Category Archives: Communication and Conflict Resolution

Islamic and Western Approaches to Peace

Whether your intellectual tradition is that of the Enlightenment, or the religious patterns of Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, or Judaism along with modern liberalism each provides horizons of meaning that offer a picture and a future of peace. All of these intellectual systems have an end state that is, if not utopian and glorious, at least peaceful and orderly. But how do we begin to interrogate and engage these systems? What do we have to know about the cultures that are most representative of these belief systems?

In the micro world of interpersonal relations, or the more detached pedagogical stance one can take in the classroom, it is easy enough to make references to cultural generalities. We talk quite prolifically about cultural differences and enjoy citing examples of cultural variation. But when it comes to defending these cultural generalities, when one is asked to stand up in front of an audience and say things that involve generalities about cultures to which we do not belong, things get a little bit more difficult. I have participated in many conversations where generalities about culture were invoked (and I’m not talking about humorous stereotypes) but the participants would be hard-pressed to defend these generalities; they shy away from expressing cultural descriptions because they realize that such generalities are always a little bit on shaky grounds.

But on the other hand, there are characteristic qualities of cultures. We classify cultures as either individualistic or collective, self oriented or other oriented, modern or traditional, along with any number of other descriptions. These generalities often have some claim to legitimacy but they also are rarely a universally valid framework. We have to grapple with differences and try to avoid shallow cultural blather but at the same time improve the depth of our knowledge about cultures, especially cultures in conflict trying to resolve differences. Below, and in the next few posts, I explore some differences we might claim separate Islam from the West with respect to concepts of peace and conflict resolution. A good reading on this topic is Islamic Approaches to Peace.

When it comes to understanding Islam and its conceptions of peace and conflict management, we are in a difficult historical period because of “Islamism” and it’s narrow and aggressive discourse that is seen as a threat to peace. The concept of peace in the Islamic culture is typically misrepresented or ignored. But there are differences between Western and Islamic concepts of peace that must be understood. The differences between the two cultures form the basis for dialogue and deliberation. Yet, you actually see very little contact and very little theorizing about Islamic-Western dialogue. There are any number of reasons for this, but one of the most pertinent is that Western literature is more concerned about stating differences rather than commonality, and emphasizing the incompatibility of Islam with Western ideas about conflict.

There is a shameful lack of contact between Islam and the West with relatively little grassroots dialogue. There is a need for a new attitude and framework in order to organize knowledge about Islam for Westerners and organize knowledge about the West for Muslims. For example, there does seem to be a tendency to define Western approaches to conflict resolution as the “norm” or the ideal to strive for. We simply don’t have attitudes that expect Islam to be serious about peace. And although everyday contact between Muslims and Westerners is fine wherever it is possible (e.g. educational institutions), it still falls short of the structured and guided form of communication that results from dialogue and deliberation.

It is commonly accepted among conflict scholars that peace between deeply divided groups requires a global conception of peace that is integrated; in other words, problems will not be solved on the basis of narrow self-interest or the belief in one’s own cultural superiority with respect to ideas about peace. Peace will not come and problems will not be solved on the basis of a single dominant cultural attitude. Religion, for example, is essential to the attitudes about peace for Muslims but far less important for the secular West. And it is the West that must accept the role of religion and integrate it into the process.

All major religious, philosophical, and secular systems of belief and knowledge claim that peace will be the result of the full expression and recognition of the systems. And in a new world where boundaries are more porous and once separated groups must now confront the other there is an even more profound need for intercultural communication.

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Tags: Islam, Peace, Political Islam

How to Understand “Reasonable Disagreement”

Ever have a political discussion with a friend and have it degenerate into incompatible positions that cause tension, anger, and exasperation? You have to learn how to appreciate “reasonable disagreement.” This is not a contradiction in terms; you can disagree and be both reasonable about it.

In the culture-laden and pragmatic world of communication disagreement is the norm, so we have to deal with it. Some people are taught that specific sources of information are the true guides to knowledge. Scripture and religious communities which include all sorts of information about the earth and animal species can be cited as a supreme source of knowledge. If people take no critical stance toward these issues and accept them thoroughly then they are justified in their beliefs. There can be a debate about what is true and what is not but this does not change the normative system. The beliefs of the religious person are justified; they are part of a system of relationships their empirical content notwithstanding. A “creationist” and “evolutionist” produce disagreement because they live in different knowledge worlds. They may be polarized and the position of the other may be unimaginable but this is the “stuff” of disagreement and must be managed.

Relationships that are “fiercely entangled”, such as between ethnopolitical groups in conflict, are characterized by the incommensurability that accompanies situations where the parties in conflict are divergent. Conflicting groups must be able to experience disagreement; they must, as Benhabib describes, treat the other as an “adversary” and not an “enemy.” The ability to tolerate disagreement as well as work with it is central to the communicative and resolution process.

There is more to reasonable disagreement than a gentleman’s agreement to respect differences. Clearly, communities, cultures, social networks, and groups establish different sets of standards and principles regarding beliefs and drawing conclusions. And while there are overlaps between groups in terms of standards of knowing (e.g. science) there are also sharp differences between them. For this reason, reasonable disagreement is a defensible philosophical position and a communicative state that usually cannot be avoided.

Some theorists are relativists in that they do not believe there is any overarching cultural norm of rationality. Others want to argue for more objective standards. One problem is that for one side of a cultural disagreement to be “correct” there must be a standard that determines such correctness. Such standards are difficult to establish. Still, rampant relativism is equally as indefensible and it is possible for certain positions to be more justified than others. The central question is posed as the following: is it possible for two cultures or conflicting groups, both of which have epistemic standards, to both share evidence and have reasonable disagreement. In other words, one group believes a proposition and the other group does not. An explication of the clash of narratives between Israelis and Palestinians present a good example. Zionism, for example, as stated in historical documents and instances can be interpreted as a noble effort to return a historically oppressed people to their homeland, or as a European colonialist enterprise with an expansionist ideology. The two groups (Israelis and Palestinians) are in disagreement such that one believes a proposition to be true and the other disbelieves it.

The disagreement is “reasonable” to the extent that each side is justified in holding the belief or disbelief. Ideally anyway, members of both groups should have equal access to evidence and documentation including the benefit of full discussion. In many cases this condition is not met. Differences in education and availability of information will also account for disagreements. To make matters even more complex, we must include the fact that people have graded beliefs based on subjective probabilities.

Participants in groups who disagree are working on the basis of a proposition that states that their own system of information justifies their beliefs. The simple act of observing Jews migrate to Israel justifies both the belief in “noble return” as well as “colonialism.” And from a communicative and discursive standpoint there is nothing malevolent about these differences. Both beliefs are justified and linked to some system of information. One side of the argument is not more correct than the other.

One solution to the condition of reasonable disagreement is for the two parties to converge on what counts as evidence. Some progress here is possible but slow and difficult. Then again, we always note that the process of communication and decision-making is slow and difficult.

Posted on November 11, 2013 | Image

Good News Friday

Oct 16

Posted by Donald Ellis

Yea, boycott Isreal but watch this video first. I wish the sentiments of this video, which is thoroughly enjoyable, were made available to all. It simply cannot be denied that Israel is singled out for special criticism and the litany of injustices portrayed in this video is a remedy for that.

Also, it is unfortunate that the news about the Nobel Prize winners has to be turned into nationalism. I happen to know members of the Warshel family and they would not appreciate the focus of the announcements about the award to be so blatantly nationalistic. Professor Warshel is immensely talented and I’m sure deserving but we can never ignore influences and the complex networks of people who make a difference in our work.

Anne's Opinions

It’s time for another Good News Friday installment.

My first item for this week is the very exciting news that two out of the three 2013 Nobel Prize winners for chemistry are Israeli, and the third winner is Jewish.

Israeli professor Arieh Warshel on Wednesday won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, along with fellow Jewish professors Michael Levitt (who also holds Israeli citizenship) and Martin Karplus.
Warshel, 72, is a distinguished professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where he has been since the 1970s.
Fellow winner Michael Levitt, a South Africa-born professor, immigrated to Israel in 1979, married here and taught at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot for most of the 1980s. Vienna-born Martin Karplus fled the Nazi occupation of Austria as a child in 1938.
Of the 23 chemistry Nobels awarded in the past decade, 11 of the winners were…

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The debate on Syria: To bomb or not to bomb?

Sep 5

Posted by Donald Ellis

A good read.

Posted in Communication and Conflict Resolution, Political Conflict

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What It REALLY Means to Be a Democracy: Egypt Ain’t It.

Aug 19

Posted by Donald Ellis

I grow weary of listening to all these claims of developing democracies in places like Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya. It’s well enough understood that elections alone don’t mean much and some minor rabble rousing from the population is equally as trivial. I have little interest in pseudo-democracies, hybrid democracies, illiberal democracies, nondemocratic but liberal states, and societies where strands of democracy exist but must be upheld and supported by the military of all institutions.

A true democracy achieves consolidation and the best thing one can read on consolidated democracies is by Linz and Stepan (Journal of Democracy, 7, 1996). A REAL democracy, one that is established and fully functional, is a system of institutions and communication patterns that does not compete with anything else. Places like Egypt and Libya will be considered truly democratic when the current regimes no longer have to grapple with the problem of governmental breakdown. When the majority of people believe that any political change must only emerge through the democratic process, when there is no significant movement to control or overthrow the government, then democracy is taking hold in a culture.

In REAL democracies the actors do not spend their time trying to create nondemocratic processes. Certainly the military does not step in and remove someone from office. It is true that removal of an anti-democratic leader can be part of the transition to a genuine democracy, but this represents an early unstable stage of development not what I am calling a REAL democracy. In such democracies the population holds the belief that democratic institutions are the only way to govern and any support for an alternative system is small. Democracies remain a continuum from well-developed liberal democracies (the US, France) to lower quality pseudo-democracies (Venezuela, authoritarian groups democratically elected, e.g. Hamas). And these lower quality democracies are marked by the ease with which nondemocratic alternatives gain support.

REAL Democracies Have the Following Features:

First, the citizenry must be intellectually and politically developed such that they appreciate democratic institutions and support the role they play. An angry tribal citizenry, who might be more properly termed “subjects” than “citizens,” will have trouble meeting the standards of an educated citizenry who have the proper democratic habits of mind. Democracy is advanced citizenship and often runs contrary to the preference of many for quick and easy decisions. A democratic population requires a level of sophistication.

Secondly, you know that a democracy is stable when the society has an active and influential civil society. Still, a stable civil society is not enough. Egypt has benefited from it civil society because it is increasingly educated and demanding of democratic processes and market economies. The civil society must be able to create pressure on government and leadership; it should have the capacity to monitor government, and resist nondemocratic pressures.

The ability to provide citizens with what they want and actually “get things done” is a third quality of REAL democracies. The institutions and structures of government must be skilled and professional enough to carry out laws and regulate the political system. We are seeing now in Egypt the removal of elected political officials (the justification of which is debatable) and the military cracking down on a significant portion of the population. This is prima facie evidence that the institutions of government are not working in a democratic manner.

There are other important issues associated with genuine democracy (the legal system, the economic structure) but no other is probably as basic as the right of the public to contest policies and priorities. Democracy should not be composed of powerful ideological forces (e.g. the Muslim Brotherhood) whose goals are to absorb other groups; rather, the concept of the public sphere should be dominant – a place where representatives from any number of ideologies come together to work out problems that are shared by everyone. Public contestation is the foundation of the interactive system of argument and discussion that is the basis of governance.

Places like Egypt are trying to break free of cultural and political constraints and might be an interesting case of the “transition” to democracy, but do not yet represent REAL democracies.

Posted in Communication and Conflict Resolution, Democracy

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Tags: democracy

Dangerously Rigid Political Opinions Can be Changed: Here is One Approach

Jul 8

Posted by Donald Ellis

Extreme opinions are one of the thorniest issues when it comes to trying to solve problems and the necessary “difficult conversations” required. But related to extreme opinions are rigid opinions; that is, those people who hold firm opinions from which they will not waiver. They are convinced that they are correct and will not listen or engage in communication designed to solve problems or result in integrative solutions to.

A recent study in the journal Psychological Science (2013) found that those who hold extremely rigid opinions often support those opinions by the illusion of understanding. These people believe that they understand things better than they actually do. The study examined how much people really understood a particular policy or issue, and the extent to which the rigidity of their opinions contributed to polarization. The authors then predicted that asking subjects in the experiment to explain political issues would make them aware of how poorly they actually understood issues and hence they would subsequently moderate their opinions. We will get to the results of the study in a moment. But first it’s important to say something about extreme opinions and their deleterious effects on the political process. Polarization, or the increased perceived distances between people’s political opinions and the resulting paralysis with respect to problem-solving, is a serious problem.

After Obama was elected president Mitch McConnell in the United States Senate declared that the only agenda for him was to make sure the president did not succeed. If we take this statement seriously it means that this elected official will subject himself to no communication that upsets his belief system. He has made decisions about where he stands and will not subject them to any decision-making processes to the contrary. This is not much different than the religious Muslim or Orthodox Jew who has a comprehensive worldview and will not depart from it.

Rigid opinions are capable of inciting violence. Such opinions are usually accompanied by intense belief that includes emotions and justifies strong reactions. We can see this operating when politicians or religious people use the “politics as a war” metaphor. It codes into the discourse all of the language of war including the fact that your adversary is your “enemy” and he or she must be “vanquished”. So political leaders have enemies lists and incorporate all of the aggressive and clandestine language associated with such lists. Our culture is filled with individuals, journalists, and talk show hosts characterized by combative personalities who are more rigid than extreme.

Throughout the 1980s conservatives made considerable progress by maligning liberals and turning the word “liberal” into a shibboleth used to attack democrats. Again, I’m less concerned about the content of a political opinion that I am its fixed nature. An opinion becomes extreme and dangerous when it cannot be moderated or there is no sense of perspective and proportion. Politics is not warfare; in fact, it is the antidote to warfare. Politics and communication with those who are unlike you is the alternative to warfare. It is the only consequential and morally legitimate means of solving problems and avoiding violence.

So what did the authors of the study referred to above discover? Interestingly, they found that those people with particularly strong opinions were unjustified in their confidence with respect to how thoroughly they actually understood policies. Very simply, they understood policies and political positions considerably less than they thought. When subjects in the experiment were asked to produce what are termed “mechanistic explanations” they were exposed to their ignorance and thereby moderated their opinions. Mechanistic explanations are explanations about how things actually work such as legal positions and social policies. When subjects in the study were simply asked to list the reasons that they supported something they were less likely to be influenced by their own lack of knowledge and did not moderate their positions. The assumption is that asking someone to list the reasons for supporting or not supporting a political position allows them to tap into values and general principles that do not require much knowledge and are more fundamental emotional attachments.

It turns out that educating people about how policies and positions actually work tends to increase their exposure to other perspectives and improves the quality of debate. This is one more weapon in the “difficult conversation” arsenal (to continue the war metaphor) that can serve as a corrective and ameliorate the polarization process. Rigid opinions will not disappear but improving knowledge promises to be an effective unfreezing of attitudes procedure.

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Tags: polarization, political argument

Zionism and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The Triumph of “Narrative” over “History.”

Feb 20

Posted by Donald Ellis

Last week I attended a conference on Zionism at Brandeis University. It was an excellent conference populated by highly capable people all of whom had something to say and are worth listening to. There were lectures on the history of Zionism and its various expressions. The essence of Zionism is a rather simple idea. It was a national movement designed for the care and feeding of Jews who had a history of displacement and discrimination. Zionism was about finding a home and reconstituting the Jewish people as a nation along with the promotion and development of Jewish culture, history, arts and literature. Zionism was a program designed to foster a transition from a dispersed and discriminated religious group to a coherent nation.

This basic idea and many of its ramifications received attention during the conference. But there was a dearth of papers and discussion about the changes in Zionism over the years. Some have argued that Zionism is over; the state of Israel was created and Zionism has successfully served its purpose. Moreover, there was little discussion about the degradation of the term Zionism. Jews and the Zionists have had the contradictory misfortune of benefiting by the movement toward nationhood and nationalism in the last century – a period of time when nationalism was on the ascendancy – along with the deconstruction of nationhood. Contemporary theorists such as Hobsbawm have argued that groups of people have invented history and invented traditions in order to serve their own purposes which are sometimes inconsistent with true nationhood. Of course, Benedict Anderson and his captivating phrase “imagined communities” has been at the center of the claim that traditions are invented. Zionists have been particularly subject to recent efforts to deconstruct historical traditions. Zionism began as a noble effort to find a homeland for a historic people but its enemies successfully degraded the term associating it with at one time or another with “racism” or “apartheid” or “colonialism.”

Two words that appear quite often in discussions of Zionism and issues related to national histories are “myth” and “narrative.” I’ve noticed an increase in use of these terms over time. Both of them imply a subjectivity and I think their increased use is due to academic and intellectual fears of talking about historical facts or truth. The postmodern sensibility that vaporizes “truth” and characterizes knowledge as having lost its moorings needs a new language to talk about historical events and their explanations. This new language includes “narratives” which have a subjectivity and truth coded into them. In other words, a member of one ethnic group or nation does not have a history they have a narrative. And narratives are rooted in individuals and subject to their individual distortions. Hence, one narrative becomes as good as the next if it is tied to an individual and a perception of reality, and there is no historical or evidence-based grounding for the claims of the narrative. The same is true for the word “myth.” The culture does not have events or occurrences in its history that are meaningful, the culture has “myths.”

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be understood as filtered through these lenses. The current intractable nature of the conflict is the result of the clash of “narratives.” And narratives are subjective and rooted in the beliefs of one group or collection of individuals. Because narratives are personal and assumed to be the “reality” of the individual or group they must be taken seriously. So a Palestinian can tell his or her story and it must be treated as truthful, real, and respectfully. The same is true for an Israeli Jew. His story must be treated as truthful, real, and respectfully. The two realities are incommensurate and share very little in common, they have almost no sense of overlapping historical evidence or truth, the two narratives are almost incapable of sharing facts or interpretations, but both must be considered “real!” The two sides cannot even narrate one another. The Israeli “war of independence” is a Palestinian “disaster.” This paradox goes directly to the heart of the conflict. The conflict is a consequence of contemporary sensibilities about truth and reality, and a form of political correctness, as much as it is about historical events.

So Zionism, which was so central to the redefinition of Jewish nationhood, is now an opaque and harsh term according to many that has degraded in significance. In the future I think there needs to be more discussion of how this happened and why. Finally, the argument that Zionism has successfully established the state of Israel is a defensible one, but now there needs to be room for some sort of new Zionism: A Zionism that continues the tradition of developing Jewish nationhood but adapts to current political and geographic conditions. This sort of Zionism might include more attention to democracy, conflict resolution, and better ways to coexist in the neighborhood.

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Tags: Israel, Media, Zionism

Group Level Perceptions and Racism in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Feb 4

Posted by Donald Ellis

When grappling with the difficult issues of intractable conflicts and how to moderate them one always encounters the “contact” solution; in other words, the two competing groups must get together and begin the process of communicating in such a way that the differences dissipate. There is sound research supporting such a suggestion and my own work, along with many others, is deeply focused on the processes of difficult conversations – or, as some term, dialogue.

There is always then a chorus of people who chuckle and say “this won’t work”. The depth and intensity of the conflict between the two parties, so the claim goes, is so great that talk is a waste of time. Well, this is true sometimes. I know of no serious scholar who believes that talk is magic, but I also know of no serious scholar who doesn’t recognize the centrality of interaction, contact, and some properly controlled form of dialogue.

What do you do about situations we’ve been reading about recently? I’m talking about the reports of fan racism in soccer in Israel. Israel has suffered a few difficult instances in the last few years with respect to violence against Arabs and Palestinians. But the sports context seems to exacerbate the problem and provide a context for a poison cocktail of attitudes, energized competition, and ignorance that produces a combustible mixture of racism.

Recently, plans by Beitar Jerusalem soccer club to add its first Muslim players prompted violent and racist incidents in Israel. During a recent match between Beitar and a team from Umm El Fahm hundreds of police had to be deployed. Beitar Jerusalem fans held up the banner above(which reads “Beitar will remain pure forever”) which connotes very unpleasant references to “group purity” an attitude that Jews – at least most Jews – would like to forget. Beitar gets its name from the youth movement, linked to Herut the forerunner of Likud, which opposes Israel’s Arab neighbors. The team name symbolizes a position of honor in Israeli youth movements. Some Beitar fans lead chants calling the Arabs offensive names, which prompts the Arab teams to call out “Allahu akbar.” Some Israeli teams do include Arabs but not Beitar.

The sports environment activates group level perceptions that cause fans and players to identify even more strongly with their national and ethnic group. Sports is a team activity and it is thus easier to foreground a collective group identity. The “individual” versus “group” level of perception is exaggerated in the sports context. People can feel threatened or vulnerable and they can feel this on an individual basis or a group basis, and the two levels of perception can be quite distinct with some situations, such as during heated competition, causing greater distance between the two. For example, if a Jew were asked whether or not he feels vulnerable or threatened he might say “no.” He personally feels secure and not threatened. But if you ask that same person whether or not his group (Jews) is vulnerable or threatened he might say “yes” my group the Jews are vulnerable and threatened. Some studies show that the more one feels his or her group is vulnerable or threatened the more conservative they are with respect to social policies and security.

It’s clear that Israel is expressing its insecurities and hardening its own political stances because it increasingly feels threatened and vulnerable at the group level. The sports context and public displays of demands for “purity” (meaning no Arabs) are troubling examples of the increased polarization in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Nothing is separated from politics in Israel because conflicts of such intractability permeate the entire society. The whole culture participates in the conflict ethos. Ultimately the goal is to play soccer without charging ethnic tensions. Talk will not solve the problem at the moment but it will one day.

Posted in Communication and Conflict Resolution, Israel

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Tags: ethnicity, Intractability, nationalism, Palestinians

The “Business” of Peace

Jan 8

Posted by Donald Ellis

Establishing new relationships between adversaries is always a primary goal of the peace process. There is much in the research literature that talks about transforming relationships and typically this discussion focuses on changing attitudes, stereotype reduction, and humanizing the other. But one relationship change that receives relatively little attention but is quite effective is the process of what I call “rationalizing” relationships. Rationalized relationships are based less on personal intimacy and more on instrumental and pragmatic interdependencies. “Business relationships” are the best examples of a rationalized relationship where the two parties benefit and interact on a regular basis but do not have to be personal. Of course, an ideal goal rooted in theories such as the contact hypothesis would be to improve the quality and personal nature of the relationship since this mitigates various tensions. But this more personalized relationship is not the primary goal.

These “business relationships” are slightly different from the political relationships I wrote about on October 29^th because they are less oriented toward problem-solving. Still, emotional attachment to the other is less important than the realization of interdependence and the need for practical coordination. This form of a communicative relationship serves as a useful starting point for conflict resolution, and allows minority groups in multicultural societies to establish mature relationships with the dominant group. Business relationships treat others as respectful partners that have common interests in problem resolution as much as anything else. The experience of rationalized relationships is quite compatible with the ability to sustain “reasonable disagreement.”

Business relationships recognize self-interest but develop a relationship that rests on equitable self-interest; that is, a relationship where each attends to the utilitarian and practical needs of the other. These rationalized business relationships entail, above all else and as in friendship a habit of attention by which participants in a conflict are attuned to the balances and imbalances in what they are giving up for each other. Business relationships are less concerned with intimacy because intimacy is reserved for relatively few relationships that are more absorbing and based on sacrifice and strong identity with the other. But utilitarian business relationships can apply to large numbers of people and is focused on the pragmatics of resource gratification. Parent-child, ruler and ruled, or superior- subordinate relationships are not business relationships because they limit the autonomy and agency of one person (the child, ruled, or subordinate) and are based on maximization of differences. In short, the business relationship is central to the problems associated with multicultural contact and the ability of groups to develop their capacities for trust and communication.

Recently, a United States Institute of Peace special report (special report 315) outlined the ways in which the business sector could foster peace and assist with the conflict resolution process. The relationship between business and peace is certainly complex and potentially fraught with problems of ownership, ethics, corruption, tribalism, and preoccupation with narrow market interests. And there is a line of research that points to how business exacerbates problems and can be a source of strife and tension. For example, the routine operations of a company can have negative effects on the local community, degrade the environment, and engage in unfair labor practices. But business can also sustain peace because it is based in nonviolence and consensus ethical relationships. The USIP report describes five main areas in which business relationships can be promoted of peace.

The first is economic activity which helps alleviate the relationship between poverty and violence. Jobs and a vibrant business environment creates a context for people of different religious and ethnic backgrounds to work on common goals. Cisco Systems, for example, connects Palestinians and Israelis through a $10 million investment in Palestinian technology development.

Secondly, there are benefits that accrue by respect of the rule of law associated with international labor standards. Businesses with strong ethical commitments are powerful models for the value of respecting the rule of law and clearly an avenue of peace.

A commitment to good organizational citizenship, which includes attention to local community and culture, stimulates a positive social environment and teaches the lessons of responsibility. Moreover, these relationships develop outside the company and establish an organizational-cultural relationship that engenders trust and promotes the habits of democracy.

The interaction between track one and track two diplomacy is a fourth feature of business relationships that helps lessen tensions. Business leaders can partner with government leaders to address political challenges. Finally, businesses can engage in assessment of practices that are particularly suited to the political environment. By paying attention to the unique concerns of employees, customers, and suppliers business relationships continue to rationalize the political culture.

USIP report 315 outlines these issues in more detail and extend the discussion of the relationship between business prosperity, the relationships that business engenders, and political stability and conflict prone environments.

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Tags: Communication strategy

“Political Friendship” A New Kind of Weak Tie Deliberative Relationship

Oct 29

Posted by Donald Ellis

Solving ethnopolitical conflicts involves initiating the two conflicting groups into the larger cultural conversation, where the understanding is that the conversation is about the relationship between the two groups. This involves creating a relationship where members of each group understand that they must engage in reasonable discourse, accept the burdens of justification, and reject illiberal attitudes and behaviors. Another way to think about it is as a network of weak ties. Weak ties are important forms of relationships that are more casual friendships or work relationships (e.g., acquaintance or coworkers) and engage in less intimate exchanges and share fewer types of information and support than those who report stronger relationships. Strong ties include in their exchanges a higher level of intimacy, more self disclosure, emotional as well as instrumental exchanges, reciprocity in exchanges, and more frequent interaction. We have fewer strong ties and they are more important to our personal lives. Facebook and electronic contacts create numerous weak ties that serve important functions.

What Danielle Allen (2004), in her book “Talking to Strangers”, describes as “political friendship” is a sort of important weak tie. This is the sort of friendship that goes beyond the close relationships we have with family members and intimates. Political friendship is a set of practices and habits used to solve problems and bridge difficult differences. Emotional attachment to the other is less important than the realization of interdependence and the need for practical problem resolution. This form of a communicative relationship serves as a useful outlet for conflict resolution, and allows minority groups in multicultural societies to establish mature relationships with the dominant group. The polarization described by Sunstein that currently characterizes the American political environment is a consequence of the degeneration of political friendships. Allen’s political friendships treat opponents as respectful adversaries that have common interests in problem resolution as much as anything else. The issue sophistication that comes with political friendship is quite compatible with the ability to sustain “reasonable disagreement.”

The concept of political friendship is important and deserving of some elaboration. It is necessary to develop a healthy path to the resolution and reconciliation of group conflicts in order to provide either citizens or members of competing groups with political and interpersonal agency. The idea of political friendship is particularly associated with citizenship which is not necessarily a matter of civic duties but a communicative role that values negotiation and reciprocity. It is an excellent relationship to cultivate between members of different cultural and political groups because it is based more on trust than self-interest. Political friendship recognizes self-interest but develops a relationship that rests on equitable self-interest; that is, a relationship where each attends to the utilitarian needs of the other. As Allen (2004) writes, “Equity entails, above all else and as in friendship a habit of attention by which citizens are attuned to the balances and imbalances in what citizens are giving up for each other.” (p. 134). Political friendship is less concerned with intimacy because intimacy is reserved for relatively few relationships that are more absorbing and based on sacrifice and strong identity with the other. But utilitarian political relationships can apply to large numbers of people and is focused on the pragmatics of problem solving or resource gratification. Parent-child, ruler and ruled, or superior- subordinate relationships are not political relationships because they limit the autonomy and agency of one person (the child, ruled, or subordinate) and are based on maximization of differences. In short, the political friendship relationship is central to the problems associated with multicultural contact and the ability of groups to develop their capacities for trust and communication. As Allen (2004) points out, we have to teach people how to “talk to strangers.”

It is necessary to identify some conditions of political friendship. These are habits of communication that facilitate the relationship. They include recognizing and publicly acknowledging groups and their differences as well as promoting deliberative environments and intelligent judgment. Many of these communication behaviors require exceptional sensitivity and tolerance. Recognizing a group, for example, that is less talkative or more remote from Western habits of thinking and either accepting the differences or trying to meld cultural norms is difficult. So minority groups simply need to learn communication skills most associated with success depending on the nature of the dominant culture. Diverse groups must understand their problems as “public” problems. Under the best conditions different groups will have secure knowledge of each other and a similar level of understanding about what is occurring between them.