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542 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 8 (1995)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0542 and id is 1 raw text is: PREFACE International conflict occurs and is perpetuated due, perhaps in large part, to an unwillingness to arrive at solutions acceptable to all the disputing parties and their constituencies. That unwillingness is widely in evidence from the superpowers' reluctance to enter into meaningful arms-control agreements during the long period of the Cold War to the vicious post-Cold War conflicts among ethnic groups and newly emerging nations with strong desires for independence. From the well-publicized bitter conflicts in the former Yugoslavia to the seemingly intractable conflicts in the Middle East and other regions in most of the world's continents, intransigence stands in the way of progress toward peace. The collection of articles in this volume is intended to further our understanding of the causes and consequences of this behavior. Flexible behavior is often thought to be at the heart of conflict resolution. Efforts made to find solutions to conflicts depend for their success on a willingness to take into account others' views of conflict situations or their interests and values. Obvious as this may seem, it is also the case that flexibility comes in many forms, and its causes and consequences are quite complex. If this were not true, it is likely that settlements and resolutions would not elude us as often as they do. The problem is complicated by processes that occur at both a micro and a macro level of analysis, by the difficulties involved in developing coherent policies and tactical plans, by attempts to coordinate those policies with their execution in the various venues where negotiation takes place, and by a need to be responsive to diverse and often conflicting interest groups and third parties. To do justice to these complexities, we must view conflict with a wide analytic lens, taking into account the mix of parties, structures, processes, and issues that come into play in any international conflict. The articles in this collection are a broad sampling of approaches to the study of flexibility. Guided by a common set of questions, the authors view flexibility through varied disciplinary perspectives, choosing as they do to apply different meth- ods in analyzing flexibility as it occurs in various settings. Although the contributors are well-known specialists in international conflict resolution, they come from many social science disciplines, including political science, international relations, sociology, and social psychology. Diversity is also apparent in the way they investigate the problem and in the types of cases chosen for analysis. Formal modeling, experimental simulation, comparative case studies and events data, interviews, and organizing frameworks are used. The negotiations studied include those on environmental issues, border disputes, cease-fires in civil wars, and directions for newly independent nations in Central Europe. Third party roles analyzed include leadership functions, the role of those representing governments and those acting on 8

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