Patterns of National Factions' Strategic Moves in Peace Negotiations: A Perception-oriented Typology

Abstract

By proposing a perception-oriented typology and applying it to the Cambodian peace negotiations, this study attempts to provide an analytic framework for examining the changes in national factions' negotiation strategies during civil war peace negotiation processes. Specifically, this article stresses that domestic negotiating actors readjust their strategies ‘phase by phase’ according to their subjective consideration of three factors: the contents of the peace proposal, the resources under their control, and the strength of the incentives and pressures from external interveners. Based on this finding, this study further (1) demonstrates that a peace negotiation is a continuous process in which multiple chances for successful conflict resolution also continuously change and (2) highlights the importance of perceptual factors in explaining the behaviour of national factions in peace negotiations.

Notes

 1. Lotta Harbom and Peter Wallensteen, ‘Armed Conflicts, 1946–2009’, Journal of Peace Research 47/4 (2010) pp.501–9.

 2. In this article, the terms national factions, national actors and warring factions commonly denote the domestic military groups with substantial military forces that engaged in their civil conflicts and participated in the peace negotiation process. Regarding the level of analysis, the author pays sole attention to the decision-making of the factions' top-leaderships.

 3. The group that established Democratic Kampuchea is commonly known as the Khmer Rouge in the West (meaning Red Khmer in French). However, this article uses the Party of Democratic Kampuchea, the name that was officially used by the organisation itself after 1981.

 4. Although the PRK changed its name to the State of Cambodia in 1989, this article will consistently use the PRK to denote this faction.

 5. Although the FUNCINPEC was the other prominent actor in the Cambodian peace negotiations, the faction is excluded from this study because most of the people who determined FUNCINPEC's negotiation strategies during the negotiation were inaccessible for the author's interview.

 6. Desirée Nilsson, ‘Partial Peace: Rebel Groups Inside and Outside of Civil War Settlements’, Journal of Peace Research 45/4 (2008) pp.479–95; Desirée Nilsson, ‘Turning Weakness into Strength: Military Capabilities, Multiple Rebel Groups and Negotiated Settlements’, Conflict Management and Peace Science 27/3 (2010) pp.253–71; and K. DeRouen, M. J. Ferguson, S. Norton, Y. Hwan Park, J. Lea and A. Streat-Bartlett, ‘Civil War Peace Agreement Implementation and State Capacity’, Journal of Peace Research 47/3 (2010) pp.333–46.

 7. Stephen Stedman, ‘Peace Processes and the Challenges of Violence’ in John Darby and Roger Mac Ginty (eds) Contemporary Peacemaking: Conflict, Violence and Peace Processes (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan 2003) pp.103–13.

 8. David Cunningham, Barriers to Peace in Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2011).

 9. Karin Aggestam, ‘Internal and External Dynamics of Spoiling: A Negotiation Approach’ in Edward Newman and Oliver Richmond (eds) Challenges to Peacebuilding: Managing Spoilers during Conflict Resolutions (Tokyo: United Nations University Press 2006) pp.23–39; and Hanne Fjelde and Desirée Nilsson, ‘Rebels Against Rebels: Explaining Violence between Rebel Groups’, The Journal of Conflict Resolution 56/6 (2012) pp.604–628.

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12. Kanisha Bond, Power, Identity, Credibility, and Cooperation: Examining the Development of Cooperative Arrangements Among Violent Non-State Actors, Unpublished PhD Thesis, The Pennsylvania State University (2010); and Fotini Christia, The Closest of Enemies: Alliance Formation in the Afghan and Bosnian Civil Wars, Unpublished PhD Thesis, Harvard University (2008).

13. Saadia Touval and William Zartman (eds) International Mediation: Theory and Practice (Boulder, CO: Westview Press 1985); Adam Curle, In the Middle: Non-Official Mediation in Violent Situations (Oxford: Berg Publication 1986); and Jacob Bercovitch (ed.) Studies in International Mediation (London: Palgrave Macmillan 2002).

14. Andrew Kydd, ‘Which Side Are You On? Bias, Credibility, and Mediation’, American Journal of Political Science 47/4 (2003) pp.597–611; and Andrew Kydd, Trust and Mistrust in International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 2005).

15. Dolly Chugh and Max Bazerman, ‘Bounded Awareness: What You Fail to See Can Hurt You’, HBS Working Paper, 05-037 (2005) p.2.

16. Leigh Thompson, The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator, 3rd ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2005).

17. Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, ‘Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases’, Science 185/4157 (1974) pp.1124–31.

18. Margaret Neale, ‘The Effects of Negotiation and Arbitration Cost Salience on Bargainer Behaviour’, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 34/1 (1984) pp.97–111.

19. J. Folber and A. Taylor, Mediation (San Francisco CA: Jossey-Bass 1984.); C. W. Moore, The Mediation Process: Practical Strategies for Resolving Conflict (San Francisco CA: Jossey-Bass 1986); and Jacob Bercovitch and Karl DeRouen, ‘Managing Ethnic Civil Wars: Assessing the Determinants of Successful Mediation’, Civil Wars 7/1 (2005) p.104.

20. Ronald Fisher, Methods of Third-Party Intervention (Berlin: Berghof Foundation 2001) p.169; and Michelle LeBaron, Bridging Cultural Conflicts (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass 2003).

21. Stella Ting-Toomey, Communicating Across Cultures (New York: Guilford Press 1999); Ringo Ma, ‘The Role of Unofficial Intermediaries in Interpersonal Conflicts in the Chinese Culture’, Communication Quarterly 40 (1992) pp.269–78; and Roichi Okabe, ‘Cultural Assumptions of East and West: Japan and the United States’ in William Gudykunst (ed.) Intercultural Communication Theory: Current Perspectives (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications 1983) pp.21–44.

22. Edward Hall, Beyond Culture (Garden City, NY: Doubleday 1976) and Geert Hofstede, Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991).

23. Sung Yong Lee, ‘Lost in Translation: The Problem of Self-Perception in Civil War Peace Negotiation’, International Interactions: Empirical and Theoretical Research in International Relations 39/2 (2013) pp.144–66. doi: 10.1080/03050629.2013.768469.

24. For instance, FUNCINPEC and the KPNLF continued to pursue the holding of a traditional ‘pledge’ ceremony for peace agreements as they considered such an event an important tool in pressurising all national factions to abide by the signed peace agreements. Another example is the PDK's determination to exclude ‘Hun Sen and his clique’ from the negotiation process due to the ideological nature of its military campaigns.

25. Sung Yong Lee, Dynamics of Interplay between Third-Party Interveners and National Factions in Civil War Peace Negotiations: Case Studies on Cambodia and El Salvador, Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of St Andrews (2011) p.76.

26. A key challenge during the fieldwork was preventing potential information bias from the research subjects. An interview frequently reveals only partial aspects of an event because it relies heavily on a person's subjective opinions, experiences and memories. To screen for inaccurate information, the author confirmed information to be accurate only after the information was corroborated by at least one counterpart who was also involved in the negotiations. In addition, interviews with people from different backgrounds (associations and positions) were pursued. When contradictions between the answers were encountered, the answers were re-examined using a third source. In cases where the use of a third source was impossible, the contradictory answers were not used as evidence in this research.

27. Michael Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis, ‘International Peacebuilding: A Theoretical and Quantitative Analysis’, The American Political Science Review 94/4 (2000) pp.779–801; Stephen Stedman, Implementing Peace Agreements in Civil Wars: Lessons and Recommendations for Policymakers (New York: International Peace Academy and Center for International Security and Cooperation 2001); and Paul Collier, Anke Hoeffler and Måns Söderbom, ‘On the Duration of Civil War’, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 2681 (September 2001).

28. Patrick Regan, Civil Wars and Foreign Powers (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press 2000); Michael Ross, ‘How Do Natural Resources Influence Civil War? Evidence from Thirteen Cases’, International Organization 58/1 (2004) pp.35–67; and Barbara Walter, Committing to Peace: The Successful Settlement of Civil Wars (Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press 2002).

29. William Zartman and Jeffrey Z. Rubin (eds) Power and Negotiation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 2002).

30. Chester Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson and Parmela Aall (eds) Herding Cats: Multiparty Mediation in a Complex World (Washington DC: USIP Press 1999); Philippe Le Billon and Eric Nicholls, ‘Ending “Resource Wars”: Revenue Sharing, Economic Sanction or Military Intervention?’, International Peacekeeping 14/5 (2007) pp.613–32; Teresa Whitfield, ‘The UN's role in Peace-Building in El Salvador’ in Margarita Studemeister (ed.) El Salvador: Implementation of the Peace Accords (Washington, DC: USIP Press 2001) pp.33–40; and Walter (note 28).

31. David Chandler, ‘Cambodia's Historical Legacy’, Accord 5 (1998) pp.12–9.

32. Craig Etcheson, ‘Civil War and the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea’, Third World Quarterly 9/1 (1987) pp.187–202.

33. Justin Corfield, ‘A History of the Cambodian Non-Communist Resistance 1975–1983’, Working Paper 72 (Clayton: Monash University 1991).

34. Michael Haas, Genocide by Proxy: Cambodian Pawn on a Superpower Chessboard (New York: Praeger Publications 1991) pp.156–8.

35. MacAlister Brown and Joseph Zasloff, Cambodia Confounds the Peacemakers 1979–1998 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press 1998) pp.167–8.

36. Stephen Heder, Pol Pot at Bay: People's War and the Breakdown of the 1991 Paris Agreements, Unpublished PhD Thesis, SOAS, London (1999) pp.20–3; and David Ashley, ‘Between War and Peace: Cambodia 1991–1998’, Accord 5 (1998) p.42.

37. Chhin Kim Thong (a former commander of the PDK), author's interview in 2009; Haas (note 34) p.195.

38. Sophie Richardson, China, Cambodia, and the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence (New York: Colombia University Press 2009), p.153.

39. Steven Hood, ‘Beijing's Cambodia Gamble and the Prospects for Peace in Indochina: the Khmer Rouge or Sihanouk?’, Asian Survey 30/10 (1990) p.981; and Haas (note 34) p.127.

40. Brown and Zasloff (note 35) p.17.

41. Jack Turner, The Great Powers and Local Factors in Internal Conflict: The Dynamics of Conflict Termination in Cambodia, 1979—1991, Unpublished PhD Thesis, Oxford University (2004) pp.159–60.

42. Richardson (note 38) p.146; and Robert Ross, ‘China and the Cambodian Peace Process: the Value of Coercive Diplomacy’, Asian Survey 31/12 (1991) p.1180.

43. Richardson (note 38) p.148.

44. Hood (note 39) p.977.

45. Heder (note 36) p.96.

46. Men Sourn (a former commander of the PDK), author's interview in 2009.

47. Hood (note 39) p.984; and Heder (note 36) p.97.

48. Richardson (note 38) pp.149–50; and Ross (note 42) pp.1181–4.

49. Richardson (note 38) pp.157–60.

50. Heder (note 36) pp.109–15.

51. A former PDK leader who requested anonymity, author's interview in 2009.

52. Heder (note 36) pp.100–5.

53. Haas (note 34) pp.220, 230–1.

54. Brown and Zasloff (note 35) pp.82–3.

55. Heder (note 36) p.115.

56. Sorpong Peou, Conflict Neutralization in the Cambodia War: From Battlefield to Ballot-Box (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1997) pp.270–4.

57. Heder (note 36) pp.91–3, 105–6.

58. Richardson (note 38) pp.161–4; and Chhin (note 37).

59. Heder (note 36) pp.277–8.

60. Brown and Zasloff (note 35) p.31.

61. Turner (note 41) p.56.

62. Richard Solomon, Exiting Indochina: U.S. Leadership of the Cambodia Settlement & Normalization with Vietnam (Washington, DC: USIP Press 2000) p.21.

63. Ieng Mouly (a former leader of the KPNLF), author's interview in 2009.

64. Haas (note 34) pp.237, 286, 254–9; and Solomon (note 62) p.34.

65. Brown and Zasloff (note 35) p.32.

66. Nagendra Prasad, Indonesia's Role in the Resolution of the Cambodian Problem (Farnham: Ashgate 2001) pp.75–7.

67. Solomon (note 62) p.73.

68. Haas (note 34) p.282.

69. Solomon (note 62) pp.66–9.

70. Haas (note 34) p.286.

71. Raoul Jennar, Cambodian Chronicles 1989—1996, Vol. 1 (Bangkok: White Lotus 1998) pp.106–15.

72. Frederick Brown, ‘Cambodia 1991: An Uncertain Peace’, Asian Survey 32/1 (1992) p.90.

73. Final Communiqué of the SNC of Cambodia, 29 August 1991, UN document A/46/494 and S/23066, 24 September 1991; and PCC Co-Chairs report, A/46/418 and S/23011, 4 September 1991.

74. Doyle and Sambanis (note 27) pp.160–4.

75. Haas (note 34).

76. Brown and Zasloff (note 35) pp.105–11.

77. Ibid. pp.146–61.

78. Corfield (note 33) p.21.

79. Lee Jones, ‘ASEAN Intervention in Cambodia: From Cold War to Conditionality’, The Pacific Review 20/4 (2007) p.530.

80. Son Soubert (a former leader of the KPNLF), author's interview in 2009.

81. Ieng Mouly (note 63).

82. Ibid.

83. Haas (note 34) p.49.

84. Ibid. pp.134 and 173.

85. Ieng Mouly (note 63).

86. Khatharya Um, ‘Cambodia in 1989: Still Talking But No Settlement’, Asian Survey 30/1 (1990) p.101.

87. Haas (note 34) p.145.

88. Brown and Zasloff (note 35) pp.63–9.

89. Haas (note 34) pp.214–5; and Um (note 86) p.100.

90. Son Soubert (note 80).

91. Ibid.

92. Leszek Buszynski, Soviet Foreign Policy and Southeast Asia (London: Croom Helm 1986) p.731.

93. Heder (note 36) p.137.

94. Ieng Mouly (note 63).

95. Examination of a wider range of case studies is required to confirm the generalisability of the perception-oriented typology presented in this paper. Nevertheless, my previous research suggests that this typology can be used as an analytic tool for understanding peace negotiations where domestic actors have clear and stable goals (preferences). For instance, the interplay between the Cristiani Government and the USA and between the Farabundo Marti National Liberation (FMLN) and the UN in El Salvador generally follows the typology. Similarly, the typology is applicable to the negotiations between the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and the UN and between the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) and the USA in the Angolan peace negotiation that led to the Bicesse Accords (1990–91).

96. Solomon (note 62) p.90.