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Multiple Paths to Knowledge in International Relations: Methodology in the Study of Conflict Management and Conflict Resolution
Multiple Paths to Knowledge in International Relations provides a uniquely valuable view of current approaches and findings in conflict studies. This volume showcases work informed by four powerful research tools: rational choice theory and game theory; simulation, experimentation, and artificial intelligence; quantitative studies; and case studies. Each research method is introduced and evaluated for its specific potential, including both strengths and weaknesses. Throughout, the notable contributors clearly explain how they choose, frame, and go about answering questions. While expanding our knowledge of particular conflicts, from the Crimean War to the Vietnam War to ongoing Palestinian-Israeli instability, Multiple Paths also furthers our understanding of how to conduct research in international relations.
392 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
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January 13, 2019
Modeling Conflict and Negotiation
One of the best chapters in the book is Gochal and Levy’s conventional analysis of decision points and available alternatives leading to the Crimean War. On this basis alone the book is worth fetching from a library. However if you are the sort of reader who’s eyes glaze over at the mention of statistics, markov models and turn away at the sight of an equation, you'd probably pass over fine collection of articles, which would be a shame. Mathematical modelling is simply another form of rhetorical argument which begins with a premises and ends with conclusions. The difference with convention rhetoric is that the model can be tested and fine tuned, while still debated as to whether or not the mapping corresponds to the territory.
Inside are 11 thoughtful and interesting papers that provide a somewhat technical look at techniques for understanding how state level conflicts evolve. The four methodologies covered are: game theory , simulation, quantitative analyses and case studies
The 1st paper “Rational Choices and Game Theoretic Approaches” observes that there are two approaches mediators follow when dealing with a conflict – resolution vs management. In some cases the differences between the parties may not be readily resolved in which case the goal is to stabile it at inflection points known as a Nash equilibrium that minimize the ongoing costs to either side.
In chapter 2, “Bargaining and Conflict Management” Rousseau's Stag Hunt the classic Prisoner' Dilemma and labour strikes are used to illustrate the problem of managing expectations. The author, R. Harrison Wagner asks the reader to consider counterfactuals such as what the outcome would have been if WW II, the US Civil war, the American or French Revolution or the Rodney King riots had been “solved” through negotiations – the last one being problematic as there were no representatives to negotiate with at the time. Wagner also asks whether the neorealist view that interstate war is driven by a condition of anarchy between nations and security needs and argues that the same explanation does not apply to civil wars which are more prevalent. He also contributes another interesting idea, suggesting that underlying both war and bargaining there exist a series of information exchanges, often deceptive, the purpose of which is to raise the estimated cost of continuing the conflict and forcing resolution. A recent example I came across (not in the text) was Charlemagne's 5 year siege of Carcasonne in the 8th century where the city dwellers, their supplies running out, tossed a fatted pig over the wall to signify they were still well supplied. The Frankish King, not wishing to maintain a long seige, offered a settlement. Marc Kilgour's intensive chapter 3 uses game theory to suggest models that could predict the likelihood of escalation rather than settlement.
Chapters 4-6 examine mediation. The first of these by Philip Schrodt discusses a computational model to detect and categorize different mediation styles used by different US secretaries of state in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and I found a link to an interesting later paper by the author “Seven Deadly Sins of Contemporary Quantitative Political Analysis” which is well worth reading. The paper is concerned more with the development of the model than a discussion of the styles, which are considered to be well known. Ch 5, by multiple authors, looks at quantitatively modelling the effect of different mediation approaches to a fishing dispute between Canada and Spain using students to role play the parties in order to determine the parameters of the model. What was interesting was their conclusion that mediation had a slightly negative effect! The last chapter of this group on mediation by Charles Tabor was about design of AMED (Artificial MEDiator). This AI program was built in 3 layers - perceptual, representational and reasoning. What was intriguing was the incorporation of long term and short term memory into the representational layer – like the human mediatore, AMED “forgets”. Working memory is divided into declarative (facts) and procederal, and is laid out as a series of schemas per the representations used by Schank and Abelson. It's a toy model where AMED contributes to a dispute between Reno and Cartha over a territory known as Flatland. It would be probably be interesting to see this come out as a computer game.
The 3rd set of papers is about quantitative approaches. Stuart Bremer asks under what circumstances militarized conflicts are actually amenable to negatiated settlements given that over 65% of a sample of size 1705 one on one disputes led to a stalemate. If both parties are democracies then the possibility of settlement rises to 45%, still low but double than if either party is not. Mediations are also 3x likely to succeed if the two parties are culturally similar, but relative size of political power does not seem to make a difference. D. Scott Bennet writes about “Patterns of Conflict Management and Resolution in Long Term Rivalries”. I found this one of the more difficulty studies to understand, for example the sinusoidal charts that near the beginning aren't linked to a data source. What Bennet concludes is that conflicts with outside intervention tend to much last longer but are less violent, and that he hopes future studies will winnow out positive from negative aspects of outside interference. The 9th paper by Bercovitch and Patrick Regan outline a set of hypothesis regarding mediation – timing with respect to the outbreak of hostilities, relative power of the disputants, mediator relationship with either parties and whether the mediator uses inducements, deterrence, adjudication, or accomodation and relates this to the relative success of the outcome using criteria of stability, efficiency and fairness. The authors also include “wise” as a criteria but do note explain what this means. Their results while not definitive some promise for this kind of analysis.
The final section of case studies contains two articles. The 2nd on the Crimean War I’ve already described. The 1st examines the Vietnam War as a series of 11 2-player game scenarious played between the Americans and the Viet Kong, presented as a series of tables outlining..... possible moves and outcomes. The authors put forward a hypothesis X at the start, and by the end of the study they reject it.
The math used is just enough to understand the essence of each approach, though not so detailed as to make up the whole of each paper. The non mathematical reader should be able to skim around the math and extract the major points. It's a shame that large numbers of political and policy analysts shy away from even looking at this approach, often due to fear of and a lack of mathematical training.
One of the best chapters in the book is Gochal and Levy’s conventional analysis of decision points and available alternatives leading to the Crimean War. On this basis alone the book is worth fetching from a library. However if you are the sort of reader who’s eyes glaze over at the mention of statistics, markov models and turn away at the sight of an equation, you'd probably pass over fine collection of articles, which would be a shame. Mathematical modelling is simply another form of rhetorical argument which begins with a premises and ends with conclusions. The difference with convention rhetoric is that the model can be tested and fine tuned, while still debated as to whether or not the mapping corresponds to the territory.
Inside are 11 thoughtful and interesting papers that provide a somewhat technical look at techniques for understanding how state level conflicts evolve. The four methodologies covered are: game theory , simulation, quantitative analyses and case studies
The 1st paper “Rational Choices and Game Theoretic Approaches” observes that there are two approaches mediators follow when dealing with a conflict – resolution vs management. In some cases the differences between the parties may not be readily resolved in which case the goal is to stabile it at inflection points known as a Nash equilibrium that minimize the ongoing costs to either side.
In chapter 2, “Bargaining and Conflict Management” Rousseau's Stag Hunt the classic Prisoner' Dilemma and labour strikes are used to illustrate the problem of managing expectations. The author, R. Harrison Wagner asks the reader to consider counterfactuals such as what the outcome would have been if WW II, the US Civil war, the American or French Revolution or the Rodney King riots had been “solved” through negotiations – the last one being problematic as there were no representatives to negotiate with at the time. Wagner also asks whether the neorealist view that interstate war is driven by a condition of anarchy between nations and security needs and argues that the same explanation does not apply to civil wars which are more prevalent. He also contributes another interesting idea, suggesting that underlying both war and bargaining there exist a series of information exchanges, often deceptive, the purpose of which is to raise the estimated cost of continuing the conflict and forcing resolution. A recent example I came across (not in the text) was Charlemagne's 5 year siege of Carcasonne in the 8th century where the city dwellers, their supplies running out, tossed a fatted pig over the wall to signify they were still well supplied. The Frankish King, not wishing to maintain a long seige, offered a settlement. Marc Kilgour's intensive chapter 3 uses game theory to suggest models that could predict the likelihood of escalation rather than settlement.
Chapters 4-6 examine mediation. The first of these by Philip Schrodt discusses a computational model to detect and categorize different mediation styles used by different US secretaries of state in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and I found a link to an interesting later paper by the author “Seven Deadly Sins of Contemporary Quantitative Political Analysis” which is well worth reading. The paper is concerned more with the development of the model than a discussion of the styles, which are considered to be well known. Ch 5, by multiple authors, looks at quantitatively modelling the effect of different mediation approaches to a fishing dispute between Canada and Spain using students to role play the parties in order to determine the parameters of the model. What was interesting was their conclusion that mediation had a slightly negative effect! The last chapter of this group on mediation by Charles Tabor was about design of AMED (Artificial MEDiator). This AI program was built in 3 layers - perceptual, representational and reasoning. What was intriguing was the incorporation of long term and short term memory into the representational layer – like the human mediatore, AMED “forgets”. Working memory is divided into declarative (facts) and procederal, and is laid out as a series of schemas per the representations used by Schank and Abelson. It's a toy model where AMED contributes to a dispute between Reno and Cartha over a territory known as Flatland. It would be probably be interesting to see this come out as a computer game.
The 3rd set of papers is about quantitative approaches. Stuart Bremer asks under what circumstances militarized conflicts are actually amenable to negatiated settlements given that over 65% of a sample of size 1705 one on one disputes led to a stalemate. If both parties are democracies then the possibility of settlement rises to 45%, still low but double than if either party is not. Mediations are also 3x likely to succeed if the two parties are culturally similar, but relative size of political power does not seem to make a difference. D. Scott Bennet writes about “Patterns of Conflict Management and Resolution in Long Term Rivalries”. I found this one of the more difficulty studies to understand, for example the sinusoidal charts that near the beginning aren't linked to a data source. What Bennet concludes is that conflicts with outside intervention tend to much last longer but are less violent, and that he hopes future studies will winnow out positive from negative aspects of outside interference. The 9th paper by Bercovitch and Patrick Regan outline a set of hypothesis regarding mediation – timing with respect to the outbreak of hostilities, relative power of the disputants, mediator relationship with either parties and whether the mediator uses inducements, deterrence, adjudication, or accomodation and relates this to the relative success of the outcome using criteria of stability, efficiency and fairness. The authors also include “wise” as a criteria but do note explain what this means. Their results while not definitive some promise for this kind of analysis.
The final section of case studies contains two articles. The 2nd on the Crimean War I’ve already described. The 1st examines the Vietnam War as a series of 11 2-player game scenarious played between the Americans and the Viet Kong, presented as a series of tables outlining..... possible moves and outcomes. The authors put forward a hypothesis X at the start, and by the end of the study they reject it.
The math used is just enough to understand the essence of each approach, though not so detailed as to make up the whole of each paper. The non mathematical reader should be able to skim around the math and extract the major points. It's a shame that large numbers of political and policy analysts shy away from even looking at this approach, often due to fear of and a lack of mathematical training.
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