Transforming Intractable Conflicts under the Shadow of the Past Sunk Costs, Inaction Inertia, and the Gilad Shalit Negotiations

Intractable conflicts, broadly defined as disputes that persist over long periods of time, with fluctuating hostilities, are often visited by recurrent yet failed attempts to negotiate their termination. Outside observers of these attempts may wonder why adversaries repeatedly pass up reasonable offers that could end the conflict. To account for such puzzling behavior patterns, international relations’ scholars have stressed domestic political considerations, organizational and institutional constraints, and a variety of structural factors (Arrow et al. 1995; Bacharach and Lawler 1981; Fearon 1994, 1995; Raiffa 1982). Yet overall these approaches give little theoretical attention to the impact of past events on the perpetuation of conflict.1. Exceptions in the formal bargaining literature that address the impact of the passage of time include Brams (1994), Rubinstein (1982), Terris (2017), and Terris and Maoz (2005). Scholars from the field of psychology, however, suggest that failure to end conflicts may have psychological origins rooted in the past. Two psychological effects, which involve the lingering impact of past choices and actions on present decisions, are particularly relevant to the study of intractable conflicts: the sunk-cost and the inaction-inertia effects. The sunk-cost effect refers to continued action and further engagement with an endeavor even when such an undertaking is not optimal. Inaction inertia refers to continued avoidance of action after an attractive opportunity has been passed over or rejected. Both effects are found to contribute to the perpetuation of conflict.