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Efforts to resolve interstate disputes are often characterized by repeated engagement and evolving strategies. What explains a state's decision to continue conflict resolution efforts but escalate their management strategy? Drawing from foreign policy literature, I argue that third parties escalate policies in response to past failures, shifting conflict dynamics and their relationship with the disputants. Analysis of management efforts from 1946 to 2001 reveals that the changing nature of the conflict, policy failures and relationships between the third party and disputants are integral to understanding the management decision process, but the effects of these factors depend on the management history. [Reprinted by permission; copyright Sage Publications Ltd.]

Negotiation & conflict resolution theories do little to shed light on the role of understanding in resolving violent political conflicts. A useful complement is Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutics. The question addressed in the essay is this: How is a shared understanding reached in a negotiation process aimed at resolving conflicting issues? In Gadamer's view, understanding is important, because conflict resolution engages the parties to a conflict in a dialogue of interpreting meaning & values. Any mediators involved will also take part in the interpretation of meaning: theirs is a job of a translator; that is, they will interpret & transfer meaning between the language games the parties in conflict play. The Gadamerian model is, however, limited because it does not tackle the issue of asymmetry & power in international conflict resolution. Despite its limitations, the theoretical model can be translated into practical policy implications, which suggest that an outside party cannot force the parties into a dialogue. Attempts at conflict settlement that rely on force are unlikely to be successful. 27 References. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright 2005.]

This study examines international news coverage in local newspapers in Japan, a country with one of the most influential economies in the world. The study shows that local daily Japanese newspapers dependent on wire services for international copy devote more of their space to international news and produce more international news about conflict and disaster than do newspapers that do not depend on the services. International news coverage appears not to be related to circulation size. The authors compare the results to similar characteristics of U.S. dailies.

The relationship between foreign trade and political conflict has been a persistent source of controversy among scholars of international relations. Existing empirical studies of this topic have focused on the effects of trade flows on conflict, but they have largely ignored the institutional context in which trade is conducted. In this article we present some initial quantitative results pertaining to the influence on military disputes of preferential trading arrangements (PTAs), a broad class of commercial institutions that includes free trade areas, common markets, and customs unions. We argue that parties to the same PTA are less prone to disputes than other states and that hostilities between PTA members are less likely to occur as trade flows rise between them. Moreover, we maintain that heightened commerce is more likely to inhibit conflict between states that belong to the same preferential grouping than between states that do not. Our results accord with this argument. Based on an analysis of the period since World War II, we find that trade flows have relatively little effect on the likelihood of disputes between states that do not participate in the same PTA. Within PTAs, however, there is a strong, inverse relationship between commerce and conflict. Parties to such an arrangement are less likely to engage in hostilities than other states, and the likelihood of a military dispute dips markedly as trade increases between them.