonetheless, Zartman still singles out the United States as having “a unique position in regard to preventive diplomacy” (p. 239), recognizing that in almost every case success is more likely when the United States plays a leadership role, and failure is more likely when it does not. The point is neither that the United States has a hegemonic role (as neoconservatives boast) nor that the United States should be the global equivalent of a 9/11 emergency service (which isolationists fear). It is, rather, an affirmation of the leadership role that the United States can play in leveraging, facilitating, and persuading action by the international community. Cowardly Lions has both “analytic and hortatory” goals (p. 2). Both sets of goals are well fulfilled, and in ways that have scholarly value for theory building as well as policymaking. As Zartman argues, “analysis is always hortatory, serving as the basis for action, and exhortation should always be analytical, based on sound examination and reasoning” (p. 2). This well-stated position is equally well carried out by Zartman–one of our discipline’s lions, and never a cowardly one.

References Brown, Michael & Richard N Rosecrance, eds. 1999. The Costs of Conflict: Prevention and Cure in the Global Arena (Boulder: Rowman and Littlefield). George, Alexander 1979. Case Studies and Theory Development: The Method of Structured, Focused Comparison, in Paul Gordon Lauren, ed., Diplomacy: New Approaches in History, Theory and Policy (Free Press). George, Alexander & Andrew Bennett 2005. Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Science (Cambridge MS: MIT Press). Jentleson, Bruce W, ed. 2000. Opportunities Missed, Opportunities Seized: Preventive Diplomacy in the Post-Cold War World (Lanham: Roman & Littlefield). Stedman, Stephen John 1995. “Alchemy for a New World Order: Overselling ‘Preventive Diplomacy,’” Foreign Affairs LXXIV 14–26. Zartman, I William 2000. “Ripeness; the Hurting Stalemate and Beyond,” in Paul Stern and Daniel Druckman, eds., International Conflict Resolution after the Cold War (National Academies Press). Zartman, I William 1998. “Putting Humpty-Dumpty Together Again,” in David Lake & Donald Rothchild, eds., The International Spread of Ethnic Conflict (Princeton University Press). Zartman, I William 1989. Ripe for Resolution: Conflict and Intervention in Africa (Oxford University Press).

About Johns Hopkins University

The university takes its name from 19th-century Maryland philanthropist Johns Hopkins, an entrepreneur and abolitionist with Quaker roots who believed in improving public health and education in Baltimore and beyond. Mr. Hopkins, one of 11 children, made his fortune in the wholesale business and by investing in emerging industries, notably the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, of which he became a director in 1847. In his will, he set aside $7 million to establish a hospital and affiliated training colleges, an orphanage, and a university. At the time, it was thei The Johns Hopkins University opened in 1876 as the first research university which would promote creative thought and scholarship at the highest levels. The first president, Daniel Coit Gilman, guided the opening of the university and other institutions, including the university press, the hospital, and the schools of nursing and medicine. The original academic building on the Homewood campus, Gilman Hall, is named in his honor. “Our simple aim is to make scholars, strong, bright, useful, and true,” Gilman said in his inaugural address. While many colleges existed in the US, The Hopkins was established as “a great graduate university” that would strike out boldly toward new frontiers of knowledge and continues that tradition.1

1

John Schmidt, Johns Hopkins: Portrait of a University (The Johns Hopkins University, 1986), 5.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 I. W. Zartman, I William Zartman: A Pioneer in Conflict Management and Area Studies, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06079-4

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About the School for Advanced International Studies

The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) is a division of Johns Hopkins University based in Washington, D.C., United States, with campuses in Bologna, Italy; and Nanjing, China. The institution is devoted to the study of international affairs, economics, diplomacy, and policy research. The School was founded in 1943 by Paul H. Nitze and Christian Herter who sought new methods of preparing men and women to cope with the international responsibilities that would be thrust upon the United States in the postwar world. Nitze feared the diplomatic and economic expertise developed in World War II might get lost if the nation became isolationist. Originally a stand-alone graduate school, it became part of The Johns Hopkins University in 1950. The founders assembled a faculty of scholars and professionals to teach international relations, international economics, and foreign languages to a small group of students. The curriculum was designed to be both scholarly and practical. The natural choice for the location of the school was Washington, D.C., a city where international resources are abundant and where American foreign policy is shaped and set in motion. When the school opened in 1944, 15 students were enrolled. In 1955 the school created the Bologna Center in Italy, the first full-time graduate school located in Europe under an American higher- education system. By 1963 Johns Hopkins SAIS outgrew its first quarters on Florida Avenue and moved to one of its present buildings on Massachusetts Avenue. In 1986, the Hopkins–Nanjing Center was created in Nanjing, China, which teaches courses in both Chinese and

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 I. W. Zartman, I William Zartman: A Pioneer in Conflict Management and Area Studies, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06079-4

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About the School for Advanced International Studies

English and is jointly administered by Johns Hopkins SAIS and Nanjing University.2 Johns Hopkins SAIS is a global school with its campuses in three continents. In 2018 it had nearly 700 full-time students in Washington, D.C.; 190 full-time students in Bologna, Italy; and about 160 full-time students in Nanjing. Of these, 60 percent come from the United States and a third from more than 70 other countries. Half the students are women and nearly a quarter are from U.S. minority groups. Some 300 students graduate each year from the two-year MA program in with concentrations (majors) in international relations, American foreign policy, international development, international economics and area studies; in 1983 the conflict management program was created as a sub-field of international relations. The school offers multidisciplinary instruction leading to the degrees of master of arts for early and mid-career professionals, as well as a doctor of philosophy program. Unlike most other international affairs graduate schools that offer professional master’s degrees, Johns Hopkins SAIS requires its MA candidates to fulfill the International Ecopass a one-hour capstone oral examination synthesizing and integrating knowledge from the student's regional or functional concentration and international economics. The oral examination and international economics requirements of the master of arts curriculum have been the signature aspects of the school’s education.

2

Tammi Gutner, The Story of SAIS. (The Johns Hopkins University, 1987).

About the Author

I William Zartman (Ph.D. 1956, Yale University; doctorates honoris causa Catholic University of Louvain 2003, Uppsala University 2018) is the Jacob Blaustein Distinguished Professor Emeritus of International Organization and Conflict Resolution at the Paul H Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University, and founding member of the Steering Committee of the Processes of International Negotiation (PIN) Program at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA-Hamburg). He was on the faculty of International Studies at the University of South Carolina (1960-–65), and then Professor of Politics at New York University (1965–80), where he served as All-University Department Head. He was a Visiting Lecturer at the American University in Cairo, Olin Professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, and Elie Halévy Professor at the Institute for Political Studies (Sciences Pô) in Paris. He received citations for distinguished scholarship from the International Studies Association (ISA), United States Institute of Peace (USIP), Canadian Institute for Governance Innovation (CIGI), and International Association for Conflict Management. (IACM) and is a Commander of the Order of the Alawites of Morocco. He is a retired LCDR in the US Navy. He was founding Executive Secretary and the President of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), founding president of the American Institute of © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 I. W. Zartman, I William Zartman: A Pioneer in Conflict Management and Area Studies, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06079-4

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Maghreb Studies (AIMS) and president of the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies (TALIM), founding treasurer of the West Africa Research Association (WARA), and vice-president of the Council for American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC). The bibliography of his prolific writings appears in this book. Address Dr. I William Zartman, Jacob Blaustein Distinguished Professor Emeritus of International Organization and Conflict Resolution, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC, 1740 Massachusetts Ave., NW Washington, DC 20036. Email [email protected]. Website https://www.sais-jhu.edu/i-william-zartman.

Index

A Adjudication, 342, 402 Afghanistan, 107–111, 114, 116, 117, 163, 170, 232, 233, 236, 242, 271, 403, 427, 429, 501 Africa, 8–11, 13, 15, 17–20, 23, 51, 53, 57, 107, 129, 156, 162–164, 166–169, 175, 181, 198, 201, 233, 239–242, 244, 245, 248–251, 261, 262, 264, 265, 272, 276, 277, 306, 307, 319, 320, 339, 342, 344–347, 350, 354, 355, 357, 359–367, 373, 380–382, 385, 386, 389, 391–395, 397–399, 407, 408, 412, 422, 423, 427, 429–431, 434, 435, 439, 440, 442, 445, 446, 448, 449, 454, 458, 469, 471, 481–483, 485, 500, 501, 503, 507 Algeria, 8, 10, 14, 15, 42, 43, 45, 64, 66, 79, 83, 90, 111, 139–141, 154, 156, 158, 170, 198, 219, 241, 242, 245, 250, 251, 259, 320, 349, 358, 384, 386, 390, 392–398, 405, 426, 428, 439, 442, 443, 445, 447–449, 451–453, 456, 462, 474, 481–489, 491–494, 500, 504 Allal al, 153 Allocating, 341, 342 American Institute of Maghrib Studies (AIMS), 12, 18 Angola, 98, 106, 108, 110, 111, 114, 116, 117, 162, 163, 165–167, 169–171, 180, 182, 188–191, 226–230, 232, 233, 235, 241, 242, 250–252, 262, 271, 306, 307, 356, 403, 404, 429–431, 445, 500, 506 Aristotle, 100, 275, 295, 342, 375, 421, 432 Army, 7, 8, 14, 53, 60–62, 64, 66, 79–81, 84, 90, 107, 116, 139, 141, 142, 144, 161,

164, 180, 188, 204–206, 208, 211–213, 217, 240, 246–248, 271, 287, 305, 351, 357, 362, 363, 393, 439, 445 Army of Liberation, 60 Authoritative, 121, 138, 243, 244, 275, 418, 512 Autonomy, 12, 165, 166, 169, 184–187, 191, 216, 276, 285, 341, 349, 357, 358, 407, 410, 411, 422, 424, 425, 427, 428, 432, 433, 439, 446, 454, 455, 457, 459, 466, 473, 474, 476, 487, 488, 493–495 B Balafrej, Ahmed, 60 Barka, Mehdi ben, 64, 66, 141 Ba’th, 53 Berber, 60–62, 83, 349, 454 Bipolarity, 275, 279, 287 Boumedienne, Houari, 79 Boundary, 19, 120, 127, 247, 249, 262, 264, 284, 310, 313, 344, 372, 402–404, 406, 408, 421, 423, 424, 439, 440, 442–448, 453, 454, 459, 460, 463, 465–467, 469, 472, 473, 476, 494, 497, 503, 504, 508, 509 Bourgeoisie, 60, 65, 107, 146 Bourguiba, Habib, 86, 153 Bouteflika, 81 Buffer, 233, 235, 236, 368, 402, 468, 508 C Cease-fire, 175, 176, 178, 180–183, 185, 186, 188, 189, 212, 217, 219, 253, 306, 433, 457, 473 CEMAT, 12, 18

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530 Chadli ben Jedid, 72, 79, 87 Change, 22, 41–45, 47, 48, 50–52, 54, 55, 59, 62, 66, 67, 73, 74, 76–80, 82, 84–87, 89–91, 96, 98, 113, 117, 121, 123–125, 127–130, 132, 135, 136, 138, 141–143, 145, 146, 169, 175, 182, 185, 186, 195, 206, 210, 216, 219, 223, 229, 231, 240, 243, 246, 249, 251, 272, 275, 280–283, 295, 299, 300, 302–304, 307, 311, 313, 321, 325, 346, 351, 355, 357, 359, 361, 364, 382, 386–388, 390, 394, 401, 405, 406, 412, 431, 442, 447, 461–463, 465, 469, 474, 477, 478, 497, 498, 500, 501, 507, 508 Chicken Dilemma Game (CDG), 333 Coalition, 50–52, 55, 68, 76, 81, 86, 91, 121, 124, 126–130, 132, 134, 135, 137, 138, 142, 158, 159, 165, 167, 168, 200–203, 207, 208, 211, 219, 221, 222, 241, 263, 278–281, 284, 334–336, 346–349, 351, 357, 371, 398, 430, 432, 501, 513 Collapsed state, 102, 106, 114, 187, 272 Colombia colonial, 107, 500 Community, 11, 46, 113, 115, 129, 152, 181, 185, 208, 209, 235, 243, 249, 250, 272, 276, 277, 284, 317, 322, 331, 333, 335, 336, 345, 346, 373, 374, 376, 377, 387, 408, 413, 417, 418, 422, 425, 428, 430, 434, 435, 444, 449, 461, 463, 466, 467, 483, 485, 492, 497, 500, 502, 506, 510, 511, 521 Compensation, 11, 153, 179, 190, 296, 303, 305, 311, 323, 327, 329, 368, 397, 402, 413, 432 Concession, 11, 190, 206, 214, 218, 248, 280, 281, 301, 302, 305, 323, 402 Conference on the Disarmament of Europe, 298 Conflict, 15, 18, 20–22, 24, 45, 66, 84, 95–105, 109–117, 122, 123, 125, 152, 157, 159, 161, 162, 164–171, 173–191, 195, 196, 199, 201–206, 209, 215, 218, 219, 223, 225–237, 252, 257, 258, 260–265, 274, 276, 277, 282, 284, 285, 287, 293–295, 297, 304–306, 312, 317–323, 326–329, 332, 335, 339, 342–347, 350, 352, 356–358, 364–367, 374, 382, 391, 402–405, 410, 411, 413, 417–425, 427–435, 445, 448, 449, 453, 461, 472,

Index 475, 477, 481, 487–489, 492–495, 497–513, 519, 520 Conflict management, 18, 20, 24, 101, 107, 113, 174–176, 186, 187, 229, 237, 250, 257–259, 276, 282, 285, 318, 320, 323, 335, 339, 340, 342–345, 348–350, 352, 353, 359, 362, 367, 368, 373, 420, 429, 431, 432, 481, 498, 513 Constitution, 12, 63, 64, 80, 86, 89, 140, 153, 185, 251, 279, 305, 412, 419, 429, 432, 433, 444, 457 Cooperation, 53, 112, 152, 171, 173, 187, 191, 202, 207, 212, 227, 230, 236, 251, 252, 262, 274, 284, 285, 302, 322, 325–337, 346, 366, 368, 371–376, 384, 391, 399, 404, 411–413, 432, 455, 472, 478, 481–485, 487–492, 494, 495, 501, 507 Costa Rica, 133, 180, 182, 189–191 Counter-revolution, 46 Cuban Missile Crisis, 280, 298, 299 Cyprus, 20, 181, 185, 188, 191, 226, 227, 229, 233, 234, 236, 261, 320, 404, 423, 426, 430, 433, 469, 470, 473, 479, 505, 506, 510 D Dayton Bosnian Peace Agreement, 298 Decision, 14, 61, 74, 80, 91, 98, 128, 175, 178, 195–200, 202, 203, 207, 209, 210, 214–217, 219, 223, 243, 244, 259, 275, 276, 278, 281, 286, 293, 295, 297, 300–302, 305, 308, 309, 313, 323, 331, 333, 335, 342, 348, 362, 363, 379, 383, 384, 386, 389, 397, 399, 408, 440, 485, 512 Decision rules, 293 Demand-bearing groups, 77, 123, 124, 129, 131, 135, 143, 146, 246, 340, 342, 348, 349, 352, 353, 357, 363, 365, 366 Democratic Constitutionalist, 90 Deng, Francis Mading, 17, 169, 184, 227, 229, 233, 272, 406, 407, 410, 423 Deprivation, 100–104, 106–108, 111, 356, 421, 510 Detail, 15, 73, 106, 127, 128, 141, 146, 167, 175, 177, 179, 182, 187, 191, 197, 221, 230, 234, 246, 280, 295, 297, 299, 302, 303, 307, 309, 310–313, 330, 339, 364, 376, 385, 392, 406, 432, 471, 494, 499, 505

Index Discrimination, 104, 351, 421, 427 Dispute-resolution, 322 Durability, 112, 173, 176–178, 191, 371, 375–377, 388, 417–421, 423, 427, 430, 432, 433 E Ecuador-Peru Border Agreement, 298 Egypt, 15, 16, 41, 42, 129, 138, 141, 144, 153, 156, 158, 179, 214, 231, 276, 322, 332, 374, 384, 393, 442, 451, 453–458, 460, 462, 463, 473, 476, 479, 490, 507 Elections, 7, 8, 59, 62–65, 67, 68, 71–73, 79, 90–92, 126, 129, 132, 138, 139, 144, 155–159, 166, 167, 169, 179, 180, 182, 183, 187, 205, 206, 211, 212, 223, 230, 241, 246, 248, 251, 252, 277, 293, 298, 306–309, 351, 352, 355, 357, 362, 363, 365, 367, 428, 432, 483, 484, 486, 487 Elite, 42–50, 52, 54, 58, 71, 75, 80–83, 91, 93, 104, 106, 107, 111, 119–122, 124–140, 142–146, 166, 235, 279, 347–349, 353, 398 Elite succession, 71, 92, 129, 133, 351 El Salvador, 180–182, 190, 191, 234, 262, 305, 306, 312, 313, 320, 427 Embeddedness, 232, 234, 236 Equivalence, 296, 298–300, 303, 304, 307, 309, 312 Ethiopia, 166–171, 236, 241, 242, 245, 247, 249, 252, 261, 383, 394, 396, 403, 404, 412, 423, 439, 442, 443, 445, 448, 500 Ethnic identity, 104, 108, 109, 132, 340, 421, 425–427, 434, 459 F Factions, 57, 62, 66–68, 107, 108, 135, 141, 166, 170, 196–198, 203, 204, 207, 209, 218, 219, 221, 222, 252, 352, 353, 431, 455, 456, 461, 488 Fairness, 187, 313, 329, 368 Focal points, 11, 308, 309 Formula, 15, 22, 24, 138, 151, 166, 167, 173–191, 205, 210–214, 221, 222, 231, 280, 295–299, 301, 303–305, 307–309, 311–313, 330, 331, 368, 417, 420, 421, 424, 429, 432, 433, 435, 493, 506, 512 Front for the Defence of the Constitutional Institutions (FDIC), 64

531 Funnel, 49, 50, 131, 142, 342 G Genocide, 22, 23, 200, 203, 273, 427, 475, 510 Governance, 18, 85, 88, 98, 101, 102, 107, 113, 114, 117, 118, 151, 152, 154, 155, 163, 166, 180, 181, 244–246, 278, 281, 322, 339–345, 350, 356, 359, 361, 365, 366, 368, 422, 454, 456, 483, 484, 486 Government negotiations with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, 304 Greed, 95, 106, 110, 111 Grievances, 44, 49, 50, 62, 65, 76, 89, 95, 97, 99–101, 110–112, 115–117, 161, 165, 168, 173, 176–179, 183, 186–189, 198, 200, 211, 222, 228, 229, 319, 341, 364, 368, 417, 419, 420, 424, 427, 428, 431, 503, 512 H Haile Mariam, Mengistu, 168 Haiti, 20, 24, 111, 117, 263, 483, 520 Hassan II, 8, 63, 153, 389, 443, 494 Homans, 296, 330, 402 Human rights, 159, 205, 263, 264, 287, 305, 308, 341, 347, 356, 360, 484, 486, 493, 501 I Ibn Khaldun, Abdurrahman, 152 Identity, 12, 22, 84, 95–97, 99–101, 103, 104, 108, 109, 111, 116, 130, 132, 153, 154, 177, 226–229, 231, 233, 235, 239, 242, 243, 246, 286, 287, 311, 321, 332, 334, 336, 341, 342, 344–346, 372–374, 380, 382, 386, 388, 401–413, 417–427, 431, 434, 435, 453–455, 457, 459, 462, 465–469, 471–473, 477, 479, 505, 509–513 Ideology, 45–47, 53, 97, 108, 143–145, 200, 240, 257, 276, 333, 352, 354, 374, 379, 380, 382, 386–399, 404, 405, 410, 411, 423 Institution, 11, 17, 19, 23, 57, 60, 64, 78–80, 84, 96, 98, 101, 102, 107, 112, 123, 127, 144–146, 208–210, 212, 240, 243, 244, 248, 286, 293, 312, 342, 399, 418, 432, 462, 466, 498, 504, 506, 507

532 Interdependence, 176, 323, 328, 414 Interest groups, 51, 52, 62, 68 Intervention, 15, 103, 113–117, 122, 161, 183, 184, 201, 202, 209, 240, 241, 248, 252, 253, 258, 259–261, 263–265, 309, 362, 399, 407, 408, 435, 454, 456, 458, 501, 502, 504, 513 Intractability, 105, 112, 225–227, 229, 231, 232, 234 Iran hostages, 298, 312 Istiqlal, 57, 65 J Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPoA) on Iranian nuclear non-proliferation, 280, 298, 313, 325 Justice, 22, 100, 104, 112, 116, 175, 230, 263, 264, 267, 268, 274, 275, 282, 283, 293–314, 317, 320, 328, 329, 360, 380, 402, 443, 449, 462, 504, 511 K Kampala, ix, x Karabagh, 175, 180, 186, 191, 229, 230, 233 Kinship, 277, 331–337, 373 Kosovo, 20, 198, 204–212, 220–222, 226, 261, 409, 410, 461, 494, 501, 505, 506 L Labor, 48, 50, 51, 54, 55, 81, 88, 121, 133, 135, 136, 138, 144, 156, 159, 214, 250, 280, 349, 351, 353, 354, 356, 357, 361–363, 366, 367, 422, 474 Lebanon, 24, 107–111, 114, 116, 117, 141, 162, 163, 166, 170, 171, 180, 183, 187, 189–191, 218, 262, 427, 429–431, 433, 435, 453, 455, 458, 459, 461, 520 Legitimization, 74–79, 92, 216, 235, 244, 251, 252, 261, 340, 442 Liberia, 24, 108, 111, 117, 180, 182, 183, 188, 189, 191, 241, 242, 245, 250–252, 262, 271, 320, 348, 349, 351, 353, 355, 358, 360, 362, 392, 394, 396, 426–431, 435, 443, 520 M Macedonia, 180, 181, 187, 188, 190, 191, 198, 211–213, 220–222, 221, 223, 260, 265 Maghreb, 57, 449, 452, 454, 458, 481–494 Makhzen, 60 Mali, 10, 41, 43, 248, 249, 348, 349, 355, 357, 358, 362, 363, 390, 423, 443, 445, 449

Index Mandela, 167, 168, 242 Market, 136, 275, 281, 287, 350, 356, 368, 384, 385, 396, 397, 422, 483, 484, 488, 506 Marx, 120, 341 Mediators, 115, 168–171, 174, 176, 178, 181–187, 189–191, 198, 212, 213, 219–222, 227, 229, 232, 234–236, 235, 262, 298, 306, 308, 312, 313, 318, 335, 368, 429, 430 Military, 7, 14, 47, 49, 50, 66, 78, 80–82, 84–87, 89, 91, 113, 117, 122, 136, 138–140, 142–144, 166, 170, 182, 187, 200, 202, 203, 205, 207, 213, 222, 228, 241, 246, 258–261, 264, 280, 286, 302–304, 306, 340, 344, 345, 349, 351–356, 359, 361–363, 365, 385, 386, 393, 399, 405, 408, 418, 426, 433, 440, 442, 456, 461, 472, 474, 479, 482, 485, 489, 501, 503, 506 Mobutu Sese Seko, 106, 242, 245 Model, 18, 57, 59, 74, 75, 79, 83, 92, 93, 96, 101, 102, 106, 107, 125, 126, 129, 139, 142–144, 146, 152, 199, 243, 284–287, 309, 311, 312, 373, 402, 406, 451, 470, 475, 476, 486, 487, 493 Mohammed, 8, 81, 87, 89, 353, 388, 426 Mohammed VI, 12, 13, 72 Moroccan, 7, 8, 10, 12, 57, 59–62, 67, 68, 141, 153, 389, 392, 393, 396, 397, 444, 452, 460, 482, 487, 489, 492, 493, 495 Morocco, 8–10, 12, 14, 41, 43, 57, 59–61, 63, 66, 68, 69, 90, 93, 140, 141, 153, 156, 275, 349, 439, 442–445, 451–453, 456, 457, 461, 462, 470, 478, 481–492, 494, 504, 512 Movement of Islamic Ways (MTI), 88, 91 Mozambique, 162–164, 167, 169, 170, 180, 181, 188, 190, 191, 231, 241, 242, 245, 252, 261, 262, 271, 320, 322, 429–431, 500 Mu’ammar Qadhdhafi, 72 Multipolarity, 275 Mutually Enticing Opportunity (MEO), 173–188, 190, 191, 262 Mutually hurting stalemate, 15, 109, 115, 174, 212, 220, 229, 234, 262, 299, 304, 305, 312, 313, 333, 431 N Namibia, 15, 235, 265, 298, 306, 307, 312, 313, 427, 429, 431, 443, 447, 500

Index Nash equilibria, 333 Nationalist movement, 48, 49, 54, 57–61, 67, 87, 130, 131, 134, 138–142, 145, 156, 306, 342, 345–349, 356, 358, 360, 366, 391, 420, 459, 467 National Liberation Front (FLN), 80, 81, 83, 84, 139, 191 National Union of Popular Forces (UNFP), 62–65, 67, 68 Need Negotiations, 11, 15, 22, 23, 45, 66, 76, 98, 104, 112, 161, 163–165, 167–169, 173–187, 189–191, 195–198, 202, 203, 206, 207, 210, 212–214, 217–221, 223, 229, 235, 241, 242, 253, 281, 294, 295, 297–299, 301–313, 323, 330, 331, 334, 392, 393, 396, 412, 417, 429–431, 433, 435, 448, 454, 459, 493, 494, 501, 507, 512 North Africa, 12, 18, 72, 129, 345, 349, 393, 481–483, 487, 494, 495, 507 Nuclear test ban treaty, 298, 301 O Obasanjo, Olusegun, 171, 443 Order, 8, 12, 13, 22, 26, 43, 45, 46, 48, 51, 55, 59, 65, 78, 81–83, 87, 89, 91, 92, 95, 100, 102, 119, 138, 140, 142, 145, 153–155, 159, 161, 164, 165, 167, 173, 174, 186, 200, 204, 205, 210, 212, 219, 220, 235, 239, 240, 242–244, 246–249, 251, 253, 264, 271–288, 293, 294, 302, 305, 313, 321, 327, 328, 332, 334, 336, 344, 345, 351, 352, 362, 368, 380–382, 386–390, 394, 396, 397, 399, 403, 411, 419, 421, 425, 428, 431, 433, 448, 452, 456–458, 462, 463, 471, 486, 497–509, 513, 514, 520 Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), 209, 212, 236, 261, 498, 501 Oslo, 215, 217–221, 229–231, 235 Overthrow, 41–51, 54, 55, 58, 138, 162, 198, 339, 344, 354, 357, 358, 363, 381, 456, 474 P Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), 198, 213–221, 223, 262 Parti Socialiste Démocratique (PSD), 65, 68, 87, 90, 91, 200, 201, 203

533 Party, 46, 47, 52, 57–62, 64–69, 78, 80–92, 108, 120, 122, 126–130, 131, 133, 138–141, 143, 144, 153, 157, 158, 164, 168, 169, 171, 174, 176, 178, 183, 185, 188, 190, 191, 196, 198–200, 202, 203, 205, 206, 211, 212, 214–216, 222, 223, 228–230, 235, 242, 258, 260, 276, 280, 294, 296, 297, 307, 308, 310, 313, 314, 317, 319, 321, 326–330, 333, 335, 343, 344, 346–352, 354, 356, 357, 359–363, 365, 366, 368, 372, 383–385, 393, 402, 429, 435, 452, 455, 456, 484, 488, 498, 504, 513 Peasants, 52, 55, 61, 143, 146, 154, 170, 305, 356, 367 Persuasion, 129, 223, 234, 235, 498 Pluralism, 42, 57, 63, 64, 68, 69, 120, 142, 158, 272, 276, 277, 279, 344, 347, 357, 360, 361, 363, 365, 404, 491, 511 Polarization, 50, 99, 123, 126, 170, 226 Police, 46, 47, 53, 60, 61, 64, 137, 164, 207, 208, 211, 246, 248, 451 Political entrepreneurs, 97, 103, 104, 108, 109, 113, 246, 258, 511 Poverty, 96, 97, 100, 102, 103, 106, 112, 117, 153, 287, 340, 421 Power, 10, 11, 22, 43, 46, 50, 57, 58, 60–63, 66–68, 72, 74, 75, 77–82, 84, 85, 88, 89, 92, 102, 104, 106–108, 112, 113, 116, 117, 119–121, 124–126, 128–130, 133, 134, 136, 139, 140, 141–146, 155, 157, 158, 163–166, 168–170, 174, 176–178, 186–189, 199, 202, 203, 205, 208, 210, 217, 219, 221, 222, 228, 239, 241–243, 245–248, 250–253, 262, 271, 272, 275–277, 279, 281–287, 294, 295, 297, 299, 301, 304, 309, 313, 319, 325, 340, 342, 346–355, 357–359, 362, 364–366, 371, 375–377, 380–382, 384–389, 392, 394, 399, 429–431, 435, 465, 466, 468–475, 477, 480, 485, 499, 501, 503, 509, 519 Power-sharing, 176, 177, 179, 182, 183, 186–188, 200–203, 223, 242, 252 Prisoners’ Dilemma Game (PDG), 230, 332–334, 346, 354, 363, 393 Profitability, 226, 228, 229, 231, 232, 235 Protraction, 226, 227, 231, 234 Q Quran, 157, 276

534 R Rally Democratic Istiqlal (PDI), 60, 62 Realist, 273, 281, 282, 284, 330–331, 336, 337, 371, 376, 377 Reciprocity, 296, 303, 329–332, 336, 371, 499, 502 Reconciliation, 112, 141, 162–165, 169, 170, 173, 175, 181, 188, 236, 253, 261, 264, 304, 317–322, 342, 345, 392, 432 Reference points, 11 Referendum, 64, 151, 210, 305, 393, 419, 428, 439, 444, 487, 494 Relative deprivation, 96, 100, 102, 103, 107, 129, 477 Repression, 64, 100, 106, 111, 112, 139, 242, 245, 246, 248, 252, 262, 342, 345, 352, 357, 367, 407, 486, 510, 512 Requitement, 320, 329 Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), 24, 107, 110, 117, 170, 226, 280, 298, 304, 305 Riot, 64, 87–89, 156, 239, 242, 245, 249, 351 Ripeness, 15, 23, 24, 174, 175, 189, 212, 229–231, 234, 262, 417, 435 Rural, 51, 52, 55, 60, 62, 65, 116, 132, 137, 141, 304, 348, 350, 355, 356, 358, 366, 367, 426, 502 Rwanda, 180, 198, 199, 201, 202, 219–222, 241, 242, 259, 265, 271, 273, 320, 349, 408, 427–429, 431, 435, 442, 505, 510 S S5 situation, 110, 178, 190, 229 Self-government, 49 Self-preservation, 398 Senegal, 10, 18, 20, 41, 43, 133, 249, 260, 344, 348, 349, 351, 357–360, 362, 363, 365, 367, 392, 408, 422, 442, 443, 445 Sierra Leone, 106, 108–111, 113, 114, 116, 117, 180, 185, 188–191, 235, 241, 242, 271, 320, 344, 346, 348–351, 354, 355, 357, 359, 360, 362, 365, 393, 427 Single-party, 57, 59, 60, 64, 130, 350, 351, 363, 432 Sovereignty, 17, 96, 101, 115, 130, 131, 135, 139, 156, 169, 230, 239, 247–249, 259, 264, 265, 272, 276, 287, 301, 307, 308, 310, 311, 340, 363, 380, 397–399, 405–407, 410, 418, 422, 424, 451–453, 455–458, 463, 466, 478, 479, 487, 493, 495, 501, 506, 508, 509, 513

Index Spoilers, 167, 168, 178–181, 183, 186, 188, 190, 195–199, 220, 222, 233, 259, 431 Sri Lanka, 20, 111, 163, 164, 166, 168, 170, 171, 183, 188, 189, 191, 198, 262, 271, 410, 430, 433, 510 Stalemate(S5), 110, 162, 163, 229, 232, 313, 331 State collapse, 24, 105, 106, 111, 114, 117, 203, 239–250, 252, 257, 282, 453, 519 State of nature, 329 Students, 6, 11, 18, 20, 58, 60, 90, 108, 137, 156, 174, 347, 348, 353, 356, 357, 360, 362, 363, 379, 398, 410 Substantive demands, 177, 187, 191, 346, 359, 360, 365, 366 Succession, 59, 71–74, 76–81, 87–89, 92, 93, 106, 113, 117, 130, 144, 156, 180, 182, 230, 251, 261, 273, 282, 284, 303, 353, 365 Sudan, 41, 42, 141, 152, 154, 163, 166, 169, 170, 180, 184, 187–191, 227–230, 233, 236, 241, 242, 248, 249, 262, 349, 373, 409, 411, 423–426, 429, 431, 433, 434, 439, 442, 444, 446, 448, 479, 506, 507 T Tactical Question (TQ), 45, 195–197, 199, 203–207, 211, 213, 214, 218, 220, 222, 365, 375 Taliban, 109 Tangier American Legation Museum Society (TALMS), 12 Transformation, 21, 41–50, 52–55, 138, 142, 175, 278, 282, 320, 321, 323, 351, 394, 401 Transitions, 49, 67, 80, 120, 141, 182, 199, 200, 242, 263, 273, 279, 280, 282, 288, 321, 360, 362, 363, 365, 407, 433, 467, 484, 486 Tunisia, 10, 20, 43, 86, 88, 91, 140, 141, 153, 154, 158, 198, 219, 250, 349, 393, 397, 408, 428, 446, 448, 453, 456, 458, 462, 481–484, 486, 489, 490, 504, 510 U UGTA, 81 UMT, 64, 65, 67 Unipolarity, 275 United Nation (UN), 11, 13–15, 18, 23, 24, 181, 182, 185, 211, 214, 231, 234, 235, 239, 248, 250, 252, 253, 257–259,

Index 261–263, 272, 285, 286, 296, 298, 301, 305–307, 312, 335, 347, 376, 406, 407, 421, 429, 439, 445, 461, 481, 485–488, 492–494, 498, 499, 501, 502, 506, 513, 521 Uti possidetis, 264, 423 V Violence, 18, 22, 42–50, 53, 55, 96, 101, 111, 115, 130, 139, 162, 164, 168, 169, 175–178, 184, 187–191, 195, 197, 198, 202–205, 212, 213, 217, 219, 220, 229, 282, 304, 306, 312, 313, 318, 326, 339, 340, 349, 358, 393, 398, 417, 419–422, 432, 456, 462, 463, 502, 506, 507, 509–511 W Way out, 15, 120, 170, 174–176, 212, 220, 234, 299, 305, 307, 312, 334

535 Weber, 120, 243, 244, 283, 284, 451, 462, 471 Western, 10, 81, 82, 87, 114, 129, 152, 153, 157, 204, 208–210, 244, 259, 260, 275, 276, 287, 298, 299, 301, 306, 344, 348, 357, 362–365, 368, 393, 404, 405, 408, 412, 419, 443, 445, 446, 457–460, 462, 466, 481–483, 487, 492–494 Western Sahara, 8, 12, 15, 410, 439, 444–446, 461, 487, 488, 492, 493, 495 Z Zero-sum, 100, 190, 223, 228–230, 232, 235, 280, 311, 313, 323, 402–404, 407, 411, 413, 425, 434 Zine Labidine ben’Ali, 72 Zone of Possible Agreement (ZOPA), 199, 210, 297