Book Review: War and Reconciliation: Reason and Emotion in Conflict Resolution by William J. Long and Peter Brecke

In War and Reconciliation, William Long and Peter Brecke seek to understand whether reconciliation between former belligerents contributes to conflict resolution. As such, they have gone far toward making their analysis an important contribution to the growing literature on this topic. War and Reconciliation is one of the handful of books that attempt to develop a theory or theories of reconciliation and conflict resolution. Although the authors attempt to integrate theory and evidence in a way that generates useful policy recommendations, a number of problems—some related to the issue under investigation, others to the authors' presentation and claims—undermine its ultimate contribution to the literature.

The book has five chapters. The first provides an overview of the data on reconciliation following civil and interstate wars and a discussion of two models of reconciliation. Chapters 2 and 3 present synoptic case studies of civil and interstate wars respectively and assess the fit of the authors' models with the cases. Chapter 4 develops the models further and explains how emotions can be incorporated into rationalist models. The last chapter offers recommendations based on the authors' findings.

Although Long and Brecke provide a clear definition of a reconciliation event—an event that "includes the following elements: direct physical contact or proximity between opponents, usually senior representatives of respective factions; a public ceremony accompanied by substantial publicity or media attention that relays the event to the wider national society; and ritualistic or symbolic behavior that indicates the parties consider the dispute resolved and that more amicable relations are expected to follow" (p. 6)—what they are trying to explain is less clear. Their dependent variable is defined in multiple ways: as subsequent relations between former belligerents; effective conflict resolution; order restoration; successful reconciliation; or post-reconciliation relations between former combatants. A better or better-specified dependent variable might have been "the recurrence of war between the former combatants."

The authors' apparent difficulty in choosing what variation in reconciliation explains may be an artifact of the limited data available. The broader the definition, the larger the set of potential cases. Long and Brecke offer two sets of data on civil and interstate conflicts and reconciliation events. What becomes apparent is that reconciliation events as Long and Brecke define and select them are rare: Of 430 violent conflicts at the intrastate level, only eleven experienced a reconciliation event (or about 3 percent of all cases). Of these, 64 percent (seven cases) did not experience a return to violence, whereas 36 percent (four cases) did. Long and Brecke argue that this is striking because war recurred in only nine percent (or about 41 cases) of the civil wars that did not have a reconciliation event after hostilities ended. The problem is that not only are reconciliation events rare, but there are so few cases that the comparative statistics are extremely tenuous.

The data on international wars fare no better. Of fifty-three cases of interstate war, twenty-one involved reconciliation events, but only eight of these provided data capable of testing whether reconciliation events contributed to conflict resolution between the former belligerents. Worse still, even these eight provided only limited information: Five appeared to display improvement of relations, whereas the remaining three were ambiguous. Although the authors admit the limitations of their method and data, the inclusion of these cases and the discussion in the volume make it appear that they hold more validity than they do. For example, Long and Brecke go so far as to state that their findings show that reconciliation events do indeed influence the likelihood of a return to violence (p. 8). This may actually be true, but unfortunately the cases are too few to support such a claim.

Despite the limitations of the data, Long and Brecke present some theoretical insights into how reconciliation events might contribute to conflict resolution. They present two models, a signaling model based in rational choice and a forgiveness model based in evolutionary psychology. The signaling model operates within the realm of rationality and cost-benefit analyses and holds that "relations between belligerents can be understood as bargain or game with a range of potential outcomes" (p. 35). A reconciliation event can act as a signal that helps to reduce perceptions of threat and thereby can improve relations. The forgiveness model is based in emotion and a behavioral process that includes truth telling, redefinition of identity of former belligerents, partial justice, and a call for a new relationship. The authors indicate that the forgiveness model and its implications are the most important contribution of their book. But their argument that the forgiveness model is all that new or that it is vital to understanding when reconciliation contributes to a stable postwar environment is not persuasive.

Although the authors' models are helpful in thinking about different mechanisms that might enhance reconciliation, they unnecessarily argue that the applicability of the two models is restricted to particular domains. The forgiveness model, for example, applies only to civil disputes. It cannot explain international dynamics, because international society lacks both the will to pursue a forgiveness process and the means of doing so.

Although this statement about the different dynamics of post-civil- and post- interstate-war environments seems like a helpful guide on how to think about reconciliation, the authors' claims are not consistent with the evidence. True, Japan remains reluctant to admit blame for its actions in World War II, but Germany is not. Germany has been more forthright in truth telling and in trying to persuade its neighbors and the world that it has changed its ways (note that neither case meets the study's case-selection criteria). Such actions are consistent with the forgiveness model. In other words, both models could be applied to both domains. Long and Brecke admit as much when they state that "negotiation and signaling may be a necessary part of reconciliation" (p. 66), albeit an insufficient part. The problem is that the forgiveness model, or elements of it, may also be necessary but not sufficient. It is not clear from either the logic or the evidence that both models apply to only one of the two domains, and the authors' argument is therefore puzzling.

In sum, War and Reconciliation is a timely contribution to the burgeoning literature on the reordering of societies following the trauma of war. The authors are correct in pointing out that little theorizing has been done on the topic, and they provide some interesting insights into how to go about thinking about reconciliation. But the lack of sufficient data necessary to establish a strong causal relationship between reconciliation and peace makes it far too soon to support the theories they introduce or to use those theories to generate meaningful policy recommendations.