The Resolution of Conflict

Abstract

SUMMARY The paper deals with the of by bargaining, a term which is defined broadly. It is more concerned with the actual results of bargains than fair results, and discusses some conditions under which one party concedes to another in a bargaining situation. The difficult and ambiguous role of information in bargaining is also discussed. THIS paper makes no pretence to be an endeavour to provide a simple or even a complex set of rules whose application will enable all conflicts to be resolved in socially harmless ways. I wish I could do this, but I cannot, nor do I imagine anyone will be able to do so for very many years to come. Instead I shall be analysing the features of one form of conflict, an analysis which I hope will throw light on what sorts of factors conffict must take into account. It is a prolegomenon to the of rather than a discussion of as such. Though this a lecture which is in part under the auspices of the Royal Statistical Society, it is only indirectly connected with any form of analysis which could be properly called statistical. The pioneer of the analysis of was, of course, Dr Lewis Fry Richardson, the bulk of whose work is contained in the two posthumously published books Arms and Insecurity and Statistics of Deadly Quarrels (Richardson, 1960a, b). He spent a large part of his life classifying, counting and relating variables in the hope of gaining insight into the behaviour of societies. This paper, though, does not attempt to fall into that style of work. Its connections with analysis are tortuous. A little of what I shall say impinges on topics discussed under the general rubric of the Theory of games which, in the hands of scholars such as Savage, is closely intertwined with statistical decision theory. Similarly, approaches to the theory of bargaining by, for example, Professor Nash (1950) and Professor Braithwaite (1955) have been made under this same rubric. I shall be discussing bargaining later in my paper, though in a somewhat different sense from these discussions. This interconnection between the subject-matter of my paper and matter falling under the general heading of analysis might with justice be thought a little weak and I do not wish to stress them. is ubiquitous in the social life of all animals including mankind. It is, of course, the latter species of animal which most closely concerns us. In order to get to grips with the problem, we must define the term conflict more closely. A arises when two or more people or groups endeavour to pursue goals which are mutually inconsistent. Conflict resolution is the process by which two t Organized by the Royal Statistical Society in conjunction with the Eugenics Society and the