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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
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