Strategic Conflict Research Articles

Struggling Against the ‘Worst‐Case Scenario’? Strategic Conflicts and Realignments of the Feminist Movement in the Context of the 2006 Nicaraguan Elections

This article analyses the debates that took place within the Nicaraguan feminist movement during 2006. In the months before the election of Daniel Ortega, a new feminist organisation, the Autonomous Women's Movement (MAM), was created. Its members decided to ally themselves with the Sandinista Renewal Movement (MRS), which shared the priority of avoiding the return to power of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), because they considered it to be the ‘worst‐case scenario’. This article explains these processes. It studies their consequences for other feminist groupings and the relevance of the revolutionary referent for the strategic divergences within the movement.

Diversionary Incentives, Rally Effects, and Crisis Bargaining

We do not yet have strong evidence that the rally effect motivates domestically vulnerable leaders to become engaged in international conflict. We draw upon mechanism design to argue that, if anything, diversionary incentives should be associated with a greater likelihood of being the target of disputes, though the conditions under which the result obtains are restrictive. Our analysis of all dyad-months involving the United States and its rivals for the period from 1956–1996 yields suggestive evidence of the unconventional behavior anticipated by our model, while failing to find evidence of patterns anticipated by either traditional diversionary accounts or strategic conflict avoidance. These results suggest that if we are to better understand international conflict by focusing on diversionary incentives, which may not be very useful, we should focus on the behavior described by our formal model rather than that anticipated by either traditional diversionary accounts or strategic conflict avoidance.

What you don’t know can hurt you: Information, external transparency, and interstate conflict, 1982–1999

This paper examines the role that information plays in conflict behavior by focusing on the external component of governmental transparency. Building from the crisis bargaining and the diversionary strategic conflict avoidance literature, I argue that governments that are more externally transparent are less likely to initiate conflict and are less likely to have the opportunity to use force for diversionary purposes. Using original data on the access that foreign media has to states, a large- N statistical analysis is implemented. The empirical analysis suggests that states that are more externally transparent are less likely to initiate conflict and that these same states are less likely to respond to domestic challenges with diversionary uses of force. This research demonstrates the important role of governmental transparency and provides support for some of the conclusions of crisis bargaining models and the strategic conflict avoidance argument in the diversionary literature.

Strategic conflict

Strategic conflict

Strategic Utility Analysis of Special Operations Forces Applying Game Theory

As a strategic asset, special-operations forces (SOF) are trained, equipped, and organized to combat irregular threats. The employment of SOF is under heavy discussion among academics, decision makers, and the SOF community. This article addresses the following questions: 1) How do SOF achieve strategic effects as a policy tool of national strategy; and 2) In which types of roles and missions do SOF’s strategic value rest? This study claims that to provide strategic utility, SOF must operate independently, or at least supported by conventional forces, executing both direct-action missions and indirect-action missions. SOF’s indirect-action missions are comparatively more important than their direct-action skills. The authors applies game theory to all strategic environments, peacetime, conflict, and conventional war. Using a game-theory approach, this article presents the decrease in SOF strategic value when they are improperly employed. Military leaders and policy makers must employ SOF according to their capabilities and limitations.

Relational time-space data structure to enable strategic de-confliction with a global scope in the presence of a large number of 4D trajectories

This paper introduces an innovative framework for the design and implementation of new ATM decision support tools for strategic de-confliction. The main key implementation aspects to support an efficient state space analysis of more than 4000 4D Trajectories in the entire European ATM is described. The paper focuses on the innovative aspects developed to improve Spatial Data Structures, i.e. the paper focuses on the new Relational Space Data Structures and Time-Space Data Structures concepts, that allow supporting strategic Conflict Detection (CD) between a large number of 4D trajectories and a wide airspace region. Results have been tested in the WP-E project STREAM, whose aim is to coordinate the entire European ATM traffic at strategic and tactical levels, thus requiring the processing of large number of trajectories under heavy traffic conditions. The new and efficient CD algorithms presented in this paper may contribute to increase airspace capacity in the SESAR framework for the period up to 2020.

A Concert of Powers and Hybrid Regionalism in Asia

With the rise of China the strategic competition between the US and China has gained momentum over the last 10 years and is likely to continue in the near future. To deal with this challenge, Hugh White has proposed a concert of powers in Asia. White's proposal, however, has not received sufficient attention in Asia and is likely to be a failure if Asia does not take it seriously. This article examines the problematic assumptions of White's proposal and argues that his proposal needs to incorporate the important role of ASEAN, an existing de facto Asian concert of powers. It shifts the idea of a concert of powers towards a new hybrid regionalism, identifies its key components and discusses how this hybrid regionalism can dilute the strategic conflict between China and the US.

Problems and perspectives of contemporary European radical left parties: Chasing a lost world or still a world to win?

This paper provides an overview of the key European radical left parties, their ideological stances, their supporters and electoral performance, their links with social movements, policy impact, and reaction to the post-2008 economic crisis. The radical left is increasingly a stabilized, consolidated and permanent actor on the European political scene and has become a principal challenger to mainstream social democratic parties, although it has not fully overcome its own communist-era crisis and its failure so far demonstrably to exploit propitious economic conditions indicates severe weaknesses (particularly the absence of sufficiently electorally attractive strategic vision, the persistence of historical stigma in Eastern Europe, and still-persistent ideological and strategic conflicts). Should such problems be addressed, the contemporary socio-economic and political environment in Europe is only likely to increase the future appeal of the radical left, although radical left parties face significant challenges from Greens, radical right parties and the new European protest movements over which they, as yet, have little influence.

Razing Lafitte

Problem, research strategy, and findings: The contentious politics of the demolition of Lafitte public housing in post-Katrina New Orleans and its replacement with mixed-income properties is a telling case of the strategic conflicts housing advocates face in public housing revitalization. It reveals how the qualified outcomes of HOPE VI interact with local institutional and historical circumstances to confound the equity and social justice goals of housing and community development advocates. It shows the limits to public housing revitalization as an urban recovery strategy when hostile government leadership characterizes a region, and the state is recast as an adversary rather than revitalization partner. This case is part of a longer ethnographic project on post-Katrina New Orleans recovery. Takeaway for practice: Housing and community development advocacy for urban revitalization strategies is limited without a supportive state partner to endorse and smooth programmatic efforts. Public housing revitalization, especially the legacy and derivatives of HOPE VI, is imbued with multiple, often conflicting meanings and expectations across its range of stakeholders. Nonprofit housing advocates charged with integrating revitalization schemes in communities with historic government-civil society conflict can expect resistance and challenges from both the state and civil society actors. Research support: Portions of this research were supported by The Social Science Research Council and the Harold Horowitz Fund at MIT.

Quality of strategic decision making: An empirical study of behavioral variables

Pressure across companies to succeed in an atmosphere of constant, systematic and uninterrupted change has brought to the fore; the increasing importance of strategic decision-making as a crucial element for competitive advantage. However, empirical evidence shows that decisions fail half time. An empirical study was carried out among a sample of 88 companies in Chile to test the relationship between the quality of decisions and a set of variables that define how top management teams adopt strategic decisions. The findings are worthy of note since, on the whole, the explanatory capability of variables such as rationality, politicization, conflict, flexibility, and procedural justice among top management account for 82.9% of the quality of strategic decisions. Key words: Strategic decision-making, rationality, politicization, conflict, flexibility and procedural justice.

Fuzzy Preferences in the Graph Model for Conflict Resolution

A new framework for the graph model for conflict resolution is developed so that decision makers (DMs) with fuzzy preferences can be included in conflict models. A graph model is both a formal representation for multiple participant-multiple objective decision problems and a set of analysis procedures that add insights into them. Within the new framework, graph models can include-and integrate into the analysis-both certain and uncertain information about DMs' preferences. One key contribution of this study is to extend the four basic stability definitions for two or more DMs to models with fuzzy preferences. Together, fuzzy Nash stability, fuzzy general metarationality, fuzzy symmetric metarationality, and fuzzy sequential stability provide anuanced description of human behavior. A state is fuzzy stable for a DM if a move to any other state is not sufficiently likely to yield an outcome which the DM prefers, where sufficiency is measured according to a fuzzy satisficing threshold that is the characteristic of the DM. A fuzzy equilibrium, which is an outcome that is fuzzy stable for all DMs, therefore represents a possible resolution of the strategic conflict. The practical application and interpretation of these new stability definitions are illustrated with an example.

Coercive Diplomacy Meets Diversionary Incentives: The Impact of US and Iranian Domestic Politics during the Bush and Obama Presidencies1

This paper applies theories of strategic conflict avoidance and diversionary war to help explain US–Iranian interactions. The article argues that US attempts at coercive diplomacy have tended to strengthen hardliners in Iran by allowing them to frame opposition to government policies as support for the United States. In particular, US public uncertainty about the advisability of using force against Iran provided both the Supreme Leader and the Iranian President with an opportunity to increase tensions with the United States with little concern about provoking a military strike. The aggressive stance of the Iranian regime is about developing a threat which diverts attention from domestic problems and places it firmly in the arena of the international.

Grand strategic overview: epochal change and new realities for the United States

This grand strategic overview highlights and analyzes the influence of epochal change on the state and conflict and the new realities with which the United States must now contend. This deep context is being provided so that (1) the belligerent and politicized non-state entities that have emerged in Mexico and the Americas can be better understood within the larger three-front grand strategic temporal conflict the US is now engaged in; and (2) the stark realities that the US faces – such as loss of unilateral world dominance, increasing debt and ongoing deficits, shifting demographics, inability to staunch the flow of and demand for illicit drugs, and an increasing prison population – are highlighted. Finally, this essay finishes with a discussion of the many important contributions contained in this edited work.

THE COST OF SOCIAL PACTS

ABSTRACTThe paper deals with the various institutions capable of improving the macroeconomic performance in a situation of conflict between unions and the government. In particular, we discuss the difficulty of agreeing with a cooperative solution and the need for some kind of explicit or implicit compensation for unions in signing a social pact. A cooperative solution encapsulating the operation of the different mechanisms designed to cope with the conflict and including the various elements of compensation is presented. The model shows that the amount of the explicit compensation depends on the extent of the strategic conflict between the parties as well as on the factors that determine the implicit compensation (i.e., unions’ inflation aversion, partisanship) or are partial substitutes for it (i.e., the conservative central banker). Finally, the role played by external anticipated and unanticipated shocks is also discussed.

Examining the Chinese Approach to Crisis Management: Cover-Ups, Saving Face, and Taking the “Upper Level Line”

In 2008, the Sanlu Group, a former giant in the Chinese dairy industry and a quintessential Chinese organization, was confronted with the melamine-contaminated milk crisis. Its products were blamed for causing at least six babies' deaths and damaging the kidneys of about 294,000 babies. Sanlu was criticized for its crisis handling, which resulted in its collapse several months later. Using the contingency theory of strategic conflict management and Coombs' typology of crisis communication strategies, this study explored Sanlu's crisis management as a mirror to understanding the Chinese approach to crisis management. Findings showed that influenced by political, social, and cultural factors, Sanlu adopted an accommodative stance toward its local government while maintaining an advocacy stance toward the media and consumers. Government relationships, cover-up, and denial were used. Findings also suggested that the Chinese approach to crisis management remains mired in values that differ from best practices of effective crisis management.

Who Said the Cold War is Over? The political economy of strategic conflict between Venezuela and Colombia

The occasionally dangerous rivalry between Colombia and Venezuela can best be explained by the distinct developmental paths each has pursued since independence. Significant factors include the array of productive forces in each country (eg oil in Venezuela versus illicit drugs in Colombia), the role of geographical features in relation to social forces and state structure, the extent of institutionalised conflict-resolution mechanisms, and the localised effects of a changing world order. The epistemological aspect is key here, since both countries have strived in vain to achieve a modernist project, one that includes a stable state complete with the development of a sizeable middle class rather than populous extremes of poverty and extraordinary wealth, and the embrace of the nation-state as well as the cultivation of patriotism as the exclusive focus for political space and political identity. They have relied on an epistemic framework that emphasises binary thinking, zero-sum competition and absolutist conceptions of human nature upon which to construct political regimes. At either extreme of this 180 degree ideological spectrum the ideological battles between Colombia and Venezuela are the epitome of the infamous ‘storms in a children's paddling pool’ observed by Foucault in The Order of Things.

An analysis of collaboration between Coca-Cola and Carrefour using drama theory

Collaboration is a process in which participating members work together to improve overall performance. However, the participants often face conflicting interests that hamper the implementation of collaboration. This study aims at analysing the collaboration process between Coca-Cola and Carrefour. Graph model for conflict resolution (GMCR) and drama theory are employed as complementary methods in modelling and analysing strategic conflicts. Collaboration between Coca-Cola and Carrefour took place in two functions of marketing and supply chain. The former function could be illustrated in a set of episodes that showed how Coca-Cola and Carrefour agreed to run promotion programmes together. Episodes in the supply chain function show that Coca-Cola agrees to improve the level of service and Carrefour agrees to share customer information. This paper contributes to the current knowledge of collaboration by focusing on a specific sequence of episodes in which participating members interact to accommodate significant emotional events.

Institutions and Conflict: Communal Water Management in North-West Namibia

In the context of recent legal developments in Namibia promoting the common based management of water resources, the main focus of the project underlying this paper was to gain a detailed impression of how the rural communities in the country were dealing with the development of institutional arrangements for the water access and usage. Based on an anthropological fieldwork this paper aims to describe and to analyse the conflict over water a rural community in North-West Namibia is confronted with. From a theoretical perspective, the objective of this paper is to analyse the role of power in the development of institutions by means of Knight’s (1992) bargaining theory of institutional development. This paper concludes that the case study provides important evidence that the development of institutions at the local level can be the by-product of a strategic conflict and not the result of the users’ attempts to achieve collective goals, as frequently assumed by the mainstream communal natural resource management theory.

Using matrices to link conflict evolution and resolution in a graph model

The graph model for conflict resolution provides a convenient and effective means to model and analyze a strategic conflict. Standard practice is to carry out a stability analysis of a graph model, and then to follow up with a post-stability analysis, an important component of which is status quo analysis. A graph model can be viewed as an edge-colored graph, but the fundamental problem of status quo analysis – to find a shortest colored path from the status quo node to a desired equilibrium – is different from the well-known network analysis problem of finding the shortest path between two nodes. The only matrix method that has been proposed cannot track all aspects of the evolution of a conflict from the status quo state. Our explicit algebraic approach is convenient for computer implementation and, as demonstrated with a real world case study, easy to use. It provides new insights into a graph model, not only identifying all equilibria reachable from the status quo, but also how to reach them. Moreover, this approach bridges the gap between stability analysis and status quo analysis in the graph model for conflict resolution.

Opportunities and Presidential Uses of Force

Political vulnerability is thought to influence the opportunities available to the US president to engage in uses of force abroad. Conventional theories linking economic misfortune and partisan opposition to presidential uses of force detail the incentives and constraints facing the president in decisions to use force. In contrast, these theories’ strategic counterparts focus on the ability of US adversaries to respond to the president’s vulnerability through either avoidance or exploitation. The behavior of US adversaries is thought to critically affect the president’s opportunities to use force. Conventional and strategic accounts of the linkage between domestic political vulnerability and the use of force provide contradictory expectations. To assess these theories we identify hypotheses related to four dependent and selection variables corresponding to dispute initiation and reciprocation involving the US. These hypotheses are tested with a two-stage Heckman Probit model to account for selection effects due to strategic interaction. The results are most supportive of orthodox diversionary theory. Our findings challenge the other perspectives evaluated—the strategic conflict avoidance (SCA) perspective, Howell and Pevehouse’s party cover approach, and Schultz’s signaling model.