Power, Justice, Empathy:
How and Why Empathy Matters for Peace
By
David S. Western
B.A., University of Victoria, 2002
A.M., Brown University, 2005
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
in the Program in Political Science
at Brown University
Providence, Rhode Island
May 2009
© Copyright 2009 by David S. Western
This dissertation by David S. Western is accepted in its present form
by the Department of Political Science as satisfying the
dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
Date__________________ _______________________________________
Thomas J. Biersteker
Recommended to the Graduate Council
Date__________________ _______________________________________
Sharon Krause
Date__________________ _______________________________________
P. Terrence Hopmann
Date__________________ _______________________________________
Corey Brettschneider
Approved by the Graduate Council
Date__________________ _______________________________________
Sheila Bonde, Dean of Graduate School
iii
Curriculum Vitae
David Western was born in Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Canada on April 2nd
1973, and spent most of his first 18 years in the nearby town of Terrace, though he did
spend a year in England and a number of years in various cities in the province of
Alberta. In 1998, already well into his 20s, David began college-level courses at a
correspondence institute in British Columbia then called the Open Learning Agency. In
1999 David began attending the University of Victoria where in 2002 he graduated with a
B.A. with Honours with Distinction in Political Science. Later in 2002 David moved to
Providence, Rhode Island in order to attend Brown University’s graduate program in
Political Science where he earned an A.M. in 2005 and defended his dissertation on Aug.
15th, 2008 (though the PhD was awarded at the next Brown University convocation,
which was not until May 2009). While at Brown David won a Brown Graduate School
Dissertation Fellowship and was awarded the first ever P. Terrence Hopmann Award in
Teaching Excellence. Upon defending his dissertation David moved to Grinnell, Iowa to
begin a postdoctoral fellowship in the Peace and Conflict Studies program at Grinnell
College.
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Preface and Acknowledgments
Tradition requires that graduate students thank their dissertation committee
members in the acknowledgements section of their dissertations, and as such we might
assume some students pour forth praise and gratitude for their advisors whether they
genuinely intend the gratitude or not. My gratitude for my committee is deep and
genuine. Without the initial interest shown by Thomas Biersteker in my desire to write a
dissertation on empathy my project may have never found a home, and without that
initial anchoring I suspect I would have floundered not only in my dissertation but right
out of graduate studies. For this I have more to thank Tom for than anyone. More, Tom’s
concern for how empathy may actually have salience in real international life challenged
me to move beyond the abstract and largely theory-oriented manner in which I was
thinking of the project before I brought it to him. Sharon Krause’s arrival at Brown
during my time there was a godsend to my education, as she was the first serious thinker I
had ever met who was already producing important work on the subject of emotion in
political life and was well versed in the latest psychological and neurological literature
which I spent the first year (at least) of my dissertation studies familiarizing myself with.
Terry Hopmann has more knowledge in real life conflict issues and efforts at resolution
ready to access at the tip of his brain than anyone I have ever and perhaps ever will meet
again. His input and knowledge of conflict resolution literature has been invaluable.
Finally, Corey Brettschneider has been a brilliant role model. He is an enthusiastic,
engaging and popular teacher, from whom I have learned a great deal just by watching,
and yet he excels in his field of research and publications as well. Corey more than
anyone has mentored me on how to be a professional academic, and even though I may
v
never fully grasp all the strange protocols of academic life I am indebted to his valuable
teachings. Each of these four figures has in their own way impressed upon me some sense
of how to achieve future goals.
On a more personal note, I would like to thank and acknowledge Jana Cram,
whom I met, fell in love with, was supported and provided by, and finally married
throughout the long journey that led to the completion of this dissertation. She is the true
prize that I take away from my time in Providence, Rhode Island. I would also like to
thank four of my (many) parents, Joe Western, Dianne Postman and John and Linda
Cram, for all of the love, dinners and occasional financial support that was so
instrumental in keeping me afloat during the dissertation writing years.
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Table of Contents
Introduction ……………………………………………… 1
I. Power, Justice, Empathy: Three Approaches to Peace …… 8
II. Introducing… Empathy! …………………………………. 94
III. Five Forms of Empathy …………………………………. 133
IV. Empathy and Northern Ireland …………………………. 169
V. Conclusion ………………………………………………. 244
Bibliography ……………………………………………… 270
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INTRODUCTION
In answer to a survey that asked “what is your dangerous idea for the 21st
century?” (dangerous in the sense of a Copernican revolution), Cambridge professor
Simon Baron-Cohen proposed “a political system based not on legal rules but on
empathy,” and then asked “Would this make the world a safer place?... What would it be
like if our political chambers were based on the principles of empathizing?” “It is [a]
dangerous [idea],” he continues, “because it would mean a revolution in how we choose
our politicians, how our political chambers govern, and how our politicians think and
behave. We have never given such an alternative political process a chance. Might it be
better and safer than what we currently have? Since empathy is about keeping in mind the
thoughts and feelings of other people (not just our own), and being sensitive to another
person’s thoughts and feelings (not just riding rough-shod over them), it is clearly
incompatible with notions of “doing battle with the opposition” and “defeating the
opposition” in order to win and hold on to power… We have had endless examples of
systemizing politicians unable to resolve conflict. Empathizing politicians would perhaps
follow Mandela and De Klerk’s examples, who sat down to try to understand the other, to
empathize with the other, even if the other was defined as a terrorist” (Baron-Cohen,
2006).
1
2
The first thing to note about this passage is that, even though Baron-Cohen does
mean to be thinking about empathy and politics generally, his specific concerns point to
issues of safety and conflict resolution. In this Baron-Cohen is resonating with an
intuition, or perhaps a hope, that is not uncommon amongst many people: that there is
some direct connection between the human capacity for empathy and the human capacity
for peace. Here is another expression of the same hope by another psychologist who
works primarily with empathy, Daniel Batson: “Might the introduction of empathy… be
worth pursuing in business or political negotiations? In these situations, is allowing
oneself to feel concern for the other’s welfare too big a risk to take? Think, for example,
of negotiations between management and labor, between Catholics and Protestants in
Northern Ireland, between the Palestinians and Israelis, between Pakistanis and Indians.
Empathy… might prompt one to give ground. But it might also produce a better outcome
for all. It might even save lives” (Batson et al., 2004, p 367).
Psychologists like Baron-Cohen and Batson are increasingly willing to make such
musings publicly, and even within academic literature, because for psychologists who
have been studying the concept of empathy closely for decades now what I just
characterized as an “intuition” or a “hope” in the general populace is for them,
increasingly, a significant, empirically substantiated fact. Empathy in human beings, the
psychology literature today suggests, encourages prosocial, helping and moral
behaviours. It inhibits the desire for aggression, retaliation and retribution. It facilitates
forgiveness and trust. It counters the tendency to stereotype and prejudice. Each of these
effects of empathy tends towards healthy, prosocial, peaceful social relations between
human beings and away from violent conflict. For psychologists like Baron-Cohen and
3
Batson, that empathy might play a vital role in establishing the right conditions for peace
amongst human beings must seem a fairly obvious hypothesis to make.
Yet if empathy and peace make an intuitive connection for the psychologist, we
cannot say the same for the political scientist. Empathy is not a concept that we hear a
great deal about in political science. Literature that deals with empathy explicitly is
sparse, and the most common impression a reader who goes looking for empathy in
political scholarship receives is that the majority view amongst political thinkers and
scientists is that empathy hardly matters for political affairs. But if empathy is a concept
that can play a positive role in creating peace in the world then it is one that political
scientists should want to know more about and pay closer attention to.
In this dissertation I am going to begin explorations into the concept of empathy
and what role it may play in making peace. My hope is to lay the groundwork for future
research on empathy, given that there is relatively little on empathy within political
literature and still so much to discover, reveal and think on. As a result this dissertation
has become largely an exercise in surveying the political landscape for signs of empathy,
gaining insights about empathy’s possible role for peacemaking along the way.
In the first chapter I explore the possibility that ideas about empathy as a factor
for peace may already exist in International Relations and conflict resolution literature.
What I find is that we can in fact organize prominent approaches to peace into three
categories: those that seek peace primarily through the application of power, those that
seek peace primarily through the establishment of political and economic institutions of
justice and those that seek peace through empathy. Of these three, approaches to peace
that emphasize power and justice have been dominant. The effect is that, in the most
4
predominant approach to peace of our own time, there has been an emphasis on seeking
peace through political and economic structures, and something of a neglect when it
comes to thinking about and acting on the underlying psychosocial conditions that tend to
cause conflict and dissuade peace. Throughout this dissertation the suggestion is that the
engendering of empathy must be a central tactic for efforts to establish positive
psychosocial conditions for peace. However, in the first chapter there is the suggestion
that empathy need not be seen as playing a role at only the psychosocial level of society. I
suggest throughout the dissertation that we may be able to conceive of empathy as a
quality of social and political structures as well. Moreover, empathy may be an important
tool for elites and statespersons in negotiations and decision-making.
Chapters II and III explore the question “what is empathy?” I have lingered on
this question because empathy is a relatively neglected concept in political scholarship.
Herein we discover that empathy has been shown to be responsible for a plethora of
positive behaviours that seem particularly conducive for peaceful relations, such as the
encouragement of prosocial behaviour and the inhibition of aggression, the
“humanization” of the other, forgiveness, trust and a reduction in the tendency to
prejudice and stereotype. In these two chapters we discover that empathy is a
multidimensional and highly complex concept – not unlike power and justice themselves.
In order to keep a handle on this rather large concept as we pursue it within political
scholarship we should want to develop a manageable conception of it, and so I organize
empathy into five forms: Perspective Taking, Humanizing Empathy, Sympathy,
Empathetic Identification and Relational Empathy. The last of these five – Relational
Empathy – is a form of empathy that describes the quality of a social or political
5
relationship rather than an isolated, individual psychological experience. Though later we
find, in Chapter IV on Northern Ireland, that Relational Empathy and other forms of
empathy tend to reciprocate and encourage one another.
Finally, Chapter IV is an exploration of the Northern Ireland peace process,
focusing on the role empathy has played in moving that region forward towards peace.
Northern Ireland, wracked with violent conflict since the later 1960s, came to the
culmination of over ten years of peace negotiations in 2007 to form its own government,
distinct from the direct British rule that Northern Ireland had been under for 35 years. In
this it is widely felt that an end to the levels of violence Northern Ireland had experienced
in the past has been significantly secured. In this historic moment commentators and
politicians who have been engaged in the Northern Ireland peace process have felt
confident enough to start considering what are the lessons for peacemaking from the
Northern Irish experience. Our question is, are there any lessons for the possible role of
empathy in peacemaking? To find out I look at the Northern Ireland peace process at
three levels: elite experiences and conflict resolution; peacebuilding within wider society;
and political and international institutions. Our immediate suspicion is likely to be that
empathy will be found (or at least should be found, if the Northern Ireland case should
indeed be found lacking) working to create peace at the level of wider society. As authors
like Lederach (2005), Mac Ginty (2006), Saunders (2000), Lipschutz (Keating and
Knight, 2004) and others protest, the finalization of elite level peace negotiations does
not signal the sudden creation of peace in wider society. Psychosocial hurts, hatreds,
resentments and historic animosities are all still likely to persist after the signing of elite
level peace agreements, and in Northern Ireland we should hope to find some
6
psychosocial transformations occurring as a result of the application of empathy. In fact
there is not as much significant peacebuilding of this nature going on in Northern Ireland
today as we might hope, though it does exist. In fact, what I discover in my research is
the beginning of growing interconnections between former enemies, Loyalists and
Republicans, as they take the perspective of the other, try to understand their own actions
from the perspective of the other, humanize the other in their mind, and form bonds of
trust and empathy in order to work together to build peace within local communities.
But again, the influence of empathy is not limited to the shifting of psychologies
and psychosocial structures within wider society. Empathy has played a crucial role
within elite level motions towards peace as well. Today former violent enemies share
power together in institutions of government, and we might say that peace in Northern
Ireland is being held together by these institutions and by the fact that, for the first time
since their inception, Northern Irish violent Republicans now legitimate the government
and do not seek to challenge the state through violent means. Yet, the same institutions of
law and justice could not have held the country together decades earlier. Indeed, as early
as 1973 Northern Ireland attempted to establish a powersharing government between its
two ethnonational communities – Catholic and Protestant – but the attempt failed,
rejected by elements across both sides of the community divide. What changed between
then and now? Over those thirty-five years key elites have shifted perspectives on the
conflict, have redefined their own understandings of themselves, their understandings of
the other, and of their goals regarding Northern Ireland. In recent years key elites have
becoming more willing to see the other as a rational agent, capable of working towards
peace with, rather than a fiend or a terrorist. In that, accommodations occurred which
7
could not have in the past and agreements have been managed. In this process of shifting
perspectives and redefining understandings, empathy can be found playing an important
role.
Finally, our exploration of Northern Ireland tells us something interesting about
the quality of relationship that empathy engenders (or at least is engendering in Northern
Ireland) as a means to peace. It is a form of empathy that promotes, perhaps even thrives
in, diversity, and brings former enemies to cooperation without asking them to agree on
key contested issues. A number of Republican and Loyalist former enemies in Northern
Ireland are cooperating within a sort of empathetic modus vivendi: where they continue
to disagree about key issues of the conflict yet even in that disagreement find grounds to
understand, accept and accommodate the other.
CHAPTER I:
POWER, JUSTICE, EMPATHY:
THREE APPROACHES TO PEACE
Psychologist Maureen O’Hara has written “As the world undergoes what some
consider to be the birth pangs of its first truly “global civilization,” in which national,
ethnic, religious, gender and class boundaries are shifting on unprecedented scales, all of
us will need new postmodern psychologies with which to navigate. The ability to
empathize with other individuals and other groups may become the most important
interpersonal and even political competence. Increased attention to mutual empathy could
lead those of us in Western societies to recover some of our sense of connectedness to
each other, our communities and our world, a recovery that, given the world’s current
disproportionate impact on global realities, may prove vital to future survival” (O’Hara,
1997, p 295). Psychologists seem fond of occasionally engaging in short, sweet
ruminations on the urgent implications of their own research interests (i.e. empathy) for
more vast political and international questions. But is there substance to this quick
thought? How do O’Hara’s suggestions square with the understandings and discourses of
academics that have devoted their considerable intellectual powers to study of the
international realm? There does exist, after all, a long-standing, robust, sophisticated
8
9
tradition within academia of thinking about the global space, the possibilities for human
survival and what exactly we might do to best assure that survival. What does
International Relations (IR)1 thought have to say about the importance of empathy?
The immediate problem for anyone who wants to take seriously questions of
empathy is that empathy is not a concept that has garnered a great deal of attention over
the years in IR, or in modern political inquiry in general. I think there are in fact four
things that we can say about the way empathy appears (or does not appear) in
contemporary IR (and overall political) scholarship: 1) predominantly, it is simply not
considered, with dominant logics and frameworks geared to focus on other concepts and
questions; 2) a small handful of authors, from Nussbaum (2001) to White (1984) to ethics
of care feminists, have explicitly focused on empathy (or its sister concepts, like care); 3)
empathy appears in literature, sometimes playing important roles, but in ways that are
noticeably undertheorized (as in Habermas, as we will see in a later chapter), and; 4)
literature opens the door for thinking seriously about empathy yet scholars do not seem to
pursue the opportunities presented, leaving the question apparent but unasked (a few
examples of which we will see in this chapter). As such, any scholar who wants to
wonder about empathy’s role in political life has a difficult task ahead of her because
there is a lot of groundwork still to be laid. Because we do want to know about empathy –
more specifically, empathy’s positive possible role in efforts at making and maintaining
peace - this dissertation is an effort at laying some of that ground. Of course, we will not
be able to lay it all. Concepts (of equal significance, to my mind) like “power” and
1
Hereafter “IR” refers to the academic discipline of International Relations, unless I refer to “IR practice,”
which then refers to actual international affairs.
10
“justice” have already had centuries of intellectual attention bestowed upon them in the
field of modern political scholarship. Empathy has a lot of catching up to do.
The heart of this dissertation is an exploration into the meaning of the concept of
empathy and into questions of what empathy might do for peacemaking efforts, by
looking at literature where serious work on empathy does exist (primarily psychology)
and by exploring the Northern Ireland peace process to determine what role empathy
played in that relatively successful affair. There is another theme explored in this
dissertation, however – the eponymous theme of power, justice and empathy – primarily
in this chapter. In this chapter I take us through a long consideration of how these three
themes – power, justice, empathy – shape approaches to peace. Empathy-oriented
approaches receive much less attention amongst political and international thinkers and
practitioners than do concerns of power and justice, and in this chapter the reader will spy
the beginnings of what eventually becomes the main normative argument of this
dissertation: that the concept of empathy should be granted more attention than it
traditionally has been by political thinkers.
In this chapter I have erred on the side of exposition and length over brevity,
perhaps out of a sense that empathy deserves its moment in the spotlight, but more, I
suspect, because the concept really does touch upon so many possibilities and facets of
political and international life, despite its general lack of explicit appearance in much
political literature, that even in giving a relatively surface treatment of where empathy
appears in issues of international peace (in relation to power and justice) there is much to
say.
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Section 1: Three Approaches
Three Views on Peace
Two years before the Cold War came to an end in 1989 John Lewis Gaddis
(1987) wrote a book called The Long Peace in which he pondered why the US and USSR
had been so successful in avoiding direct, massive military engagement with each other
for the forty years after World War II, even though they were ideological enemies and
rival superpowers. Three years after the publishing of this book, as the Cold War thawed
and evaporated into history, renowned realist thinker John Mearsheimer was warning us
that we might come to miss this Long Peace. “To be sure,” he offers, “no one will miss
such by-products of the Cold War as the Korean and Vietnam conflicts. No one will want
to replay the U-2 affair, the Cuban missile crisis, or the building of the Berlin Wall. And
no one will want to revisit the domestic Cold War, with its purges and loyalty oaths, its
xenophobia and stifling of dissent” (Mearsheimer, 1990a, p 35). But just as Mearsheimer
makes it sound as if the passing of such an era must be a welcome thing he turns around
and admonishes us for it, suggesting that the “Long Peace” of the Cold War may well
have been the good times. “[T]he prospect of major crises, even wars, in Europe is likely
to increase dramatically now that the Cold War is receding into history.”
For most in the Western world the end of superpower hostilities was something to
rejoice, so what caused Mearsheimer to think these pessimistic thoughts on the cusp of
the post-Cold War era? The answer to that question has everything to do with the
conceptual framework through which Mearsheimer, as a realist, sees the international
world, the logic by which he believes it is organized, and more precisely what that
framework and that logic have to say about peace and the possibilities for achieving it. “If
12
you believe (as the Realist school of international-relations theory, to which I belong,
believes) that [when it comes to] the prospects for international peace… it is the character
of the state system… that drives states towards war – then it is difficult to share in the
widespread elation of the moment…” The primary “character of the state system” to
which Mearsheimer is referring is the distribution of power within an environment of
anarchy. “There is something elementary about the geometry of power in international
relations and so it is easily overlooked,” he writes, “…[but] a bipolar system is more
peaceful for the simple reason that under it only two major powers are in contention.”
This shift of the systemic distribution of power away from a bi-polar international order
leaves Europe, Mearsheimer feels, in a new multi-polar power alignment, and it is
because of the geometry of that new order that Europe’s chances for continued peace
have significantly lessened. But Mearsheimer further notes ways in which peace seems
dependent upon certain realities of power. “The prospects for peace… are also affected
by the relative military strength of those major states,” he writes, and “Nuclear weapons
seem to be in almost everybody’s bad book, but the fact is that they are a powerful force
for peace” (Mearsheimer, 1990a).
Mearsheimer’s view of what we should accept as peace and of what it takes to
hold it is drastically different from that of Russett and ONeal (2001), whose approach to
peace more reflects the optimistic sense of liberal triumph that became popular during the
first post-Cold War decade. For Mearsheimer, as with perhaps all realist thinkers, the
manner of peace that we should accept is fairly limited. “Peace” for authors like
Mearsheimer means, as Gaddis referred to with his phrase “the Long Peace,” a period
without massive military engagement between major powers. Yet the multiple proxy
13
wars and crises required to continually avert that massive military engagement make it
difficult for many of us to think of “peace” as the proper term for that condition (and thus
many IR thinkers will limit themselves to speaking in terms of “security” rather than
“peace”). The “peace” offered by Russett and ONeal blatantly harkens back to the article
Perpetual Peace by Immanuel Kant (2002), and as the title suggests, these authors feel
that a “Kantian peace” can be sustained indefinitely, even perhaps perpetually, should the
right conditions be maintained. But by the ‘right conditions,’ unlike with Mearsheimer,
Russett and ONeal do not primarily mean the systemic geometry of power? Instead these
authors emphasize three conditions: that all states be democratic, that states participate in
multilateral international institutions, and that states trade economically with each other
and create webs of liberal economic interdependence.
Yet as contrasting as these visions of peace - and of what is required to make and
maintain peace - may seem, they are closer to each other than they are to the vision of
peace that we derive from Gandhi’s social and political thought. With both Mearsheimer
and Russett and ONeal “peace” is largely understood as a condition between states: in
Mearsheimer peace is just the absence of war; in Russett and ONeal peace is a nonviolent
and functioning zone of liberal democracy. Moreover, with both of these authors peace is
achieved by the shaping of large, supra-social structures: for Mearsheimer it is the
international geometry of power, for Russet and ONeal the political and economic
structures of and between nations. For Gandhi, peace is something that begins in the
human soul, and is achieved primarily through behaviours of love and empathy.
As a well-known historic figure Gandhi has authored many quotes that have been
turned into popular and perhaps trivialized catch phrases, yet are still important for
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understanding his overall philosophy. “Poverty is the worst form of violence,” is one
such quote. Gandhi was probably the first major thinker in modern centuries to propose
that peace is not just the absence of overt physical violence but also the removal of
oppressive and degrading social, economic and political structures. In Gandhi’s time
more Indians faced cruel and unbearable conditions from British economic colonial
policies than they did overt physical violence from the British Raj. Yet further quotes like
“Be the change in the world you want to see” and “the world will live in peace only when
individuals comprising it make up their minds to do so” (Gandhi, 1950, p 70) illustrate a
core difference between Gandhi and both Mearsheimer and Russett and Oneal: for
Gandhi, peace is achieved not primarily by establishing the right political and economic
structures which then constrain human behaviour into peaceful actions and relations, but
rather by individuals first developing peaceful inner psychologies and interpersonal
relations, which in turn drive the desire to build and maintain political and economic
structures more conducive to peace.2 Crucially, the psychology that is conducive to peace
is the one that adheres to satyagraha: a firm commitment to satya, which is defined
interchangeably as truth and love. For Gandhi, the best and most practical examples of
working conflict resolution involve love, and are found not at the levels of states and
interstate dealings but at the level of the interpersonal. “History, as we know it,” Gandhi
explained, “is a record of the wars of the world… How kings played, how they became
2
In fact I think I am right to describe Gandhi’s philosophy this way in order to emphasize the role of
individual psychologies in relation to the main streams of modern political thought. But ultimately I think
even what I have said here is a mischaracterization. Ultimately I think Gandhi’s view is more along the
lines of what I will ultimately endorse in this dissertation: that in order to achieve peace we should not
distinguish between these levels of analysis so sharply: that factors of psychology, nation and global do not
only interact but often are fully integrated. Gandhi, after all, was deeply concerned about structural
violence, as I suggested earlier when discussing peace. He obviously felt that peaceful psychologies
without peaceful structures were not sufficient conditions for peace. That being said, Gandhi’s emphasis is
certainly on peaceful psychologies and interpersonal relations founding peaceful structures more than
peaceful structures keeping individuals in line.
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enemies of one another, how they murdered one another, is found accurately recorded in
history, and if this were all that had happened in the world it would have ended long
ago… The fact that there are so many men still alive in the world shows that it is based
not on the force of arms but on the force of truth or love [satya]… Thousands, indeed
tens of thousands, depend for their existence on a very active working of this force. Little
quarrels of millions of families in their daily lives disappear before the exercise of this
force. Hundreds of nations live in peace. History does not and cannot take note of this
fact” (Gandhi, 1956, p 111).
Typologies
Peace has often been treated as if it were an obvious, uncomplicated and
universally understood concept, usually defined as simply a general antonym for war or
violent conflict, understood broadly as whatever war or violent conflict are not.3
However, in Mearsheimer, Russett and ONeal and Gandhi we have three notably
different visions of what peace is and of how to achieve it. Moreover, there are places in
the literature where we can find even further dimensions to the concept. Anatol Rapoport,
for example, in his rumination on peace (Rapoport, 1992) writes that there are at least
five different ways of conceptualizing peace that are visibly prominent in the
contemporary international world: “Peace Through Strength,” which ‘is encapsulated in
the Roman dictum, Si vis pacem, para bellum, “If you want peace, prepare for war” (p
141); the “Balance of Power,” where peace is conceived of as the stable equilibrium of
power between relevant actors; “Collective Security,” which “envisions every state
potentially allied with every other” where “International cooperation replaces rivalry as
3
Take for example Hobbes, an author insistent on precise definition, who spends the better part of the first
book of the Leviathan simply concisely defining words. After spending a paragraph defining war, Hobbes
ends the paragraph by simply stating “All other time is PEACE” (Hobbes, 1991, p 89).
16
the “normal” mode of interaction between states” (p 146); “Peace Through Law,” where
“world peace is pictured as an extension, to global scale, of the internal peace that reflects
a modern, civilized society” (p 150); and “Personal or Religious Pacifism” where “Global
peace is envisaged as a consequence of expurgating aggressiveness from individual
human psyches” (p 153).4 Aron provides another typology for conceptualizing peace (and
how to achieve it): peace from equilibrium, peace from hegemony, peace from empire
and peace through terror (Aron, 2003, p 151, 173). More recently, Oliver Richmond has
undergone extensive analysis of the different conceptions of peace used in both IR
literature and practice: a more thorough analysis than currently exists anywhere else in
the literature (Richmond, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2002). His work proposes several
different typologies. One recounts how 20th century approaches to peace have progressed
over time, in three generational waves: classic, first generation approaches concerned
with power and interstate diplomacy; a second generation concerned with conflict
resolution at the individual and societal level; and a “hybrid multidimensional” third
generation “associated with UN peace operations since the end of the Cold War” (p 183).
Elsewhere Richmond proposes a typology of realist, utopian, liberal and “postmodern”
conceptions of peace (Richmond, 2006), and still elsewhere he proposes a multifaceted
typology of at least nine different types of peace, revolving around the notion of a “liberal
peace (Richmond, 2005).
In this dissertation we are going to typologize ways of thinking about peace (and
how to achieve it) in a tripartite scheme that reflects the three images of peace I began
this section with, revolving around three primary themes. On one hand, there is the core
4
Rapoport actually offers a sixth conception of peace, which is basically a Marxist view of post-socialist-
revolution society as a state of peace. I have not included it here because it seems less relevant now than it
likely did to Rapoport in 1992, only a few years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
17
theme that peace is achieved by managing power. On another hand there is the core
theme that peace is a consequence of legitimate institutions of justice that adhere to and
enforce universal principles of right (and more particularly, liberal principles: i.e.,
democracy, human rights, liberal economic trade). On a third hand there is a theme of
peace through empathy: either taking the perspective of the other and acting in ways
appropriate for the other or actually transforming the psychologies and relationships (or
structures) from those that hurt and aggress into those of a empathetic identification with
the other. In fact, I am going to ask the reader to think of these three themes in terms of
Weberian ideal type approaches to making peace: Peace-through-Power; Peace-through-
Justice; and Peace-through-Empathy.5 As is the case with ideal types – despite the way I
have presented Mearsheimer, Russett and Oneal and Gandhi as exemplars of each type -
in real world policy, and even in theory, we rarely see an absolutely pure expression of
any one of these three ideal types. Theories and practices tend to be comprised of some
combination of two or three of the types (even when the merger is somewhat incoherent),
though with different degrees of emphasis one way or the other.6 Nonetheless, for
heuristic and analytic purposes, introducing these three themes as ideal type approaches
5
An ideal type, most closely associated with Max Weber, is an abstract concept that we should not expect
to find in reality – except perhaps in some extreme cases. Rather, it is an imaginary extreme designed to
parse out and highlight certain trends, themes or components of the social world in order to analytically
distinguish them from each other. The classic example from Weber is his tripartite scheme of three ideal
types of authority: traditional, rational/legal and charismatic. In the real, concrete, non-abstracted social
world, it would be rare to find examples of any of these three types of authority being appealed to purely.
Usually real situations of authority can be described as some conflagration of two or three of these types,
with different types emphasized to different degrees. For example, in today’s modern world we tend to
emphasize and respond primarily to rational/legal forms of authority. Yet the US is a fantastic example of a
very modern nation that continually elevates individuals to positions of power (political or popular) based
on a great deal of charismatic authority: martin Luther King, Bill Clinton and Barak Obama all provide
easy and immediate examples. Distilling these three forms of authority into “pure forms” is something a
social scientist will do for heuristic purposes: again, to facilitate analysis.
6
Though political theories, more abstract by nature, are often closer to a pure expression of one ideal type
than real world practices, institutions and policies tend to be.
18
to peacemaking helps us separate the influence of empathy from other influences so that
we can better think about and analyze empathy’s role in peacemaking.
So now let us take a close look at these three types of peacemaking – but after I
have first defined the one concept that they all have in common: peace.
Section 2: Peace, Power, Justice, Empathy
Peace
As we’ve just seen, peace is not the obvious and uniform concept many political
thinkers have often assumed it to be, and we have just seen that multiple conceptions of
peace reign in international thought and practice, ranging from the very shallow very of
peace as a temporary absence of violence between major states (even while punctuated
by smaller wars and crises) to a very broad and some might charge utopian view of peace
as a stable organization of love-based interpersonal relations and social structures. How
shall we conceive of peace in this work? As where in the past what we might think of as a
realist vision of peace – an absence of violence between states – had been predominant
amongst IR thinkers and apparently amongst statespersons as well, since the end of the
Cold War views on peace (as with views on so many subjects regarding international
affairs) have expanded. Realist visions of peace can still carry sway amongst IR thinkers
and practitioners, but post-Cold War a vision of peace as necessarily more than simply
the absence of overt violence has swelled to prominence, arguably even becoming
hegemonic amongst many academics as well as “leading states, international
organizations, international finance institutions and NGOs” (Mac Ginty and Richmond,
2007, p 1).
19
Galtung is often cited as an early theorizer of a broadened conceptualization of
peace. The basic principle behind virtually all notions of peace, Galtung suggests, is that
“peace is the absence of violence” (Galtung, 1969, p 167). But from here Galtung
expands the notion of violence by accepting two categories of violence. “Negative peace”
he takes to be the negation of overt physical violence while “positive peace” becomes the
negation of structural violence. Here Galtung, following Gandhi, argues that even in the
absence of overt physical violence (that is, even amidst negative peace) we can still suffer
from violence embedded in the economic, political and social structures we live under, in
the form of oppression, poverty, lack of access to resources, and other such hardships
imposed less by individuals as by the overarching social structure itself (Galtung, 1969).
“Positive peace,” then, amounts to “the establishment of positive, life-affirming and life-
enhancing values and social structures” for individuals to live their lives within (Barash
and Webel, 2002, p 1). Normatively it can be argued that positive peace is a good in
itself, as worthy of pursuit for its own sake as negative peace. But increasingly within the
literature there has a more pragmatic argument for positive peace as well. Studies on
peace, or on the recently emerged concept of human security (which in many ways
present “security” as an issue of freeing individuals from structural violence just as
Galtung sees peace as an issue of freeing individuals from structural violence), argue that
what we might think of as structural violence – oppressive or harmful social, economic,
political and even environmental conditions - can ultimately cause overt physical
violence, and thus positive peace can be thought of as a necessary pragmatic condition
for negative peace to be achieved and maintained.
20
In this dissertation, by peace we will mean both the core principle of an absence
of overt physical violence and the maintenance of whatever positive personal, social,
economic and political conditions may prove necessary to maintain the absence of
violence permanently. That is, peace will signify both a lack of overt violence and a
positive living environment where freedom from violence and from conditions that are
likely to drive human beings to violence has become normalized. Conflict resolution in
this dissertation will refer to processes or efforts aimed at ending existing violent
conflicts, but not the construction of peaceful conditions beyond that cessation.
Peacebuilding efforts are efforts to create the conditions for a permanent peace (negative
and positive, as required), usually but not necessarily undertaken after conflict has
ceased. (Indeed, some authors suggest peacebuilding – establishing conditions of positive
peace – is a necessary component of conflict resolution.7) In this dissertation when I use
the term peacemaking I will intend by this a catchall phrase indicating efforts aimed at
both conflict resolution and peacebuilding (as actors often act towards peace with both in
mind). (Other common, related terms, like “peacekeeping,” I will define later in this
chapter when we look at post-Cold War peace operations). 8
Power
Now let us turn to our three ideal type approaches to peace: Peace-through-Power,
Peace-through-Justice and Peace-through-Empathy. The first thing I need to point out
when discussing our three “ideal type” categories is that what I am doing in this chapter
7
We will see this later in the chapter.
8
That being said, the reader needs to be aware that while I intend to use these terms as such, when I am
speaking of the way other thinkers have conceptualized peace and the absence of violence I will speak in
their terms. Particularly in this chapter, where I will probably be considering many authors who see peace
as little more than the absence of violence between states, and therefore see efforts at peacemaking as little
more than getting the bullets to stop flying, how I am using terms like “peace” and “peacemaking” will
depend on context.
21
is analyzing approaches to peace as we see them in political thought and practice.
Philosophically there are many ways that we can define power, justice, and perhaps
empathy. But what we are doing in this chapter is looking at how prominent modern
thinkers and practitioners have approached questions of peace and conflict, and therefore
when I define power and justice here I mean to define them in accordance with the way
we see them used in the most prominent approaches to peace.9 In regards to power, this
means defining the concept along its classic sense. That is to say, power has been
theorized in more than one way, and some of those theorized conceptions of power are
actually competing conceptions. For example, there is a widely recognized classic way of
defining power that is often associated with Max Weber or Robert Dahl. Weber defines
power as “the chance of a man or of a number of men to realize their own will in a
communal action even against the resistance of others who are participating in the same
action” (Weber, 1958, p 180) and Dahl has defined the same classic sense of power more
succinctly by saying “A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something
that B would not otherwise do” (Dahl, 1957, pp 202-3). In regards to this classic sense of
power there has been a lot of analysis and theorizing on further details and more rigorous
ways of thinking about it – such as the classic study by Lukes, where he proposes three
“faces” of this classic vision of power (Lukes, 1974. See also Baldwin, 2002). Beyond
the classic conception there have been some competing conceptions of power proposed.
Hannah Arendt, for example, has argued the importance of sharply distinguishing
between a plethora of concepts that we often find being used as synonymous with power
– strength, force, authority, violence - and in this she defines power as something like the
9
Empathy we must, by necessity, be more speculative about, since there is no obvious tradition of thought
on the concept in political scholarship.
22
ability of a community to act collectively or the ability of an individual to act as
legitimated by the community; a far more cooperative and democratic conception of
power than the classic conception.10 Similarly, Michel Foucault is renowned for
introducing a number of complex views of power into the literature that are noticeably
different from the classic conception.11 Nonetheless, predominant approaches to peace in
the modern era they tend to think about peace in terms of the classic, more inherently
confrontational sense of power – as an actor subjugating others or imposing its will
against that of others – and as such in this dissertation so too will we.
The basic assumption with theories that ascribe to Peace-through-Power
approaches is that actors are self-interested and will pursue their own self-interested goals
until they are forced not to by external obstacles (the power of another or power realities
in the environment) or until they realize that, rationally, they cannot achieve what they
seek because of powers opposed to them. Peace-through-Power approaches are attempts
at peace by either imposing peace on others through the will and might of a powerful
actor (i.e., a Hobbesian monarch, or the act of “crushing” an aggressor), or by wielding
positive and negative reinforcements (the proverbial “carrots and sticks”) in order to
navigate or push an actor towards peace, or by managing the distribution of power, as in
10
“Power,” Arendt writes, “corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert. Power is
never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group
keeps together. When we say of somebody that he is “in power” we actually refer to his being empowered
by a certain number of people to act in their name” (Arendt, 1970).
11
Indeed Foucault’s conception of power is complex enough that its very definition is elusive. In earlier
works he appears to see power as something immanent within structures and institutions that shapes and
moulds human beings (in dehumanizing and de-individuating ways). See for example his discussion of the
power of the Panopticon: “It is an important mechanism, for it automatizes and disindividualizes power.
Power has its principle not so much in a person as in a certain concerted distribution of bodies, surfaces,
lights, gazes; in an arrangement whose internal mechanisms produce the relation in which individuals are
caught up” (Foucault, 1977, p 202). In later works he describes power as governance of the conduct of
individuals (others and self), and not just any individuals but, necessarily, free subjects. “Power is exercised
only over free subjects, and only insofar as they are free… [S]lavery is not a power relationship when man
is in chains” (Foucault, 1997).
23
balance of power acts, on the presumption that peace is best maintained when power
distributions are in stable equilibrium (as we see in many realist prescriptions for the
international realm).
Let us consider some examples, a plethora of which populates the 20th and 21st
centuries. For most of the 20th century these were arguably the predominant approaches
to peace. For some, the modern state itself may be seen as a Peace-through-Power
mechanism, if one envisions the modern state the way Hobbes did: as a mechanism for
security and conflict resolution by way of wielding an unchallengeable monopoly on
society’s powers for violence (Hobbes, 1991). In the first decade of the 20th century –
which was still inured to the 19th century international order – international peace was
primarily sought by the classic ‘balance of power’ order, managed by the occasional war
to correct the balance (though such a war had not occurred for roughly a century in
Europe) and by a network of elite diplomatic ambassadors, such as Bismarck and
Metternich, orchestrating alliances and deals.12 Indeed the ‘balance of power’ theory on
peace and conflict, as we have already seen exemplified in Mearsheimer’s arguments,
was for much of the 20th century perhaps the most prominent theory and the mechanism
by which international affairs were conducted, in as much as “The leading realist theory
is balance of power theory” (Levy, 1996, p 5) and that “For years, the thinking of
generations of post-World War II academics, scientists, foreign affairs specialists,
journalists, editors and, not the least, politicians, was shaped by the “realist” school of
politics” (Volkan et. al., 1990, p ix). Again the notion with the ‘balance of power’ theory
is that it achieves and holds peace, to the degree that it is seen to be able to hold peace (as
12
For literature on classic balance of power international orders, see (Morgenthau, 1985; Bull, 1995,
Watson, 1992).
24
advocates almost always predict that any peace will be only temporary), by keeping
power at an equal enough level that no one state feels confident enough of their chances
at winning to risk starting a war. Another Power-through-Peace approach is peace
through hegemony, as with the (generally) stabilizing influences of classic modern
hegemons such as the Habsburg and Bourbon houses, or the “collective hegemony” of
the five Great Powers of the Concert of Vienna (Watson, 1992). (Of course in the 20th
century it has often been debated whether the US has played the role of a global
stabilizing hegemon and to what effect) (Kindleberger, 1975; Keohane, 1984; Kagan,
1998; Weber, 1999). “Hegemons commonly arise and use their strength to create a set of
political and economic structures and norms of behaviour that enhance the stability of the
system at the same time that these structures and norms advance the security of the
hegemon” (Levy, 1996). Wilsonian Collective Security is a Peace-through-Power
institution as well, in that its purpose is to deter any nation outside of the security
compact from threatening any nation in the compact, even if the single nation to be
threatened is much weaker than the aggressor, by way of threatening the aggressor with a
superior ‘preponderance of force’ comprised of all the military might the compact has at
its disposal, collectively, to unleash.13
Beyond the overarching international order, most 20th century efforts at mediation
and attempting to create or maintain peace in local conflicts were based on a Peace-
through-Power approach as well. Zartman and Touval explain the dominant assumptions
in international mediation. “Conflicts over politico-security issues take place within a
13
In fact, perhaps ironically given the traditional ascription of Hobbes to the realist tradition, this “idealist”
approach to peace was the closest thing to Hobbes’s answer to conflict that the international realm has seen,
in that Hobbes’s answer was to replace anarchy with a unified institution holding a monopoly on power,
while the idealists’ answer (a full adoption of Hobbes’s answer – unchecked world government – being out
of the question) was to replace anarchy with a unified pact holding a majority of the world’s power.
25
context of power politics, which has a major affect on international mediation,” (Zartman
and Touval, 1996, p 445). Mediation, Zartman and Touval explain, is a third-party
intervention into a conflict but one that is not “arbitration,” an approach closer to Peace-
through-Justice, “which employs judicial procedure and issues a verdict that the parties
have committed themselves beforehand to accept” (p 445). Instead, even though
mediation “is not based on the direct use of force and it is not aimed at helping one of the
participants to win” (p 445) and even though “mediators tend to remain relatively
powerless throughout the exercise” mediation is entirely a game engaged within an
environment of power. “Power – the ability to move a party in an intended direction… is
the ticket to mediation,” (p 455) which comes in the form of whatever incentives or
punishments (carrots and sticks) mediators can use to move the parties in intended
directions. Zartman and Touvel are clear that the actors in mediation are the sorts of
unfailingly self-interested subjects generally assumed by those who take power-focused
approaches to peace. “The parties, whose interest is in winning, view mediation as
meddling, unless it produces a favourable outcome” (p 455).14 UN peacekeeping prior to
the post-Cold War was also a Peace-through-Power method, in that peace was sought by
the forcible separation of two combatant groups them, with peacekeepers providing a
buffer between the two. Cyprus provides an example where we have seen both Peace-
through-Power peacekeeping and mediation applied as the primary tactics for achieving
peace. 15
14
For more on mediation as a common power-oriented approach to peace of the 20th century, see Richmond
(2002), particularly chapter 2.
15
Many have judged efforts at peace in Cyprus as representing a questionable and unsatisfying degree of
success, given that Cyprus represents one of the oldest ongoing UN peace operations, having originated in
1964, yet to this day the Republic of Cyprus exists as a segregated island, still divided by UN peacekeeping
forces, with the conflict largely dormant and arguably long in limbo. While talks are currently ongoing and
current news reports are optimistic (Hadjipapas, 2008), the conflict has so far left a trail of over 4 decades
26
Justice
Justice, like Power, is a big concept – one perhaps as old as human history itself –
and so, like with power, when we speak of “justice” we could be speaking of many
different things. Justice from the Old Testament or the Koran is what Yahweh or Allah
declares it to be. Hobbes’s justice is the honouring of contracts amongst people unified in
an overarching, undeniable institution of Power. Gandhi’s justice is “That action alone…
which does not harm either party to a dispute” (Gandhi, 1958):16 a code of action rooted
in his commitment to non-violence quite distinct from today’s view of justice, which
carries with it the implication of the legitimate use of violence (i.e., just war, or national
law enforcement: Kant sometimes refers to justice as “Lawful Coercion” (Kant, 2002).
But throughout the modern era there has been a particular tradition of justice that
has been appealed to as a guarantor of peace, rooted in a particular liberal democratic
tradition developed in the modern West, with which we can associate names from Kant to
Rawls to Woodrow Wilson. To explain: originally I toyed with the idea of identifying
this concept not as Justice but as “Right,” or perhaps Recht. Recht is the term that we find
in the original texts of Kant’s moral and political philosophy (written in German) for
what is often translated into English as either “Right” or “Justice” depending on the
translator.17 In German the term “Recht” carries with it several meanings. First, it is used
to refer to the broad body of a state or institution’s Law in general – as in “Rule of Law” -
and as such it necessarily carries with it all the connotations of legal/political institutions
of recurring spoiled peace negotiations and unsuccessful efforts at political restructuring. I am indebted to
Terry Hopmann for noting Cyprus as an exemplar case of a Peace-through-Power approach in a localized
conflict.
16
Quoted in Erikson (1969, p 342).
17
The most common translation is “right” (for example, see the Cambridge Press edition of Kant’s
Political Writings, ed. by Reiss (Kant, 2002)), however John Ladd’s translation of the Rechtslehre as The
Metaphysical Elements of Justice provides an example of a translation of Recht as “justice” (Kant, 1999).
27
and powers of arbitration and enforcement. Kant writes, “[J]ustice [Recht] is united with
the entitlement to use coercion against anyone who violates justice [Recht]” (Kant, 1999,
p 31). Second, it carries the connotation of individual liberal rights (in its plural, Rechte),
so it also has a specific quality of liberalism and individualism: that is, the protection of
individual sovereignty and freedom. Third, as Ladd explains, “Recht… in contrast to our
word “law,” carries with it the connotation of moral rightness, that is, justice. Indeed, for
Kant, Recht applies only to the moral side of law in general” (Ladd, 1999, p xxi). Within
contemporary political philosophy (much of which today follows in the tradition of
Kant18), justice is often seen as the political/legal establishment of the moral rights and
duties that are owed to everyone, universally, regardless of anyone’s particular, unique
being or situation. We see this made clear, for example, in Habermas’s tripartite typology
of possible discourses: pragmatic, ethical and moral. “Pragmatic discourses concern the
rational choice of the means to a given end” (Finlayson, 2005, p 91).19 Ethical discourses
concern the ends of specific groups or communities (for example, a specific ethnic
group). But moral discourses concern that set of rights and duties that are owed to
everyone, and justice is the institutional establishment and securing of these rights and
duties (Habermas, 2001; Finlayson, 2005). These three themes associated with the
concept of Recht - judicature (law; adjudication of rights and wrongs and the
enforcement, punishment of legal justice); liberal individual rights; and the institutional
18
In that discipline-defining authors like Rawls and Habermas both follow a Kantian tradition of thought,
though modified for contemporary times. Neither would identify themselves as working directly within the
philosophical framework Kant established, yet both have explicitly identified themselves as working within
a “Kantian” tradition (Habermas, 2001; Rawls, 1996).
19
Habermas (2001) makes this distinction several times in his (unwieldy and occasionally repetitive)
Between Facts and Norms. One example begins on p 108. As Finlayson (2005, p 92) explains the
distinction between ethics and morals/justice can be traced back explicitly at least to Hegel and implicitly
to the ancient Greeks, whose term ethos referred to the practices and values of a particular polis.
28
manifestation of rational universal principles seen as universally legitimate or moral – are
all integrated in Peace-through-Justice approaches.
That being said, to the degree that Justice embodies morality it is important to
understand that Justice embodies a kind of morality. The tendency, especially amongst IR
thinkers, is to distinguish sharply and simply between those who think of politics in terms
of power and those who think of politics in terms of morality. Yet all three of the ideal
type approaches in this dissertation – Power, Justice and Empathy – can have a manner of
morality associated with them. Hans Morgenthau, for example, gives a moral argument
for power politics, on the grounds that the political actor (the state) has a moral obligation
to its own citizens’ safety that is prior to obligations of international justice. “The
individual may say for himself” Morgenthau writes, ““Fiat justitia, pereat mundas” (let
justice be done, even if the world perish), but the state has no right to say so in the name
of those who are in its care. Both individual and state may judge political action by
universal moral principles, such as that of liberty. Yet while the individual has a moral
right to sacrifice himself in defense of such a moral principle, the state has no right to let
its moral disappropriation of the infringement of liberty get in the way of successful
political action, itself inspired by the moral principle of national survival” (Morgenthau,
1985, p 12).
Elsewhere, authors in feminist ethic theory, particularly “ethics of care”
feminism, have thought more than anyone on how the morality of what we are calling
Justice can be seen as distinct from an empathy-based morality. Feminist ‘ethics of care’
morality “sees persons as interdependent rather than as independent individuals and holds
that morality should address issues of caring and empathy and relationships between
29
people rather than only primarily the rational decisions of solitary moral agents” (Held,
1995, p 1). This such authors have juxtaposed to a kind of morality associated with Kant
and Kohlberg (and in ethics of care literature, with men and masculinity) whereby moral
behaviour is the product of independent moral agents abiding by rational universal
principles, rather than abiding by any particular knowledge of, attachments to or
concerns for particular others. The morality of Justice is one that finds its legitimation in
rational universal principles and arguments – an approach to morality that has been in
“overwhelming dominance” (Held, 1995, p 1) within moral and political thought
throughout the modern era (and hence why so many thinkers immediately associate talk
of morality with the manner of Justice I have laid out here).
So, at its thinnest and least particular, we can see Justice as judicature (codified
law and/or adjudication) that manifests what are held (or argued) to be universally
legitimated principles (as opposed to mere positivist expressions of law). An example is
Grotius’s early argument for international rights and restrictions regarding war, which
was ultimately founded in arguments of rational universalist principles (Tuck, 1999).
More particularly, Justice is associated with a tradition of thought that holds Western
tradition of valuing liberal democratic political and economic institutions as universally
right for all. The core idea with Peace-through-Justice approaches, then, is that peace is a
consequence of establishing the right (universally legitimate) political and economic
institutions. The assumption in regards to the political actor (individual, state, etc.) is that
the actor may be self-interested or may be moral, but either way properly designed
structures of justice will keep actors peaceful (either through incentives like good
30
outcomes (i.e., peace) or through legitimate coercion).20 Peace-through-Justice
approaches include codes of law based on principles that are claimed to be universally
legitimate (i.e. international law), employing a fair, third-party adjudicator (perhaps a
juridical institution or a state) to adjudicate what is right (and not just prudent or in the
interests of a particular party) between disputants or combatants, and perhaps most
prominently the construction of what are understood to be just institutions (political,
economic, social) which are seen as establishing the right conditions peace. Moreover, I
would like to re-iterate that in modern thought and practice the idea of what manner of
justice sets the right conditions for peace is (increasingly) particular. Justice is
(increasingly) seen to have a liberal democratic character, in accordance with traditions
that have arisen in Europe and North America over the modern centuries, including
individual rights, democracy and liberal economics (and this includes arguments of peace
as a consequence of the prosperity that liberal economics brings). Thus an increasingly
prominent manifestation of the Peace-through-Justice approach emphasizes liberal rights,
democracy and liberal economics as conditions for peace.
Like Peace-through-Power approaches, Peace-through-Justice approaches have
been extremely influential throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, and many examples can
be pointed to. Earlier I noted that the argument could be made that the modern state is
itself a Peace-through-Power mechanism. Most political theorists, however, would argue
it is a Peace-through Justice mechanism, preferring to view the modern state (or, more
specifically, the modern liberal democratic state) as a manifestation of universally
20
The assumption is that most actors (enough to grant the institutions legitimacy) will be reasonable or
intelligent enough to realize the worth of these institutions. As Russett and ONeal write, paraphrasing a
moment in Kant’s Perpetual Peace (2002), “Peace does not depend, therefore, on people being transformed
into angels, but on constructing a system of incentives whereby even self-seeking devils would be well
behaved “so long as they possess understanding” (Russett and ONeal, 2001, p 302).
31
legitimate liberal principles and ideals and a model mechanism for resolving societal
conflict through legitimate, legal recourse. Internationally, the genuine uniqueness of the
20th Century era approach to international peace and order has been an emphasis on
Peace-through-Justice approaches first established in the post-World War I era of idealist
Wilsonianism. At that time US President Woodrow Wilson explicitly railed against the
influence of power politics in the previous international order, citing those influences as
largely causing the Great War and pointing to the historical fact that such tactics had
proven weak and incapable of staving off inevitable, periodic slides into international
violence. Wilson and fellow “idealists” like Zimmern and Hobson sought to reorganize
the international order and base it on a more liberal, morally-based international law,
liberal economic integration, international institutions that afforded nations the
opportunity for more open deliberation21 and a union of democratic “like-minded” states
pledged to peace.22 Post-World War II the United Nations (UN) has carried the League of
Nation’s legacy and stood, at least in the ideal, as the international realm’s leading
mechanism for a Peace-through-Justice international order, evidenced by its primary
focus on achieving and maintaining international peace through international law and
conventions, emphasizing human rights and more recently mechanisms such as the
International Criminal Court. Other more recent Peace-through-Justice efforts include
deployments of (UN sanctioned) multinational forces to enforce international law, such
as the operations to force Iraq’s invading forces out of Kuwait in 1991.
21
Wilson saw open, public and non-secretive political functions as in the spirit of liberalism and
democracy, and wanted to bring that to an international realm that until the time had been managed
primarily by a small network of elite foreign policy statespersons whose dealings the public – and perhaps
even their own governments – were often unaware of. This point comes out clear in Wilson’s Fourteen
Points (Wilson, 1918). Benefits of international institutions over the “Old Diplomacy” for conflict
resolution via deliberation was also a theme of Alfred Zimmern’s (Zimmern, 1936, pp 480-96).
22
See Wilson (1917; 1918), and for other writings emphasizing the Peace-through-Justice aspects of the
interwar international order see Hobson (1915), Wells et al (1919), Zimmern (1936).
32
Looking at Power earlier in the chapter we saw that a certain, predominant model
of mediation and negotiation (i.e., “carrots and sticks”) can be seen as a Peace-through-
power approach. In that model, actors vie against each other to fulfill their interests
according to what the differentials of power will allow them to achieve. In the Peace-
through-Justice approach, the model is not power-navigating negotiation but third-party
adjudication, where an impartial and objective third party judges the situation and
imposes a verdict on what should be the right outcome to a conflict. Also in our look at
Power I suggested Cyprus as a case where peacemaking efforts have leaned heavily
towards Peace-through-Power approaches. South Africa may be a case that has leaned
heavily towards a Peace-through-Justice approach. In South Africa the root cause of
conflict was identified as the political institution of apartheid and a morally condemnable
yet powerfully influential racism that pervaded South African society. Initial forms of
pressure against apartheid came in the form of international moral outrage. “Sanctions,
whether of the trade, financial or cultural variety, served as a constant and uncomfortable
reminder of the force of almost universal moral rejection… It was this sustained and
unrelenting moral climate which increasingly began to rob the dominant white groups,
and Afrikaner nationalism in particular, of any kind of legitimacy” (Van Zyl Slabbert,
2002, p 44). Movement to overturn apartheid focused on transforming political and
economic institutions to reflect a greater degree of equality and respect for human rights,
and institutionalized efforts at post-apartheid social reconciliation have focused on
“righting wrongs” by means of truth-telling and, in some cases, retributive justice.
33
Power and Justice
These notions of Power and Justice should be more than familiar to the IR
scholar. In fact what I have described so far should largely be the IR scholar’s proverbial
‘bread and butter.’ The notion that politics can be read as a contest of two approaches,
one focused upon power, the other set on constraining politics into conformity with
higher principles of right and justice, is in many ways written into the very DNA of IR
thought (if not modern political thought in general) and in many ways a foundation upon
which it has been shaped, like Rome founded on the sibling rivalry of Romulus and
Remus. As Hans Morgenthau writes on the opening page of Politics Among Nations, one
of the founding books of IR theory, “The history of modern political thought is the story
of a contest between two schools that differ fundamentally in their conceptions of the
nature of man, society and politics. One believes that a rational and moral political order
derived from universally valid abstract principles, can be achieved here and now… The
other school believes that the world, imperfect as it is from the rational point of view, is
the result of forces inherent in human nature. To improve the world one must work with
those forces, not against them. This being inherently a world of opposing interests and of
conflict among them moral principles can never fully be realized, but must at best be
approximated through the ever temporary balancing of interests…” (Morgenthau, 1985, p
3-4). Morgenthau equates, of course, the former school with “idealism” and the later with
“realism,” framing a contest between those two constant pillars of the discipline, realism
and liberalism, that continues in evolving forms throughout the entire history of IR
thought.
34
That being said, it is not quite right to think of Power and Justice as I have just
described them simply as reformulations of realism and liberalism. Re-emphasizing the
point that Power- and Justice-approaches to peace are ideal types, which rarely appear as
pure expressions in the world, we can see the blending of these approaches to some
degree even in the relative purity of realist and liberal theory. Morgenthau himself makes
a great example. In a collection of tributes to his work, Morgenthau laments that he has
often been accused of setting a trend of “indifference to the moral problem” in IR
(Meyers, 1984), in that he and other pioneering realists are often seen as arguing the
Machiavellian line that the international political realm is inherently a place where
thoughts of morality and justice do not apply. (Indeed, his “two schools” narrative
certainly suggests it). Yet a more careful reading of Morgenthau reveals that this is quite
wrong, and that in his work he is very subtle on and even accepting of the role universal
norms and principles play in politics. He writes, “In a world whose moving force is the
aspiration of sovereign nations for power, peace can be maintained only by two devices.
One is… the struggle for power on the international scene, that is, the balance of power.
The other consists of normative limitations upon that struggle, in the form of international
law, international morality and world public opinion” (Morgenthau, 1985, p 27).23
Similarly, Russett and ONeal, who can most immediately be associated with a Peace-
through-Justice theme, themselves write that “we combine the realist and liberal
perspectives” and seek to recognize the important influence of power on the international
realm in their arguments (Russett and ONeal, 2001, p 90). That being said, of course,
23
Indeed later in his career he lost a lot of credibility amongst US foreign policy practitioners who had
themselves taken up the mantle of realism Morgenthau had established by arguing that US policies on
Vietnam were “rooted in moral and intellectual deficiencies” (Meyers, 1984, p 128) and he was called by
one critic “a doctrinaire liberal with a rather thin overlay of hard-nose attitude…” and a “frustrated idealist”
(Meyers, 1984, p 127).
35
thinkers such as Morgenthau and Russett and ONeal do ultimately lean heavily towards
one or the other. Morgenthau does conclude that the best hope for peace in the 20th
century rests with intelligent diplomatic national statespersons who can understand and
manage the international distribution of power (Morgenthau, 1985, pp 563-94), and
Russett and ONeal do ultimately argue that “the realist perspective alone is incomplete,
that it misses too many important elements of international relations” (Russett and
ONeal, 2001, p 90).24 But in actual practices of international politics the two themes are
usually more entwined and harder to disjoin. Classic modern international order (17th to
19th century) was held stable – to the degree that it was held stable – through a mix of
hegemonic power, balance of power mechanisms and international law (with some law
being of a more positive, technical quality, but some of the Grotian quality concerned
with the universal rights of men and nations). Wilsonianism merged the Peace-through-
Power approach of Collective Security with a Kantian emphasis on democracy and
international right. Post-World War II international politics was largely a ‘mish-mash’ of
Power and Justice approaches, with a great deal of debate and ambiguity around much
international political action and whether it represents efforts at justice or merely the
24
On the other hand, it seems to me that it is not always the case that liberal scholarship has always been
associable with the Peace-through-Justice approach more than the Peace-through-Power approach.
Liberalism in the 1970’s and 80’s, in the form of neoliberalism, widely adopted neorealist ontology and
assumptions about the international realm and disagreed with neorealists primarily on the point that even
given entirely selfish, egoistic, rational calculating, utility maximizing actors and even given the
determinative force of power and the distribution of power in the international realm actors may still find
mutual benefits in cooperation. See for example Keohane (1990, p 227): “Indeed, much of my own work
has deliberately adopted Realist assumptions of egoism, as well as rationality, in order to demonstrate that
there are possibilities for co-operation even on Realist premises” – it is much harder to suggest that
prescriptions for peace would be focused on universal principles, codes of law and claims of justice. During
the neoliberalist phase of the school of liberal thought it is not at all clear to me that any prescriptions for
peace that would come out of this literature would not be simply another take on the Pace-through-Power
approach, or a mix of the two skewed towards the Power side. Since the end of the Cold War, seen by
many as the triumph of the values of the liberal tradition (Fukuyama being the classic articulator of this
view) (Fukuyama, 1989) international liberalism has been re-infused with the sense of Justice as has been
defined here.
36
interests of great powers. Indeed, for many IR students and scholars, questions about
whether Power or Justice best explain international behaviour, or are the best
prescriptions for international politics, dominate their thoughts and scholarship.
Section 3: Peace-through-Empathy
Why We See Fewer Signs of Empathy
Undeniably the phenomenon of power has been of crucial importance for both
social and political life. So too has the world of judicature and rational, universalist
principles. But there is another whole facet to life that is, undeniably, every bit as real and
inevitable in at least the social life of all human beings: one that is more personal,
intimate and psychologically involved, where the currency is not power or legality but
empathy amongst human beings bound together to some degree in the intersubjective
sharing of their life experiences. The economist Kenneth Boulding once typologized
power into three “faces:”25 threat power, which corresponds to our understanding of
Power (A imposes its will on B); economic power, which is the capacity to produce and
exchange goods), and integrative power, which is “the power to create such relationships
as love, respect, friendship, legitimacy, and so on” (Boulding, 1989, p 10). He
characterizes these three faces of power as “the stick,” “the carrot” and “the hug,” and
says of integrative power “the most fundamental form… is love” (p 110). Boulding
laments that there is not enough scholarship on this concept of integrative power, (this is
particularly true in political scholarship) and that a serious history of integrative power in
25
Not to be confused with what we mean by “Power” here. Boulding's view of power is wider than ours, so
that what he means by his later two “faces of power”– or certainly the last face if not the second - are facets
of social life outside of the bounds of what we are calling Power. Boulding writes: “The very word power
is used in a great variety of meanings… In social systems and human behaviour there is a larger concept of
power: To what extent, and how, can we get what we want? Within this there is a smaller concept of power,
somewhat beloved by political scientists, which is our capacity to get other people to do things that
contribute to what we want” (Boulding, 1989, p 10). By Power we mean more than the shallow meaning
which Boulding says social scientists are fond of.
37
the world has yet to be written (exactly as Gandhi expressed in is quote on history earlier
in this chapter). Yet Boulding feels that it is this facet of life – that facet where integrative
power works and lives – that ultimately has the greatest influence in the world. “[N]either
threat power nor economic power can achieve very much in the absence of” it, he writes
(p 11).
Most political scholars are likely to recognize the deep importance this integrative
factor of Boulding’s has had on human history and social life, but the question for
political scholars is: how important is it for political life?26 Boulding’s understanding of
integrative power is much wider than what we are interested in here. “Love, respect,
friendship and legitimacy” cast a wide net, and we can see legitimacy and perhaps respect
(i.e., as in Kantian thought) as key aspects of Peace-through-Justice approaches as well.
Legitimacy, after all, is not always achieved through “the hug.” Yet we can narrow down
Boulding’s ideas about this integrative facet of life to focus on one aspect: the fact that
human beings have a capacity for empathy – the ability to come to understand the
subjective experience of another human being, to humanize the other in our minds and to
grow concerned about the welfare and woes of the other. The main question for this
section of the chapter is, what reasons do we have, from a survey of literature, to think
there might be an important Peace-through-Empathy approach?
Unlike with our other two ideal type approaches it is not so easy to look at the
main streams of modern political thought and practice and find instances or examples of
26
In this dissertation I am going to accept that large scale social and political violent conflict is a political
issue, and that political scholars and practitioners need follow whatever possible answers to violent conflict
arise into whatever levels, areas or facets of life they might take us into (from the supra-national to the
interpersonal and even deeply psychological). Therefore I accept that conflict resolution and peacemaking,
when we are discussing important and widespread social and political conflicts, are political, even when
they involve activities at levels other than those of political institutions (i.e., sociological, interpersonal and
even psychological).
38
Peace-through-Empathy efforts. Generally there is no serious, robust, well-established
tradition of modern political thought on empathy, and at least three tendencies within IR
scholarship in particular have given political scholarship a character and a focus that
tends to make an interest in empathy seem out of place. The first tendency begins for us
with Waltz’s three “levels of analysis” as introduced in his Man, State and War (Waltz,
2001).27 Waltz proposes that factors that affect international affairs can be seen as
originating from three levels: the level of individual psychologies, the level of society and
national politics, and the level of the international system itself. Empathy, widely
understood as a psychological capacity of the human individual, will immediately be
placed by many thinkers into the category of Waltz’s first level of analysis. As we shall
see in this dissertation, I am not convinced that this is necessarily the case. Nonetheless, I
believe it is largely the assumption that most IR thinkers would make. That being said,
Waltz himself devised the three levels of analysis to make his case that international
politics can be understood as if entirely determined by the third level of analysis, the
systemic level (and to be more specific, Mearsheimer’s “geometry of power”). In this he
denigrates arguments to the effect that peace can be achieved through the betterment of
individual human psyches - by “enlightening men or securing their psychic-social re-
adjustment,” as he puts it - which he feels have “been dominant in the writings of many
serious students of human affairs from Confucius to present-day pacifists” (Waltz, 2001,
p 16). Waltz also argues against the second level of analysis – domestic politics – as
ultimately having any impact on international affairs. In this Waltz and the neorealism
that ensued made blatant a tendency already existent in the “classic” realism of Kissinger
27
In that book Waltz actually speaks of three “lens” or “images” through which to consider international
problems and order. “Levels of analysis” is a term that becomes common usage to refer to Waltz’s three
levels by later IR scholars (i.e., Levy, 1996).
39
and Morgenthau to place priority on the overarching structure of international power.
Liberal authors have disagreed, as one of the key constants in the liberal international
tradition has been that the quality of the politics of a nation matters to the way it conducts
its international affairs. From Kant to Wilson to Russett and Oneal liberals have argued
that democracy has some advantage over other forms of domestic political structures for
ensuring international peace. Thus a key debate in IR has been about whether to prioritize
the international structure of power over all others or whether to priorities liberal
domestic and international institutional structures over others. Liberals of course are far
more interested in the individual as a potential actor in international affairs, and thus are
interested in “non-state actors,” whereas realists think of states as the primary political
subjects that scholars need to be concerned about. Yet none of this speaks to Waltz’s first
level of analysis – the actual psychology of the individual of interpersonal relations, and
the main streams of IR have maintained an undeniable emphasis on political and
economic structures – either understood as objective structures of power in the
international system or as political institutions and economic structures like the market –
over personal interactions. Though, as an extremely important caveat, this has been
countered to a degree by a robust literature on political psychology, from Laswell (1966)
to McDermott (2004a), a good review of which can be found in Stein (2002).
Nonetheless, political psychology still remains something of a subset in the discipline
(routinely receiving less attention in typical undergraduate IR classes than, for example,
feminist IR, which still tends to think of itself (and I am not contesting it) as marginalized
within the discipline).28
28
From Tickner’s review chapter on “Feminist Perspectives on International Relations” in the authoritative
Handbook of International Relations: “[I]n spite of its rapid growth, feminist IR is still quite marginalized”
40
Second trend: this traditional lack of interest in personal psychologies has often,
in the traditionally dominant streams of the discipline (though again there are important
works that go against this tendency as well), been deepened by an abiding assumption
that international politics are best understood by a particularly systematic, or what
psychologist Baron-Cohen calls a “systematizing” approach, and more particularly one
that assumes little worth in thinking of the particular psychologies of the individuals
involved in decision-making. By taking a heavily “systematizing” approach I mean that
the main streams of IR have tended to adopt a more abstract and sometimes even
mathematical approach that seeks to model behaviour in a way that takes its cues more
from science or economics then the more idiographic, personal approaches taken by
journalists, historians and novelists. In this approach many IR thinkers have followed
Morgenthau’s early argument that international events occur “regardless of the different
motives, preferences, and intellectual and moral qualities of successful statesmen… To
search for the clue to foreign policy exclusively in the motives of statesmen is both futile
and deceptive,” (Morgenthau, 1985, p 5) and thus political actors have come to be treated
largely as “black boxes” where we see information going in and see the behaviour
coming out but not the processes that occur in between, and as such the scholar is
counseled to “consider all decision-makers to be alike” (Morgenthau, 1985 p 6). Thus the
specific, the particular and the personal becomes eclipsed by a vision of political actors as
like units. Again, much literature has gone against this point, taking an interest in
decision-making processes, and of course not all liberal IR treats all states as alike, with
some literature (i.e., democratic peace theory) normatively privileging democracies
(though even then we might say that this literature accepts two kinds of actors rather than
(Tickner, 2002).
41
just one). Still, it is prevalent enough even into the 21st century that when a scholar wants
to say that the psychologies of decision-makers makes a difference it is a thesis they need
to argue for rather than one that will immediately be accepted by the masses of IR
scholars (Rosati, 2000).
Third, empathy is intuitively associated with emotion and the emotions are a
subject that 20th century political thought has been thoroughly disinterested in studying (a
fact that has become most apparent recently because an increasing numbers of scholars
are in fact returning an interest in emotions to political scholarship) (Krause, 2004, 2005,
2006; Nussbaum, 2001; Mendus, 2000; McDermott, 2004b; Koziak, 2000). Crawford
(2000) points out that this has been particularly true of IR theory, even though emotions
such as fear and ‘love of country’ will routinely appear in realist literature, playing
undertheorized roles. The industry standard within IR, especially since the “behavioural”
trend of the 1960’s to the 80’s, has been to assume the political actor as rational, egoistic
and self-interested, with rationality, as Crawford points out, understood as ‘non-emotive’
(Crawford, 2000).29 Even where emotion is looked at closely in regards to peace and
conflict or international politics it is usually in regards to emotions as a disruptor of
reason and a creator of violence (Petersen, 2002) or the effects of negative emotions such
as shame (Keck and Sikkink, 1999).30 Studying positive emotions, and the potential good
29
Writes Crawford: “The assumption of rationality is ubiquitous in international relations theory.’ As
Robert Keohane and Nye say “both realism and liberalism are consistent with the assumption that most
state behaviour can be interpreted as rational or at least intelligent activity” (Crawford, 2000). And from
Rosati, “Foreign policy often has been explained from a rational actor perspective… The assumption has
been that governments and their leaders think and act rationally in their quest for power, wealth, and
prestige. Such rationality assumed that “decision-makers usually perceive the world quite accurately and
that those misperceptions that do occur can… be treated as random accidents” (Rosati, 2000, p 45).
30
I would like to reiterate that what I have described here are tendencies that have traditionally dominated
the discipline of IR. Over the last two decades, with the end of the Cold War and the rise of new ideas
about international society, the construction of social facts and the role of norms, ideas and beliefs in
society, along with a shift away from the bipolarity superpower dynamics of the Cold War and to multiple
42
they might bring to political life, often seems to be the last research program we should
expect in the main streams of modern academic political inquiry. As such, as Keohane
tells us, “Empathetic explanations of behaviour in world politics are limited to relatively
small spheres of activity: situations in which actions do not have obvious explanations in
terms of more narrowly defined self-interest. The presumption in a self-help system [i.e.,
the international realm] is that empathy will play a subordinate role. Even when
behaviour appears to be motivated by empathy, it may be possible to construct
alternative, and plausible, explanations for it on the premise of egoism” (Keohane, 1990,
p 231).
Exactly because of this basic lack of study on empathy in political scholarship it
will take a longer and more illustrative account of Peace-through-Empathy approaches to
familiarize ourselves with them than it took to illustrate Peace-through-Power and Peace-
through-Justice approaches. Indeed, as I see this dissertation, the purpose throughout is to
explore and illustrate the possibilities of a Peace-through-Empathy approach. This
chapter reviews where we might see such an approach already suggested in political
literature on peace and conflict resolution, Chapter II considers what psychology has to
say on empathy and Chapter IV gleans insights from the case of Northern Ireland’s peace
process. But for our considerations of Peace-through-Empathy at the present moment, we
are going to have to start with some sense of what exactly empathy is. What do we mean
by “empathy?” In fact, I cannot yet give a deep account of what exactly we mean by
empathy as that is something that this dissertation develops over the next two chapters (II
and III), but for the sake of having something solid to work with at the moment I will
problems that do not fit well within the relatively narrow system of thought that realism had created within
the 20th century, much of what I have just characterized as the dominant trends is certainly being
challenged. Nonetheless, even within social constructivist literature these tendencies often remain.
43
perform a sleight of authorial magic and pull forth a very short characterization of
empathy from those later chapters. Empathy needs to be understood in terms of two
aspects (and why this is so will be made more apparent in the next chapter, though I can
assure you there is good reason for it). The first is that empathy denotes a capacity to
share in the subjective experience of the other, which itself comes in two forms: an
“imagining” of the other’s perspective as if we were experiencing it, though knowing that
we are not; and an actual sharing of the feelings of others. The second aspect is an
emotional identification with the other such that we feel to some degree “at one” with the
other, from a very thin level of basic, common humanity (even if sharing nothing else in
common) to a very strong integration in, for example, kin groups or identity groups. Let
us say that empathy is present when either of these effects is occurring.
Now, for the rest of this section, let’s consider some hints as to how empathy
might matter for peacemaking at three levels of analysis, which are similar to Waltz’s
though not exactly the same: the level of individual psychologies and interpersonal, face-
to-face relations; the level of society; and international behaviours and institutions.31
Psychological and Interpersonal
Despite the fact that much mainstream political scholarship has not considered
the concept of empathy, more interdisciplinary, related “specialty” fields that consider
peace and conflict, like peace studies, conflict resolution and peace psychology, have.
Indeed, perhaps because conflict resolution thinkers recognize that (and work in
situations where) conflicts are actually often resolved in face-to-face meetings (for
31
Why do I say these are not the same as Waltz’s three levels? For Waltz, individual decisions at the
international level are still “first level,’ because they are factors of psychology, even if they are affecting
international relations. My three levels are more simplistic. Here we will just look at politics at the levels of
person-to-person, broad national society and international.
44
example, elite peace talks), empathy is a factor of importance for a number of conflict
resolution thinkers. Outside of political scholarship and practice, the essential role of
empathy in conflict resolution is hardly controversial or novel. Goldberg’s recent survey
of conflict resolution practitioners found that “The overwhelming response given by
more than 75 percent of the respondents was that the key element in successful mediation
is developing rapport with the parties.” Moreover, “If the mediator is unable to develop
rapport, it matters little how proficient the mediator is with the many tactics that are
espoused in the mediation literature and taught in mediator training — success in
bringing disputing parties to a resolution of their dispute is unlikely.” And what does
Goldberg mean exactly by “rapport?” He tells us: “A relationship of understanding,
empathy and trust” (Goldberg, 2005). Practitioner and scholar Marc Gopin writes, “The
critical importance of empathy… cannot be overestimated… [it] generates a common
bond between enemies that has often led, with subtle, careful guidance, to more honest
discussion and relationship building” (Gopin, 2000, p). Avruch has noted that in many
conflict resolution situations that involve combatants from different cultures and/or with
different languages it is very easy for the parties to misinterpret or misunderstand the
interests of the other and the intentions and meanings behind communications. Thus the
ability to take the perspective of the other and his culture becomes absolutely crucial for
conflict resolution in this situation (Avruch et al., 1991; Avruch and Black, 1993).
John Paul Lederach, like many conflict resolution authors, is both a scholar and a
practitioner. In his own work, as in his literature, Lederach continually emphasizes the
human, intimate, personal dimension of effective conflict resolution work, and he often
highlights the way combatants will move away from the motivation to violence and
45
towards halting aggression and enacting reconciliation as they experience moments of
more clearly seeing the other’s perspective. Here is only one example found in
Lederach’s work, involving two groups (the Konkombas and the Dagombas) in northern
Ghana:
In one of their early encounters those involved in the mediation
observed a story that created a transformation in the process and in the
relationship between these two groups and therefore changed the
fundamental direction of the conflict. In the first face-to-face meeting of the
two groups, the Dagomba paramount chief arrived in full regalia and with his
entourage. There were designated persons who carried his staff and sat at his
feet. In the opening moments of the meeting he assumed a sharp attitude of
superiority. Taking the role of the paramount, he wasted no time in
denigrating and verbally attacking the Konkombas. Given the traditions and
rights afforded the highest chiefs, little could be done except to let the chief
speak.
“Look at them,” he said, addressing himself more to the mediators
than to the Konkombas. “Who are they even that I should be in this room
with them? They do not even have a chief. Who am I to talk to? They are a
people with nothing who have just come from the fields and now attack us in
our own villages. They could have at least brought an old man. But look!
They are just boys born yesterday.”
The atmosphere was devastating. Making matters worse, the
mediators felt in a very difficult bind. Culturally, when facing a chief, there
was nothing they could do to control the process. You simply cannot tell a
chief to watch his mouth or follow ground rules, particularly in the presence
of his entourage and his enemies. It appeared as if the whole endeavor may
have been misconceived and was reaching a breaking point.
The Konkomba spokesman asked to respond. Fearing the worst, the
mediators provided him space to speak. The young man turned and
addressed himself to the chief of the enemy tribe: “You are perfectly right,
Father, we do not have a chief. We have not had one for years. You will not
even recognize the man we have chosen to be our chief. And this has been
our problem. The reason we react, the reason our people go on rampages
and fights resulting in all these killings and destruction arises from this fact.
We do not have what you have. It really is not about the town, or the land, or
that market guinea fowl. I beg you, listen to my words, Father. I am calling
you Father because we do not wish to disrespect you. You are a great chief.
But what is left to us? Do we have no other means but this violence to
receive in return the one thing we seek, to be respected and to establish our
own chief who could indeed speak with you, rather than having a young boy
do it on our behalf?”
The attitude, tone of voice, and use of the word Father spoken by the young
Konkomba man apparently so affected the chief that he sat for a moment
46
without response. When finally he spoke, he did so with a changed voice,
addressing himself directly to the young man rather than to the mediators: “I
had come to put your people in your place. But now I feel only shame.
Though I insulted your people, you still called me Father. It is you who
speaks with wisdom, and me who has not seen the truth.
What you have said is true. We who are chiefly have always looked down on
you because you have no chief, but we have not understood the denigration
you suffered. I beg you, my son, to forgive me.
At this point the younger Konkomba man stood, walked to the chief,
then knelt and gripped his lower leg, a sign of deep respect. He vocalized a
single and audible “Na-a,” a word of affirmation and acceptance. Those
attending the session reported that the room was electrified, charged with
high feeling and emotion. It was by no means the end of the problems or
disagreements, but something happened in that moment that created an
impact on everything that followed. The possibility of change away from
century-long cycles of violence began and perhaps the seeds that avoided
what could have been a full-blown Ghanaian civil war were planted in that
moment (Lederach, 2005, p 9-10).
Gandhi similarly emphasized the role of empathy in peacemaking. As I mentioned
earlier, Gandhi believed that conflict resolution and peace arise when concern for the
other is engendered, and he felt that those committed to conflict resolution and peace
should transform themselves into “the change [they] want to see in the world” by
practicing satyagraha – a commitment to “truth and love.” A crucial component of
training to practice satyagraha essentially involved engendering empathy for others. In
Gandhi’s life he established ashrams throughout India, which he named Tolstoy Farms
after the Christian pacifist Leo Tolstoy, in which followers were to learn satyagraha. In
the context of Gandhi’s India key conflicts were along sectarian lines, and to engender
satyagraha in his followers “Gandhi combined religious discipline, pluralism and conflict
resolution. Religious fasting and dietary restrictions were experienced on Gandhi’s
Tolstoy Farms as a means of promoting mutual respect and tolerance, as each religious
community member – be he Parsi, Hindu, Christian, Jewish or Muslim – would aid others
in observance of the discipline of their respective tradition” (Gopin, 2000, p 23). Here
47
Gandhi literally placed his followers into the experience of the other by having them
actively live through each other’s religious rituals. In this Gandhi’s followers came to
identify, understand and accept not only the specific others on the Tolstoy farms, but also
their religions, ways of life and, by extensions, the many other persons throughout
broader society that adhere to them.
Some IR scholars may suggest that these examples are generally not indicative of
the sorts of conflicts IR scholars today generally deal with. It might be suggested that
tribal conflicts in contemporary Africa or Gandhi’s India represent less modern, perhaps
less bureaucratized and more immediately personal examples of conflict that
contemporary IR scholars tend to concern themselves with. However, as many other IR
thinkers will agree to, particularly since the end of the Cold War, both IR scholarship and
the international community have turned their attentions away from a relatively narrow
focus on the possibility of major power conflicts and have become more attentive to what
Kaldor characterized as “new wars” (Kaldor, 1999) and their destabilizing effects.
Moreover, similar core insights as Lederach’s and Gandhi’s have been the foundation for
a school of thought in conflict resolution involving thinker-practitioners such as John
Burton, Herbert Kelman, Edward Azar and Ronald Fisher (Fisher, 1997)32 which has
been applied to conflicts that are certainly prevalent amongst the minds of contemporary
international thinkers and practitioners, such as the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and the
conflict in Cyprus. The Interactive Conflict Resolution (ICR) approach, as it is called,
involves academic workshop-organizers and facilitators “bring[ing] together unofficial
representatives of the parties to a conflict for informal, off-the-record meetings to analyze
32
In fact, Fisher (1997) is an excellent introductory yet thorough account of this school of conflict
resolution. See also Stephan and Finlay (1999), Fisher (1994), Burton (1986, 1987, 1990); Kelman (1996,
1990).
48
the conflict as a shared problem to generate new approaches to its resolution. These
workshops are not intended as a substitute for official diplomacy, but as a complement;
they typically take place in the background and, if successful, can feed new ideas into
official negotiations” (Babbitt and D’Estrée, 1996, p 521). Kelman, who ran ICR
workshops in Israel and Palestine for years explains “Workshops are designed to enable
the parties to explore each other’s perspective and, through a joint process of creative
problem-solving, to generate new ideas for mutually satisfying solutions to their conflict”
(Kelman, 1996, p 501). Saunders describes in detail how the basic principle of empathy-
inducement seen in the previous examples from Lederach and Gandhi is at the heart of
ICR workshops.
The approach is distinguished most clearly by its differences from
formal mediation and negotiation. The talk is different. It is wider ranging.
Participants speak only for themselves—not under instruction from
government or other political authority. They are free to explore a broad
range of ideas that they come to believe—as a result of listening to each
other—are important. Often these are ideas that underlie or reach beyond
present relationships. As participants exchange ideas, the talk is increasingly
characterized by its interactive quality—that is, they gradually learn to talk,
think, and work together on problems and relationships of importance to all in
the group rather than only exchanging formal positions on agreed agenda
items…
Rather than focusing primarily on agenda issues and the need to write
an agreement, participants explore their overall relationship. They examine
their own human needs in relation to the needs of the other group. While
participants in unofficial dialogue reflect the experience, feelings, and views
of their own communities, their purpose in dialogue is to absorb the other
party’s perspective—not to force their own. Participants put themselves, to
the extent possible, in the minds of the adversary to understand what he or
she needs in order to change the relationship. Rather than defending their
own interests alone, they may gain respect for the others’ experience,
feelings, and needs. They may experience change in themselves that can seem
to bring them closer to the adversary. In a negotiation each side must claim
to have defended its group’s interests even where compromise has been
necessary.
The product is different. Rather than aiming to produce a written
agreement, the purpose is to generate insight, refocus perspective, redefine
problems. Rather than seeking solutions, the hope is to shape new
49
frameworks within which to tackle problems, change attitudes, alter
relationships. (Saunders, 2000, p 255-6).
Important to note, ICR is a process that involves the whole psychology of its participants,
thoughts and emotions, and it deals in the intimate and the humane. In this there appears
to be an undeniable psychotherapeutic aspect to it. Saunders writes, “Participants will
speak from their hearts as well as their minds. Because they need to speak about the
feelings and relationships behind specific problems… [T]he qualities that seem essential [
to moderate an ICR workshop] underscore the focus of the process on the human
dimension of the conflict: sensitivity to the human dimension of problems—what
participants as human beings really need, why people hurt and feel victimized, why
people may be understandably angry and intransigent—and the ability to relate to
participants on that level” (Saunders, 2000, p 260-1).
The IR thinker’s response may be to question what these workshops have to offer
beyond improving interpersonal relations amongst a small group of select individuals?
Harold Saunders was a member of the US negotiation team on Israel/Palestine until 1981,
during which time Kelman and his associates were busy conducting ICR workshops in
Israel/Palestine. Saunders recalls “During the 1970s we in the government paid only
minimal attention to a slowly burgeoning series of workshops between Arabs and Israelis
outside government… We focused on the official peace process” (Saunders, 2000, p
254). But eventually Saunders decided that the interactive conflict resolution efforts
going on in parallel with the “official” peace process of high-level political elites was not
just supplemental but vital for any success that was had in the region. “In the 1980s the
seminars, workshops, symposia, and dialogues proliferated. …I would hypothesize that
these countless interactions over two decades deserved a significant share of the credit
50
when Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)
Chairman Yasser Arafat shook hands on the White House lawn in 1993” (p 254). But on
what grounds does Saunders think these workshops have contributed to movement
towards peace in Israel/Palestine? Saunders suggests many points. Politicians often feel
safe in proceeding only so far in peace negotiations as their constituents and
representatives impress upon them that they are prepared for, and ICR workshops help
change perspectives and feelings in society to help create a general sentiment for peace
and change in society. Also, ICR can honestly address potential impasse-creating issues
that become taboo at the more professional level and cannot be dealt with by elites.
Further, peace treaties and legal agreements do not in themselves heal fractured
relationships. ICR helps with peacebuilding at the societal level (Saunders, 2000).
Society
This last point brings us to our second level of analysis: society. Richmond
documents how ICR thinkers and practitioners belong to a small movement that began in
the mid-20th century and turned ultimately into the disciplines of peace studies and
conflict resolution theory, as well as practical manifestations like ICR (Richmond, 2002,
pp 75-104). In a world that had been dominated by thinking about peace in terms of elite-
level politics and an absence of violence between states, one of the fundamental shifts in
this generation’s way of thinking about peace was to say that peace requires transforming
the conditions in society that tend to conflict into conditions that tend to peace and non-
conflictual relationships, including psychological, economic and social conditions. The
suggestion was that transformations at the societal level would decrease motivation for
conflict and perceived legitimacy of the conflict, having what Richmond refers to as a
51
“trickle up” effect into the more elite levels of politicians and institutions (Richmond,
2002). This thinking spawned the notion of peace processes occurring at multiple levels
in society and “multitrack diplomacy,” with Diamond and McDonald ultimately
proposing nine tracks for a peace process to be conducted upon, only the first of which
being elite-level negotiations (Diamond and McDonald, 1991).
I’ve already detailed how Saunders suggests that empathy-oriented ICR
workshops can play an important role in influencing elite-level conflict resolution
processes. But what about building peace after conflict is ceased? That is, is there any
reason to suggest empathy may be important for successful reconciliation? Montville has
argued for decades of the importance for a greater emphasis on the process of conflict
resolution as a process of psychosocial healing. He writes, “There is a strong case to be
made that the sense of victimhood can only be relieved through the experience of
profound psychological processes by the victim group as a whole. Here there would seem
to be powerful linkages between the acts of oppressors acknowledging their wrongs and
asking forgiveness for them, the victims forgiving the aggressors --- and we must note
that victims may also have committed dehumanizing crimes of violence --- and finally
both sides completing a mourning of their losses so that a new equilibrium and a true
sense of mutual respect and security can describe the relationship” (Montville, 1991, p
181). Jeong writes: “By producing attitudinal and cognitive changes as well as rekindling
positive emotions, the interactive conflict resolution approach can enact the elements of
reconciliation such as acknowledgement, apology, forgiveness and assurance…” (Jeong,
1999, p 35). Fisher writes: “[W]e now see the essential role of mutual forgiveness in
achieving reconciliation between long time enemies… Henderson (1996) provides a
52
variety of case descriptions of internal and international conflict in which forgiveness and
reconciliation were significant factors in resolution… In many cases, religious actors and
a spiritual element have played an important role in fostering reconciliation and
resolution (Johnston and Sampson, 1994)” (Fisher, 1999, p 100).
The intuitive sense is that empathy is playing an important role for such
processes, bound up with notions such as “forgiveness” and “apology.” One initial hint
that it is playing a role comes form Long and Brecke (2003), who recently conducted a
study of ten cases that had experienced reconciliation efforts after a conflict. In concert
with a burgeoning trend amongst political scientists to take McDermott’s advice that
political science needs to learn from recent important advances in psychology and the
neurosciences regarding the subject of emotion (McDermott, 2004b) Long and Brecke’s
basic interest was to determine which model for explaining conflict resolution best
explained what they saw in their ten cases: the standard rational choice model of selfish
rational actors pursuing rational interests, or a model suggested by evolutionary biology,
which assumes the individual is a “cognitive-emotive” actor33 and that individuals
respond to emotional factors during efforts at conflict resolution and reconciliation due to
patterns of conflict resolution established in our evolutionary make-up eons ago.34 The
thesis of their work, at least where it applies to intra-societal reconciliation,35 sides with a
model that assumes “reconciliation occurs when shame and anger that often lead to
aggression or a desire for revenge are superceded by a different emotive and cognitive
33
The question of cognition, emotion, and how we should understand the interaction of the two, and what it
means for our psychologies and how political scientists should think about the subject (or at least how they
should think about empathy in the subject) is something we will address later in the dissertation.
34
Their cases are: Columbia, North Yemen, Chad, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, El Salvador, Mozambique,
South Africa, Honduras, (Long and Brecke, 2003, p 67). Of this list, Long and Brecke count the first three
cases as cases of recidivism and the last seven as cases that do not return to conflict.
35
Interestingly, and against my general thesis, they found that escalation in international conflict is still best
modeled by the standard rational choice.
53
path – empathy and desire for affiliation” (Long and Brecke, 2003, p 28). Of Long and
Brecke’s ten cases, for seven of them (70%) “the combatants reached a peaceful solution
that produced lasting social order and did not devolve into further conflict” (Long and
Brecke, 2003, p 148). The defining difference: “Most important, those countries that
reconciled successfully, that is, restored lasting social order, did so through… [a]n untidy,
seemingly idiosyncratic but undeniably patterned process of national forgiveness… The
three instances of reconciliations confined to a negotiated bargain – Columbia, Yemen,
Chad – did not lead to long-term restoration of peace” (p 65).36 The “forgiveness”
process for Long and Brecke was comprised of three components: publicly recognizing
the harm done to others (truth telling and apology); imperfect and incomplete efforts at
retributive justice; and, a process of individuals in society redefining or “reframing”
others that allows individuals to move past the hurts and resentments of the conflict.
While the first process (publicly recognizing harms) may have a degree of empathy to it,
and while the second is certainly a Peace-through-Justice approach, this last crucial
process is, for the authors, all about empathy. Reframing involves “separating the
wrongdoer from the wrong which has been committed… [It] does not do away with the
wrong itself, not does it deny the wrongdoer’s responsibility for it, but it allows us to
regard the wrongdoer in a more complete, more detailed, more rounded way… [T]his
36
I am indebted to Thomas Biersteker for bring up the very important point that most of Long and Brecke’s
cases represent societies of a particularly strong Christian influence. Long and Brecke describe the
successful reconciliation processes of processes of forgiveness. Gopin, a Rabbi and conflict resolution
practitioner, has argued that forgiveness is a tactic for conflict resolution that is particular to the Christian
tradition, while it is much less useful or befitting, and indeed may even be harmful, in other religious
contexts, such as Jewish and Muslim, where the religion has no similar historic theological emphasis on
forgiveness (Gopin, 2000).
54
phase is often described in emotive terms as an ‘empathetic understanding” of the other”
(p 30).37
Thinking of peacemaking at the level of society brings us to ask, as has Elise
Boulding, whether there is a culture of peace that socializes society’s individuals into
norms of peace. Boulding finds that genuine peace cultures are truly rare, but one
outstanding example is the culture of peace created in various religions: “In the holy
peace culture… love is the prime mover of all behavior… The weak are looked after and
the trouble-makers reconciled” (Boulding, 1998). Ruddick does not think explicitly in
terms of a peace “culture,” nor on religious grounds, but she does think of a feminine,
“ethic” of maternal care and maternal work that is inextricably bound with motivations
for social peace, with the implicit suggestion that the spread of this ethic could be a force
for socialization into nonviolent behaviour. “The contradiction between violence and
maternal work is evident. Wherever there are wars, children are hurt, hungry and
frightened; homes are burned, crops destroyed, families scattered. The daily practice and
long-term aim of women’s caring labour are threatened. Though mothers may be warlike,
war is their enemy. Where there is peace, mothers engage in work that requires
nonviolent battle, fighting while resisting the temptation to assault or abandon
opponents… Although mothers may not be peaceful, “peace” is their business… Peace
itself can be conceived for both activists and mothers as depending on a connective
“love” that still struggles “toward definition, grow[s] out of confusion, knowledge,
misery and necessity”… The promise of maternal peacefulness lies in the work and loves
37
Another amazing aspect to this case study is that “most civil conflicts do not result in restoration of
enduring social order: the rate of recidivist conflict in nonreconciled cases exceeded 90 percent.” Yet in
Long and Brecke’s ten cases of postconflict reconciliation only 30% slipped back into conflict – and again
they were the cases without emotion-oriented processes.
55
to which mothers are committed… It is this potentially painful and lively contradiction
between war and mothering as human activities that might motivate individual mothers to
resist” (Ruddick, 1989, p 220-1).
The International
With the previous two levels of analysis – the interpersonal and the broadly
societal – it is not hard to accept that human relations can be of an interconnected enough
nature that empathy may feature or play an important role. Many IR thinkers have
assumed that when we are speaking of the international level the situation is different.
For many IR thinkers the actors we need be most concerned about are primarily corporate
entities (such as the state): synthetic conglomerations of many individuals that have
different internal decision-making dynamics – more bureaucratic and tending to
rationality - than do individuals. It is perhaps for this reason that IR scholars have been
content to assume political actors at the international level can be treated as rational,
egoistic units, far less complex in their “psychological” make-up than real human beings
(and this is true of realists primarily concerned with states, liberals who accept non-state
actors, and generally amongst social constructivists as well38). As such it should probably
not surprise us that we have not heard very much about empathy as a significant factor
for IR.
38
Social constructivists do not accept that political subjects must b e defined as such, but they tend to
accept that in contemporary times political actors (i.e., states) do tend to act as if rational and egoistic, even
if, unlike with realists, subjects are open to the influence of norms and ideas. Alex Wendt has gone out of
his way to explain that, in his view of social constructivism, states may intersubjectively share norms and
societal beliefs (regarding international society), and those norms and beliefs may shape the way actors see
themselves and what their interests are, but this does not mean that we cannot still conceive of the state as a
rational actor. Nor is an international realm of shared norms and beliefs necessarily incompatible with the
idea of entirely egoistic states (Wendt, 1999). Indeed, as we have already seen, Morgenthau, the classic
realist, accepted the important role of norms on international behaviour and this did not change his
ontological view of states and the international realm.
56
Nonetheless, even within existing IR literature there are places to point to that
either explicitly argue or strongly suggest the possibility that Empathy is an important
factor for peace (or at least the reduction of violent conflict in the world). I’d like us to
review three: literature from Ralph K. White and his adherents, which has adopted what
is sometimes called the “phenomenological” approach to IR and applied it to questions of
how to reduce international conflict; literature on the idea of security communities; and
literature on the ideas of friendship and the image of the “friend” as opposed to the image
of the “enemy.” Of these three sets of literatures, literature from White and literature on
friendship explicit advocates a Peace-through-Empathy approach. Security communities
literature and literature on the image of the enemy tends to avoid taking up direct
questions about the role of empathy which they naturally suggests. That being said, one
commonality amongst all of these literatures is that they advocate, or suggest, Peace-
through-Empathy approaches that work within the international status quo. There may
also be moments in current IR literature that suggests the possibility of thinking about
Empathy as having a transformational effect upon the international realm that may
improve the chances of global peace.
Let’s begin with a small section of IR literature centered on the figures of Ralph
K. White and a growing host of adherents, including former US Secretary of State Robert
S McNamara (White, 1984, 1991; McNamara, 1999; McNamara and Blight, 2001; Blight
and lang, 2004; Schwebel, 2006; Smith, 2002, 2004).39 White’s work draws heavily on at
least two ideas that arose from standard Cold War-era IR: 1) the notion of misperception
(Jervis, 1976), and; 2) the idea of the image of the other. Both of these points were
39
A 2004 special edition of the journal Peace and Conflict focuses on the work of White. See Peace and
Conflict: Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 10, no. 4, 2004.
57
manifest out of a more psychology-oriented approach to studying IR than was dominant.
Yet the arguments around these two points are well known, generally respected and
ultimately lead, as White points out, to the possibility of empathy as a corrective to the
problems they may lead to.
The literature from which these two points stem has been described as taking a
“phenomenological” approach (Hermann, 2002). The term is apt in that questions of
phenomenology are questions of the perception or experience of subjective
consciousness, as opposed to questions of what actually is, objectively, or what has
actually objectively occurred (which are questions of ontology).40 The dominant strands
of IR thought have generally been what Herrmann calls “objectivist.” We see this most
explicitly in realism, both classic and neorealist, where it is believed that ultimately the
behaviour of international actors is determined by the objective facts about a larger
structure of power (the distribution of power within the fact of anarchy) and that those
facts can be deciphered and understood the same way science has understood the laws of
physics. That is to say, just as objective (and immutable) laws of physics determine the
behaviours of molecules and rain clouds, so too do the objective laws of international
power distribution ultimately determine the behaviour of states. Thus the subjective,
particular experiences and viewpoints of particular actors (the particular perceptions of,
say, the Chinese, Nigerian or US states, or at least individuals acting on a state’s behalf)
ultimately does not effect the important outcomes in international politics, and so
40
Traditionally most if not all questions of philosophy have been seen as possible to categorize into one of
five types: ontology (what is; questions of being); epistemology (what or how do we know); ethics (what
should we do); logic (what is valid and formally correct); and phenomenology (questions of the (subjective)
experience of consciousness). We might distinguish “ontology” and “phenomenology” as such. The
ontologist asks, “what is that?” The phenomenologist asks, “how do I experience that?” For thinkers who
may believe we can never know the objective or final truth about the true qualities or being of a thing, and
we can only ever know a thing as we perceive it or as we experience it, then everything is ultimately a
question of phenomenology.
58
scholars can, as we have already seen Morgenthau suggest, all be considered as alike, the
way in many economics models individual consumers are treated as basically alike.41
However some thinkers saw flaws in this “objectivist” approach and felt
international affairs can be better understood and rational choice models more effective
when taking the “phenomenological’ approach and recognizing that international actors
make decisions (and thereby behave) not according to the realities of power but
according to how they perceive the realities of power, and crucially, that the perceptions
of different actors will always differ in the international realm, so that “an actor’s action
will follow from the actor’s perceptions not the scholar’s perception, no matter how
objective scholars claim their view to be” (Herrmann, 2002, p 120). Jervis writes,
“Evidence available to decision-makers almost always permits several interpretations. It
should be noted that there are cases of visual perception in which different stimuli can
produce exactly the same pattern on an observer’s retina. Thus, for an observer using one
eye the same pattern would be produced by a sphere the size of a golf ball which was
close to the observer, by a baseball-sized sphere that was further away, or by a
basketball-sized sphere still further away. Without other clues, the observer cannot
possibly determine which of these stimuli he is presented with, and we would not want to
call his incorrect perceptions examples of distortion. Such cases, relatively rare in visual
41
See Herrmann (2002) on this point for further elaboration. His discussion of the “objectivist” and
“phenomenological” approach is quite good. The more subtle claim of the “objectivists” is actually that,
when explaining or predicting international behaviour and events, we can do so as if all actors were
determined by the objective realities of power because ultimately these factors are strong enough that even
given the messy process of decision-making amongst human beings that eventually gives birth to foreign
policy, policy will inevitably look like what an accurate reading of the objective facts about power would
predict. Herrmann writes, “Realists accept that states may misread the situation and make mistakes. The
objectivist distribution of power, however, is assumed to determine the outcome of these actions. In
addition, some realists add a social Darwinian notion, suggesting that actors that misread the situation are
over time eliminated from the system, leaving actors that can be assumed mostly to understand objective
reality” (Herrmann, 2002, p 120).
59
perception, are frequent in international relations. The evidence available to decision-
makers is almost always ambiguous since accurate clues to others’ intentions are
surrounded by noise and deception. In most cases, no matter how long, deeply, and
“objectively” the evidence is analyzed, people can differ in their interpretations, and there
are no general rules to indicate who is correct” (Jervis, 1968, p 460).
In order to understand or predict the behaviour or goals of other international
actors foreign policy experts need to understand something about the subjective
perspective of the other. From this insight spawned a literature in IR that moved away
from realism’s strongly structuralist streak and became concerned with understanding the
psychologies and rationales of decision-makers, though they did not drop assumptions
about rational egoistic actors pursuing interests in an environment of power.42 For an
author like Jervis, then, the perspective-taking aspect of empathy is actually what is
required to be a successful nation in something like a realist international realm. He
writes, “If he is to decide intelligently how to act, a person must predict how others will
behave… [I]f the person believes that the other’s behaviour is determined by the situation
in which the other is placed (i.e. all actors behave the same way under the same
circumstances), then he can predict what the other will do if he knows what the external
42
Reviewing the literature Herrmann (2002) writes: “Scholars therefore turned to the study of foreign
policy decision-making (Hudson, 1995) and in particular to the identification of the cognitive lenses
through which actors understood the world. Richard Snyder, H. W. Bruck and Burton Sapin (1962) offered
a framework identifying key concepts that could be used to describe such a mediated decision-making
process, including the values, mindsets and domestic players that comprise them. Kenneth Boulding (1956,
1959) meantime, argued that the cognitive images leaders have of other countries guide choices about
action and that the two most important components of this image are perceptions of the threat or
opportunity the other country poses and the perception of the other country’s capability. He argued that by
identifying the factors empirically, foreign policy action could be explained. In the 1970s, Michael Brecher
(1972) offered an elaborate conception framework with which to study Israeli decision-making… Robert
Jervis (1976) illustrated how a phenomenological perspective modified international relations theory and
drew attention to the advances made in social psychology. He identified substantive misperceptions and a
host of common perceptual tendencies that could guide the empirical study of world-views and beliefs.
Robert Axelrod (1976) proposed a strategy for mapping an actor’s cognition, including the actor’s central
concepts, objectives and casual beliefs.”
60
stimulus will be. He need only imagine what he would do in given circumstances to know
what the other will do if those conditions arise. But if he believes [otherwise], he will
need to look inside the state, to its domestic policy, its bureaucratic bargaining, or [its]
preferences” (Jervis, 1976, p 32). To not do so is to invite misperception. When we
misperceive, thinks Jervis, we react to an other in ways that we think will achieve a
certain aim but discover that the aim we believed we would achieve is not what actually
occurs because the other does not react to us in ways we expected, or because the
situation was not as we had originally read it. Jervis writes, “[C]ases like the United
States’ misestimation of the political climate in Cuba in April 1961, which may seem at
first glance to have been instances of wishful thinking, may instead be more adequately
explained by the [misperceiving] theories held by the decision-makers (e.g., Communist
governments are unpopular)” (Jervis, 1968, p 461).
Discourse on the image arose as early as the 1950’s with Kenneth Boulding
arguing that actors do not react to objective levels of threat but to perceived levels of
threat. Thus actors may feel insecure and engage in violence out of misperception of
great threat where perhaps there was comparably little. Importantly, Boulding theorized
that an enormous influence in how decision-makers perceive threat from others has to do
with the “image” of the other held within the minds of decision-makers. Decision-makers
that hold an image of another state as an irrational enemy, for example, are more likely to
perceive a threat from that state than if they did not hold such an image (Boulding, 1956).
White and authors like McNamara and Blight have carried these insights into a
normative project aimed at reducing conflict in the world and have argued that “realistic
empathy” should be a cornerstone of foreign policy for correcting misperceptions and
61
images that cause animosity or fear of the other. For McNamara, had all sides of the mid-
20th century conflict in Vietnam been more attuned to the perspectives of each other
much of the bloodshed and escalation could have been avoided. In the late 1990s James
Blight and Brown University’s Watson Institute organized conferences that brought
together individuals from the US, Vietnam and China who were high ranking political or
military officials of each respective country during the time of the Vietnam war, and as
they discussed their perspectives of the war it emerged that each had held entirely
different views on each other’s understandings, intentions and motives, and on what was
actually transpiring in Vietnam in the 1960’s.43 McNamara, taking into account what he
learned from these conferences, now characterizes the Vietnam war as “a tragedy! We
believed that the North Vietnamese were merely doing the bidding of the Soviets and
Chinese, obsessed with spreading communism over all of southeast Asia. So we
discounted their nationalism and completely missed the point of the war, which was to
unify their country under Vietnamese leadership – not French, not Japanese, not Chinese
and certainly not American leadership.44 They, on the other hand, concluded that our
aims were those of these other colonial powers, and went to war to throw us out when, in
reality, we didn’t want to be there in the first place, except to prevent them from
spreading communism. There was approximately zero empathy on each side, no
understanding in Washington and Hanoi of the values and assumptions that were driving
the policies of their adversaries” (McNamara and Blight, 2001, pp 69-70).
43
The conferences were titled “Missed Opportunities” and were a part of James Blight and janet lang’s
ongoing Critical Oral Histories projects.
44
One important point that came out of the “Missed Opportunities” conferences was that the Americans
were primarily concerned with the “domino effect” of countries being assimilated into communism and so
saw the Vietnamese as pawns in a larger geopolitical struggle. The Vietnamese, on the other hand, saw the
Americans as just the latest in a long history of colonial masters attempting to imperialize Vietnam – the
Chinese, the Japanese, the French – and the Vietnamese saw the war very much as a war of national
unification and independence. Again, see McNamara (1999) or McNamara and Blight (2001).
62
But if the literature I have just discussed gives place to the more perspective-
taking aspect of empathy, what about the aspect of empathy involving identification with
others? Here again we do find possibilities, though I must wonder why more explicit
work on empathy is not being done regarding the examples I’m about to give, as the
possibilities for research in this area seems to me obvious and begging.
Security communities literature appears to rely heavily on factors that strike us,
intuitively, as strongly empathy-related (if not forms of empathy themselves). Indeed,
Karl Deutsch’s original ideas on the North Atlantic states (North America and Europe) as
a “security community” and on what creates and binds security communities are the
earliest important use of the identification aspect of empathy that I have found in 20th
century IR literature. Deutsch saw security communities as the answer to “The
fundamental problem of international politics and organization [which] is the creation of
conditions under which stable, peaceful relations among nation states are possible and
likely” (Deutsch, 2000, p 652). Deutsch defined a security community as “a group of
people [integrated in] a sense of community [and] a belief… that they have come to
agreement on at least this one point: that common social problems must and can be
resolved by processes of ‘peaceful change,’” (Deutsch, 1957, p 5) creating international
zones where at least interstate war has become unthinkable, at most both interstate and
civil war have become unthinkable. Deutsch’s vision of a security community
emphasized integration necessarily at two levels: the integration of political institutions
between nations, and; the recognition of shared values and a “sense of community,”
amongst the populace (not just the elites, but also the populace) of nations within a
security community, which Deutsch describes as “a matter of mutual sympathy and
63
loyalties; of “we-feeling,” trust, and mutual consideration; of partial identification in
terms of self-images and interests” (Deutsch, 1957, p 17). Deutsch stresses the
psychological nature of this mutual sympathy, sustained by effects of “psychological
role-taking,” and it only holds if it is genuinely felt: “Psychological acceptance of
community roles, however, must arise from individual experience, and even sustained
efforts at persuasion or indoctrination have only limited effects if they seem to clash with
the preponderance of actual experience” (Deutsch, 2000, p 655). Though, interestingly,
he also stipulates that for the psychological sense of mutual sympathy to coagulate into a
full-blown security community political institutions must be shaped to reflect and channel
that feeling into organized activities. Of the essential need for both political integration
and empathetic emotional identification Deutsch writes: “[T]here appears to be no case of
a security community which was established solely by the appearance of a sense of
community or by persuasion unaccompanied by the growth of institutions and
organizations which sustained the “we-feeling” and channeled it into activities of group
living; nor any security community which had only institutions and organizations but
none of the psychological processes operating in and through people” (Deutsch, 2000, p
655).
Unfortunately, Deutsch’s ideas about security communities were largely sidelined
within IR throughout the realism-dominated years of the Cold War, and were not revived
until social constructivism emerged in the post-Cold War era, particularly with social
constructivist authors Adler and Barnett’s (1998) who, it is generally recognized, took up
the idea and developed it with greater theoretical complexity. However, these authors
also bring to the theory a greater emphasis on Peace-through-Power and Peace-through-
64
Justice approaches, demoting the original focus on, if not the force of, empathy’s
contribution.
In Adler and Barnett the factors that we might see as most essential to the
cohesion of peaceful security communities - the “necessary conditions for dependable
expectations of peaceful change” amongst states – seem still to be empathy or empathy-
related, apparently situation the theory of security communities as a Peace-through-
Empathy approach. Yet as where with Deutsch it was very clear that we were to
understand these factors as functions of a psychological sense of empathy amongst the
populace of nations within a security community, channeled into political institutions,
Adler and Barnett gives us much less a sense of that. For Adler and Barnett security
communities are constructed in three stages, the stage of mutual trust and collective
identity being the last and essential stage, but one that is built towards via prior factor in
the first two stages. In the factors of Alder and Barnett’s first two stages – the factors that
create trust, collective identity and ultimate the peace and security of the community
itself – it is harder to find empathy at work. The first stage involves “technological
developments, an external threat that causes states to form alliances, the desire to reduce
mutual fear through security coordination, new interpretations of social reality,
transformations in economy, demographic and migration patterns, changes in the natural
environment…” (Adler and Barnett, 1998, p 38). Spurred by these factors, the second
stage involves “power,” “knowledge,” “liberalism and democracy,” “international
institutions” and “social learning.” Where in these factors might we find empathy
contributing significantly towards the peace of security communities? We might find it in
what Adler and Barnett term “new interpretations of social reality” or “social learning,”
65
both of which the authors are very vague on. The reader does get the sense from the
authors’ discussion of the “knowledge” variable that their impression of psychological
interactions and factors are that they are highly cognitive oriented. Adler and Barnett are
much less vague, and more focused, on those aspects of Power and Justice that see as
contributing to security communities. They suggest, for example, a powerful, perhaps
even hegemonic, actor shaping norms and constraining other actors’ choices can work to
bind security communities as nations rally beneath the hegemons power and influence.
They also emphasize the role of liberal democracy as an agent for binding nations
together in a sense of collective identity and trust. Indeed, Russett has a chapter in their
book where he explains that the “Kantian peace” is what security communities are all
about (Russet, 1998). Tusicisny notes that much of the social constructivist literature on
security communities has focused on international elites, turning away from Deutsch’s
original concern for a sense of “we-feeling” amongst the general populace, and that these
authors have emphasized liberal international organizations and the democratic peace as
conditions for security communities (Tusicisny, 2007).
Yet Tusicisny also points out that “international organizations are now
burgeoning in all corners of the world [and so the] institutional prerequisite seems to be
satisfied in most regions. However, security community building has not proven to be
equally successful in all regions” (p 428). Other variables are at work here, perhaps
fundamentally. Tusicisny recently studied four security communities, “build[ing] upon
Deutsch’s original concept” by “turn[ing] attention to common values held in society”
rather than among political elites. In that study he finds that the values of “interpersonal
trust” and “ tolerance of out-groups” appear to be the most important factors for citizens
66
within security communities, while “the prominent role of democracy and civil society,
usually just assumed by most of the literature about security communities, was not
confirmed by my empirical analysis. Contrary to Adler’s (1992) theoretical claim, liberal
values are not a necessary condition of security community building, at least not at the
societal level” (p 441). Here then we have the possibility that empathy may indeed be
doing a lot of the work in binding security communities, and may be a factor that
deserves greater focus among IR thinkers and greater attention amongst policy-makers.
This talk of mutual identification makes us wonder about the concept of
“friendship” in IR. Returning to the discourse on the “image” of the other first raised by
Boulding, Stein and other authors have worked on the question of how nations and
individuals in nations come to adopt within their (collective) understandings and feelings
an image of another nation as the “enemy” (Stein, 2001; Mack, 1990; H. Stein, 1990,
Moses, 1990). “Embedded enemy images are a serious obstacle to conflict management,
routinization, reduction, or resolution,” Stein writes. “Once formed, enemy images tend
to become deeply rooted and resistant to change, even when one adversary attempts to
signal a change in intent to another. The images themselves then perpetuate and intensify
the conflict” (Stein, 2001, 93). Important to note for later, Stein sees these images as they
solidify within shared notions of a group as becoming stereotypes and caricatures of the
other. Of course, as even Carl Schmitt realized, any discussion of the “enemy” in politics
naturally leads to wonder about its antipode, the “friend.”45 Wendt points out, “relative to
“enemy,” the concept of “friend” is undertheorized in social theory, and especially in IR,
where substantial literature exists on enemy images but little on friend images, on
45
Schmitt, of course, rejected the notion of friendship as a serious influence in politics, seeing enemy-
recognition as the heart of political activity (Schmitt, 1976).
67
enduring rivalries but little on enduring friendships, on the causes of war but little on the
causes of peace, and so on” (Wendt, 1999, p 298). Stein is, of course, concerned about
images of the enemy because she wants to know how to contradict them and, especially,
their potential violent consequences. Yet prescriptions for how to stave off the
construction of the image of the enemy are not necessarily prescriptions for, or
instructions for how to, construct images of friendship, and again we see a golden
opportunity to think about an empathy-related theme largely left hanging in international
relations scholarship.
That being said, with some digging an inquirer can find interesting thoughts on
friendship here and there. Here philosopher Mary Midgely considers friendship as one of
the many factors that converge to shape a general deterrence from war in international
reality.
“I think there is real reason to suppose that between nations… intelligible
and useful deterrence can only work within the context of some sense of
fellowship resting on shared basic aims, which – in spite of very wide local
differences – makes it possible to understand and sympathize with the
motives of the other opponent…
Pursuing for a moment the case of equal and independent nations, we can
put the question why, when they disagree, war does not continually break
out between them? ...The most obvious way to answer this does not begin by
listing the armies and the hardware, but by asking why it should [break
out]… Nations are not sealed boxes, isolated from each other except for the
conduct of disputes. Their boundaries are often arbitrary and inconvenient
for current purposes; all sorts of activities go on across them. Unless
deliberately prevented, citizens of different states tend strongly to travel
and trade together, and to engage in all sorts of activities, ranging from
sports to religion, which ignore political frontiers… When therefore a cause
of disputes arises, it has to be weighed against the drawbacks [of going
against these cross-border fellowships]. Even to threaten violently is
something of a gamble; one may drive lasting friendship away elsewhere.
Accordingly, though armed forces and the power of using them are a
regular element in such disputes, the threat of using them forms only one
part in a whole complex web of bonds, propositions, offers, half-offers,
threats and promises, out of which, as a rule, some sort of tolerable
understanding emerges” (Midgley, 1983, p 24).
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In a recent special edition on friendship in a European IR journal Oelsner blames
the previous dominance of realism for the ill acceptance of the concept of friendship and
she sees social constructivism and particularly security communities literature as opening
the possibility of recognizing deep importance in the concept for the international realm.
Indeed, quite contrary to the empathy-laden picture of security communities painted by
Deutsch, in realism international friendship is seen as a function of power. Rapoport
notes one characteristic of his “Peace Through Strength” category: “the enemy of my
enemy is my friend” (Rapoport, 1992). More, Oelsner quotes Wolfers: “most states most
of the time… maintain amical [sic] or inimical relations with others in the basis of
calculations of interest rather than in response to popular sentiments whether of gratitude
or resentment” (Oelsner, 2007, p 238). But Oelsner’s article pushes the question of how
mutual trust and security community bonds form in nations to a farther place than Adler
and Barnett do, moving the argument ever-closer to the basic acceptance of an empathetic
process of friend-creation that the theory itself seems inherently wanting to go to. In the
process of moving towards trust and a shared sense of community states will need to
“redefine [their] relationship” [which] means not just to reassess how one perceives the
other(s). Rather, it implies to simultaneously re-evaluate the vision one has both of the
other and of the self” (p 272). Here Oelsner is close to both Ralph White’s notion of
empathy as a correction of misperception and bad images (providing empathy is what we
use to “reassess how we perceive the other”) and the aspect of emotional identification.
Oelsner further writes: “The resort to social constructivist theory helps to
understand the process at work [in international friendship]” (p 272). Indeed, that the rise
of social constructivism in IR opens up possibilities for thinking about empathy in IR has
69
been a prominent theme in our discussions, from Adler and Barnett to Stein to Oelsner
(yet also with the recognition that most social constructivists do not seem interested to
pursue that theme). Social constructivist thought re-envisions the international realm as a
society where subjects (i.e., states) define their identities and their interests via a milieu
of intersubjectively held ideas, beliefs and norms in which they are inextricably
embedded. In this social constructivist thought opens up the possibility of not only
imagining the actor as something more than egoistic,46 and not only that empathy may
play an important factor in constructing the actor (in as much as we might think of
empathy as one aspect of the milieu of norms, ideas and beliefs47), but also that the
international social world may be to some degree constructed – or we might say
transformed - so as to construct international actors of the future along more empathy-
oriented lines.
Now let’s turn to the question of international transformation and make it the final
point in this section on Peace-through-Empathy. We can start with Alex Wendt, roundly
regarded as one of the main pioneering theorist of IR’s social constructivist school. An
important role for empathy has always been present in his work (and thus has always
been present in IR social constructivism). In a paper from 1994 he explains that collective
action problems are solved when actors (in his case, states) adopt collective interests.
46
As I noted earlier, Wendt is open on the possibility that a political actor (i.e., a state) may or may not be
egoistic, and says it all depends on how the social milieu constructs the actor. It is possible, he thinks, to
have an international culture (which he calls a Hobbesian culture) which looks like and shapes actors along
the lines realists have always envisioned, or it is possible to construct other possibilities (Wendt, 1999).
47
This is, in fact, a problem that I have with much social constructivism literature. Social constructivist
theories do appear to have a highly cognitive bent and, just as Crawford (2000) says of realism, does not do
well with theorizing the role of emotion. If political thinkers have been learning anything from recent
advances in neuroscience, after all, it is that our assumptions about the division between cognition and
emotion (Damasio, 1996), or the emphases we have placed on cognition over emotion, have been quite
mistaken. When it comes to moral reasoning, for example, increasingly the evidence is suggesting that our
brain makes decisions primarily based on emotion, which we tend to later rationalize with higher cognition
(Greene and Haidt, 2002). When social constructivists speak of “ideas, norms and beliefs” I believe they
should start putting “feelings’ in that oft-referred to list as well.
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Collective interest he defines “as effects of the extent to which and manner in which
social identities involve an identification with the fate of the other” (Wendt’s italics]
(Wendt, 1994, p 386). He continues, “[collective identity] refers to positive identification
with the welfare of another, such that the other is seen as a cognitive extension of the self,
rather than independent… [T]o the extent that it exists, there will be an empathetic rather
than instrumental or situational interdependence between self and other. This is a basis
for feelings of solidarity, community, and loyalty and thus far collective definitions of
interest” [italics mine](p 386). Of course, whatever forces lead states to identify
empathetically with other states are not the only forces at work in the formation of state
identity. States also have factors that tend them towards egoism. In fact Wendt realizes,
as many of us do, that history so far has tended to produce perhaps more instances of
states defining themselves and acting in egoistic ways than in empathetic ones. “Still,”
Wendt writes, ‘given that international history has produced mostly egoistic states,
collective identity formation must start with and overcome that fact. So if we want
cooperation rather than competition (and normatively we can assume that we do), Wendt
proposes we need to figure out how to dispose of the tendency to state egoism and incline
the international world towards empathetic collective identity formation. From the early
days of the social constructivist project, then, that project appeared to lend itself to – in
fact almost pleaded with its theorists to take up (if you will permit me the
anthropomorphism) – a further research project aimed at the question of how to solve
conflicts in the international realm by transforming that realm into a condition that
socially constructs primarily empathetic agents. That is, a project on how to transform
the normative and social conditions of the global arena to better create and engender
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empathy and friendship in future versions of international life. Broadly speaking such a
program has not been picked up by social constructivist thinkers. To date the work on
security communities may be the best contender, but I have already suggested ways in
which the social constructivist re-working of that idea spearheaded by Adler and Barnett
is actually tending to move away from Deutsch’s original sense of communities rooted in
“mutual sympathy” and towards something like social constructivism’s own version of
Russett’s ‘Kantian peace.’ Moreover, the social constructivist literature – on security
community or otherwise – like so much IR before, it has been primarily concerned with
explaining the world as it currently is rather than re-imagining possibilities for the future,
despite the obvious possibilities for constructing new approaches to international
behaviour that social constructivist thought opens up.48
That being said, Wendt does somewhat address the possibility of transformation
further, in connection with the concept of friendship that we have been discussing. Wendt
argues that, within the basic and undeniable fact of anarchy as the modern international
typography, the international society can still construct different social orders (his famous
argument that “anarchy is what states make of it”). He theorizes three “cultures” of
anarchy in particular: the Hobbesian, the Lockean and the Kantian. In these cultures
states treat the other as, respectively: enemy, rival, and friend. Wendt also suggests three
different motives for abiding by international norms and rules, respectively: coercion,
interest and legitimacy. The cultures tend to correspond to Boulding’s three faces of
power, with the Kantian, friendship-based culture analogous to integrative power.
48
Which is not to suggest that there are no IR authors who make the transformation of the IR realm a main
point of their work. Linklater (1998) and Walker (1993) are only two classic examples. Many IR feminists
of course have an abiding interest in transformation as well. Tickner (1992) provides another classic
example. In regards to this dissertation’s question of peacemaking, Richmond (2002) makes the need for a
switch away from a Westphalian organization a priority in his book.
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However, if Wendt truly wants Kant to be the avatar of this culture then it is the side of
Boulding’s integrative power that I am not sure fits with a Peace-through-Empathy
approach. Kant’s vision of the international, exemplified so far in this chapter by Russett
and Oneal (2001) is based on institutions of justice and rights and an adherence to a
universal morality (Kant, 2002). Rooted in legitimacy, yes: but that vision of the
international is properly situated with what I am calling Justice, not Empathy. To
organize around institutions and principles of right is not the same as organizing around
mutual identifications.
Finally, allow me to end this section of the chapter with some vague pondering on
new vistas, new possibilities and new ways of being while only having, at this stage, a
vague notion of what those new ways might be. I have mentioned in the Introduction that
John Burton has suggested the need to develop a different conception of conflict
resolution for the entire international realm. The models of conflict resolution that have
reigned throughout the modern era have been models of resolution through force and
coercion or through adjudication via institutions populated by elites. We can see now that
these tactics roughly correspond to approaches of Power and Justice, and later I will
argue that these models are supported by centuries of powerful modern thought, reaching
back to great thinkers like Kant and Hobbes. Burton ponders the need for a paradigmatic
shift in how the world approaches conflict resolution. “[D]eep-rooted conflict,” he writes,
“cannot be dealt with by conventional methods, arbitration, and other implicitly coercive,
non-analytical processes (Burton, 1991). In several essays Burton develops the argument
that this paradigmatic shift in thought and institution should move the international world
towards a model that transposes the insights of the very empathy-based, interactive
73
processes of ICR. It resonates with Saunder’s call to re-conceptualize the international
realm as a web of relationships, with all of the interpersonal, affiliative, and emotional
(sometimes emotionally troublesome) connotations that go with that word (Saunders,
1990).
Section 3: Power, Justice, Empathy in Post-Cold War Peace Operations
Post-Cold War Peacemaking: Influences and the Basic Approach
At the end of the Cold War predominant norms regarding how to achieve peace
took a dramatic and widely accepted shift towards a powerful emphasis on Peace-
through-Justice approaches, which have largely guided the international community’s
major practical efforts at establishing peace ever since. This shift has been most
obviously associated with official UN peace operations (which routinely involve not just
the UN but leading states, international finance institution and NGOs) but to some degree
it has also set the normative framework and provided the basic method for US- or
NATO-led multinational interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. While the ideological
framework of this shift is largely associated with the Peace-through-Justice type
approach, ideas about how practically to achieve peace have generally incorporated all
three of our ideal types, and in actual practice the operations themselves have tended to
reserve resources and attention for Peace-through-Power and Peace-through-Justice
efforts. However, there are reasons to suspect that a lack of attention to possible Peace-
through-Empathy approaches has been a problem.
The shift towards a predominant and widely accepted post-Cold War Peace-
through-Justice agenda was the result of a convergence of factors. First, the end of the
Cold War was seen by several prominent elites and thinkers within Western nations as
74
the triumph of liberalism in a long contest between liberalism, fascism and communism
that had seen one candidate (fascism) drop out in the mid-20th century but did not fully
resolve itself until 1989. The US immediately saw the situation as an opportunity to
spread liberal democratic values throughout the world as the girding points for a new
world order (Fukuyama, 1989). In his famous speech delivered by US President George
H. W. Bush after the conclusion of the First Gulf War in 1991, the President, according to
Alker et. al., (pending publication), “articulated… a hegemonic vision of an emerging
world order. Following an awesome demonstration of post Cold War American military,
political and economic power, he elaborated a characteristically Anglo-American
normative view. Except from the speech: “Until now, the world we’ve known has been a
world divided – a world of barbed wire and concrete block, conflict and cold war. Now,
we can see a new world coming into view. A world in which there is the very real
prospect of a new world order. In the words of Winston Churchill, a "world order" in
which "the principles of justice and fair play ... protect the weak against the strong..." A
world where the United Nations, freed from cold war stalemate, is poised to fulfill the
historic vision of its founders. A world in which freedom and respect for human rights
find a home among all nations” (Bush, 1991). Within the UN, after decades of frequent
impotence due to stalemate between contending superpowers (the US and USSR) within
the UN’s main decision-making bodies (the “Permanent 5” of the UN Security Council),
the UN saw with the end of the Cold War “that an opportunity has been regained to
achieve the great objectives of the Charter - a United Nations capable of maintaining
international peace and security, of securing justice and human rights and of promoting,
75
in the words of the Charter, "social progress and better standards of life in larger
freedom" (Boutros-Ghali, 1992).
This optimistic vision for the possibility of a peaceful and liberal new world order
was coupled with (or perhaps it spurred on) an eagerness on the part of the UN to expand
their methodology for peacemaking and attempt new avenues and approaches. Through
the Cold War new ideas about how to think of security and how to achieve peace had
been simmering, some of which we have already seen. Also with the end of the Cold War
world attention shifted to conflicts other than that of the US/USSR: conflicts often rooted
in causes other than those traditionally focused on by international security thinkers (such
as ethnonationalism) and as world public opinion increasingly called for resolution to
these conflicts (Richmond, 2002) new approaches had to be considered. Peace scholars
had been developing new approaches to peacemaking throughout the Cold War, such as
Galtung’s concern for creating structural conditions for peace, and conflict resolution
practitioners’ engagements with the populace of conflict-torn regions beyond elite
negotiations (i.e., ICR). During the 1980’s and into the 1990’s academics had been
theorizing a new approach to security that focused on threats to individuals rather than
states – “human security” rather than “national security” – finding that the threats that
affect individual lives most immediately were rarely the same threats that theories of
national security asked us to focus on: for example, individuals are often far more
immediately threatened by disease, poverty and political oppression than they are the
threat of nuclear war (Buzan, 1983). The notion of human security, like the work of peace
scholars and conflict resolution thinkers, expanded the range of what should be involved
in peace and security efforts to include issues of social and economic structures. In the
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1990’s the Human Security agenda was adopted by many “mid-level power” countries
such as Canada and Australia, as well as the UN Development Program (Bernard, 2006).
Importantly, each of these factors could be seen to have a particular Peace-through-
Justice character. In Galtung’s arguments about positive peace he often characterized
structural violence as the oppression of individual freedom and economic inequality –
implicitly highlighting freedom and equality, the two constant and dominant normative
principles within the modern liberal tradition – as the key to establishing perpetual peace
(Galtung, 1969, 1971). Human security obviously carries with it a normative liberal
connotation in its emphasis on the human individual. All of these factors were combined
in the UN’s new thinking on peace to develop an ambitious, comprehensive,
“multidimensional” approach to peacemaking (Richmond, 2002) for which the liberal,
Peace-through-Justice theme was the normative foundation (Paris, 1997). This new
paradigm expanded the social levels and dimensions that peace operations would engage
with and it expanded the number of organizations that would be seen as playing a useful
role in such engagements. The result has been that “The objective of many contemporary
peace support interventions by leading states, international organizations, international
finance institutions, and NGOs can be described as the ““liberal peace” [which]
represents an increasingly formulaic synthesis of Western-style democratisaton, “good
governance,” human rights, the rule of law, and developed, open markets” (Mac Ginty
and Richmond, 2007). Perhaps the first full articulation of this “liberal peace” approach
was the UN’s 1992 An Agenda for Peace (Boutros-Ghali, 1992). It made clear that the
aim of UN peace operations would now be to not only cease overt conflict and keep them
dormant through peacekeeping operations but also, in pursuit of positive peace, to build
77
the structural conditions that will make for lasting and enduring peace. The scope of UN
aspirations were now “in the largest sense, to address the deepest causes of conflict:
economic despair, social injustice and political oppression” (Boutros-Ghali, 1992). The
full extend of such practices involved “nothing less than eliminating the causes that
initially led to the conflict” (de Soto and del Castillo, 1994, p 70), so that it has been said
“At root, full-scale peacebuilding activities are nothing short of attempts at nation
building; they seek to remake a state’s political institutions, security forces, and economic
arrangements’ (Bertram, 1995, p 389).
An Agenda for Peace described explicit mechanisms for these purposes which
sought to engage in peacemaking activity at all stages around a conflict: pre-conflict,
during conflict and postconflict. Pre-conflict the mechanism is preventive diplomacy
(accurately noting warning signs of possible conflict and averting conflict through pre-
emptive diplomacy). During conflict the mechanisms are “peacemaking,” defined as
traditional negotiation and conflict resolution, and “peacekeeping”, which now takes on a
more militarized role of ‘peace enforcing’ and policing, “designed to impose public order
by force, if needed, with or without host government consent” (Doyle and Sambanis,
2000), than the traditional role of merely acting as a buffer between combatant parties.
Post-conflict mechanisms designed to rebuild conditions within society conducive to
maintaining and enduring peace go by the general term of “peacebuilding.”49 With
49
With the academic literature the different stages (pre-conflict, during conflict and post-conflict) and the
different mechanisms of contemporary peacemaking (i.e. peacebuilding, peacekeeping, conflict resolution)
are most often dealt with distinctly, as separate topics of study. Academics are right to do so for the sake of
analytic rigor and focus. Moreover, to suggest that these mechanisms be understood as aspects of one
approach may give the false impression that peace operations always involve an engagement in every stage.
Not so; many peace operations deal with conflicts on limited levels (i.e., only peace-building efforts).
However, this does not mean that we can or ultimately should understand these mechanisms as completely
distinct from each other. They should be conceived as consecutive stages in a complete process (i.e.,
peacebuilding begins where peacemaking ends) and mutually enforcing and interweaving (David, 2002, pp
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exceptions such as the Marshall Plan efforts in Germany and Japan after World War II,
peacebuilding is a new and unique aspect of the post-Cold War approach to peacemaking.
As such it is the aspect of the post-Cold War peacemaking program that peacemakers
know the least about (learning by trial and error). It has also turned out to be the most
intensive and demanding on time and resources. Moreover, as Keating points out,
peacebuilding is increasingly coming to be understood as not just a post-conflict
operation but work that can also aid in creating the conditions for conflict resolution
(Keating, 2005).50 Jeong (2005) organizes peacebuilding operations into at least four
important focuses: 1) re-organizing security and the forces of violence; 2) political
transition; 3) economic development, and 4) reconciliation and social rehabilitation.
Finally, this notion of reconciliation will be important for us since, as our long
traipse through possible Peace-through-Empathy approaches suggested, it is a place in
particular where we would expect empathy to play a crucial role. Kreisberg defines
reconciliation as “the conciliatory ways members of adversary entities come to regard
each other after having engaged in intense and often destructive struggle. They give up or
21-2; Fisher, 1993). It seems apparent that by way of the approach that I have just described peacebuilding
operations are merely the completion of the process started by conflict resolution and peacekeeping
operations. But moreover, operations most often need each other. Peace-building operations may require a
prior resolution to the hot conflict, and peacekeepers to enforce restructuring. Conversely, conflict
resolution may require some antecedent peacebuilding work to bring a war-torn society to a level of
acceptance of the enemy upon which conflict resolution works can begin (Moaz, 2000).
50
“Although Boutros-Ghali’s use of peacebuilding was conceived as a postconflict activity, peacebuilding
can, conceptually, be practiced at a “preconflict” stage; the purpose being to forestall the outbreak of
violent conflict. The Carnegie Commission on the Prevention of Deadly Conflict viewed peacebuilding as
either “structural prevention” (strategies designed to address the root causes of deadly conflict) or
“operational prevention” (those strategies and tactics taken in the midst of a crisis or immediately thereafter
to reconstruct the peace and thereby prevent a recurrence of violent conflict). So we can speak of structural
peacebuilding and operational peacebuilding (to replace the notion of pre- and postconflict peacebuilding).
Used in this way, peacebuilding is tied closely to preventive diplomacy and other chapter VI measures in
the UN Charter that aim to address the underlying economic, social, cultural and humanitarian obstacles to
sustainable peace. Peacebuilding is therefore concerned not just with postconflict situations, but also with
the broad spectrum of conflict and its main aim is to generate and sustain conditions of peace while
managing differences without recourse to violence” (Keating and Knight, 2004, p xxxvii).
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at least do not act on their feelings of hate, fear and loathing or their desires for revenge
and retribution… The degree of reconciliation varies along four dimensions of beliefs and
moral interpretations. Members of formerly antagonistic parties varyingly (1)
acknowledge the terrible aspects of what happened between them; (2) accept with
compassion those who committed injurious conduct as well as acknowledge each other’s
suffering (3) believe that injustices are being redressed; (4) anticipate peaceful mutual
security and well-being” (Kriesberg, 1999, pp 106-7).
The Distribution of Power, Justice and Empathy in Post-Cold War Peace Operations
So if this is the agenda – a multidimensional approach that seeks to stop overt
violence and build “positive, enduring social peace, guided by a liberal ideology – what
have been the actual characteristics of real manifestations of this agenda, starting with
UN peace operations and then (very) briefly looking at the US in Iraq. Perhaps more to
the point: in what ways do we see Power, Justice and Empathy playing roles in the post-
Cold War approach to peace?
Given what I have already said, there is reason to suspect we would find all three
in UN peace operations, finding a concern for Empathy particularly within efforts at
postconflict reconciliation. However, true to dominant trends of thought in the modern
era, actual UN peace operations have been predominantly focused on Power and Justice.
Paris makes clear that, despite general lack of concern amongst UN policy makers
themselves to think about their ideological assumptions, “A single paradigm – liberal
internationalism – appears to guide the work of most international agencies engaged in
peacebuilding. The central tenet of this paradigm is the assumption that the surest
foundation for peace, both within and between states, is market democracy, that is a
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liberal democratic polity and a market-oriented economy” (Paris, 1997, p 56). Today, in
fact, the acceptance of the Peace-through-Justice approach as the universally best and
correct way to seek peace is overwhelming. Writes Jeong, “The notion of “neoliberal
peacebuilding” characterized by the establishment of formal democratic processes
combined with promotion of a market economy, has been accepted almost universally…”
(Jeong, 2005, p 10-11). Writes Gloppin, “In much of the transitional justice literature,
national reconciliation and democracy are seen as intimately related, almost to the point
of being indistinguishable. National reconciliation is equated with social stability and
peaceful coexistence within a democratic framework of government” (Gloppen, 2005, p
21). Jeong again: “Peacebuilding is based on the expectation that long-term security
interests are served by the promotion of a just society” (Jeong, 2002, p 7). Taylor notes,
“All inter-governmental organizations, as well as OECD states and other donor agencies,
more or less accept as common sense the self-evident virtuosity and truth of the liberal
peace project (Taylor, 2007). The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral
Assistance’s handbook on reconciliation states: “Our starting point… is a conviction that
the best form of post-conflict government is a democratic one” (Bloomfield et. al., 2003).
Yet we should not think the traditional concern for Power issues has disappeared. Indeed,
it retains a central role. One central component of post-Cold War peacekeeping that has
developed, perhaps contrary to the human security theme,51 is an emphasis on
51
Early theorizers posed the human security paradigm as an approach for thinking about security more
conducive to some international order that was alternative to the Westphalian order, and articulators of a
human security foreign policy, like Canada’s Foreign Minister for the late 1990’s, Lloyd Axworthy,
continually wrestled with the right of state sovereignty and the notion of the modern state’s priority over
the individual as the key obstacles to the work he was trying to accomplish. In the hands of these thinkers
and practitioners Human Security leaned towards the implication of necessarily prioritizing the
cosmopolitan over the state, and of the obligation of the international community to protect individuals
against the state. That being said, Human Security discourse today tends to emphasize a return to a much
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establishing a strong state structure that can monopolize the means of violence. The first
concern is for a strong state structure. Many argue that the key condition under which
regional conflicts break out is the presence of a failed or weak state. An article by Doyle
and Sambanis frames peacebuilding missions as operations of re-establishing state
authority: “Just as civil wars are usually about failures of legitimate state authority,
sustainable civil peace relies on its successful reconstruction” (Doyle and Sambanis,
2000, p 779). The theory on how to rebuild an authoritative state – or how to maintain
peace in the interregnum - appears to rely upon Hobbesian premises: “In a period of
peacebuilding, “ David describes, “security transition means the ability to demobilize
combatants, repatriate refugees and build a national police force to ensure public order
and safety in a devastated State… In order to overcome the legacy of a civil war,
peacebuilding requires a strong dose of enforcement” (David, 2002, p 33-4). Another
concern is for the balance of powers and interests within society, and the way these forces
may conflict to subvert any negotiated pacts or agreements and renew conflict. Roeder
and Rothchild write: “The interest of the international community in power sharing
increased significantly in the 1990s, as governments in the United States and Europe
searched for options that would maintain the peace after brutal civil wars…” (Roeder and
Rothchild, 2005, p 5). Within UN missions as well, the UN has attempted to construct
new state structures based on power sharing within democratic institutions of government
(Franks and Richmond, 2006; Roeder and Rothchild, 2005).
The emphases on Peace-through-Power and Peace-through-Justice approaches has
placed the focus in post-Cold War peacemaking strongly on concerns for (political and
older line: that the best way to protect individuals is to set them within a strong and violence-monopolizing
state structure.
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economic) structural transformation in conflict-torn societies while largely neglecting
the need for psychosocial transformation. As Jeong tells us, “Most reconstruction
programs rely heavily on democratic institution building and economic recovery through
free market-oriented policies” (Jeong, 2005, p 2). David is more stringent about it: “In the
minds of most of the people involved in peacebuilding operations, peacebuilding comes
down to “organizing elections”” (David, 2002, p 34). Keating provides a list of typical
UN peacebuilding activities that illustrate the point: “disarming warring parties,
decommissioning and destroying weapons, de-mining, repatriating refugees, restoring
law and order, creating or rebuilding justice systems, training police forces and customs
agents, providing technical assistance, advancing efforts to protect human rights,
strengthening civil society institutions, and reforming and strengthening institutions of
governance - including assistance in monitoring and supervising electoral processes and
promoting formal and informal participation in the political process” (Keating and
Knight, 2005, p xxxiii). Reflecting these emphases and focuses, Rushton writes,
“mainstream peacebuilding literature… continues to focus largely upon a narrower range
of activities such as DDR (Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration), SSR
(Security Sector Reform), election monitoring, judicial reform and human rights
monitoring” (Rushton, 2005). Of this list, only efforts at reintegrating former soldiers into
peaceful society (DDR) are primarily focused on psychosocial transformation.
Psychosocial reconciliation activities are often entirely neglected by formal
political actors. “The UN,” Skaar et. al. inform us, “has assisted only some states in
dealing with their past violence. Although the UN played an active role in bringing about
peace agreements in both Mozambique and Angola… [r]econciliation was left in the
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hands of the local communities” (Skaar et. al., 2005, p 11). More generally, “It is often
assumed that a peacebuilding process ends with the establishment of a new government
along with the introduction of economic recovery packages” (Jeong, 2005). When
reconciliation is considered it is often considered along lines that emphasis something
other than a Peace-through-Empathy approach. Doyle and Sambanis, following Zartman,
treat reconciliation exclusively as an issue of structural reconstruction:
“Increased hostility due to experience of war makes reconciliation more
difficult. To achieve peace and reconciliation under these circumstances,
Zartman (1995) argues that we need to (1) reconcentrate central power (the
powerful must be recognized as legitimate: or the legitimate made
powerful), (2) increase state legitimacy through participation (elections,
power sharing), and (3) raise and allocate economic resources in support of
peace… [A]ll three generally require (4) external international assistance or
authority in a transitional period” (Doyle and Sambanis, 2000).
Further, many authors suggest reconciliation is achieved primarily through engendering
classic liberal values, such as justice, respect and human rights. In language reminiscent
of Kant, Lerche and Jeong write: “reconciliation’s goal is to enhance justice based on the
recognition and full acceptance of the supreme value of the human personality, through
restoring the dignity of peoples from whom it has been stripped” (Lerche and Jeong,
2002, p 116); Jeong writes “Peacebuilding is based on the expectation that long-term
security interests are served by the promotion of a just society” (Jeong, 2002, p 7); and
Gloppen writes “reconciliation is conceived as the creation of conditions where former
enemies may continue to disagree, but respect each other as citizens with equal rights”
(Gloppen, 2005, p 20). Many institutionalized reconciliation efforts have centered upon
the concept of “Transitional Justice” and on Truth and Justice Commissions. Skaar et. al.
points out that these justice efforts may vacillate between having aspects of Peace-
through-Justice or Peace-through-Empathy. Transitional justice efforts, she tells us,
manifest on a spectrum between “vengeance” on one end and “forgiveness” on the other,
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though several actual efforts at Transitional Justice (they cite those of Burundi and
Yugoslavia as examples) manifest greater concern with retributive justice.
Judgment: First Criticism
How should we judge post-Cold War efforts so far? Has this emphasis on Justice
and Power (in that order) been a successful approach to peacemaking in the world? Given
our definition of peace earlier in the chapter this approach is normatively preferable to
what has come before it because it recognizes the need to transform the conditions for
violence at multiple levels of society (from the personal to the international) even if the
ambitious nature of this multidimensional approach has made peace operations difficult
pragmatically. One of the major problems this approach has suffered with has been a lack
of resources on the part of institutions like the UN to deliver on the ambitious scope (and
thus one of the reasons why work is contracted out to NGOs and other institutions)
(Richmond, 2002). But our main question here is: is this the right balance of Power,
Justice and Empathy approaches to peace? Some increasingly routine criticisms of post-
Cold War operations suggest that the answer is no, and that perhaps an infusion of
attention to possibilities of empathy could lead us in a new and welcome direction.
The first criticism has to do with the way post-Cold War peace operations have
dealt with issues of reconciliation. Mac Ginty has used the term “no war no peace’ to
characterize the situation of “A number of post-peace accord societies [that] have slipped
into situations of a grudging acceptance of the need for a co-existence with traditional
enemies, but little enthusiasm for a truly transformative peace (for example, Northern
Ireland, Lebanon, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Moldova, Ivory Coast, Abkhazia).” Their
situations amount to “a grudging hiatus in violent conflict crowned with an
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internationally supported peace accord that finds little approval at home after initial
enthusiasm has worn off (Mac Ginty, 2006, p 3). That is to say, many conflict-torn
societies today that have undergone peace efforts wind up in a situation of limbo between
“negative peace” and “positive peace” – without overt violence, and yet without any
transformation to create the “life-affirming conditions” of a broader peace. More, deep-
seeded roots of the conflict remain dormant rather than dealt with. Lipschutz blames this
situation on too much focus on the Justice-oriented approach: “Lipschutz argues that too
often the role of outside governments has been to support the formal institutions of
democracy in an effort to restore political stability and, not coincidentally, viable
economic activity. Agreements are signed, constitutions are drafted, elections are held,
and a deeply divided society appears restored to a level of civility. Yet in almost all-
important respects, the underlying fissures that have divided the society remain intact and
are merely papered over through these cosmetic changes. Underlying issues are not
addressed and unjust structures and practices continue and, in some cases, are
exacerbated” (Keating, 2005, p xxxix). Halpern and Weinstein blame the “no war no
peace” situation in Bosnia/Herzegovina explicitly on a failure of UN peace operations to
re-establish empathy within post-conflict society. Drawing from 90 interviews, 24 focus
groups and surveys of over 1600 in Bosnia/ Herzegovina and Croatia, they offer:
“On the one hand, people from different ethnic groups are working
together and living as neighbors at the present time. On the other hand,
…in the data analyzed thus far we could not find a single example of what
we would term empathy. Nowhere in the data does a person demonstrate a
full-blown curiosity and emotional openness towards another’s distinct
perspective… Given that people are coexisting peacefully at the present
time and working together sufficiently for economic purposes, why not be
satisfied with coexistence? In our view, coexistence without empathy is both
superficial and fragile. Just below the surface is mistrust, resentment, and
even hatred. One of our informants writes, “We can live together, we just
can’t sleep.” [Another says] “We are all pretending to be nice and to love
each other. But, be it known that I hate them and that they hate me. It will
be like that forever, but we are now pretending” (pp 569-70). They further
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offer “Most work on social reconstruction focuses on the rule of law, state
building, community development, and conflict resolution, with little
literature beyond that dealing with forgiveness, psychosocial treatment, and
community development on the critical dimension of what must happen
between people to lead to genuine rehumanization;” and, “it is the
interpersonal ruins, rather than ruined buildings or institutions, that pose
the greatest challenge for rebuilding society…” (Halpern and Weinstein,
2004).
Though UN efforts in Cyprus are more indicative of the UN’s Cold War approach to
peacemaking it is nonetheless instructive for our point here to consider what Kearney
tells us of Ryan’s (1991) assessment of the UN in Cyprus: “Ryan identified the
destructive processes perpetuating conflict, and perpetuated by it: militarization, physical
separation of communities, psychological distancing and stereotyping, religiously
inspired sanctification and demonization, entrapment of leaders (and followers) in
confrontational positions, polarizing emotionalism… [But] in Cyprus… in over two
decades of ‘peace-keeping’ UN forces had, by separating the communities, made
achieving a positive peace if anything harder. And, as for the UN’s ‘peace-making’
efforts, the destructive process had not been directly addressed ‘because this strategy is
concerned with mediation efforts involving the leaders of the various communities.’ The
peacebuilding he advocated ‘involves attempts both to change the negative attitudes that
the parties to the conflict have of each other and to address problems in the socio-
economic environment which feed destructive behaviour’” (Kearney, 1997, p 83).
For Mac Ginty “[t]he gaping hole in this approach to peacemaking is its poor capacity to
deal with the affective, emotional, and perceptual realm of peacemaking. Many peace
processes and peace accords as currently constituted face acute difficulties in effecting
trust building, intergroup cooperation, and reconciliation among broad communities of
antagonists” (Mac Ginty, 2007, p 2). There may be the danger that this brand of peace
will become so settled for so often in peace processes around the globe that norms
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regarding peace will change and we will come to complacently accept that this
incomplete state is what peace is.
Second Criticism
If empathy promotes a human sensitivity to and understanding of the particular
perspective of the other, post-Cold War peace operations have increasingly been
packaged into a common, one-size-fits-all template for applying peace to wounded
regions. This tendency seems to stem from two sources: a bureaucratic focus on the
systems and mechanisms rather than the particular, human, living aspects of the conflict-
torn societies; and the inherent sense of universality in Peace-through-Justice approaches.
Mac Ginty has lamented the “commit[ment] to ergonometric methodologies” amongst
peace operations policymakers in the UN and other institutions (Mac Ginty, 2006, p xi).
“The tendency of many contemporary peace processes and accords to deal with conflict
manifestations and contain technocratic approaches to peace implementation,” he writes,
“places severe limitations on the ability of restructuring attempts to deal with underlying
conflict causes” (Mac Ginty, 2006, p 30). Further:
“Many contemporary peacemaking processes and accords, particularly
those supported by leading western states, international organizations, and
financial institutions, are heavily influenced by legalistic, constitutional, and
business-management traditions. They adopt what critical peace scholars
have termed a “problem-solving” or “problem-oriented” approach to
peacemaking.52 As a result, they attempt to “fix” what they see as
dysfunction in society and minister to conflict manifestations but rarely
address the underlying, often structural, causes of conflict. Thus peace
support interventions often have a technocratic “box-ticking” character in
which the emphasis is on quantifiable change such as the number of
refugees repatriated, the number of former combatants retrained, or the
extent to which government has adopted “good governance” reforms.
Significant emphasis is often placed on the introduction of electoral reforms
and the introduction of guarantees of human rights. While most direct
violence may have ceased and militant groups may have engaged in
disarmament, indirect or low-level violence may persist. Local communities
52
John Burton will commonly refer to the ICR approach as an “analytical problem-solving approach.” That
is not what Mac Ginty means here.
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may fell little connection with a peace accord that is negotiated by national
and international elites” (Mac Ginty, 2007, p 2).
Paris has been one of the UN peace effort’s most prominent critics and the focus
of his arguments have primarily been on the dangers of placing a uniform template of
market democracy, assumed to be universally applicable to any context, into regions that
have just emerged from a conflict situation. Paris writes of Nicaragua, El Salvador and
Guatemala that he “challenges the conventional view of these operation as success
stories. Although the missions helped to create relatively stable democratic political
institutions in all three countries, they failed to address certain socio-economic conditions
that have traditionally fuelled the recurring cycles of violence in the region. Indeed, the
economic policies that peacebuilders promoted appear to have at least in the short run,
The point for Paris is that people in countries that have just been through traumatic
conflict, still affected by degrees of mistrust, hurt and resentments, may not prepared to
engage with the spirit of high competition that drives Western capitalism and even
democracy. Simply imposing a standard brand of liberal economics, he argues, has in
cases “exacerbated… the problems of distributional inequality and poverty that…
contributed to the outbreak of fighting in the first place” (Paris, 2002b, p 39). Sriram
notes “It is for this reason that land reform and other programmes are often in demand
after conflict, even though they may operate at cross-purposes with marketisation”
(Sriram, 2007, p 581). The imposition of Western liberalization upon non-Western
nations commits, Paris argues, the same mistakes as “modernization theory of the 50’s
and 60’s: namely, the belief that the natural evolution of developing states is toward
market democracy, and that this evolution, once initiated, is self-perpetuating” (Paris,
1997, p 57). To this point about premature introduction of liberal market forces into
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vulnerable societies with only newly rescinded violence authors have suggested the
corresponding point about premature introduction of democratic institutions, including
Paris himself, whose main conclusion in At War’s End is that is that conflict-torn regions
should be granted a transition stage between conflict and full blown democratic
marketisation (which he terms “Institutionalism Before Liberalisation”) (Paris, 2004,
Chesterman, 2005, p 204-35). It is something that we in the West do not like to consider,
but one immediate example comes to my mind: recently in Zimbabwe public elections
were the clear catalyst that sparked troubles, already inherent in society, into overt
violence.
Indeed there is right now a burgeoning literature arguing the perhaps obvious
critical stance that the post-Cold War peacemaking paradigm, which has become
widespread in its influence in bringing “liberal peace” across the globe, is ultimately a
bid for global hegemony on the part of leading liberal democratic nations, and the
imposition of democracy and liberal markets is actually a control mechanism that
assimilates vulnerable nations into that order (Taylor, 2007; Jacoby, 2007; Paris, 20002a;
Sriram, 2007; Duffield, 2001). Paris has even likened the compendium of post-Cold War
peace operations to a return of la mission civilisatrice (Paris, 2002a). That particular
theme has certain been considered in regards to the recent Western missions in
Afghanistan and Iraq. While NATO in Afghanistan and perhaps especially the US in Iraq
may in many ways be far cries from UN peace operations, they nonetheless exhibit the
same basic, paradigmatic approach to establishing peace and security in those regions -
democratization and political liberalization under the auspice of a strong state, and liberal
marketization – even if the methods by which these objectives are sought have been more
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violent.53 Thinking particularly of the US mission in Iraq, numerous critics have now
made charges against the undertaking, and many of them make the point that the great
failing of US planning regarding Iraq was the inability of US elites to take the perspective
of the Iraqi people.
Writes Larry Diamond:
“Part of the problem was that Garner54 and Bremer failed to comprehend
how Iraqis perceived them – and the entire occupation. Throughout the
occupation, the coalition lacked the linguistic and area expertise necessary
to understand Iraqi politics and society, and the long-time experts present
were excluded from the inner circle of decision-making… Indeed, the
administration of the occupation was highly centralized under Bremer
personally, in a manner that… marginalized those with vast stores of
knowledge and understanding about Iraq – not just the career diplomats,
but also well-informed British experts, as well as Iraqis and Iraqi-
Americans not tied to any specific political interest… [T]he coalition never
realized that, although most Iraqis were deeply grateful to have been
liberated from a brutal tyranny, this gratitude was mixed with deep
suspicion of the real motives of the United States (and of Britain, the former
colonial ruler)… For the majority of Iraqis, the military action was not an
“international intervention,” but an invasion and occupation by Western,
Christian, essentially Anglo-American powers that evoked powerful
memories of previous subjugation and of the nationalist struggles against
Iraqi’s former overlords… Deep Iraqi suspicions of American motives
combined with the memory of Arabs’ historical confrontations with
Western colonialism and their resentment of the U.S. stance in the Israeli-
Palestinian struggle to generate a massive legitimacy gap for the
occupation” (Diamond, 2006, p 182-3).
In planning and executing the first year of the mission in Iraq (2003) US officials
consistently displayed a tendency to perceive Iraqis as Americans – that is, as exactly like
53
In fact the level of success in these efforts has been so low that, for example, it makes little sense to
speak of efforts in Afghanistan at the moment as moving towards a liberal market society – though we can
assume that is eventually the plan.
54
It is less clear that Jay Garner deserves this criticism than Bremer. Certainly Garner’s comments in
retrospect reveal sensitivity to the Iraqi perspective, and he was against de-Ba’athification on the grounds
that he understood many Ba’athists were not intrinsic supporters of Hussein or tyranny in general.
Moreover, Garner had previous experience with humanitarian assistance in Iraq, with the northern Kurds in
1991. However, Diamond is not the only one to suggest that Garner was no less unprepared for Iraq than
Bremer. Chandrasekaran characterizes Garner and the ORHA as such: “ [The ORHA] was a bunch of well-
meaning but totally clueless Americans, people there with no communications, no training. Had very little
information about the jobs that they would have. The guy that would be told to be in charge of the Ministry
of Industry and Minerals literally had no information about that. He spent his days surfing the Web trying
to find things and eventually took to sort of reading poetry and ordering books online. But this was
supposed to be our reconstruction and administration corps. Most of them had never been in that part of the
world, didn't speak Arabic. These people were going to go into a war zone with limited services. They
didn't have sleeping bags or mosquito nets or anything.” (Chandrasekaran, 2006).
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themselves – and US officials consistently attempted to reproduce the American
experience in Iraq rather than empathetically try to understand the authentic Iraqi
perspective. Says reporter Thomas Ricks, “Well, if you subscribe to the universality of
freedom -- everybody wants to be a democrat; everybody wants freedom -- they thought
all we have to do is present it to them, and they'll take it onboard” (Ricks, 2006). The
narrative of liberating a democratic peoples from an oppressive tyrant – a narrative that
mimics the US’s own genesis story, peppered rhetoric from US officials in the first year
of the mission. US President George W. Bush was known in more uncomfortable times to
ask aloud “where is their John Adams?” Bureaucratically, US officials attempted to
reproduce their own conservative political ideology in Iraq. Ricks tells us “CPA officials
were focused on creating a “conservative millennia in Iraq where free-market democracy
of a brand not seen much outside the American South was going to be planted in the
middle of the Middle East,” and Chandrasekan informs us “They [CPA workers] came to
believe that a flat tax is what a country with 40% unemployment needs, and re-writing
the traffic code… [They made decisions like] not devoting much money to fixing Iraq's
emergency rooms [in order to save taxpayer dollars], even though injuries from car
bombings and insurgent attacks were probably the single largest health crisis the country
[was] facing” (Chandrasekan, 2006). The entire first year of the US in Iraq appears to be
an exercise in projecting the Self onto the Other.55
55
Earlier I suggested this tendency to impose one order upon other nations, even if the order does not fit,
stems from a bureaucratic concern with the system rather than an understanding of the actual lives of the
people who will be living under the system. Chandrasekan makes a point about the US’s first year in Iraq:
“There wasn't much electricity. There was rampant crime on the streets, traffic jams. Nobody was working.
It was just kind of anarchy.” But within the Green Zone’s 17-foot high walls CPA workers enjoyed bars,
discos, pools, cable t.v., hot dogs for lunch, dry-cleaning, car washes and air conditioning. “The problem
was a lot of those people [CPA workers] never got out and confronted the real Iraq enough”
(Chandrasekan, 2006).
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The common thread running through all that I have just presented is the faith in a
particular vision of a Peace-through-Justice approach (supplemented with Peace-through-
Power concerns) as a universally correct method of achieving peace, without engaging
more thoroughly in the perspectives and experiences of the lives of those upon whom the
method will be applied. That is not a condemnation of democracy or liberal economic
markets in general. I am inclined to believe that democracy is a vital institution for peace
in many areas of the world. But it is a question of context, and of having the empathetic
sensitivity to know that context. Democracy may be a malleable thing that can be
manifest in different forms than the manner we can associate with what I have described
as the Peace-through-Justice approach. As Mac Ginty suggests, “There is much laudable
about the liberal democratic peace model, though its over-rigid application and its
dependence on peculiar and western variants of liberalism and democracy explain many
of the problems experienced in post-peace accord societies” (Mac Ginty, 2006, p 5). One
has to wonder how future situations such as the ones I have just described might fair if
infused with more of what Alker, Amin, Biersteker and Inoguchi describe here:
Comprehension… requires a deep, sensitive, interpretive historical
understanding both of one’s own perspective, and that of others… [O]ur
approach relies heavily on hermeneutic interpretivism and empathetic
understanding. We believe it is important to construct an argument by first
engaging in self-reflection on the implications of one’s own work and
second by proceeding with sensitivity, humility, and openness with regard
to the analysis of the language, the values, the norms, the categories and the
systems of meaning of others… We recognize that for several of us, being at
the center of the Anglo-American world is not a sufficient condition for
good theorizing. Indeed, it may even be a positive hindrance in the
discussion of twentieth century phenomena such as imperialism, religious
revivalism, and socialism. The challenge, therefore, is to evaluate the
perspective of other traditions within the framework of the core
assumptions, orienting hypotheses, fundamental values, and the evaluation
criteria of the perspective itself…This requires being sensitive to the
different ways theoretical knowledge and interpretation are expressed,
often in languages we do not immediately recognize… Moral reflexivity, in
the sense of a critical search for moral/historical “lessons” that generalize
from others’ experience to one’s own, and vice versa, is an important aspect
of the construction of validly sharable international histories. Thus in
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studying others, we should look for generalizations, principles, or lessons
that may equally apply to ourselves, in analogous situations, and visa
versa…” (Alker, et al, pending publication).
CHAPTER II:
INTRODUCING… EMPATHY!
Because empathy is a concept that political scholars are not used to dealing with
in their research, let us take some extended time now to look at the development of the
concept as well as to see what the discipline that has come to know the concept best,
psychology, has to say about it.
Part I: Conceptualizing Empathy, in General
The Trouble With Empathy
Most of us in our everyday lives hold an intuitive sense of what empathy is, and
most commonly that intuitive sense is expressed in phrasing like “taking the perspective
of the other” and “walking a mile in the other’s shoes.” But how much does that intuitive
sense really tell us about what empathy is? We can clearly see the root idea is one of
moving beyond one’s own subjective perspective and into the subjective, experiential
space (the proverbial “shoes”) of a fellow conspecific.1 Yet, intuitively, different people
1
The term “conspecific,” refers specifically to another member of one’s own species, and there tends to be
a general sense in literature that animals empathize more easily with members of their own species. But
that is not certain or clearly so, and certainly in our own lives we have the experience or intuitively
recognize others have the experience of empathizing with creatures outside of our species (i.e., dogs and
cats make obvious examples), sometimes even more thoroughly, we feel, than we can empathize with some
other humans. Despite the fact that some may debate this and argue that any claim to empathize with
another species is ultimately a sort of anthropomorphism and a projection of what is human onto another
kind of animal entirely, I have always been willing to accept that evolutionarily human beings are not so
different from other animals that there are not grounds upon which we can empathize.
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understand what is entailed in this move in different ways, and it is somewhat telling, I
think, that in popular discourse even the old adage itself does not stay constant, with
some people expressing it as “walking in the other’s shoes” – a seemingly active,
participatory engagement with the experience of the other - and others expressing it as
“putting ourselves in the other’s shoes” - a potentially less involved engagement that
could be interpreted as merely sight-seeing the vantage-point of the other. Is empathy the
capacity to “know” the minds of others, but remain detached, in a skillful act of
perspicacious mindreading: the psychotherapist who can diagnose your inner ills, the
fraud psychic who feeds off of your involuntary cues, the FBI profiler who catches
criminals by imagining their thoughts and motives? Or is empathy necessarily more
emotive and involved? Is it the root of friendship and love, or the broad sentiment
expressed by former US President Bill Clinton when he once told victims of flood
damage in Davenport, Iowa that he felt their pain? It matters because how we conceive of
empathy makes a difference for how we understand its implications and effects. Can we
employ empathy to gather information about others for our own selfish (and perhaps
malevolent) purposes, like Machiavelli counseling the Prince to use Christian virtues
whenever it improves the Prince’s own power status to do so?2 Or does empathy
necessarily incline us towards moral behaviour and concern for the wellbeing of those we
empathize with, as Sherman suggests when she posits empathy as an essential component
in the moral psychology of an individual motivated towards international humanitarian
aid (Sherman, 1998b)? Yet, can we empathize with others so much that we loose our
objectivity and our perspective on what is just or unjust? Can we empathize with
criminals and terrorists to the point that we obstruct universal justice for the sake of our
2
See Machiavelli (1985)
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particular attachments to them? Does empathy abhor violence, or can it incline us to it?
Do Gandhi and Martin Luther King have it right when they express that love is the root
of nonviolent action? Or is empathy consistent with killing and dying for others: a
thought one stepfather consoled himself with after the death of his US soldier son.
“Byron went to Iraq,” the father explained, “to help people who couldn’t help
themselves” (BBC News, 2008).
To deal seriously with questions like these we need a solid conception of what we
mean when we speak of empathy. But empathy is notorious for resisting anything like a
solid definition. Literature on empathy is replete with warning statements about the
unwieldiness of the concept. Consider, for example, Reed (1984): “An unusual degree of
conflict and confusion surrounds the word [“empathy”] and is matched by an equally
unusual amount of inconsistency and contradiction characterizing its use;” or Preston and
de Wall (2001): “The concept empathy has had a difficult history, marked by
disagreement and discrepancy. Although it has been studied for hundreds of years, with
contributions from philosophers, theology, developmental psychology, social and
personal psychology, ethology and neuroscience, the field suffers from a lack of
consensus regarding the nature of the phenomenon” (p 1). Eisenberg and Strayer tell us,
“identifying the topic… as empathy does not clarify for many readers exactly what will
be discussed… In reality there is no correct definition of empathy, just different
definitions” (Eisenberg and Strayer, 1987). A large part of the problem has been that
historically the concept of empathy has been granted a very wide and ambiguous scope of
conceptual ground to occupy. Empathy has always been imprecisely enmeshed with other
concepts, like sympathy, fellow-feeling, perspective-taking and even compassion, love
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and benevolence, so that it has often not been clear where some of these concepts end and
others begin, or whether some of them should be considered distinct from empathy at all.
As Stueber writes, “the empirical investigation of empathy has been hindered
(particularly in the beginning) by conceptual confusions and a multiplicity of
definitions… [T]his state of affairs is due to the fact that the empathy concept merged
with and completely replaced the multi-dimensional concept of sympathy used earlier by
psychologists and philosophers” (Stueber, 2008). But for Reed, the confusion stems from
more than just the empathy/sympathy problem. “It is difficult to conceptualize
something,” he writes, “that is predicated at once as a form of knowledge, a form of
communication, a capacity, a process, an ego expression, a mode of data gathering, an
ability, an experience, a means of understanding, and a mode of perceiving” (Reed, 1984,
p 13). A comprehensive investigation of the range of disciplines that empathy touches
would take us across the academic map, into territories of religion, psychology,
neuroscience, philosophy of mind, phenomenology, hermeneutics, ethics, sociology,
feminist philosophy, economics, political theory and even primatology and evolutionary
psychology. If we also consider methodology (empathy as Verstehen) than we would
have to add philosophy of social science to the list as well. As a result, the more a scholar
tries to dig beyond the intuitive in order to develop a better clarified and more sharply
reasoned sense of what empathy is, the more broad reaching, unwieldy, blurrily-bounded,
uncooperative and multidimensional the concept can become, until the task of
conceptualizing empathy may feel like trying to catch water.
In the late 1960’s and 1970’s pioneering psychologists like Norma Feshbach and
Martin Hoffman became interested in the concept of empathy, and were later joined by
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an ever-increasing number of their colleagues in the field, with empathy becoming an
increasingly important topic within psychology over the last twenty years. What these
pioneering psychologists were primarily concerned to do was empirically test the
popular, intuitive suspicion that empathy had some important link with prosocial and
moral behaviour, which to this day has continued to be the main subject matter for
psychologists studying empathy. However, in order to pursue these questions
psychologists have had to deal with the hairy issues of definition and of how to
conceptualize empathy in a manner befitting scientific testing and assessment. In order to
conceptualize empathy psychologists have had to deal with the multiplicity of themes and
phenomena historically associated with the concept, and even though they have settled
upon certain (multiple) definitions of empathy to use in their investigations, and despite
recent decades of very important successes with those investigations, still it is not the
case that psychologists have entirely tamed this unruly concept. In working to develop
our understanding of empathy, we are going to start by looking at some important themes
and phenomena from over the centuries that have gone into the construction of the
concept of empathy, and then turn to a brief consideration of how psychologists have
tried to manage the multiple themes.
The Flavour of Empathy
When we talk about empathy, what are we referring to?
Despite the Greek etymology the term “empathy” does not go back very far. In
fact “empathy” can only be dated to 1909,3 as a transposition into English of the German
3
By Edward Titchener. Though, the exact date when the German einfühlung showed up as the English
“empathy” seems entirely debatable as different articles cite different dates. O’Hara (1997) cites 1912 as
the date. According to Jahoda the Oxford English Dictionary gives the date as 1904 (Jahoda, 2005). That
being said, 1909 seems to be the publishing date of Edward Titchener’s Lectures on the Experimental
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Einfühlung, which itself was only invented as a concept in 1872. But of course many of
the themes and phenomena we now associate with empathy existed long before 1872,
conceived of in different terms, so that for some thinkers, in order to speak of the roots of
empathy we have to reach back to the deeply historic. Notes O’Hara, “Empathy is
probably one of the oldest – both phylogenetically and ontogenetically4 – ways of
orienting to self and others, predating symbolic language in both prehominid and
prelinguistic human infants” (O’Hara, 1997). For evolutionary psychologists like Frans
de Wall, empathy is something embedded within the very DNA of mammalian life: a
capacity to feel the feelings of other conspecifics that has been perhaps the cornerstone
upon which animal sociality is built. Write Preston and de Wall, “empirical data on
empathy are very consistent, across a wide range of species.” After providing clinical
examples from albino rats, rhesus monkeys and human beings the authors tell us “These
examples, all from empirical reports, show that individuals of many species are distressed
by the distress of a conspecific and will act to terminate the object’s distress, even
incurring risk to themselves. Humans and other animals exhibit the same robust effects of
familiarity… These facts suggest that empathy is a phylogentically continuous
phenomenon, as suggested by Charles Darwin more than a century ago” (Preston and de
Wall, 2002, p 1-2). For de Wall, it is through this inherent, core mammalian tendency to
empathy, written into the biochemical language that ascribes our very being, that
primates (and later humans) have lived in kin groups and tribes, developed personal
bonds and evolved techniques of consoling one another, resolving conflicts and
Psychology of Thought Processes (1909), where the term “empathy” first appears in a official, published
capacity (the 1904 reference referred to by the Oxford Dictionary being a mention of the term in a letter
from Titchener).
4
In biology, phylogenetics refers to the evolutionary development of a species and ontogenetics refers to
the development of a particular organism over its life, from birth to maturity.
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forgiving. For Morrison (1998), the roots of empathy can be traced through Western
civilization in the form of a metaphysical, mystical view of human interconnectedness
that has been associated historically with the claim “I am You,” or of a common
humanity. Of course we can see exactly such a vision of human interconnectedness in
ancient theologies, such as the monadic Hinduism, which sees all life as ultimately one
being, or Christianity’s view of all human beings as God’s children bound in common
bonds of agape. But Morrison traces this view of interconnectedness from ancient Greece
to Christian thinkers like Augustine, metaphysical poets like John Dunne, mystics like
Meister Eckhart and, perhaps surprisingly, through to modern, secular thinkers like,
Herder, Fitche, Heidegger and Ludwig Feuerbach, while contemporary secular
philosopher Daniel Kolak (2004) adds to that list not only himself but several renowned
20th century physicists.5
Stueber has already told us that when the term empathy first appeared it largely
usurped previous discussions on sympathy, incorporating the themes and phenomena
already associated with that concept, and thus when we are talking about “empathy” to
some degree we are talking about sympathy as well. Sympathy “emerged in roughly its
current sense during the seventeenth century in English, French, and German” (Jahoda,
2005, p 152), and there may be reason to suspect that the concept represents a
transformation of previous religious ideas about human interconnectedness into a more
Enlightenment-amenable, scientific and secular form.6 Jahoda tells us “Initially, its
5
Including Erwin Schrödinger, Fred Hoyle and Freeman Dyson.
6
This notion is suggested by an advertisement for a book on the development of sympathy in the 18th
century, due to be published in 2009. From the advertisement (recall as you read that “charity” would have
carried in the 18th century a specific connotation of Christian love, service and giving (as in the three
Christian virtues Faith, Hope and Charity): “Three of the most piercing political minds of the first quarter
of the eighteenth Century—Defoe, Mandeville and Trenchard—all thought the provision of charity,
particularly free education, was counterproductive. They were responding partly to the corrupt nature of
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meaning [referred] to some kind of affinity between not only people but also things” so
that the term was used to denote contagion, for example the spread of disease (in an era
before the germs theory of disease was generally accepted). The psychological use of
sympathy had this sense of contagion as well. Hume described sympathy as a capacity for
resonance with the feelings of others, and his view was that the company of good
humoured people makes us good humoured, while the company of ill-humoured people
makes us, even when despite ourselves, ill-humoured as well (Hume, 1896). Similarly,
Adam Smith wrote “When we see a stroke aimed and just ready to fall upon the leg or
arm of another person, we naturally shrink and draw back our own leg or our own arm;
and when it does fall, we feel it in some measure, and are hurt by it as well as the
sufferer” (Smith, 1976, p 9; 10).
This idea - that humans are psychologically equipped with the inherent capacity
to resonate with the feelings of others - carried from the concept of sympathy to empathy7
with Theodore Lipps, a German academic, renowned in his time, who took the concept of
Einfühlung from aesthetic theory and used it to answer the psychological question “how
can we know the minds of others?” The reigning answer to this question in Lipps’s time
was that an individual rationally infers the inner states of others by analogy to our own
behaviours. For example, when we see another smile, we rationally think that the other is
happy because that is the state we are in when we smile. Lipps was adamant that this
contemporary charitable foundations, and partly to the nature of commercial society itself. But the suspect
status of charity left an ethical vacuum that had to be filled by some bond between humans more solid than
self-interest. So sympathy, the sudden and spontaneous entry of one person’s feelings into those of another,
filled up this vacuum. Now it was possible for people to share sentiments so vividly that neither reason nor
self-interest could limit the degree to which individuals might care for others, or act involuntarily on their
behalf.” The book is: Jonathan Lamb, The Evolution of Sympathy in the Long Eighteenth Century, due to be
published by Pikering and Chatto Publishers.
7
Lipps actually spoke in terms of Einfühlung, but this concept, as I have already noted, is what becomes
translated into English as “empathy.”
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theory was wrong and he insisted the true process was Einfühlung, which he saw as an
involuntary, subliminal emotional mimicry of the other. That is, instead of thinking about
what a smile means, when we witness the smile of another some deep, intrinsic aspect of
our own psychology mimics a smile within our own mind, feels the feelings of a smile
and then recognizes what feelings are causing the other to smile. This sense of empathy
as internal, instinctual mimicry lost favour through most of the 20th century, rejected by
philosophers and psychoanalysts, yet psychologists and neuroscientists especially have
since found reason to return to thinking of empathy in these terms. Neuroscientists have
recently discovered that certain neurons within the brains of humans and primates, at
least – neurons which are now generally termed “mirror neurons” – are allocated the task
of simulating or mirroring within our own minds the experiences of others (Gallese,
2006; Iacoboni et al., 2005; Gallese et al., 2004; Carr et al., 2003).8 Experiments by
Singer and colleagues have shown that when human beings watch other human beings
receive pain, pain neurons within our own brains fire as if we ourselves were
experiencing the pain, only less comprehensively and intensely as they do when our own
bodies receive pain (Singer et al. 2004).9 In as much as human experience ultimately
occurs within the neurons of the mind, in a very real way, with empathy we actually do
share and participate in the experience of the other, actually feeling the pain of others as
we neurologically feel pain right along with them. In some important sense, modern
neurological science has more confirmed rather than dismissed the long-standing belief
8
On a fascinating, though entirely digressive, neurologists studying mirror neurons are finding evidence
that these neurons play an essential, indispensable, fundamental role in how we learn and think (Gallese
and Goldman, 1998).
9
The experiment may suggest, as we would intuitively guess, that mirror neurons are more active when
witnessing the pain of someone that we already feel empathetically bonded with. Singer tested women
watching their significant others receive pain as a “most likely” case scenario.
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within Western civilization, historically manifesting in multiple ways, of a sense of deep,
inherent human interconnectedness and the human tendency to merge our subjective
experiences with others: the “I am You’ of Morrison and Kolak.
Directly related to this important theme of psychological interconnection has been
a theme of positive social behaviours and moral obligations seen as stemming from that
interconnectedness. Just as monadic Hindu thought emphasizes ahimsa – love and
nonviolent behaviour towards all living things – and just as New Testament thought
emphasizes love of others as we love ourselves, so have the modern, secular proponents
Morrison’s “I am You” held that a vision of common humanity founds moral behaviour.
Morrison writes:
“[For Feuerbach] what distinguished human beings from brute animals
was not self-consciousness but consciousness of the species, and the ethics of
consequently specific to human nature required the sacrifice of one’s self-
being, the surrender of self to another. The individual personified the
species, and had corresponding obligations. This was learned through love.
“In loving… I bind my being to the being of another; I exist only in the
other, with the other, and for the other. Not loving, I exist only for myself.
But when I am loving, I posit myself for another… The being of the other is
my being.” In this way one gained through love the consciousness of
humanity as a species – the unity of man with man – that was the basis of
all philosophy, moral law and truth” (Morrison, 1988, p 20).10
Similarly, quantum physicist Freeman Dyson describes an epiphany moment when he
came to see “in a blinding flash of inner light… the answer to both my problems, the
problems of war and the problems of injustice… I called it Cosmic Unity. Cosmic Unity
said: There is only one of us. We are all the same person. I am you and I am Winston
Churchill and Hitler and Gandhi and everybody. There is no problem of injustice because
your sufferings are also mine. There will be no problem of war as soon as you understand
10
Interestingly, given that Feuerbach is a well known important influence on Marx I wonder if we can not
see in this secular view of basic human interconnected ness an antecedent to Marx’s ideas about solidarity
and the “species-being.”
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that in killing me you are only killing yourself” (Dyson, 1979, p 17). 18th moral
sentimentalists like Hume and Smith “regarded sympathy as a crucial determinant of
social behaviour, with Smith going so far as to claim that it constitutes the bond that
holds society together” (Jahoda, 2005, p 152). For Hume, as for Hobbes, moral
judgments ultimately amount to our own feelings of approbation or aversion. However,
for Hume (unlike for Hobbes) the faculty of sympathy makes it possible for our
sentiment-based judgments to be truly other-regarding and, thereby, moral, because with
sympathy we are psychologically capable of not only emotionally approving (or
disapproving) things that seem good (or ill) for our own selves, but also by
sympathetically feeling for others we can approve (or disapprove) what is good (or ill) for
others. (Because sympathy causes us to feel both the positive and negative sentiments of
others moral sentimentalists are perhaps inconsistent in that they tend to emphasize good-
natured fellow-feeling and desirable social organization as a result of sympathetic
behaviour (especially Smith, who wrote, “Sympathy, however, enlivens joy and alleviates
grief”) (Smith, 1976, p 14).
Yet, if we can see an easy coherence between the themes we have so far touched
upon – a basic human interconnectedness, the merging of subjective experiences and the
internal mimicry of the other, inclinations to prosocial behaviour and obligations to a
moral law, all wrapped together perhaps in a broad theme of empathy as emotional
identification with others - then the 20th century saw a number of thinkers work to evolve
the concept of empathy away from these themes and towards a competing conception of
empathy as primarily a faculty of detached, purely cognitive perspective-taking.
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Influenced by Lipps, pioneering phenomenologist Edmund Husserl saw in the
concept of empathy a useful way of saving phenomenology from the charge of solipsism.
But Edith Stein, whose graduate thesis for Husserl is the first known academic work
taking empathy as its central focus, sought a conception of empathy that did away with
what she saw as “primordial” qualities of Lipps’s Einfühlung, including the involuntary,
subconscious aspect of it and the sense of contagion and interconnectedness. Wrote Stein,
“Empathy is not a feeling of oneness” (Stein, 1964, p 17).
Freud, also influenced by Lipps, brought empathy into the burgeoning field of
psychoanalysis (Pigman, 1995), taking empathy to be “the process… which plays the
largest part in our understanding of… other people” (Freud, 1955, p 110). Yet
psychoanalysts, like phenomenologists, were dissatisfied with the way empathy was
conceived at the turn of the 20th century. Unlike moral sentimental philosophers like
Hume and Smith who had thought about sympathy in terms of everyday relations
between generally equal individuals in a functioning society, psychoanalysts were
primarily concerned with the very asymmetric therapist-patient relationship and as such
what they wanted out of empathy was a clinical “”tool,” “instrument,” or mode of
observation for the purposes of information-gathering, analysis and diagnosis”
(MacIsaac, 1997, p 247) which would allow the psychoanalyst to stay detached,
objective, scientific, authoritative and in control of their own emotions. Possible overlap
between the phenomena of empathy and sympathy was troublesome because it was
paramount for the therapist to not resonate with or even take on attributes of the patient’s
troubled psyche. Establishing an evolved conception of empathy was a task conducted
particularly in the mid-20th century, with leading thinkers like Carl Rodgers and Heinz
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Kohut. For Rogers “The state of empathy or being empathetic is to perceive the internal
frame of reference of another with accuracy and with the emotional components and
meanings which pertain thereto as if one were the person, but without ever losing the "as
if" condition… If this “if” quality is lost than the state is one of identification” (Rodgers,
1959, p 210). For Kohut, “vicarious introspection” ultimately amounted to a particularly
well-thought out form of inference through analogy to the self, of exactly the sort that
Lipps proposed Einfühlung as an alternative to. For Kohut, “only through introspection
on our own experience can we learn what it might be like for another person in a similar
psychological circumstance…” (MacIsaac, 1997, p 247). With psychoanalysis,
inclinations towards friendship or identification were dropped. Kohut “was especially
concerned that present and future generations understand that empathy as experience-near
observation is not some way of being “nice,” “kind” or “curing through love,” (MacIsaac,
1997, p 245) and this reflects a trend in psychoanalytic literature in general to emphasize
that “empathy is not the same as unconditional positive regard (liking and prizing the
client). Nor is it being sympathetic or compassionate” (Bohart and Greenberg, 1997, p 7).
For most of the 20th century psychoanalysis literature became the authority on empathy,
to the point that today many authors outside of psychology will define empathy in the
terms that psychoanalytic thinkers from the 1960’s and 70’s defined it.11
Finally, alongside psychoanalysts and phenomenologists, sociologists had become
interested in something like the concept of empathy as well. Clark tells us, “Turn-of-the-
century writers such as George Herbert Mead, John Dewey, William James and Charles
Horton Cooley argued that the ability to empathize, to take the attitude of the other, was
the unique human capacity that made socialization possible” (Clark, 1997, p 35). But
11
See for example Nussbaum (2001).
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again, empathy is evolved away from Lipps’s Einfühlung. Goldstein and Michaels write
of the Chicago School of sociology, “A cognitive component in the form of “an ability to
understand” was added to the earlier affective emphasis. And furthermore the blending or
merging of identities notion yielded to a self-other differentiation in which the empathizer
temporarily “took the role of the other” or “put themselves in the other’s place””
(Goldstein and Michaels, 1984, p 4).
Psychological Models of Empathy
So when psychologists took it upon themselves to investigate “empathy” they had
to ask themselves what it was they would be investigating. A sense of emotional
identification with others? Inner mimicry? Emotion-based compulsions for moral
behaviour? A highly cognitive, detached perspective taking in accordance with Rogers’s
“as if” proviso? All of the above?
A primary tactic taken by psychologists has been to separate analytically each of
these psychological phenomena, parsing them out and labeling them, isolating one as
“empathy” and thinking of the others in terms of “empathy-related responses”
(Eisenberg, 2001). We find that it has become commonplace in psychology to speak of,
as Hoffman puts it, not one but two basic kinds of empathy: cognitive empathy and
affective empathy (Hoffman, 2000). Others will speak of empathy’s two main responses:
perspective taking and emotional identification (Mehrabian, 1997). Further, psychologists
then find the need to break all the phenomena possibly associated with affective empathy
(the form of empathy psychologists, unlike psychoanalysts or, as we shall see, most
political thinkers, are primarily interested in) into further separate components. So we
will see psychologists analytically separate affective empathy – sometimes called “true
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empathy” – from personal distress, emotional contagion, sympathy, and other expressions
of empathy. (For example, Preston and de Wall, as we will see in a moment, think of
empathy in terms of a broad process and so include effects like “helping behaviours” as
an expression of empathy). But exactly how to define each of these analytically separated
psychological phenomena – including the basic phenomena of affective empathy –
depends on which conceptual model the psychologist advocates or adopts. As it turns out
– and this is why I noted earlier psychology has not entirely tamed the unruly concept –
psychology habours multiple conceptual models on empathy, with no broad consensus on
which conception to hold as ultimately authoritative. As we’ve already seen Eisenberg
and Strayer express, psychology has had to accept both one reigning conception of
empathy, only different, equally valid concepts.
Generally, there are three conceptual models that seem to hold the greatest
prominence in psychology, with these three most often being adopted or alluded to in the
literature: Eisenberg’s, Hoffman’s and Batson’s. For Eisenberg (in Miller and
Eisenberg), “empathy is defined as an emotional response evoked by the affective state or
situation of the other person. This emotion may be either identical or similar to the state
of the other and involves at least a minimal degree of self-other differentiation….
Sympathy, on the other hand, is defined as an emotional response, elicited by the
emotional state or situation of the other person that is not identical to the other’s emotion
and involves feelings of concern or sorrow for the other person (Miller and Eisenberg,
1988, p 325). Elsewhere Eisenberg has written: “it is important to separate… (a) taking
the other’s perspective cognitively, (b) responding with similar emotion, and (c)
responding with sympathetic concern… which we have done by using three terms:
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perspective taking, empathy and sympathy” (Eisenberg, 1991, p 129). On the other hand,
Hoffman defines affective empathy as “the involvement of psychological processes that
make a person have feelings that are more congruent with another’s situation than with
his own situation” (Hoffman, 2000). Meanwhile, Daniel Batson defines empathy as
“Other-oriented feelings congruent with the perceived welfare of the other person”
(Batson, 1994) and, as such sees empathy as necessarily linked with, and even the prime
source of, altruism (Batson, 1981; Batson and Shaw, 1991).
These models produce different ways of reading empathy, and of reading the
related concepts like sympathy. For Eisenberg, empathy is basically a sort of emotional
resonance with others so that we feel what others are feeling (but not a strong emotional
contagion because of her stipulation of a self-other differentiation). In Hoffman the
empathizer need not internally mimic or experience the same feelings as the one he is
empathizing with, but one that is more befitting the other’s situation, Baron-Cohen
conceptualizes empathy along the lines of Hoffman, and he writes, “[affective] empathy
is an observer’s emotional response to another person’s emotional state… Perhaps you
feel anger (at the system) in response to the homeless person’s sadness, or fear (for his
safety) or guilt (over your inability to help him): these feelings are based on empathy.
Feeling pleasure, or smugness, or hate towards him would not be empathetic reactions,
since none of these reactions are appropriate to his emotions (Baron-Cohen, 2003, p 26-
7). But this means what Eisenberg distinguishes from empathy as sympathy – feelings of
concern for the other’s welfare – may well fit into Hoffman and Baron-Cohen’s
definitions of empathy. Baron-Cohen writes, “Sympathy is just one such type of
empathetic response, where you feel both an emotional response to someone else’s
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distress and a desire to alleviate it” (Baron-Cohen, 2003, p 26). Similarly, Batson’s
empathy is more narrow than Hoffman’s in that Batson sees empathy as, by definition,
the source of concern for others and altruistic motivation. So for Batson, personal distress
– a self-regarding feeling of discomfort in seeing other’s in suffering (which, unlike with
true concern for the other, can be alleviated by removing our own distress without
removing the actual sufferers distress) – is not empathy. For Hoffman, empathy –
whether it produces more altruistic concerns for the other or not, only ever comes down
to reacts to personal distress. Thus Hoffman’s model includes the possibility of
empathetic anger (for example, anger at others for victimizing one we empathize with) in
a way Batson’s model does not. Finally, what Batson calls empathy Eisenberg insists is
actually sympathy.
So where does this leave us in our own quest to conceptualize empathy? Without
an authoritative voice insisting any one of these models is preferable to the others it
would appear that our next step would have to be simply to pick one model and define
empathy in accordance. But I am going to argue that doing so would be the wrong tactic
to take. Instead political thinkers should draw important insights from these models and
from what investigations of empathy based on these models have learned, while still
conceiving of empathy in broad terms, embracing a multidimensional view of it. Here’s
why:
These three models, and others like it in psychology, are designed, and best
suited, for investigations into the inner psychological mechanisms that produce
empathetic responses. But as political thinkers we are ultimately interested in empathy in
a different way. Ultimately we are interested in empathy as a practice that may have
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important implications for social and political life. When we look at empathy as a
practice we become interested in two facets of empathy: 1) the full process that goes on
within a human being12 when she employs empathy, and 2) the consequences of empathy
beyond the internal workings of the brain - the interpersonal, social and political.
Looking at the first of these two interests - empathy as a full process in the human mind -
we find something interesting. We are reminded that the separate phenomena that
psychological models carefully, analytically parse out – perspective taking, empathy,
sympathy, for example – are in practice in deep, perhaps inexplicable, interaction (or
even integration) with each other, such that the analytic separation of these “empathy-
related” components looks somewhat artificial and more a factor of our own heuristic
needs than of how the mind actually works.
The sharp lines drawn between cognitive components of empathy and emotive
components of empathy makes sense when we are simply trying to systematically map
the typography of the inner psyche as it relates to empathy. But as Decety tells us “no one
component (i.e., emotion sharing, mental flexibility/regulation, or self-other awareness)
can separately account for the potential of human empathy. These components are
intertwined and must interact with one another to produce the experience of empathy”
(Decety, 2005, p 144). This is an insight already reflected in the conceptual models we
have just looked at. For Hoffman, the basic emotional experience of having an emotion
appropriate to the situation of the other (the core of empathy for him) cannot simply stand
on its own. It must be facilitated by any number of five other factors, the first three being
precognitive but the other two being cognitive and becoming more prominent as the mind
12
Or even between human beings, as may be the case, we will see with what I am calling Relational
Empathy later in the chapter.
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matures. They are: 1) mimicry; 2) classic conditioning; 3) direct association with a
similar experience;13 4) the communication of emotion through language, and; 5) role-
taking (what Eisenberg calls perspective taking) (Hoffman, 2002). Batson holds that “two
[cognitive] conditions are necessary and sufficient for the creation of empathy: (1)
perception of another person as in need and (2) adoption of that other’s perspective”
(Batson and Moran, 1999). Eisenberg often speaks of the separate components she parses
out as united in practice, speaking not of empathy but of “empathy/sympathy” in
Eisenberg et al., (2004) and recognizes “that people are particularly likely” to empathize
with others through role-taking processes (Eisenberg, 1991). Decety writes further,
“There is no unitary empathy system (or module) in the brain. Rather, there are multiple
dissociable systems involved in the experience of empathy” (Decety, 2005, p 153). Much
work on empathy in psychology has been conducted regarding child development, and it
has been found that the capacity for empathy develops as cognitive and emotional
prowess develop. Newborns, for example, are prone to emotional contagion, without any
sense of differentiation between self and other (exemplified in the way babies cry
together in maternity ward nurseries). Adult empathy, more precise and nuanced, requires
complex interactions between instinctual emotional resonances, such as Lipps’s internal
mimicry, coupled necessarily with cognitive abilities to discern between self and other
and to intentionally take the perspective of the other. Preston and de Wall drive the point
home for us: “While Hoffman’s definition of empathy, and that of many others [i.e.,
13
By mimicry Hoffman means, as with Lipps, the empathizer mimics facial or bodily expressions of the
other which triggers a certain affect similar to that which the other is feeling. By classical conditioning
Hoffman means the empathizer subconsciously learns to develop feelings of distress by observing the
distress of others simultaneously during periods of the empathizer’s own distress. By associations Hoffman
means “direct association of cues from others or their situation with a similar past experience, which
evokes the distress of that experience” (Hoffman, 2002).
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Batson and Eisenberg] focus on the response of the subject, our definition focuses on the
process. A process model makes empathy a superordinate category that includes all
subclasses of phenomena that share the same mechanism. This includes emotional
contagion, sympathy, cognitive empathy, helping behaviour and so on. These phenomena
all share aspects of their underlying process and cannot be totally disentangled. All forms
of empathy involve some level of emotional contagion and personal distress… and
helping is never entirely for the sake of the object (if only at the [level of DNA; that is, at
the biological level of genetic selfishness14])” (Preston and de Wall, 2002).
Thinking about empathy as a practice, as political thinkers should want to,
necessarily means thinking about empathy in wide scope. The internal process of
empathy is necessarily multifaceted and multidimensional, integrating numerous aspects
of the mind (that cross the cognition/emotion divide). Yet the actual practice of empathy
is not entirely internal. That is, the practice of empathy does not remain as an isolated
event within an individual’s mind. The process of empathizing involves interaction with
the world and a whole number of important factors, as the following chart by Davis
(2005) illustrates. Here we see that the practice of empathizing involves not only the
aspect of the other that is being empathized with (the “Aim”) and the basic psychological
means by which the empathizer is empathizing (the “Process Employed’) but also the
cues used to pick up information regarding the other and the results of empathy. Here
14
Anatol Rapoport has an interesting discussion on this point about how empathy and altruism can
ultimately be explained by the “selfish gene” theory: that is, that even life-risking altruistic behaviour for
others is ultimately explained by a Darwinian drive to keep the DNA line alive. Rapoport notes that this
inclination would always compel us towards empathy and altruism for our own kin over others, however it
is obvious that in modern societies this is not something that human beings always, or perhaps even often,
do. See (Rapoport, 1992, p 66-71).
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Davis highlights a common cognitive-emotive pathway through the process of empathy,
which we can see resembles Lipps’s Einfühlung.
Chart 1 – from Davis (2005, p 49)
Empathy, Writ Large
This brings us to my first conclusion about how we should conceptualize empathy
for political scholarship. Ultimately empathy should be thought of as a broad,
multidimensional, unwieldy concept that does not lend itself to too narrow a definition,
even though for the purposes of research authors will (and should) seek to operationalize
it in manageable terms. Empathy, in this broad sense, should be seen as incorporating a
number of themes and phenomena that we have seen in this chapter so far. Intentionally
and cognitively taking the perspective of the other, internal emotional mimicry, feeling
feelings resonate with those of the other and feeling concern and care for the welfare and
woes of others all qualify as empathetic phenomena. Yes, such phenomena must be
considered to some degree in distinction from each other when we research empathy,
how it functions in the psyche and its effects on the world, but we do so for heuristic
purposes, in order to avoid confusion in our thought and research. Ultimately these
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phenomena should continue to be thought of as aspects of empathy overall. Moreover, I
suggest that empathy be thought of as broad enough, and its conceptual limits left vague
enough, that we should expect different authors (or even the same author in different
places, as I will in this dissertation) to conceptualize empathy in competing, perhaps
incommensurate ways. For example, in the next chapter when I suggest we operationalize
this broad concept of empathy into six “types” of empathy, five of those types will be
subcomponents of the same basic, broad, psychological phenomena we have been
discussing throughout this chapter. A sixth, however, Relational Empathy, will be
something of a challenge to the main view in psychology of how to conceptualize
empathy.
Empathy as an Abstract Concept
I suspect that for a number of political scientists my suggestion of a broad,
multidimensional concept of empathy will not do. The point of social science, it may be
argued, is exactly to produce greater analytic accuracy than that, which is exactly why
political scientists must define their terms sharply and parsimoniously and avoid dangers
such as conceptual stretching (Satori, 1970). But to these readers I submit that big,
multidimensional, concepts that are ultimately impossible to define and that allow for
numerous, even competing, conceptualizations are hardly anything political thinkers and
scientists are unfamiliar with. In fact, the discourses of political science usually retain
their most important and commonly used concepts in exactly this state. This includes the
two other, more commonly used eponymous concepts of this dissertation: power and
justice. Indeed it is exactly the big, multidimensional aspect of concepts like power and
justice that make them so prominent and of fundamental importance to political thought
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and science. It is only because these concepts are massive enough and flexible enough
that we find them looming in nearly every facet of political life. Were they more narrow,
easily contained concepts they would feature much less frequently and appear to hold
much less influence upon political life. What I am proposing here is that political thinkers
conceptualize empathy in the same manner, and ultimately grant empathy the equal
possibility to be found looming in near every facet of social and political life.
Before we move to the next section in this chapter, allow me to make this last
point clear by comparing the way the concept of power appears in modern political
scholarship to how we should, ultimately, think about empathy. Notice the similarities
between what I have written in this chapter about the historic unwieldiness of the concept
of empathy and what Baldwin writes in regards to power: “The long history of
discussions of the role of power in international relations… has failed to generate much
agreement. Scholars disagree not only with respect to the role of power but also with
respect to the nature of power… Robert Gilpin describes the concept of power as “one of
the most troublesome in the field of international relations,” and suggests that the
”number and variety of definitions should be an embarrassment to political scientists””
15
(Baldwin, 2002, p 177). Just as empathy ultimately incorporates a number of
component phenomena, so too does power. “Although it is often useful to distinguish
among such power terms as power, influence, control, coercion, force, persuasion,
deterrence, compelence, inducement and so on, it is possible to identify common
elements underlying all such terms” (p 177). Of course, despite this troublesome quality
no one has suggested the concept of power should be abandoned by political scholars as a
concept too large and ambiguous to admit into rigorous investigation. Power continues to
15
The Gilpin quotes are from, respectively: (Gilpin, 1981, p 13; Gilpin, 1975, p 24).
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be viewed as a fundamental and indispensable factor for the study of political life.
Baldwin continues: “There is… widespread consensus among international relation
scholars on both the necessity of addressing the role of power in international interactions
and the unsatisfactory state of knowledge about this topic” (p 177). The reaction to this
dissatisfaction has always been to try and better conceptualize power, and the effect has
been to some degree a proliferation of possible ways of conceiving of power. Generally
the concept of power retains a core notion in it, associated with Weber or Dahl (the one
that founds Peace-through-Power approaches): the “intuitive notion of A causing B to do
something that B otherwise would not have done” (Baldwin, 2002, p 177). Empathy also
has a core intuitive notion that stays fairly constant (in fact, it has two: perspective taking
and emotional identification). But from these basic, intuitive notions, for both empathy
and power, different conceptions have arisen. For power we might start with Morgenthau,
who defined power, in the abstract, as “anything that establishes and maintains the
control of man over man… [from] physical violence to the most subtle ties,”
(Morgenthau, 1985, p11) and who defined political power specifically as a psychological
dominance over others and not, for example, physical, military force (which he saw as
“the abdication of political power”) (Morgenthau, 1985, p 33). But later realists saw this
as too broad and unruly a concept to use in a rigorous, scientific way, and so Waltz re-
conceptualized power in terms of raw material capabilities (i.e., military force, money).
Nye’s vision of “soft power” as getting “others to want what you want” by “resources
such as culture, ideology and institutions” (Nye, 1990, pp 31-2) not only affixes an
addendum to Waltz’s narrowed concept and re-widens the notion of power, but it may or
may not start to move outside the classic definition of power as A dominating B.16 On the
16
If we mean by domination getting B to do what B would otherwise not do of its own accord. It depends
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other hand, there are also definitions of power that undoubtedly challenge, or at least
stand outside of, the classic definition. As we discussed in the previous chapter, Arendt’s
definition of power as a democratic tendency for collective action and legitimation
provides one prominent example (Arendt, 1970) while others are provided by Foucault:
his notion of power as ubiquitous, inescapable and fashioning nearly ever facet of our
beings, bodies and lives (Foucault, 1977), or his view of power as governance of free
agents (Foucault, 1997). Beyond these larger conceptualizations, there are smaller
debates about contending concepts, or at least facets, of power, such as Lukes’s classic
discussion on the three “faces of power” (Lukes, 1974), or we might even return to
Boulding’s “three faces” (Boulding, 1989). Despite the fact that any one individual
political scholar may in their own research efforts adopt only one of these particular
conceptions of power to the exclusion of the rest – and despite the fact that many scholars
will argue the entire discipline of political science should adopt their chosen definition
exclusively as the overall preferred definition of power, fearing what conceptual
confusion may occur should a multiplicity of definitions abound throughout political
science – the truth is that the discipline of political studies, on the whole, does retain a
multiplicity of definitions regarding power. Ultimately, looked at from the vantage-point
of political science as a whole (and not exclusively from the vantage-point of Waltz or
Morgenthau or Nye or Arendt or Foucault), power is treated as a broad, ambiguous and
multidimensional concept from which any given researcher can draw any of multiple
on how much you see “soft power” as a form of imperialism or a form of sharing culture that the other
willingly desires and takes up of its own accord. That is, if American culture sweeping through Japan is a
form of soft power, as Nye certainly conceives it as being, and this is facilitated by the fact that the
Japanese have a genuine taste for US culture (a point of contention, but let us say for the sake of argument
it is possible) and if one of the important “power” effects of this phenomenon is Japanese good will
towards the U.S. (again, as Nye conceives it), than we may be dealing with a different conception of power
here than the traditional view of A making B do what it would otherwise not want to do.
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possible conceptions in order to operationalize the concept for the purposes of her own
research. So too, ultimately, should political thinkers treat the concept of empathy.
Part 2: Conceptualizing Empathy, Implications and Consequences
Previously I noted that as political thinkers we are interested in empathy primarily
as a practice, and as such we are concerned to understand empathy not only as the broad,
multidimensional psychological process that it is but also the direct effects and possible
social and political implications of empathy. McDermott (2004) has noted that recent
advancements in knowledge on emotion within psychology and the neurosciences “offer
important and surprising implications for work in political science,” so let us continue to
draw from psychology for the rest of the chapter and prepare to conceptualize empathy as
a practice for political life by getting to know some effects of empathy that are socially
and politically relevant.17
Prosocial Behaviour and Nonaggression
Perhaps two of the most prominently asked questions in psychological research
on empathy in the past forty years have been “does empathy encourage prosocial
17
However, we must look at the following conclusions from psychology with an important caveat. All of
the findings below come from research and experiments on interpersonal relationships conducted in the
relative safety of laboratories or local experiments (often conducted on young children or undergraduate
students). But issues and events that we can think of as political are often – not necessarily, but often –
some of the highest stakes and most emotionally charged issues and events that arise in a human lifetime.
Political elites can find themselves holding the fates of nations in their hands. Political economists deal
with issues of vast disparity in qualities of life, and with issues of not just poverty and destitution but
starvation, hopelessness and death. Wars and violent conflicts create conditions of high intensity that are
very different than the conditions created within psychology laboratories and university experiments. The
results of empathy as found by psychologists certainly have important implications for social and political
life, but we must recognize the need to pursue and study these implications specifically within the contexts
of political deliberations, institutions and relations if we want greater insight into how to make the good
benefits of empathy carry. Research that suggests an important role for empathy in inhibiting aggression
and resolving conflict, for example, should be considered within the actual context of a zone of violent
conflict to know more about how empathy may apply to real political scenarios. That being said, it is
exactly the job of the political thinker or scientist to draw from the findings that I am about to review and
carry them more explicitly into more blatantly political contexts, as this dissertation endeavours to do with
its main question of empathy and peacemaking.
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behaviour?” and “does empathy inhibit aggression?”18 The answers to each of those
questions have most often been a qualified yes, and a yes that appears increasingly less
qualified as psychologists become ever more proficient at experimenting with empathy.
The questions are in some ways two sides of one coin, in that prosocial behavior is seen
as positive social action – usually understood as cooperative or helping behaviour - and
nonaggression as the lack of action, yet both geared towards the benefit of the other.
(Which is not to say prosocial behaviour must be altruistic. Prosocial behaviour has been
defined as “voluntary, intentional behavior that results in benefits for another” that need
not be altruistic or without reward to one’s own self (Eisenberg and Miller, 1987). More
on altruism in a moment.)
I write “a qualified yes” because research on the relationship of empathy to
aggression or prosocial behaviour has always been complicated by issues of definition
and method of measure, as well as the effects of intervening variables such as personal
distress, sex, age, self-esteem, environmental factors and intensity of feeling. Results on
empathy have differed depending on the chosen definition and methodology of study.
However, what strikes the reader is that, since Feshbach’s pioneering study of empathy
and aggression in children (Feshbach and Roe, 1968), psychologists have been largely
consistent in finding that the presence of empathy correlates positively with prosocial
behaviour and nonaggression and that over time, as psychologists have become more
18
On a personal note, I dislike the phrase “inhibit aggression.” It implies that aggression is a possibility or
even something the subject wants but is blocked from, as if ready to lash out except the obstacles of
empathy stop her from doing so. I prefer nonaggression because it may be that empathy does not just
neutralize aggressive desires but probably ensures they don’t arise within the subject to begin with. That is,
I think for example of Gandhi’s programs of nonviolence based on a love of human life. The idea, the hope,
was not inhibit or suppress aggressive desires but simply not to have them. Nonetheless, “inhibit
aggression” is the phrase always used in psychology literature, and so I will oblige.
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precise with issues of definition and measurement, such conclusions have been made ever
more confidently.
Eisenberg gives an account of research on these questions (Eisenberg, 2001). She
tells us that through the 1960’s and 1970’s prominent psychologists theorized that
empathy is a prime motivator for prosocial behaviour (Hoffman, 2000; Staub, 1979), with
important research at the time appearing to concur (Feshbach and Feshbach, 1969;
Feshbach, 1975, 1978; Mehrabian and Epstein, 1972.) In 1982 Underwood and Moore
(1982) wrote an article challenging this view, conducting a study that “much to
everyone’s surprise… found no correlation between” empathy and prosocial behaviour
(Eisenberg, 2001). In the late 1980’s Eisenberg herself reviewed all of the literature on
empathy and compiled it into two massive research studies (one on prosocial behaviour
and one on nonaggression), finding that empathy does significantly correlate positively
with both when measured through certain techniques but only nonsignificantly when
measured by other techniques (Eisenberg and Miller, 1987; Miller and Eisenberg, 1998).
In the early 1990’s Batson showed that, at least in adults, what had been previously
measured as empathy was actually a conflation of two phenomena: empathy – a strictly
other-regarding emotional identification with the other; and personal distress, a self-
regarding resonance with the feelings of the other (Batson, et. al., 1987). It was found that
previous studies had often conflated these two phenomena and in the process distorted
research results (Eisenberg et al., 2004). As where empathy would tend towards prosocial
behaviour, personal distress would not, and without controlling for personal distress the
two would negate each other, producing nonsignificant results. Attempting to correct for
this, Batson’s work with adults has reported a direct correlation between empathy and
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prosocial behaviour in adults (Batson and Shaw, 1991; Batson, 1994; Batson and Moran,
1999), while Eisenberg’s improved methods of measurement in children found “there
does seem to be a link between empathy-related responding and prosocial behavior”
(Eisenberg, 2000).19 By 2004 Eisenberg was declaring with confidence that “empathy-
related responding, especially sympathy, is the basis of much prosocial interpersonal
behavior” (Eisenberg et al., 2004).
Batson makes the further insight that empathy not only encourages helping
behaviour, but it encourages a higher quality of helping behaviour. Empathy is “likely to
motivate behaviour that is more sensitive and responsive to the victim’s actual need”
(Batson, 2004, p 361). Sibicky, Schroeder and Dovidio (1995) presented test subjects an
options to help those being empathized with in ways that would give short term help but
hurt over the long term. As predicted, subjects in whom empathy had been induced
recognized the long-term implications and helped significantly less than subjects that
were not induced to have empathy. Empathy, it seems, makes us not only more prone to
helping and cooperating but also wiser and more discerning at it.
In regards to empathy and aggression inhibition, a host of literature has supported
this positive correlation, and in recent cases such as LeSure-Lester (2000) and Strayer
and Roberts (2004), where (arguably superiour) methods of observation in subjects’
natural environments are used rather than “relying upon indirect measures of
aggression… [such as] questionnaire data” (LeSure-Lester, 2000), the findings are even
more confident and convincing.20 Richardson et al. have even found that “perspective-
19
These improved methods of measurement included measuring skin conductance, heart rate and facial
expression.
20
LeSure-Lester’s work with abused teenagers claims improved methods of measurement, examining the
behaviour of youth in their natural environment rather than She reports: “As predicted, results suggest a
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takers [that is, those who use cognitive empathy] not only inhibit aggressive/negative
responding [to threat of attack]; they also maintain nonaggressive/positive responses
when faced with an attack” (Richardson et al., 1998). Harmon-Jones, Vaughn, Mohr,
Sieglman and Harmon-Jones (2001)21 recently provided hard neurological evidence for
empathy’s capability to inhibit aggression. They found that when test subjects were
induced to empathize with a participant in the experiment, and when the participant
suddenly insulted the subjects, neurological activity in areas of the subject’s brain related
to hostility was inhibited, as where it is normally increased (and was increased in test
subjects not induced to have empathy for the participant).22
Forgiveness and Trust
We’ve seen that IR and conflict resolution thinkers have been interested in the
roles that forgiveness (Long and Brecke, 2003) and trust (Adler and Barnett, 1998;
Deutsch, 1957; Oelsner, 2007) can have on conflict resolution and securing conditions of
peace. Both forgiveness and trust can be facilitated, and perhaps even require, empathy.
strong, positive relationship between empathy and lower rates of interpersonal aggression and a strong
positive relationship between empathy and higher rates of behavior compliance” (LeSure-Lester, 2000).
Strayer and Roberts find “As expected, empathy (aggregated across methods and sources) was negatively
associated with aggression and anger, and positively associated with prosocial behaviors” and say of their
study, “To our knowledge, this is the first report linking children’s empathy and their observed (rather than
rated or reported) anger and aggression in a semi-natural social context. Thus our findings are an important
confirmation of theoretical expectations”(Strayer and Roberts, 2004).
21
From an unpublished study. See Batson (2004) for details.
22
Batson (2004) has a quick review on literature on empathy and aggression. However, he qualifies his
support of the correlation between empathy and nonaggression more than the research I have found
suggests he needs to. Other research that “has shown that empathy mitigates or lessens the likelihood of
aggressive behaviors” (Shillinghaw, 1999) includes: (Carlo et. al., 1999; Cohen & Strayer, 1996; Dykeman
et. al., 1996; Kaukiainen et. al., 1999;; Loudin et al., 2003; Mehrabian, 1997; Pagani, 2001; Richardson et.
al., 1994; Sams and Truscot, 2004; Strayer and Roberts, 2004; Zahn-Waxler et. al., 1995). Further,
Feshbach has reported positive correlations for empathy with prosocial behaviour and nonaggression across
a lifetime of work (Feshbach, 1975, 1978, 1982, 1997) including empirical work in empathy training
(Feshbach and Feshbach, 1982; Feshbach, 1983; Feshbach and Cohen, 1988) where she has reported
“children in the cognitive-affective training condition displayed a significantly greater decline in aggression
than did a control group…” (Feshbach and Feshbach, 1986).
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McCullough, Worthington and Rachal (1997), who set out to rectify the fact that
prior to their study there was “no comprehensive [theoretic] social-psychological
framework for interpersonal forgiving,” discovered in their research that “empathy for the
offending partner is the central facilitative condition that leads to forgiving.” More
specifically, they found “the relationship between receiving an apology from and
forgiving one’s offender is a function of increased empathy for the offending” –
(explaining perhaps why some apologies produce forgiveness and others fail to do so).
More, the authors found that affective and cognitive empathy both facilitate forgiveness
but in different ways, with the presence of affective empathy being more immediate and
of cognitive empathy (or perspective taking) taking longer, apparently as subjects are
given time to think things over. Since this study, research has only continued to support
the findings, with research from Zechmeister and Romero (2002), Konstam et al. (2001),
Fincham et al. (2002) and Macaskill et al. (2002) all concluding important links between
forgiveness and empathy, with some reports focusing on affective empathy and others on
both cognitive and affective. Worthington (1998) says that empathy for a past
transgressor is a crucial part of forgiveness. Toussaint and Webb (2005) find that
empathy is a more important factor in forgiveness for men than women and Farrow et al.
(2001) adds the hard neurological data by finding common neurophysiology expressed in
the experiences of empathy and forgiveness.
Nooteboom has defined trust as a function of empathy. It is part of trust, then, to
understand another’s cognition and motivation, as a function of conditions. This is clearly
related to the “availability” heuristic: “availability’ increases to the extent that one can
understand behaviour and empathize or identify with it…” (Nooteboom, 2003, p 20).
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Lewicki and Bunker (in Kramer and Tyler (1996)) write of three types of trust. The first
type is calculus-based trust, which is based largely on the confidence that “individuals
will do what they say because they fear the consequences of not doing what they say.
Like any behavior based on a theory of deterrence, trust is sustained to the degree that the
deterrence (punishment) is clear, possible and likely to occur if the trust is violated” (pg
119). The second form of trust is a “Knowledge-based trust [which] occurs when one has
enough information about others to understand them and accurately predict their likely
behaviour. Finally, the third type of trust is called identification-based trust. This form of
trust is based on a complete empathy with the other party’s desires and intentions. This
third level trust exists because each party effectively understands, agrees with,
empathizes with, and takes on the other’s values because of the emotional connection
between them and thus can act for the other” (p 119) The later two (arguably normatively
preferable23) forms of trust can be seen as having a link to empathy as we have described
it in this chapter. What the authors call knowledge-based trust may require, or at least
will likely be improved by, a particularly deep understanding (or set of knowledge) of the
other, which can be seen as the result of cognitive empathy / perspective taking, while
what the authors call identification-based trust is most obviously built upon affective
empathy, so that we may say affective empathy appears to be a necessary condition of
this form of trust.
Reduced Tendency to Stereotype/ Increased Identification with Other Groups
Batson and others have found that empathy can be an effective way to reduce
stereotypes and stigmatizations of groups in society, inducing prosocial behaviour
23
That empathy-based behaviours are normatively preferable to behaviours that rely on fear and power is a
theme that will grow stronger and be spoken of more explicitly as this dissertation goes on.
126
towards those groups. Batson et al. (1997) asked if inducing affective empathy for one
person who could be seen as belonging to a stigmatized group increased empathy,
prosocial attitudes and behaviour for the whole stigmatized group. Batson et al. begin by
recognizing that there appear to be many obstacles against empathy having such an
effect. Cognitively, when we receive positive information about one member of a
stigmatized group it is often the case that individuals react by separating that member
from the group in the individual’s mind, so that the individual no longer identifies the
member with her group, saying, for example, in the case of racial stigmatism “yes, she’s
Hispanic, but she’s not like the rest of them.” More, people are often motivated not to try
and change stigmatizing attitudes because the effort or cost of the prosocial behaviour
involved may seem too high, one’s own privileged, non-stigmatized position may be
threatened, or it may make an individual question too much for their cognitive comfort a
sense that the world is just as it is (Batson et al., 1997, p 106). Yet despite these expected
obstacles, Batson et al. found that when they induced empathy for one AIDS sufferer test
subjects responded by developing empathy and a concern for the welfare of AIDS
sufferers in general. (Very importantly, Batson et al.’s findings come with a proviso.
Inducing empathy for an individual group member leads to empathy for the whole group
providing that the condition of group membership (i.e., in order to be an AIDS sufferer
you have to be suffering with AIDS) “is a salient component of his or her plight”)
(Batson et al., p 106).
Elsewhere related research has supported the general hypothesis that empathy
improves attitudes and behaviours towards stigmatized groups, including towards racial
or ethnic minorities (Dovidio, Gaertner & Johnson, 1999; Finlay and Stephan, 2000;
127
Vescio, Sechrist & Paolucci, 2003), homosexuals (Vescio & Hewstone, 200124) and hard
drug users (Batson, Chang, Orr and Rowland, 2002).25 Political scientists may be
interested in this effect for what it might have to say about conflict and the means of
abating conflict between ethnic groups (which we will return to consider later in this
dissertation with our case study on Northern Ireland).
Emphasizing the inter-related nature between cognitive and affective empathy,
Batson et al. found that affective empathy for stigmatized groups and individuals was
induced by asking test subjects to cognitively take the perspectives of others (cognitive
empathy), and suggested that cognitive empathy may be a useful way to promote
empathy for stigmatized groups in situations where we cannot expect much close
proximal contact between stigmatized and other groups.
Considering this in terms of possibilities for Peace-through-Empathy approaches
considered in the first chapter, we saw two discussions that this empathy-effect speaks
directly to. First, again, Tuscany’s two main determinants for security communities: trust
and tolerance of out-groups. Empathy, it seems, is an important factor for creating such
tolerance (indeed, even acceptance). Second, recall that Stein saw the violence-inducing
“enemy” image of the other as becoming a stereotype amongst a nation’s population.
Empathy, as a psychological force that defeats the tendency to stereotype, may be a
bulwark against enemy images or a factor for dissolving existent images.
Empathy Can Be Learned
If we are going to propose empathy and the inducement or engendering of
empathy within society as a means to improve society, than we are going to need to know
24
Unpublished manuscript, referenced in Batson (2004).
25
Evidence also suggests the same effect when dealing with animals and the environment (Shelton and
Rogers, 1981; Schultz, 2000).
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whether empathy can be so induced or engendered. That is, are we essentially stuck with
the degrees of and dispositions towards empathy that individuals appear to naturally
manifest? Or can it be encouraged and learned? Feshbach, Hoffman and Eisenberg have
all been interested in the development of empathy over a lifetime and have found that as
we grow older and our cognitive capacities increase these increasing capacities create
conditions for more frequent and effective empathizing. This suggests that empathy can
be learned, and authors report some success in reducing aggressive in children (Schonert-
Reichl, 2006, Swick, 2005) teenagers (Gibbs, 2003) and adults (Acton and During, 1992)
through programs of empathy training.
Furthermore, researchers have found that the tendency to empathize is affected by
the intensity of feelings in the potential empathizer. When emotions are very intense –
say perhaps in situations of conflict, or in watching someone being tortured - a person’s
capacity to empathy can be countered or “short-circuited” by the emotional intensity.
Similarly, emotional intensity that is too low tends to result in less empathy. Empathy
appears to be best achieved when the emotional identification is of a ‘middle’ intensity,
and Eisenberg suggests this middle level of emotional arousal most often occurs in
people who have a strong sense of how to cognitively regulate their own emotions
(Eisenberg 2002). Thus, empathy is most likely to lead to care for the other and altruistic
behaviour when it is internally and intellectually regulated by the empathizer’s own
mental will, suggesting that empathy is a skill that can be learned, practiced and
improved.
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The Prisoner’s Dilemma
The Prisoner’s Dilemma is perhaps the most famous rational choice model in
political science. Virtually every student of political science learns at some point that if
two players are placed within a Prisoner’s Dilemma situation, both players will act for
their own self-interests but the final result will be an outcome that is in the interest of
neither. In IR the Prisoner’s Dilemma is often seen as a model for real life security
dilemmas, such as for example arms races between nations and other situations where the
attempts of individual nations to ensure their own security lead to an overall less secure
situation. Batson and Moran (1999) tell us in their look at the Prisoner’s Dilemma that in
“over 2000” studies performed in its honour, but not one prior to Batson and Moran’s
tested the effects of empathy in the game. In political science, a basic ontological
assumption about the players in a Prisoner’s Dilemma is that they will be self-interested
and egoistically rational (that is, rational in the self of pursuing their own interests to the
best of their abilities). Altruism does not enter into the equation. As a result, in political
science it is always assumed the outcome of a Prisoner’s Dilemma (assuming no
iterations – that is, the first and only Prisoner’s Dilemma the subject has faced26) will all
be that as actors pursue self-interested goals they create poor or sub-optimum outcomes
for all players involved. However, in psychology, when the Prisoner’s Dilemma is
actually tested empirically, “about one-third to one-half [of the subjects] cooperate”
(Batson and Moran, 1999). “Why,” Batson and Moran ask, “would anyone cooperate in a
one trial prisoner’s dilemma?” The answer they find in their own experiments is that
26
Point being that conflict resolution thinkers have well pointed out when it comes to iterated Prisoner’s
Dilemma games – that is, games played over and over – actors learn strategies, realize the broader
implications of their moves, and become more willing to cooperate for better outcomes overall. See
Axelrod (1984).
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people in the real world spontaneously cooperate during the Prisoner’s Dilemma for one
of two reasons - “moral motivation and empathy-induced altruistic motivation” – with the
later, empathy-induced altruistic motivation, actually proving a more persistent, less
shakable motive for cooperation once it was established amongst subjects in the study
than cooperation for reason of moral principles.27
Human Nature/ the Conception of the Subject
All works of political thought and science must begin with some particular
ontological conception of the political subject, and all the behaviours of the political
subject that those work will be willing to describe or prescribe must be congruent with
that ontological conception. Most often in political thought and science the political
subject is conceived of as, if nothing else, self-interested and rational, with rationality
often understood as a primarily cognitive, calculative, often non-emotive means of
pursuing one’s self-interested ends (see Mansbridge, 1990).28 Indeed this conception of
the subject holds well beyond political science. As Batson writes, “Why do people do
what they do – especially what they do for others? In Western thought, the most common
answer to this question about the nature of human motivation is: self-interest. People do
what they do for others in order to benefit themselves; benefiting others is only an
instrumental goal on the way to the ultimate goal of self-benefit. This is the dominant
view in philosophy, biology, psychology, economics, and the social sciences” (Batson,
27
From the conclusion to Batson and Moran (1999): Why would anyone cooperate in a one trial prisoner’s
dilemma? Our research points to two different answers: moral motivation and empathy-induced altruistic
motivation. Apparently, some people cooperate because they feel obliged to do what is good and right. This
obligation may, however, diminish in certain situations such as in a business transaction. Many people
cooperate if they are led to feel empathy for the other person in the dilemma, presumably because empathy
induces an altruistic desire to increase the other’s welfare.”
28
This is much less the case in political theory, where rationality is often understood as the capacity to
understand what is just and moral behaviour (and sometimes even, as in Kant, to be motivated to act as
such).
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2004, p 360). Yet Batson’s own ever-increasing body of experiments has consistently
found that altruistic motivation does appear to be an important facet of human nature, and
that empathy provides a wellspring for that motivation. This “conclusion has, in turn, led
to the suggestion that we psychologists need to change our view of human motivation
and, indeed, of human nature. If the human motivational repertoire is not limited to self-
interest – if one person can have the welfare for another as an ultimate goal – then
humans are more social creatures than even our most social social-psychological theories
have suggested.” Similarly, Keith Oatley writes, “One view [for explaining social
cooperation], which might be called the economists’ view, is that social cooperation
depends on exchanges that increase the net utility for each party.” But closer to the truth,
Oatley argues, is that “Exchanges occur because members of the human species often
seek the social goal of affiliation, and so they happily cooperate with each other.
Increases in utility are by-products” (Oatley, 2000, p 86). Ontological assumptions about
how to conceptualize the political (or economic, or social) subject are perhaps the most
fundamental premises in social science work from which everything else stems. The
changes that would be required if we took seriously the work of authors such as Batson
and Oatley could be paradigm-shifting or even discipline altering – and I do not believe I
am in any way being hyperbolic when I suggest that. A conception of the subject more
suited to Batson’s or Oatley’s outlook may open up optimistic possibilities for social and
political behaviour that many political and international thinkers have often assumed can
be dismissed outright or left out of their considerations.29
29
Something that I discovered during my research for this dissertation fascinated me in a way related to this
theme of the conception of the subject. The famous Milgram experiments showed that test subjects failed to
stop shocking participants in an experiment, even to such high voltages that were the experiment not faked
the recipients of the shock would have been dead - when authority-figures in white lab coats pressed them
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Gender
Psychology literature makes it impossible to ignore that, in general, women
appear to have an advantage over men when it comes to the ability to empathize (and all
of the social goods that come with it). Research consistently finds that women tend
towards empathy, or are easier to induce empathy in, than men, to the point that studies
routinely separate their results for women and men so as not to distort their statistics and
conclusions, or they will test either women or men depending on whether they want a
“most-likely case” or a “hard case.”30 There is debate as to whether women are on
average more prone to empathy due to something inherent and neurological or due to
some combination of inherent dispositions to empathy and intervening factors of
socialization. Perhaps due to the nature of the discipline, some psychologists, such as
Baron-Cohen, seem to be increasingly arguing for the former (innate, neurological
disposition to be more empathetic) (Baron-Cohen, 2004).
to continue with the shocking. These experiments have been cited incessantly since they were conducted as
evidence for how obsequious and compliant human beings generally are to authority, which has had many
implications for the obviously political issue of the role of authority in shaping society. However, the view
of humanity thinkers often suggest comes out of the Milgram experiments may be too extreme a view. Not
all of the possible interesting findings of the Milgram experiments, it turns out, are commonly known. the
empathy-related implications are rarely ever reported. Ohbuchi et al. write of the Milgram experiments:
“When the victim was located close to the subjects so that they clearly perceived his or her apparent
suffering, subjects were more likely to reject the order to deliver intense shocks. Such a reduction has been
interpreted as a result of empathy or sympathy…” (Ohbuchi et. al., 1993). That is to say, the possible
induction of empathy or sympathy for the recipient of the shock worked to lessen the possibility that the
subject would be compliant to authority at the cost of sacrificing the recipient. That small item of
knowledge alone significantly changes the picture of humanity and the possible implications for politics
and society that seem to derive from the Milgram experiments. Enough, in fact, that we might wonder why
this data is so little reported, and most likely we can conclude the simple fact that empathy was not a topic
psychology was interested in during the era the Milgram experiments were conducted nor one that social
and political thinkers have been interested in enough since.
30
For cases where gender features importantly see for example (Gault and Sabini, 2000; Toussaint and
Webb, 1995, Gilligan, 1982). For examples where gender is not the central focus of the study but must be
recognized out of a general, routine recognition that women are simply better empathizers than men, see
(Singer et al., 2004; Singer, 2006). For studies where gender was not the central focus but results split
consistently along gender lines, see (Richardson et al., 1998).
CHAPTER III:
FIVE FORMS OF EMPATHY
So now we have seen empathy in psychology and we’ve seen that empathy
ultimately retains a broad conceptual range. Still, as with the concept of power, if we are
going to use it to good analytical effect in investigations into political life we will need to
operationalize the concept in a more precise and manageable way. In this chapter I
outline not one but five forms of empathy - Perspective Taking, Humanizing Empathy,
Sympathy, Empathetic Identification, and Relational Empathy - retaining important,
varying aspects of empathy that we encountered in the previous chapter. I do not mean to
suggest that these are the only forms of empathy we could consider, but for thinking
about possible positive aspects of empathy in peacemaking efforts they suit our purposes.
Yet before I delineate these five types of empathy we should have a quick discussion
about the cognition/emotion divide in our conception of empathy - a discussion that
happens to double as a quick look at the way empathy is generally thought of in political
science today.
Part I: Empathy in Political Scholarship Today: Cognition and Emotion
When we look for explicit references to empathy in political thought today (and
even in related social sciences like economics) we seem to find a precedent being set for
how to define empathy. That is, a particular vision of empathy does seem to explicitly
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appear commonly enough in political scholarship that it threatens to become the official
view of empathy for political research. But it would be an obstacle to our understanding
of empathy if it did.
When it comes to political thinkers on empathy (and, it seems, to social thinkers
in general) the divide between cognition and emotion appears to be keenly important. The
general trend in most political scholarship is to accept a definition of empathy as an
exclusively cognitive faculty. Martha Nussbaum, for example, presents a definition of
empathy where she goes out of her way to distinguish empathy from the more emotive
concept of compassion, limiting empathy strictly to a cognitive, Rogers-like “as if”
imagination of the other’s perspective. Empathy, she writes “is like the mental
preparation of a skilled (Method) actor: it involves a participatory enactment of the
situation of the sufferer, but is always combined with the awareness that one is not
oneself the sufferer” (Nussbaum, 2001, 327). One important characteristic of empathy,
Nussbaum feels, is that it need not lead to any particular emotion for the other. Empathy
could leave one feeling neutral for the other, it could become an avenue to “appropriate
compassion,” or it could become an avenue for entirely more malevolent purposes. “[A]
torturer can use it for hostile and sadistic ends,” she writes (Nussbaum, 2001, 332-333).1
Nussbaum’s view of empathy resembles its use in contemporary economics, where
authors have conceptualized empathy and sympathy in terms of preferences and utility
functions in efforts to fit them unproblematically within economic rational choice models
1
Throughout this chapter my citation of Nussbaum’s strictly emotionless view of empathy perpetuates the
sense that Nussbaum sides with other political scientists who tend to avoid dealing with emotion in their
theory or research. That is a misconception that deserves to be rectified. The book from which I am quoting
Nussbaum’s account of empathy is entirely devoted to investigations into emotions such as love and
compassion. Se does define empathy as without emotion but her focus on empathy is far outweighed by her
focus on compassion, which she says as blatantly emotional. Moreover, she argues that study on the
emotions has been marginalized in political theory and must be returned to because emotions may have an
important role to play moral reasoning itself (Nussbaum, 2001).
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(Fontaine, 2001, 1997; Binmore, 1998, Sugden, 2002). Binmore elaborates on the
difference:
“Adam sympathizes with Eve when he so identifies with her aims that her
welfare appears as an argument in his utility function… The extreme
example is the love a mother has for her baby. Adam empathizes with Eve
when he puts himself in her position to see things from her point of view.
Empathy is not the same as sympathy because Adam can identify with Eve
without caring for her at all. For example, a gunfighter may use his
empathetic powers to predict an opponent’s next move without losing the
urge to kill him” (Binmore, 1998, p 12).
Within the discipline of IR, Ralph K. White has focused more attention on the concept of
empathy than anyone. In defining empathy (and sympathy) White writes, “Although the
two words are often used almost interchangeably, “empathy” will be defined as a realistic
understanding of the thoughts and feelings of others, while “sympathy” will be defined in
accordance with the Greek derivation, as feeling with others – being happy because they
are or unhappy because they are – which often implies doing what one can to help them.
Empathy is cognitive, in the language of psychology; sympathy is affective” [italics
author’s](White, 1984). McNamara and Blight respond to White by endorsing not only
his advocacy of a foreign policy of realistic empathy but his basic definitions as well.
“[Empathy] means simply understanding the thoughts and feelings of others,” they write,
while having “nothing to do with sympathy” (McNamara and Blight, 2001, p 65). Within
political theory we can increasingly find something like empathy being appealed to in
important ways. For Michael Ignatieff (2001), a “limited empathy” becomes the
philosophical justification for international human rights in a world where different
cultures and peoples will not all accept one common faith or comprehensive philosophic
story.
“A secular defense of human rights depends on the idea of moral
reciprocity: that we judge human actions by the simple test of whether we
would wish to be on the receiving end. And since we cannot conceive of any
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circumstances in which we or anyone we know would wish to be abused in
mind or body we have good reason to believe that such practices should be
outlawed. But that we are capable of this thought experiment – that is, that
we possess the faculty of imagining the pain and degradation down to other
human beings as if it were our own – is simply a fact about us as a species.
Because we are all capable of this limited empathy, we all possess a
conscience, and because we do, we wish to be free to make up our own
minds and express those justifications” (Ignatieff, 2001, pp 88-9).
Habermas also grants empathy a role of fundamental importance within his normative
theories of democracy and justice. For Habermas, principles of a just society and
democratic institutions and policies must be legitimated ultimately in procedures of
democratic deliberation, because moral and political reasoning – which are for Habermas
(as is the norm in modern political thought) the force that legitimates claims of justice
and democratic political life - must be intersubjective. That is, the reason that ultimately
founds a just democratic society must be reason widely agreed upon through processes of
democratic deliberation where everyone’s perspective is genuinely included. The very act
of intersubjective deliberation, Habermas thinks, necessarily requires that the participants
genuinely take the perspective of the other and not just consider their own egoistic
interests and perspective. Yet, Habermas’s logic is designed so that it is apparent that this
perspective taking must be cognitive and devoid of emotion? In this he (like many other
political philosophers of today) takes explicitly from Kant. Like Kant, Habermas insists
that our moral reasoning about justice and democratic institutions and practices must be
rooted in a process of universalizing thought, yet also like Kant he assumes that emotions
create particular obligations (i.e., love of particular kin or identity group) that subvert the
ability to think in universalist terms. As Vetlesen tells us, “For Habermas, emotions have
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a role to play only up to a certain point, beyond which the accomplishments of moral
reasoning are exclusively cognitive, or intellectual” (Vetlesen, 1994, p 316).2
The view of empathy we see amongst political thinkers (and economists) –
empathy as a highly cognitive faculty that does not seem to reach down into the murkier
world of the emotions - is very different than the view of empathy we see with
psychologists. Political thinkers appear to focus exclusively on what psychologists might
call “cognitive empathy,” and in doing so they keep with some very strong traditions
stretching throughout the history of Western civilization. In the Western world there has
been a long-standing tendency (Nussbaum traces it back to the Stoics) to sharply
dichotomize reason and the “passions”3 within the human psyche and to normatively
privilege reason over the emotions. Crudely put, it is often posed that to be reasonable
(devoid of emotional influence) is normatively preferred (and tends to better outcomes)
while to be emotional too easily disrupts or corrupts rational thought. That this tendency
to privilege reason over the emotions has dominated modern thought is attested to by the
general character of modernity itself: the influential traces of the Age of Reason and Age
of Enlightenment, the rise of science, Weber’s rationalization and disenchantment of the
world. Which is not to say that no important modern thinkers have been interested in
questions of the emotions. We can point to, for example, David Hume, Adam Smith or
William James. But interest in the emotions has cycled in and out over the modern era,
with many important schools of academic thought often proceeding as if human beings
(or, in the case of political thought, the political actor, be it an individual or a corporate
2
This traditional tension between reason and emotion, universal vs. particular, will be explored further in
various places throughout the dissertation.
3
The etymological root of the word “passions” is the ancient Greek pathê, which is also the root of the
“pathy” portion of the words “empathy” and “sympathy.”
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entity like the state) can be theorized as a purely rational actor, without considering the
effects of emotions – and this has been true even in psychology, the discipline which we
may think most likely to have always retained interest in emotion. Yet Forgas tells us that
emotions were not studied for the better part of the first half of the 20th century, and when
psychologists did first turn to the task of studying emotions in the mid-20th century it was
only to ask how cognition shaped, formed and constrained emotion (cognitive appraisal
theory). “Most of what is known about the role of feelings in social thinking and
behaviour has been discovered only during the past two decades” (Forgas, 2000).4
Because we are currently in a time when interest in emotions is returning to the social
sciences, this tendency to privilege reason over the emotions has been well commented
on elsewhere5 and I need say no more of it here (there will be more discussion on this
point in a later chapter) except to note that the pattern of thinking about empathy as a
primarily cognitive faculty fits a dominant tendency within social thought and science to
normatively privilege the faculties of cognition and reason while either ignoring or being
skeptical of the worth of emotions. Where we do see empathy or empathy-related factors
like care and compassion discussed as emotions in political scholarship it is often in
discourses that are posed as a problem or challenge to the way social and political life has
4
Says Damasio of neurobiology: “By the end of the nineteenth century Charles Darwin had made incisive
observations on the expression of emotions in animals and humans and placed emotion in perspective of
biological evolution; William James had produced a scientific description of the phenomenon of emotion,
thus opening the way to its experimental study; and Sigmund Freud was writing about the means by which
emotion might play a role in psychopathology. Somebody freshly arrived on the earth in 1994 and
interested in the topic of emotion would have good cause to wonder why such groundbreaking
developments did not lead to an assault on the neurobiology of emotion. What could possibly have gone
wrong in the intervening century? The simplest answer to this question is that emotion has received benign
neglect from neuroscience and been passed over in favour of the study of attention, perception, memory
and language” (Damasio, 2001, p 99).
5
See for example Nussbaum, 2001; Koziak, 2000.
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been thought about in the main traditions of political thought and science, as we see with,
for example, feminist ‘ethics of care’ literature.6
But given the previous chapter’s review of the concept of empathy, there are
several reasons why we should not be so sure that the account of empathy being
presented by all of these authors is the best for political scholarship.
First, the Nussbaum/Binmore view of empathy is contested by authorities on
empathy. Baron-Cohen, for example, will strictly deny some of the aspects and
implications of this empathy as presented in political scholarship. In sharp contrast, for
example, to how both Nussbaum and Binmore explicitly characterize empathy as a
faculty that allows the empathizer to, if he wants, use the knowledge of the other he gains
from empathy for nefarious purposes, Baron-Cohen writes “Empathizing is the drive to
identify another person’s emotions and thoughts, and to respond to them with an
appropriate emotion. Empathizing does not entail just the cold calculation of what
someone else thinks and feels (or what is sometimes called mind reading). Psychopaths
can do that much” (Baron-Cohen, 2003, p 2).
Second, as should be apparent to the reader after the previous chapter, the purely
cognitive reading of empathy – what psychologists distinguish as “cognitive empathy” or
“perspective taking” – is simply too narrow a concept to think of as empathy on the
whole. We have already seen that in practice the cognitive and emotive components of
empathy tend to interact with and facilitate one another, suggesting that they can
naturally lead to or blend in with one another. Indeed, the tendency for authors to be
apparently inconsistent about their understandings of empathy in their own work, and to
slip into and out of cognitive and emotive visions of empathy, is exactly the reason why
6
For some examples, (Gilligan, 1982; Noddings, 1984; Ruddick, 1989; Held, 1995, 1993; Baier, 1993.)
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authors like Binmore or like White and McNamara and Blight seek to sharply define
empathy in the first place. But even with these sharp definitions, when it comes to
thinking about empathy in practice authors sometimes cannot help but follow “cognitive
empathy” into more emotional territory. White, for example, thinks of demonizing the
other (for example, White writes “German Kaiser Wilhelm’s attack on France in World
War I stemmed mainly from his demonizing of France’s ally, Britain”) (White, 2004, p
400) as a “misperception’ caused by a lack of cognitive empathy, but how much can we
say that creating images of the other as a “demon” is entirely cognitive and how much
must we say it speaks to our emotional capacities for fear and anger while attempting to
“short-circuit” our capacities for more emotionally empathic responses like acceptance
and humanization? Further, though White himself cannot be blamed for this because he
never conducted the study, but recent research on White’s ideas finds that “EE [empathic
emotions] appear to be activated by PT [perspective taking] and mediate its effect on
conflict behaviour. This suggests that PT, the [cognitive] process by proposed by White
to achieve empathetic understanding, involves activation of emotions that in turn explain
some of the behaviors relevant to negotiations and conflict resolution” (Betancourt, 2004,
p 369) For a more illustrative example, here we see McNamara and Blight make an
obvious appeal to an emotive empathy.
“While the numbers [of deaths] permit an appreciation of the scale of the
tragedy, they can also be mind-numbing: so many wars, so many millions of
dead, so many tragic cases. But numbers of course cover only those aspects
of the horror of the 20th century that can be quantified… Alongside the
numbers we need to consider individualized records… We need to think
about the Cambodian women who… have witnessed horrors so
unspeakable that physical blindness resulted as a protective mechanism…
we need to stare for a while at the recent photographs taken by James
Nachtwey of the victims of torture in the wars in West Africa and
elsewhere. We must try to identify with other human beings who have been
victimized by war and violence – like the hundreds of children whose arms
and legs were brutally chopped in half recently in Sierra Leone – in order
to make human sense of the numbers, and in order to be moved by the
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numbers to take preventive action” [italics mine] (McNamara and Blight,
2001, p 23).
According to McNamara and Blight’s own definitions they have moved here from
empathy to sympathy. One response would be that if McNamara and Blight, or White for
that matter, are going to make such sharp distinctions between empathy and sympathy
and then explicitly claim to advocating an empathetic foreign policy but not a
sympathetic foreign policy they should remain consistent, and McNamara and Blight
should not bring up this message of identifying with the suffering of victims of war, or
White should perhaps avoid the point about demonization, or dismiss Betancourt’s
findings about the influence of emotion in his realistic empathy. However, these points
are all important to think about. Moreover, they should be thought of in terms of empathy
– as we have seen, the emotional identification that McNamara and Blight appeal to
requires the empathizer to cognitively take the perspective of the other (according, at
least, to psychology). The better answer, then, would be not to lean towards narrowing
our conception of empathy and therefore the aspects and effects of actual empathy in
practice in the world, but rather to keep our understanding of empathy rather wide so that
we can continue to talk about important factors like the emotional identification with
victims brought up here by McNamara and Blight or the demonization brought up by
White, and that we continue to speak of them as functions of empathy (or the lack of, as
the case may be).
Third, a cognitive conception alone may not be capable of doing the work
political thinkers may want it to do. The way Habermas uses empathy provides the
example. As I briefly described above, Habermas’s theory of democratic deliberation
requires the cognitive empathy that we have seen Eisenberg call perspective taking, and
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“for Habermas to remain faithful to his overall view, he has to make sure that
[democratic] deliberation… bars the impact of emotions and remains purely cognitive”
(Vetlesen, 1994, p 321). However, Vetlesen has argued that the basic work of
recognizing the other as a moral agent worthy of being included within democratic
deliberation necessarily entails an emotional empathy (Vetlesen, 1994). This is a point
that Habermas, informally at least, has conceded to Vetlesen. Witness a recent interview
of Habermas in the Norwegian journal Replikk. Says Habermas, “Look, the idea of a
moral discourse shouldn’t be interpreted in too rationalist a way. To argue from a moral
point of view requires participants to mutually take the perspective of all the others. It is a
rather demanding obligation to step in the shoes of any other participant: you are
expected to interpret and assess competing interests and values from within the world-
view and the self-understandings of them… [W]e should not forget what Dr. Vetlesen
once pointed out to me: A moral discourse would not meet its cognitive purpose if it did
not ask participants for empathy, and even sympathy, with whatever strange perspectives
and distant forms of life” (Oyen, 2005). But what then of the earlier Habermasian logic
that could not coherently accept emotions in deliberations on morality and justice?
Ultimately this is a question for a different dissertation, but for now the point I’d like to
take from this example is two-fold: first, empathy as a concept is still obviously
undertheorized within political theory (and I would suggest this undertheorization applies
widely across the overall discourses of contemporary political scholarship). In this
example, it is not that Habermas has made a totally erroneous move in appealing to
empathy. The problem is that appealing to empathy raises questions still to be answered,
and may actually demand a limited but important overhaul of Habermas’s overall theory.
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Second, holding to a more narrow conception of empathy may not give political scholars
recourse to explore all of the potential that the concept of empathy may offer. We’ve seen
Nussbaum and Binmore suggest that cognitive empathy does not necessarily lead to any
particular sense of moral obligation or prosocial sentiment. In psychology this claim is
largely supported, either explicitly (Mehrabian, 1997; Mehrabian and Epstein, 1972) or
implicitly in that experiments and studies that have concluded empathy leads to prosocial
and moral behaviour have predominantly focused upon affective empathy (for example,
all of Batson’s work).
But this long-standing dichotomy of the human psyche into “reason” on one hand
and ‘the passions” on the other has probably led political scholarship astray when it
comes to questions of empathy. The cognitive-emotive divide is probably not the axis
which political scholars should be most concerned to define empathy upon. As
psychologists note, within individuals over the age of a toddler, for whom certain
cognitive and emotional capacities have developed, the actual practice of empathy within
their psychologies inevitably involves a combination of cognition and emotion, even if
we can claim different degrees of cognition or emotion going into different types or
effects of emotion (for example, Eisenberg’s perspective taking (Binmore and
Nussbaum’s empathy) is a form of empathy that appears to be comprised of a greater
degree of purely cognitive processes than emotional identification, for example). In fact,
increasingly within psychology and the neurosciences a map of the human psyche that
sharply dichotomizes cognition and the emotions is loosing support. Damasio has become
increasingly renowned for his work in neurology that insists cognition and emotion – and
indeed, even more physiological aspects of our being – are never really divorced from
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each other when it comes to the process of the human mind. “Emotion, feeling and
biological regulation all play a role in human reason,” he writes. “The lowly orders of our
organism are in the loop of high reason” (Damasio, 1993, p xiii). Similarly, Forgas
explains that psychologists are increasingly viewing “affect and cognition as inseparable,
interwoven dimensions of human social life… [New research] strongly suggests that the
affect/cognition relationship is fundamentally an interactive one… complex, context
sensitive and clearly bidirectional” (Forgas, 2000, p 4; 400). This new, more integrated
model of the human psyche makes it much harder to maintain the traditional view that
normatively reason should always be privileged over, and should constrain, the effects of
emotions. Forgas continues, “It would be a mistake, however, to insist on viewing the
relationship between affect and cognition as fundamentally about the question of primacy
and independence… Rather than viewing affect as a source of disruptive influence on
proper – that is, affect-less – thinking, there is now a growing consensus that affective
responses are a useful and even essential means of dealing with the social environment”
(Forgas, 2000, p 389).
Part II: Five Forms of Empathy
How should political thinkers conceptualize empathy, then, for the sake of
identifying it in research? Here are five “forms” or “types” of empathy.
Perspective Taking
With the concept of Perspective Taking (PT) I am recognizing the consistent
theme within the more recent history of the concept of empathy, highlighted particularly
by 20th century theorizers of empathy, that there is an actively cognitive component to
empathy involving the conscious, intellectual and willful act of attempting to imagine
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oneself “as if” they were in the shoes of the other. PT is the category in which we would
place Eisenberg’s ‘perspective taking,” Nussbaum and Bidmore’s “empathy” and the
detached, psychoanalytic empathy of Rogers and Kohut. Perspective Taking (PT) can be
thought of as a particularly useful tool or method that significantly aids strategic analysis
and communication by correcting misperception, miscommunication and by facilitating
accommodation of the other (or each other). It can also be seen as facilitating a more
accurate understanding of the psychology of other political actors, without developing a
sense of identification with the other and without necessarily inclining the perspective
taker to become concerned for the wellbeing or woes of the other.
Let us take consider these four aspects separately (quickly). First, as we saw in the
first chapter, there is a school of thought in IR that takes an accurate understanding of the
other as important for understand what sort of behaviour we can expect from the other
and what sort of behaviour or communications we should engage in so as to best
communicate our meanings and intentions or best achieve our goals. (We saw this school
of thought associated primarily with what Herrmann (2002) and Wendt (1999, p 3) refer
to as the “phenomenological” approach, though it may be fair to assume that this premise
is accepted by a fairly wide population of IR thinkers today, including most social
constructivists). Again, the assumption here is that we should not assume that other actors
perceive the situation in the same way that we do, and therefore we should not assume
they will read our messages and behaviours the way we intend or interpret them, or react
the way we expect them to. Viewing situations from the perspective of the other grants us
a far more comprehensive picture of all the factors (your cognition, my cognition, your
expectations, my expectations) that ultimately determine behaviour and outcomes. As we
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saw in Chapter I, IR thinkers tend to think of this in terms of correcting misperception
and miscommunication. Notice also, importantly, that as we Perspective Take and better
understand how the other sees the situation, we come to understand better what the other
requires or needs to move forward in dealings (for example, peace negotiations) or to
move towards our desired end. With this knowledge we may come to realize the best way
to get things done is to shift our own behaviours, expectations and ways of dealing with
the other in order to better accommodate the other’s perspectives and requirements.
Second, PT is an active attempt to better understand the other’s thoughts and
feelings, intentions, expectations, beliefs and general experience as the other understands
them, as well as the social, historical, religious, gender, economic and political forces that
have shaped the other as the other has experienced and understood them. It is not certain
that when the Perspective Taker makes her evaluations and forms her cognitive-emotive
“images” of the other that they will be congruent with the way the other sees or
experiences himself. They may or may not. But the act of Perspective Taking grants more
information to the Perspective Taker with which to make her evaluations and analysis.
That being said the assumption is that, perhaps excepting situations where the other’s
understanding of himself is particularly deluded, PT will grant more accurate and
authentic information about the other than will methods that do not apply PT. Notably,
better understanding of how the other sees us can have the important effect of causing us
to re-evaluate our own beliefs and behaviours (critical self reflection), recognizing
perhaps that the effects of our beliefs and behaviours are perhaps not as true to our
authentic selves as we had taken them to be.
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Third, there is no sense of identification required for PT and it is not an activity of
emotional contact or engagement with the other. The “as if” condition of Rogers’s is a
definitive characteristic of this form of empathy. If the Perspective Taker does develop a
sense of identification with the other than the Perspective Taker is feeling a further form
of empathy that has either been facilitated by PT or is occurring alongside PT.
Fourth, at the level of PT empathy is morally neutral. If PT ultimately helps in
achieving our end goal, it does not determine what those ends are. In terms commonly
used in IR thought, PT changes our understanding of the identity and interests of others
but does not shape our own (except perhaps indirectly, where it spurs critical self
reflection). Thus we incorporate the definition of empathy seen in Nussbaum and
Binmore, where an individual of malevolent purposes can use PT to get a better sense of
how to achieve her malevolent goals. But importantly the end goals need not be selfish,
egotistic or malevolent. The goals facilitated by PT can just as easily be normatively
good and other-regarding (i.e., an altruistic pursuit of peace) as they can be sort that we
often find in, for example, realist discourse (i.e., selfish pursuit of power).
This form of empathy is psychological and should be understood as occurring
within the minds of real human individuals. That being said, just as authors like Jervis
and White assume, even if large political institutions like the state are corporate entities
they are ultimately comprised of groups of real, individual decision-makers whose
psychologies play an enormous role in the decisions they make (even recognizing the
structural effects (norms, rules and laws, etc.) that may constrain the naked psychologies
and decisions of those individuals).
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An example of PT comes from one of its purest advocates (in the sense that PT is
his definition of empathy) Robert McNamara. Much of McNamara’s advocacy of
“realistic empathy” as a foreign policy approach comes from his practical experiences as
US Secretary of Defense and, perhaps more so, what he has learned on reflection of those
experiences in later years (facilitated by factors such as James Blight’s Critical Oral
History projects7). In Chapter I we considered an example from McNamara of the failure
to apply Perspective Taking during the war in Vietnam. Here McNamara asks us to
“Contrast the absence of empathy between Washington and Hanoi regarding the
escalation of the war in Vietnam with the following example of optimum empathy when
the chips are down” (McNamara and Blight, 2001, p 70), during what McNamara sees as
“the single most important exchange of the [Cuban Missile] crisis and, given the stakes at
that supremely dangerous moment, one of the most important discussions of the entire
Cold War” (p 71). At the climax of the crisis, the Kennedy administration had received
two contradictory messages from the Soviet government. Khrushchev had sent Kennedy
a private message claiming that he was willing to pull missiles out of Cuba if Kennedy
would publicly pledge not to invade Cuba. The second message was publicly announced,
and insisted that the Soviets would not pull their missiles out of Cuba unless the U.S.
dismantled nuclear weapons in Turkey. This was a particularly troubling message as the
Kennedy administration felt they could not pull the missiles from Turkey. This dual
communication confused the administration, and all in Kennedy’s inner circle, including
7
The Critical Oral Histories projects of James Blight and janet lang conducted out of Brown University’s
Watson Institute for International Studies that organizes conferences designed to allow important
individuals from different sides of a conflict (usually a past conflict, though recently they have been
engaged in a conflict on US-Iranian relations) to tell their sides of the story and empathetically reflect on
each other’s perspective. McNamara was a participant of the Critical Oral Histories conferences on
Vietnam organized by Blight and then Watson Institute Director Thomas Biersteker, as well as a separate
set of conferences on the Cuban Missile Crisis. See McNamara (1999).
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Kennedy himself, believed Khrushchev was committed to the second, public message
regarding missiles in Turkey. The only exception was Llewellyn Thompson, the lowest
ranking member of the inner circle but nonetheless the man with the most experience
with the Soviets as a former ambassador to Moscow. As Kennedy and his advisors read
the situation, now that Khrushchev had committed publicly to the message expressed in
the second communiqué, he could not afford to back down from it. We can assume that
US advisors predicted this of Khrushchev based on their own processes of inference by
analogy: as American political elites, had they made such a stance public they could not
back away from it and save political face. Yet, as McNamara tells it, Thompson’s unique
understanding of Soviet culture and politics (unique amongst Kennedy’s advisors) led
Thompson to believe that Khrushchev would accept the no-invasion pledge as the first
message claimed. By McNamara’s account, Kennedy believed Thompson, Thompson
proved correct and the crisis came to a peaceful conclusion.8
Humanizing Empathy
As we have seen empathy is often separated within psychology into its “cognitive
perspective taking” aspects and its “affective identification” aspects. However, the
category of affective identification is very broad, capable of ranging across a wide
spectrum of intensity in identification. To some degree this is unavoidable. Emotion and
identification, like light and shade, shift at degrees so subtle it is impossible to
systematically categories every increment. Nonetheless, for thinking about empathy and
its effects in social and political life it is usual to discern between some degrees of
identification. I am going to suggest that the next three forms of empathy – Humanizing
8
I write “by McNamara’s account,” but there is actually a record of this occurrence in the form of
transcribed secret recordings of the Cuban Missile Crisis deliberations between Kennedy and his advisors.
McNamara includes the key moment in McNamara and Blight (2001), on page 71.
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Empathy (HE), Sympathy and Empathetic Identification – represent an increasing scale
of identification between Self and Other. Thus Humanizing Empathy represents the
weakest of the three on this scale. But that is not to suggest that the experience or
emotions involved in HE are necessarily weakly felt. It is entirely possible to become
intensely overwhelmed with a feeling of HE. Or such feelings may exist at a very low,
background level intensity, as I suspect it does for most of us in regards to almost
everybody else throughout our daily lives. HE is that psychological aspect which
“humanizes” the other to us, and makes us see the other as a unique “person” (because to
recognize an organism as a human being is not necessarily to recognize that human being
as a “person”). This is the motivator of “humane” action, and causes us to perceive the
other as in some way sharing in our “common humanity,” though our identification with
and feelings for the other may go no further than that very basic, thin recognition. That is,
the empathizer may accept the other as a “human person” worthy of a basic standard of
treatment (most basically, usually, a recognition that she, like you, does not want to die or
suffer horribly) yet the empathizer need not feel any sense of similarity to, identification
with, deeper solidarity for or self-other interconnection beyond merely the fact of a
common humanity that grants both the empathizer and the other a basic worth within the
empathizer’s mind. So with Humanizing Empathy the empathizer may perceive the other
as very different from himself and may not even personally like the other person (though
HE certainly does not preclude deeper emotional connectedness and identification).
To further elaborate: For Baron-Cohen, empathy is defined as the opposite of
“systematizing.” “Systematizing,” explains Baron-Cohen, “is the drive to analyse,
explore and construct a system,” as we do when we, for example, design rational choice
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models, or strategize when playing chess, or build cars, or delineate rules for the road, or
rules for international organizations like, say, the World Trade Organization. If “the
natural way to understand and predict the nature of events and objects is to systematize
[than] the natural way to understand a person is to empathize” [italics mine] (Baron-
Cohen, 2004, p 3; 5). That is to say, for Baron-Cohen, empathy is the opposite of seeing
an individual as an object, which can be systematically analysed into component parts or
behaviours. “Systematizing and empathizing are wholly different kinds of processes. You
use one process – empathizing – for making sense of an individual’s behavior, and you
use the other – systematizing – for predicting almost everything else. To systematize you
need detachment in order to monitor information and track which factors cause
information to vary. To empathize you need some degree of attachment in order to
recognize that you are interacting with a person, not an object, but a person with feelings,
and whose feelings affect your own… rather than as a thing to be used to satisfy your
own needs and desires” (Baron-Cohen, 2004, p 5; 24). 9
We have seen in the previous chapter that empathy – particularly affective
empathy - has the effect of motivating prosocial behaviour and inhibiting aggression.
With Humanizing Empathy that effect is tied to the way we, in empathizing with the
other, come to see the other as a being of at least some degree of worth – as humanized –
as the diametrically opposite process of dehumanizing the other by seeing the other as an
object, or vermin, or an evil demon (such as a terrorist), or as a caricatured “boogey-man”
figure.
9
The irony, of course, is that much work on empathy today comes from a discipline that takes a scientific,
systematizing approach (what thinkers like Weber and Dilthey called Erklären, the opposite of Verstehen)
as its modus operandi – psychology – and much of this dissertation’s second chapter accepted that
systematizing approach.
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Kelman (1973) lists dehumanization as an important factor for weakening
restraint against violence. Coupled with the evidence that (affective) empathy inhibits
aggressive behaviour and motivates/promotes prosocial behaviour, the hypothesis is that
the presence of HE within the human psychology acts as a bulwark against violence and
aggression and a motivator for prosocial behaviour. Vetlesen argues that empathy-rooted
humanization is a primary, essential component for the development of morality and the
enactment of moral behavior. Vetlesen explains that before we can make moral
judgments in regards to an other, we must first perceive the other as a being that is
appropriate to think of in moral terms. To initially perceive the other as a being worthy of
a certain standard of treatment is, Vetlesen argues, is an act of empathy. He writes,
“[Emotion – or more specifically the faculty of empathy – is indispensable in the
disclosure of moral phenomena…. [E]motion enters into morality from the very start…
[in] the act of perceiving something as morally significant, as belonging to the domain of
the moral” (Vetlesen, 1994, p 80). At one point Vetlesen points to the famous case of
Eichmann, who personified that bureaucratic dehumanization of Jews in Nazi Germany
which many feel enabled, and was even a necessary condition for, the evils of the
Holocaust. Vetlesen argues that Eichmann dehumanized both the Jews and his own
person, allowing not just the Jews but himself to be used as a mere means for the Nazi
Holocaust machine. “What takes place once this double dehumanization is accomplished
is viewed as morally neutral. Since allegedly “nonhumans,” the Jews are viewed as
devoid of moral status… [T]he way is prepared for “killing without killing,” for murder
without a good conscience” (Vetlesen, 1994, p 180). Althea Horner (1991) supports
Vetlesen’s thoughts when she posits that individuals who perceive others as humans
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rather than as objects are less likely to inflict injury upon them, and it is a proposition that
we have often seen played out in the political world. Particularly, in agreement with the
Eichmann case, we see the role dehumanization must play in genocide, as numerous
authors have detailed how 20th Century genocides have required purposefully and
rationally constructed campaigns of dehumanization for their successful incitement
(Alvarez, 1997; Kelman, 1973; Fein, 1979; Kuper, 1981; Montville, 1990). We also see
the effect of dehumanization within military affairs. Retired Sgt. Martin Smith writes,
“[Drill Instructors] indoctrinate recruits to dehumanize the enemy in order to train them
how to overcome any fear or prejudice against killing. In fact, according to longtime
counter-recruitment activist Tod Ensign, the military has deliberately researched how to
best design training to teach recruits how to kill. Such research was needed because
humans are instinctively reluctant to kill. Dr. Dave Grossman disclosed in his work, On
Killing, that fewer than 20 percent of U.S. troops fired their weapons in World War II
during combat. As a result, the military reformed training standards so that more soldiers
would pull their trigger against the enemy. Grossman credits these training modifications
for the transformation of the Armed Forces in the Vietnam War in which 90-95 percent
of soldiers fired their weapons. These reforms in training were based on teaching recruits
how to dehumanize the enemy” (Smith, 2007; also, see Grossman, 1995).
So far in this dissertation when I have discussed the view of empathy amongst
psychoanalysts I have noted their strong emphasis on seeing empathy as PT. However,
just as I’ve noted in this chapter that political scientists can sometimes be inconsistent in
their usage of the concept (and with the different facets of empathy so integrated with
each other, how could they not be), so too do we see psychoanalysts often slipping well
154
beyond a view of empathy as PT. Here Kohut self-consciously goes past a sense of
10
empathy as PT and into a sense of empathy as HE: “[D]espite all that I have said,
empathy, per se, is a therapeutic action in the broadest sense, a beneficial action in the
broadest sense of the world. That seems to contradict everything I have said so far, and I
wish I could just simply bypass it. But, since it is true, and I know it is true, and I’ve
evidence for its being true, I must mention it…” “[T]he presence of empathy in the
surrounding milieu, whether used for compassionate, well-intentioned therapeutic, [or] -
and now listen - even for utterly destructive purposes, is still an admixture of something
positive. In other words, there is a step beyond an empathy-informed hatred that wants to
destroy you, and [that is] an empathyless environment that just brushes you off the face
of the earth. The dreadful experiences of prolonged stays in concentration camps during
the Nazi era in Germany were just that. It was not cruelty on the whole… They totally
disregarded the humanity of the victims” (Kohut, 1981, p 530). Notice two interesting
things here. First, notice the basest ill here is dehumanization, even more than hatred.
Similarly, Kelman writes, “Could the class of violence under discussion here be traced to
in inordinately intense hatred towards those against whom the violence is directed? The
evidence does not seem to support such an interpretation. Indications are that many of the
men who actively participated in the extermination of European Jews, such as Adolf
Eichmann, did not feel any passionate hatred against Jews” (Kelman, 1973, p 38).
Second, Kohut suggests something therapeutic in the process of being humanized, as if
11
dehumanization is harmful to the human psyche or soul. This may be important for
10
This quote from Kohut was found in Nussbaum (2001, pp333-4).
11
As a quick aside note, here is another example, from Jordan, of a psychoanalyst going beyond empathy
as PT and into something more humanizing, and healing: “Empathy is especially crucial for the healing of
pathological shame… When ashamed we have great difficulty trusting that the rejected aspects of ourselves
155
authors like Montville who argue that postconflict peacebuilding must be thought of
primarily as a process of psychosocial healing (Montville, 1993, 2001) and it speaks to
our view of peace, as defined in Chapter I, as incorporating “life-affirming” conditions
and structures.
Finally, here is an example of HE that illustrates not HE at its best but at its least,
so give us an account perhaps of where one passes into a state of HE. Edward Said made
a career out of chronicling instances of a kind of dehumanization in literature, history and
politics - a kind of dehumanization that stems not so much from painting the other as a
terrorist, a “bogey-man” or vermin (though sometimes Said does have cause to point
these characterizations out) but from a general process of presenting the other (in the case
of Said’s famous Orientalism (1979) the other are the “Arabs”) as a sort of living object
or icon: the distant “Other” with a capital “O,” who is seen not as a real, complex, flesh
and blood human being but as a strange, alien and exotic creature. Yet in Said’s own
quote from one of Said’s favourite “Orientalists” I think we can see the threshold of HE.
From T. E. Lawrence: “… the Arab appealed to my imagination. It is the old, old
civilization, which has refined itself clear of household goods, and half the trappings
which ours hastens to assume. The gospel of bareness in materials is a good one, and it
involves apparently a sort of moral bareness too. They think for the moment, and
endeavour to slip through life without turning corners or climbing hills. In part it is a
mental and moral fatigue [with Arabs], a race trained out, and to avoid difficulties they
will be accepted by another. Fearing exposure, we contract and withdraw… At its worst, shame divorces us
from the human community… When someone trusted sees us empathetically in a more whole way… our
capacity for relationships can change. In therapy, the client brings herself or himself more fully into
relationship and into creative action. [T]o be known [by the therapist], in a deep and thorough way, and
accepted inspires the confidence that the client can bring himself or herself more fully into relationship”
(Jordan, 1997, p 346). Somehow in this process the acceptance of the other, rather than just the objective
observation of the other, has come into play.
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have to jettison so much that we think honourable and grave…” So far what we have
Lawrence perpetrating a kind of dehumanization through romanticism, turning Arab
peoples into “the Arab.” But then Lawrence begins to turn in a way that reminds us that,
as much of an “Orientalist” as Lawrence may have been, he did develop at least some
basic empathy for the people he lived with during the era of World War I; more at least
than most other British officers. “[A]nd yet without in any way sharing their point of
view, I think I can understand it enough to look at myself and other foreigners from their
direction, and without condemning it, I know I am a stranger to them, and always will be;
but I cannot believe them worse, any more than I could change to their ways.”12 Here
then is an illustration, I think, of the threshold of HE. Lawrence does not seek to become
Arab, or to share their point of view, but he is not merely conceiving of their perspective
for the sake of gathering knowledge, either. In his perhaps limited Perspective Taking of
the Arab perspective “enough to look at myself and other foreigners from their direction”
Lawrence does develop a certain acceptance of the ways of their life that are different
than his own, at least in the sense that these ways are acceptable for the other even if not
for him. More importantly, his acceptance is not rooted in a (non-empathetic) sense that
the Arab peoples are beneath him and therefore entirely deserving of ways that he would
never deign for himself. Instead he adds “I cannot believe them worse” than how he
evaluates, at core, his own humanity.13
12
Quoted in (Said, 1979, p 228-9)
13
I am speaking of this empathetic effect in terms of “humanizing” the other within our minds, and this
effect becomes associated with the popular notion of a “common humanity.” In fact, ultimately I don’t
think that language is correct, and I think what is actually going on with this empathetic effect is something
different. We can, after all, empathize in this way with animals as well, and frequently do. The effect is not
really limited to a “common humanity.” It is often spoken of in those terms, but I do not believe the effect
really even needs to come from any sense that the other is like us in any way except for an incredibly thin,
basic sense of a thing being alive and sentient. We can understand that a dog feels pain when being beaten
and we can feel that we do not want that for the dog without feeling we are in some way ourselves dog-like.
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Sympathy
By sympathy I will, following Eisenberg, mean basically what Batson means by
empathy: “other-oriented feelings congruent with the perceived welfare of the other”
(Batson, 1994), except we do not for our purposes need to address the issue in Batson of
whether sympathy is necessarily altruistic or if it is ultimately mingled with some degree
of self-interest.14 Here we see the root of closer affiliations and senses of solidarity than
we see with HE. By sympathy we can incorporate a range of feelings of concern or
interest for the other from those like pity and sorrow to compassion to friendship and joy
for their well-being and company. Friendship we can think of as an overall predictable
pattern of primarily sympathetic feelings and behaviours over time. Friendship is
something of a routinized sympathetic bond, so it need not be a constant stream of
sympathy. Sometimes we grow temporarily angry with friends, for example. But the
commitment and pattern persists when the sympathy outweighs other, more challenging,
factors. Because we can think of this as a form of HE with a deeper sense of
identification for the other we can assume the effects are similar, though perhaps the
empathizer is more motivated with Sympathy to act on behalf of the one she sympathizes
with than in HE. I cannot be sure, however, that that would always be the case. I imagine
innumerable factors, like the specific psychologies of the persons involved and the
context of the situation, would determine such things.
Simply feeling the worth of the life of another is really ultimately what I man by this type of empathy. I
have kept it in terms of “humanizing” and a “common humanity” even though I think the experience is
actually something quite different, only for the sake of simplicity. Hopefully in future work I can engage
with this more philosophically and be more rigorous in defining my ideas here, though we can see this
notion of living creatures having equal worth to humanity’s own in literature on, for example, animal
rights. See Regan (1980).
14
Obviously, though, if we were writing a dissertation on the subject of altruism, where we did want to be
analytically clear about the distinction between true altruistic behaviour and otherwise, this point would be
important.
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Nonetheless, as I gave a basic threshold example of HE with T. H. Lawrence, so
might this example from Roger Fisher be of Sympathy in action during the peace talks of
the first Camp David. The emotional reaction here seems stronger and more personally
bonding than that of HE.
“The Israelis saw little prospect for reaching agreement. By this time,
Carter had invested a lot of time and energy in the peace process. He could
easily have expressed frustration, perhaps approaching Begin with a
warning to accept his latest proposal “or else.” But an adversarial approach
might have caused Begin to abandon the negotiation process completely…
Instead, Carter made a gesture that had a significant emotional impact.
Begin had been asked for autographed pictures of Carter, Sadat, and
himself to give to his grandchildren. Carter personalized each picture with
the name of a Begin grandchild. During the stalemate in talks, Carter
handed Begin the photographs. Begin saw his grand-daughter’s name on
the top of the photograph… His lips trembled. He and Carter talked quietly
about the war. This was a turning point in the negotiation. Later that day,
Begin, Sadat and Carter signed the Camp David Accord” (Fisher and
Shapiro, 2005).
Again, like with PT and HE, Sympathy is an individual psychological faculty,
though again we can make the same caveats we did with PT (as we can for HE) about the
role of the individual psychology in determining action even within corporate entities like
state institutions.
Empathetic Identification
Feelings of interconnection of the sort that bind identity groups, kin groups or
even citizens of a nation vary in depth and degree but often they involve a sense of the
self as resonant with the other and even “at one” with the other in that they are
components of a commonly shared body which is itself its own entity yet greater than an
one of them (the family, the identity group, the nation). Here we might think of
Rousseau’s vision of citizenship over, for example, Locke’s. By this I basically mean the
same concept that is often discussed in the literature as identification, though I am
assuming that it is a form of strong empathetic connection with the group and others of
the group – and if identification does not involve such a sense of personal and emotional
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closeness (i.e., a very aloof and detached sense of citizenry) than we can simply say it is
not an example of Empathetic Identification.
Relational Empathy
So far the forms of empathy I have delineated, because they are seen as occurring
within the psyche of individual human agents, lend themselves (necessarily) to a
methodologically individualist15 view of social activity, like any rational choice model or
case study of individual elite decision-making. This seems natural given that empathy is
almost always assumed to be an internal psychic faculty of the human (or animal) mind.
However, that is not a universal view. We can see empathy as an aspect of broader social
structures16 rather than as entirely encapsulated within the human mind, and we can draw
up a methodologically holistic, as opposed to methodologically individualistic, account of
empathy as something that occurs within and defines the relations between actors (hence:
“Relational” Empathy (RE)). Thus with Relational Empathy we open up possibilities for
thinking about empathy for the levels of politics and international thought (levels that
often deal in structures), which the usual psychological approach to empathy does not
offer.
15
Max Weber is credited with introducing the notion of methodological individualism. Methodological
individualism insists that we understand social phenomena as ultimately the results of individual actors and
the psychic and intentional states of the actors when they act.
16
The term “social structures” is a commonly used and yet ambiguous and rarely defined one. Acceptable
definitions themselves can be fairly vague. For the sake of ease and brevity we can say define social
structures are relatively enduring patterns of behaviour and relationships. But for the sake of sophistication
I will quote Linklater from his review of strucuration theory in sociology: “Structuration theorists start out
much like structuralists by defining “structure” in generative terms as a set of internally related elements.
The elements of a social structure could be agents, practices, technologies, territories – whatever can be
seen as occupying a position within a social organization. The fact that these elements are internally related
means that they cannot be defined or even conceived independently of their position in the structure…
Structuration theorists argue the scientific realist thesis that because social structures generate agents and
their behavior (in the sense that they make the later possible), that because social structures have observable
effects, we can potentially claim that they are real entities despite being possibly unobservable” (Linklater,
2000, p 514).
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Our understanding of RE begins with Maureen O’Hara, who has sought to
challenge the usual view of empathy as set in one particular worldview – a modern
Western worldview – which thinks in terms of individual sovereign egos and agents.
“The idea,” she writes, “that people have something inside called “a self” of “the Self”
containing a deep interiority that is contacted through introspection, self-examination, or
some other form of “inward vision” would have been incomprehensible to Europeans
before St. Augustine. It still is to some peoples from nonmodern societies untouched by
the Western worldview” (O’Hara, 1997, p 296). Interestingly, O’Hara’s development of
her idea of relational empathy came from years of work in “nonmodern” societies where
their conception of the universe and of themselves in it was inherently more holistic; that
is, trained as a modern psychologist the concept developed in her own empathetic
attunement with alternate vision of life. Even more interestingly, her partner in this
journey was Carl Rodgers, the man who defined the detached, “as if” proviso at the
backbone of PT. By the end of Rogers’s life, O’Hara writes, he had redefined his
understandings of self and relationship. “When I can relax,” he writes, “…then I may
behave in strange and impulsive ways in the relationship, ways I cannot justify rationally,
which have nothing to do with my thought process. But these strange behaviors turn out
to be right… At these moments it seems that my inner spirit has reached out and touched
the inner spirit of the other. Our relationship transcends itself and has become something
larger” (O’Hara, 1997, p 314). Rogers and O’Hara are reaching for ways to express how
our actions are not determined or shaped entirely by our own inner forces – nor are those
inner forces entirely shaped internally – and that our interaction with the larger
environment, and with others, is very much in the process of our own identity-creation
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and action determination. As we come to develop sense of self it is as much the social
milieu as our own inner forces that are shaping that self. Indeed O’Hara would say it is
only because we in the West live within a social milieu that impresses upon us the sense
of a separate, sovereign self that we think of developing a “self” in that manner. In this
O’Hara and Rogers have strong resonances with certain schools of sociology, such as
George Mead’s, and with that school of thought which is defined by its effort to bring
sociological insights about identity-creation and holistic relationships into IR: Wendtian
social constructivism. Wendt and authors in agreement with him, after all, argue that the
identity and the interests of the political subject (the state) are formed not exclusively by
internal factors but largely by the international social milieu and the ideas and beliefs
floating around in it.
To consider Relational Empathy we must think of empathy as an aspect or quality
of relationships, where subjects can be understood as defined by their relationships. (Thus
the idea of Relational Empathy relies upon an acceptance of relationships between actors
as intersubjective, as does social constructivism.17) That is to say, we are to some
important and undeniable degree defined by our relationships. Some relationships are
social defined as antagonistic, and that tends to construct antagonistic relationships
between individuals – often before they have even ever met one another personally –
because, as their “role” in that relationship each already knows how they are supposed to
feel or respond to the other. Take, for example, the traditional animosity of Hindus and
Muslims in India or Pakistan. Of course in some cases of interpersonal relationships the
animosity is transcended. But the expected role for each to take is to be guarded, wary
17
As does Habermasian deliberative democracy, and it is no coincidence that these literatures have created
the largest opportunities to think seriously about empathy, even to say that they require empathy, in today’s
political scholarship.
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and untrusting, perhaps even unkind. Those who meet others, make friends and break this
social expectation face consequences in relationships within their own group as they
might come to be seen as rebellious and embodying alterity.
Marc Gopin has argued that one crucial aspect of bringing peace to
Israel/Palestine must involve redefining the relationship between Jews and Muslims from
‘natural enemy’ to ‘natural empathy.’18 Jewish and Muslim tradition and theology, he
argues, both relate similar stories of mythic characters and prophets, though in different
ways and with different emphases. Yet too often both interpretations emphasize blame,
inferiority of the other and enmity for each other. These interpretations have a powerful
affect on the way individuals who identify with Judaism or Islam relate to each other.
Jews and Muslims do not define themselves as individual, separate sovereign beings
capable of dislodging themselves from their spiritual beliefs and practices. They define
themselves as Jews and Muslims, with all the burdens of history and the perceptions of
self, the world and others that come with it. Like communitarians such as Charles Taylor
(though he rejects the terms to describe himself) have argued, the individual is embedded
inextricably within her social existence. As such, moving from violence to peace can be
seen as perhaps a function of moving out of a relationship of enmity to one of empathy.
Relational Empathy, then, is a particular quality of a relationship or set of relationships
that causes individuals, shaped in that empathy-based milieu, to identify themselves as
friendships (or at least acceptable acquaintances, or even at least as sharing a common
humanity). Particular historic narratives, for example, can gird and shape structures of
enmity by perpetuating stories of “natural” animosity, causing individuals to react in fear
and anger because they perceive the other as an enemy – regardless of whether they know
18
These are not Gopin’s terms.
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them on any personal level. Conversely, such narratives can be defeated by other efforts
at creating structural bonds of empathy and acceptance. In Canada, for example, a
historic animosity between Anglophone and Francophone Canadians is largely tamed due
to decades of redefining the relationship through institutions or national narratives that
promote Relational Empathy: official bilingualism, for example, or a continual barrage of
narratives, particularly in the Anglophone part of Canada, impressing on Canadians a
sense that their “goodness” comes to a great degree from their multinational history and
from that their acceptance of multiculturalism.19
So to conclude, as where the previous four forms of empathy should be thought of
as experiences that individual actors have internally, Relational Empathy should be
thought of as a phenomena of social structures shaped such that relationships within them
are defined as empathetic rather than egocentric, fear-inducing or destined to enmity. We
may think that what Wendt was thinking of with his “Kantian culture” of anarchy
(referred to in Chapter I) as a culture that constructed relations of friendship is what I
mean by a structure that produces Relational Empathy. However, I do not mean to limit
Relational Empathy to a culture of anarchy between states. More particularly we see it in
social structures and the deeply entrenched relations between identity groups.
19
The Plains of Abraham in Quebec makes a great example. Once the sight of a historic battle between the
British and the French before Canada was a unified nation, today the Plains do not stand as a symbol of
historic tensions or resentment for the Quebecois (who were, of course, ultimately annexed by the British).
Today the Plains of Abraham is a park, with a few memorials to the war that many people treat as they do
most historic statues of interest, but not as symbols capable of stirring violent emotion. If not a symbol of
Relational Empathy in itself, that the possible symbolic uses of the park to maintain a historic sense of
enmity have been utterly tamed reflects the Relational Empathy that does exist between Anglophones and
Quebecois in Canada, as imperfect as it at times may be. The contrast is sharp between the Plains of
Abraham and the war memorials that litter Belfast, for example (though obviously the conflict in Northern
Ireland is so much more current and fresh).
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Chart 1 – Five Types of Empathy
Self-Other Some Value for Individual or
Interconnection the Other Social
Perspective Taking None Not Necessarily Individual
Humanizing Empathy Weak Yes Individual
Sympathy Relatively Strong Yes Individual
Empathetic Identification Strong Yes Individual
Relational Empathy Ranges Yes Social
Section 3: How the Five Types of Empathy Relate
Recall the emphasis I placed in Chapter II on how the subcomponents of empathy
are ultimately integrated in the practice of empathy. Yet, we do need to distinguish
between empathetic experiences and effects. After all, it certainly seems apparent in our
own lives that we can take the perspective of others without coming to feel like kin, or
that we can feel deep emotional bonds with our family members and yet not be able to
understand their perspective at all. How integrated should we think of these types of
empathy? Let us start with the relationship between the four psychological types of
empathy and the more sociological Relational Empathy, and then consider the four types
of psychological empathy in relationship to each other.
At first it seems that, technically, the way to think of Relational Empathy is not to
assume that RE-laden social structures influence individuals to have HE or Sympathy, for
example. Technically these conceptions come from different theoretical perspectives
about the individual and social behaviour, founded ultimately on different assumptions. It
is Freud on one hand and Mead on the other: psychology vs. sociology. For psychologists
like Baron-Cohen, for example, empathy is very much something that occurs hardwired
in our minds, according to the neurons we are born with, and it is not clear how that
conception can accommodate an argument that empathy can be created externally,
specific neurons or not, by the conditions of the social and relational milieu. Yet there is a
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way around this in sociology’s structuration theory: generally a hybrid perspective
between methodological individualism and structuralism. Structuration theorists: “(1) in
opposition to individualists… accept the reality and explanatory importance of
irreducible and potentially unobservable social structures that generate agents. (2) In
opposition to structuralists… oppose functionalism and stress “the need for a theory of
practical reason and consciousness that can account for human intentionality and
motivation.” (3) [Posit] These oppositions are reconciled by joining agents and structures
in a “dialectical synthesis” that overcomes the subordination of one to the other…”
(Linklater, 2000, p 514). Individuals motivated by HE, for example, can work to
transform social structures from those of enmity to RE, while at the same time RE can be
shaping identities and defining relationships in society. In a perhaps mystical (in that it is
never entirely explained) yet entirely accepted presumption in the literature there is no
need in structuration theory to find the original causal variable, the psychological (PT,
HE, Sympathy, EI) or the structural (RE), nor do we need to be thought of as necessarily
prior to the other in terms of causal relationships. That we can accept this reciprocal,
“dialectic synthesis” is deeply important for thinking about empathy as a possible force
for peace, for if we did not have the capacity to change structures through the force of
individual efforts at engendering empathy, or if we could not alter he perspectives and
aggressive ways of particular individuals by socializing them via the deeper structure,
empathy would offer no means of transforming violent situations.
What of the four psychological types of empathy? Again, psychologists have
emphasized the tendency for the separate components of empathy to work together in
practice. But must they necessarily work together? Does PT necessarily lead to HE,
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leading necessarily to Sympathy and EI? Or can we engage in one type and never the
others? Returning to psychology for a moment, when asking whether affective empathy
must involve perspective taking or not, Omdahl writes “Surprisingly, despite the amount
of journal space given to this debate, clear arguments for the opposing positions have not
been presented. Scholars ultimately decide [for themselves] whether perspective taking is
or is not required for their subjective definitions of empathy… I do not pretend to have
arguments for either position. I, like all the authors who have preceded me, conclude by
simply choosing a stand: I believe that empathy can and does occur without perspective
taking. However, I also believe that perspective taking abilities are associated with an
increased likelihood of empathy, and that claim is supported by several studies” (Omdahl,
1995, p 17-8). So the answer appears to be, as with so many things in regards to empathy,
that no one knows for sure. Like Omdahl, I will simply take a stand on the question. In
fact, I will take Omdahl’s stand. On one hand it seems apparent that it is possible to
exhibit the forms of empathy as I have described them in this chapter separately and
distinctly. Former Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, for example, would interview
failed suicide bombers for a better understanding of his enemy’s mentality, yet his
feelings for his interviewees never progressed to any sort of personal concern. From
Israel’s Ha’aretz: “"You've heard the story of my life," [one failed suicide bomber] says,
her lips trembling. "It wasn't easy. But that wasn't the direction I was heading in. It was a
momentary stumble. Yes, I faltered. But when the decisive moment came, I backed out.
Please tell me, Mr. Minister, what will become of me?"… Ben-Eliezer sat there silently
and kept looking at her…. he said to her in Arabic, “To each his fate.”” (Levy-Barzilai,
2003). Conversely, though it seems very difficult to imagine having empathy for an adult
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having what we consider one of the more affective forms of empathy for someone if they
do not have some sense of the other’s perspective, still, empathy as understood over the
last two chapters does allow for the possibility that we can feel emotional bonds of
identification or even emotional resonance for others wihtout having the experience of
willfully and intellectually attempting to imagine what it must be like to be the other. On
the other hand, with psychologically normal-functioning adults we can expect a high
degree of integration between at least some of these types. In practice we should expect
to see, often, the types of empathy that I have described here working in concert, even so
integrated at times as to be the same phenomenon. For example, in actual practice,
whenever we find what I have described here as the “humanizing” effect of empathy
(HE), most of the time we should expect some degree of PT to be part of that experience,
even if at the limited level expressed by T. E. Lawrence earlier in this chapter.
The historic visit of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to Israel in 1978 is an
example of where we can see multiple types of empathy in play simultaneously, in the
figure of an individual who had apparently developed at least HE and perhaps even
Sympathy for the people of Israel attempting to channel it into the creation of RE by
asking his fellow Egyptians to Perspective Take with the Israelis and in doing so
transform the long-defined relationship of enmity between the two peoples. Writes
Saunders of the visit: “[Sadat’s] purpose was not to advance the negotiations as such, but
recognizing the deep distrust of the Israeli people for their Arab neighbors, he went to
Israel to demonstrate that peace with a major Arab country was possible. His act changed
the perceptions of the Israeli people and created a political environment in which they
gave their government permission to try peace (Saunders, 2000, p 254). Montville quotes
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Sadat for us: “All Israelis are under arms until age 55. They know war and know it is
loathsome. Death is loathsome and destruction harder to bear than death. Jews are
victims of war, politics and hatred. They have special problems, which we must know so
as to understand their positions. Jews have lived in fear for thousands of years, exposed
to many massacres and persecutions. When they established Israel, imagination became
reality and fear a certainty. They are strangers in a strange land. They are surrounded by
millions of hostile Arabs.” (Montville, 2001).
Of course this means that analysing empathy and its different shades and facets in
real life cases will be a complex process, as we can expect all sorts of different mixtures
and manifestations of empathy in different intensities or variations. But this is ultimately
an inescapable facet of studying real human behaviour as opposed to systems. (As
Bernstein, Lebow, Stein and Weber (2000) said, “God gave physics the easy problems”).
Still, there is benefit in thinking of empathy in terms of different forms. As White points
out, in many of the situations political, international or peace conflict resolution thinkers
or practitioners will find themselves dealing with it is often the case that we should not
expect actors to be able to switch on a high degree of emotional attachment or concern
for the other as we see in Sympathy or EI for the other actors involved. Yet we do want to
recognize that some form of empathy can be engendered, and this is why White makes
his empathy/sympathy distinction to begin with. There will be times when behaviour can
be explained by one facet of empathy but not the other, and there may even be times
when we want to prescribe one facet of empathy over another.
CHAPTER IV:
EMPATHY IN NORTHERN IRELAND
Actual cases of conflict-torn societies may be the last place we expect to find
empathy. Indeed, conflict is often described as a breakdown of empathy, and the story of
the Northern Ireland peace process is hardly one of a sudden flush of mutual love
spreading across the land. Nonetheless, the concept of empathy has been crucial to the
story of the Northern Ireland peace process. Over the next chapter I mean to consider
how. On one count, Perspective Taking and Humanizing Empathy have been
instrumental in reshaping perspectives amongst elites, and ultimately society, in ways
that have facilitated forward motion towards peace. On another count, negotiations
between elites improved with increased willingness to Perspective Take and Humanize.
On another count, there are instances of former enemies listening to each other, altering
their behaviours in order to accommodate each other and attempting to redefine the group
relationship in order to turn social norms of enmity into Relational Empathy. Yet even in
this, strikingly, Northern Ireland’s opposing groups remain unreconciled in regards to
many issues, including the fate of the country: a key issue that for many was the crux of
the fighting. In this state of disagreement a small number of former enemies still manage
to accept, accommodate and work with one another to build “shared safe spaces,”
recognizing that the violence is not the result of any one party’s unjust aggression but
169
170
rather a result of the tainted relationship between Northern Ireland’s two main groups: a
relationship which must be healed and made amicable (Relational Empathy). I’ve called
this situation of empathy without agreement an Empathetic Modus Vivendi.
Section 1: Background
On May 8th, 2007, political parties representing former avowed enemies within
the conflict-torn land of Northern Ireland came together to share power in a devolved,
“home rule,” Northern Ireland government, quasi-independently from the main
parliament of the British Union. This move – a long time coming, the culmination of at
least 14 years of achingly slow peace negotiations – has been heralded by world media as
a victory for peace in a land that was for decades seen as swallowed whole by what might
have proven an eternally intractable conflict. The Northern Irish themselves are more
cautious, and as I will suggest in this chapter, the proper way to see Northern Ireland is as
a place making successful forward strides to peace rather than as a place that has yet
achieved that goal.
Northern Irish Conflict
The Northern Ireland conflict is sometimes presented as a historic (and ongoing)
competition between two ethnonational groups, and sometimes it is presented as
primarily a (now concluded) struggle between the British state and a terrorist
organization (the IRA). In fact the conflict is a complex conglomeration of both.1 After
the war of Irish Independence, which saw the end of British governance over the island of
Ireland, six of the thirty-two counties in Ireland were partitioned from the new Irish
1
Thus the difficulty political scientists and commentators have had in reducing the Northern Ireland
conflict down to a parsimonious explanatory scheme. Theories of Northern Ireland have highlighted ethno-
national divisions (McGarry and O’Leary, 1995), British colonialism (Adams, 1986), economic inequalities
(Tonge, 2006, p 18-23) and religious divisions (Bruce, 1986). In fact we could not properly understand the
Northern Irish conflict without consideration of all of these dimensions.
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Republic and declared a new country within the British Union (Northern Ireland). The
majority of the people in Northern Ireland has always been Protestant, and
overwhelmingly wants to remain within the British Union (referred to as Unionists). A
significant minority (current 46%) of Northern Ireland is Catholic, many of whom can be
considered Nationalists, holding an allegiance to an idea of a united Ireland. Violent
conflict between these two groups (often termed “the Troubles”) erupted in the later
1960s.2 Prior to the violence, Catholics were generally marginalized politically,
economically and socially. The coercive mechanisms of the state were populated almost
entirely by Protestants, and Protestants were twice as likely to be employed as Catholics
(Powell, 2008). Unrest between the two groups began to explode into riots and the
burning of neighborhoods in working class areas of Belfast, Derry and other central hubs
of the Troubles. Consciously self-styled on the civil rights movement in the US and
French student protests, Catholics led by John Hume and the moderate Nationalist SDLP
party began to protest nonviolently for equal rights. On January 30th, 1972, British
soldiers, called in to police increasing violence in society, opened fire on Catholic
protesters, killing 14, in a day now referred to as “Bloody Sunday.” From that point the
divisions in society escalated into four decades of full-blown violent conflict. A splinter
group of the original IRA, the Provisional IRA,3 began a campaign of armed struggle
within Northern Ireland to oust the British from the island. The effect of British state
violence and tough measures throughout the Troubles, but particularly in the 1970s, was
only to fuel recruits and legitimacy for the IRA. Still, the British state replied throughout
the first decades of the Troubles by occupying Northern Ireland with soldiers and
2
McKittrick et al. (2004) place the first murders of the Troubles in 1966
3
From this point any reference to the IRA is intended to indicate the Provisional IRA.
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interning captured Republicans without trial. For their part the IRA began a campaign of
terrorism aimed at British soldiers and Protestant police but, despite the attempt to
present the conflict as a legitimate and rational battle against an illegitimate occupying
force, the conflict soon became a gruesome, thuggish “tit-for-tat” neighbourhood
dogfight between paramilitary Republicans and paramilitary, working class Protestant
Loyalists, each claiming to be “defenders of the community” against the other.4 Of the
costs of the Troubles, Tam et al. write, “Since 1969, over 3,700 people have been killed
and over 35,000 injured as a result of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland. This is a
considerable number, considering that the total population of Northern Ireland is only 1.7
million living in just 32,000 square miles… More than half the Northern Irish population
knows someone who was injured or killed in the Troubles” (Tam et al., 2008, p 304).
Northern Irish Peace
The Northern Irish peace process coagulated over almost the entire four decades
of the Troubles, increasing momentum over time, so that the 1990’s experienced less
death than prior decades (though the 1990s were the scene of some of the worst singular
atrocities in the Troubles, such as the Omagh bomb of 1998, which killed and injured
more people (29 dead and 220 injured) than any other single incident).
Authors like Lederach, Mac Ginty and Saunders have stressed that peace
processes should not be understood merely in terms of elite level negotiations and
agreements, for such agreements often leave the root causes of discourse festering in the
4
That the conflict was not simply a clean campaign against the British is obvious by death statistics.
Ultimately the IRA killed twice as many Catholics than did British soldiers (Alonso, 2007, p 5). Powell
notes: “On 11July [1972] a drunken loyalist gang broke into a Catholic home and killed a mentally
retarded child and raped his mother. In court they claimed their acts constituted “political offenses”
(Powell, 2008, p 47). At one point in the conflict the IRA would employ the tactic of holding a Catholic
family hostage and threatening to the kill the mother and children unless the father drove a car loaded with
explosives, to his death, into a British security guard post.
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psychosocial soils of wider society. In this chapter we will consider efforts at peace at
both the elite level and society (though one finding is that in Northern Ireland, at least on
the Republican side, elite leaders have largely managed the peace process at both the elite
and societal level). Nonetheless, to present a timeline of key moments in the peace
process we shall look at key moments in the institutional, elite process.
The first efforts at peace in Northern Ireland were at the very beginning of the
Troubles, in the early 1970s. John Hume and the Social Democrat and Labour Party
(SDLP) were largely the architects of a vision for peaceful cohabitation amongst the two
disparate groups in Northern Ireland. Upon this vision was built The Sunningdale
Agreement: an agreement between moderate Unionist and Nationalist political parties to
share power in a consociational Northern Irish local government. At the time, the
majority Unionist population felt betrayed by the inclusion of Catholic nationalists into
positions of governmental power without the Protestant public’s consultation or consent
(which, we can assume from their reaction, they would not have given) and massive
protests and strikes (in which Protestant religious firebrand Ian Paisley played a
prominent role) caused the power-sharing government to collapse, beginning 35 years of
British direct rule. The agreement had also been rejected by Republicans, who expressed
their dissent by “significantly intensifying [their] violence” (Moloney, 2008, p 485). The
painful irony, it is often said by commentators, is that the basic vision and principles
established by this group of moderates in the early 70s (again, largely an architecture of
Hume and his SDLP) have been the same vision and principles that have ultimately
founded the working Northern Irish government of the 21st century, which Ian Paisley’s
Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Sinn Féin now not only participate in but rule.
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“The St. Andrews Agreement [of 2007] is, in its defining elements, indistinguishable
from the 1974 Sunningdale Agreement” writes Moloney (2008, p 485), such that SDLP
member Seamus Mallon famously called today’s Northern Irish political agreements and
institutions “Sunningdale for slow learners” (Mandelson, 2002, p 115).
Northern Ireland then had to wait until 1985 before the next institutional shift in
the topography of the Troubles, when UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Irish
Taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald put aside historic national differences on the issue of
Northern Ireland and entered into the Anglo-Irish Agreement. With the Agreement,
consultative bodies were formed to give Irish politicians certain inputs into the running of
Northern Ireland. The input granted was small and carried no legal or legislative weight,
but eventually grew into shared institutions of governance in Northern Ireland with
Britain.
Between the years 1988 and 1993 moderate Nationalist leader John Hume began
to meet for secret talks with the leader of the Republican political party Gerry Adams.
The first attempts at talks, in 1988, broke down without significant result, but were later
resumed and in 1993, after having been discovered talking with each other, the two
authors released a joint statement. In that statement, seen as a substantial shift in
Republican thought, Hume-Adams proclaimed that the fate of Northern Ireland should be
determined by the democratic self-determination of Irish peoples. Moreover, Hume-
Adams recognized that the opinion of the Unionist population would have to be
considered in that democratic determination. Though it was only a position paper and
held no legal weight, the points attested to in the Hume-Adams joint declaration were
extremely important for setting the peace process in motion.
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In 1994 the IRA called its first cease-fire since the early 1970s, with Loyalist
paramilitaries calling a cease-fire several months later. The cease-fire held for eighteen
months, after which the IRA bombed two places in England (Canary Warf, killing two
children, and downtown Manchester). The IRA eventually called a second cease-fire in
July 1997.
Peace negotiations between the British state, the Irish state and political parties
across the Northern Irish spectrum were set to begin in 1996. An International
Commission headed by US Senator George Mitchell established the ground rules for
entrance into the all-party negotiations. The Mitchell Principles included that all parties
had to affirm their commitment to democratic and peaceful means of solving the conflict,
disarmament of paramilitaries and to renounce the tactic of violence as a means of
influencing the negotiations. Sinn Féin were originally left out of the talks for the
bombings in Britain but were invited upon commencement of their second cease-fire.
Peace negotiations led to an agreement in 1998, called the Belfast Agreement in
Protestant circles and the Good Friday Agreement by Catholics, which laid the
institutional groundwork for a powersharing, consociational government ensuring shared
power between Catholic representatives and Protestant representatives. Two referenda,
one in Northern Ireland and one in the Republic of Ireland, approved the agreement. All
parties signed up to the agreement except the Democratic Unionist Party, a conservative,
strongly religious-rooted party who rejected the agreement on the grounds that Sinn Féin,
whom the DUP still saw as terrorists, were included. Local powersharing government
went into effect in 1999 but was suspended several times due to infighting between
Unionist parties and Sinn Féin over the IRA’s slow rate of arms decommissioning. The
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government returned to direct rule in 2002. Voting continued and the extreme parties –
Sinn Féin and the DUP – became the prominent parties in Northern Ireland. Thus a new
powersharing deal would need the endorsement of the DUP, which spawned a new round
of talks. Despite a history of fierce resistance to the notion of sharing government with
Republicans, faced with the prospect of ruling Northern Ireland the DUP signed the St.
Andrews Agreement in 2007, even though the agreement was hardly different in any
substantial sense from the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement, and government resumed in
2007. So far the government has functioned cordially and effectively, though the parties
are still working on a deal to bring policing out of the jurisdiction of the British
parliament and under the jurisdiction of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
That being said, the founding of governing institutions and the end of the
Republican armed struggle has not immediately transformed the conditions within
broader society that have helped spur and maintain the psychosocial elements of the
conflict. Today Northern Ireland can be seen as in a state of Mac Ginty’s “no war no
peace” (Mac Ginty et al., 2007). Queen’s University Belfast Professor and expert on the
IRA Richard English’s assessment is that “what we have here [in Northern Ireland] is
peace without reconciliation.”5 Northern Ireland has been and remains a deeply divided
society. The two groups, Catholic and Protestants, exist as two distinct communities
within the same land, dividing along these axes socially, in marriage (Catholic-Protestant
marriages are rare and are called “mixed marriages”) and in education: “Over 90% of
children in Northern Ireland attend either a Catholic or a Protestant school” (Tam et al.,
2008, p 304). The two communities have distinct cultures, psychologies and perspectives,
evidenced by their tendency to characterize nearly everything in terms unique to their
5
Interview with Richard English, May 8th, 2007
177
own group. For Nationalists, Nation Ireland is “the 6 counties” or “the North,” while for
Protestants it is “Ulster.” The city of “Derry” for Catholics is “Londonderry” for
Protestants (often referred to as Londonderry/Derry). Catholics prefer Gaelic games,
Gaelic language and Irish history to be taught in schools, while Protestants prefer
traditional British sports: soccer and rugby and resist the idea of teaching Gaelic. An
estimated 35% to 40% of the population lives segregated from one another, in
neighborhood enclaves, often decorated to symbolize the community (i.e., Protestant
enclaves will paint sidewalk curbs the red, white and blue of the Union Jack, Irish
enclaves the green, white and orange of the Irish Tri-Colour). Segregation does correlate
with class, so that upper and middle class areas are more mixed and tolerant than working
class areas. Much of the violence of the conflicts occurred in working class areas of cities
such as Belfast and Derry where Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods meet (called
interface zones). Many neighborhoods in Belfast and Derry are separated by “peace
walls” of concrete or steel and barbed wire.
My experience in Northern Ireland suggests that most of the population has begun
to believe that the worst of the Troubles are over and some semblance of normalcy is
starting to resume. As one Belfast man put it to me, “the people wouldn’t let them go
back to the violence.” That being said, Cairns correctly warns that Northern Ireland
should not be abandoned simply because a working government is in place, the way, he
suggests, the world largely lost focus on South Africa once apartheid ceased.6 While the
main Republican paramilitary, the IRA, has ceased its armed struggle, splinter
Republican groups have not, including the INLA and the RIRA, who were responsible
for the Omagh bombing. Conversely, working class Loyalist paramilitaries were largely
6
Interview with Ed Cairns, March 9th
178
unrepresented in peace talks and have never agreed to decommission their weapons.
Violent feuds between Loyalist paramilitaries, now more criminal gangs than militias,
have occurred sporadically since the cease-fires. Low-level violence persists across
traditionally troubled areas. Since the time I spent researching in Northern Ireland,
beginning in January of 2007, Republican paramilitaries have been declared responsible
for at least five murders as well as incidents of police officers being shot.7 Hardly
reported outside of local Northern Ireland media, bomb threats, both hoaxed and genuine,
are still a relatively routine occurrence.8 Even more frequent, random sectarian violence,
primarily between youths, is routine. Sectarian prejudice is still deeply embedded within
the psychosocial fabric of society. One Northern Irish woman I spoke to, who is in a
“mixed marriage,” had been largely shunned from her original neighborhood, friends and
family. Her wish was simply to leave Northern Ireland if she could because she found the
society “full of hate. The whole place is hate.”9 My estimation of Northern Ireland after
three months in the country is that the conflict has always touched different areas to
different degrees. The working class areas of Belfast and Derry have been some of the
hottest trouble spots. Here we find dangerous combinations of parochial, tribal enclavism,
paramilitarism, romanticism of violent struggle, commitment to historic narratives of
enmity, and not least of all interface areas. In places such as these the hurts, resentments,
prejudices, ideologies and divisions remain. Other, usually higher-class, areas have been
much less touched throughout the conflict.
7
Edward Burns and Joseph Jones on March 12th 2007, Paul Quinn on the 20th of September, 2007 (beaten
to death mafia-style by ten young IRA members), Andrew Burns on Feb 11th, 2008, and Emmett Shields,
June 24th, 2007.
8
In fact, my own attempt to interview Paul Arthur in Feb., 2007 was foiled when there was a bomb scare in
the area of downtown Belfast where he and I were to meet.
9
Interview with a Northern Irish citizen who requested to remain anonymous.
179
Section 2: Perspectives
The story of the Northern Irish conflict is the story of different groups living
together in the same territory yet experiencing the world from vastly disparate
perspectives: so disparate and irreconcilable that violence ensued. Conversely, the story
of the Northern Irish peace process is one of players widening their own parochial
perspectives, coming to recognize that the perspectives of others matter, and altering their
own perspectives and definitions of self and other to create a more flexible and
accommodating worldview.
In the first decades of the conflict, for Catholic Republicans the fighting was the
last vestiges of retreat for British colonialism in Ireland. Writes Gerry Adams, leader of
Sinn Fein, in 1986: “the British government is the major obstacle and the most consistent
barrier to peace in Ireland and… a British withdrawal is a necessary precondition if we
are to secure the basis upon which peace can be built in Ireland” (Adams, 1986). As such
Republicans believed the British state retained Northern Ireland for the sake of economic
exploitation and had a self-interested stake in the region. In this Republicans considered
“the British” to be people aligned to England, Scotland and Wales, and they have not
perceived the Northern Irish Protestant Unionists as British, but rather as Irish Protestants
who have been duped into a kind of cultural false conscious. Thus from the Republican
perspective the conflict was not a competition between two ethnonational groups. Said
Adams in an interview “We don’t have two different nationalities. We have a difference
of political allegiance: those who would have a general allegiance towards Ireland and
those who would have a notion of an allegiance towards the Union” (Stark, 1994).
Unionist Protestants, on the other hand, understand themselves as ethnically, naturally
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British Irishmen, whose political allegiance to the British Union is tied to their ethnicity.
For Unionists and especially Loyalists, Republican efforts at removing the British from
Northern Ireland (signified by the common Republican call for “Brits Out”) amounts to a
form of sectarian and ethnonational “cleansing,” bent upon removing them and their way
of life from the island. In this Unionists have often felt under siege by Republican
violence, and one of their often quoted historic symbols is of the Catholic siege on the
walled city of Derry during the Glorious Revolution. On what is called the
“Constitutional Question” – the question of whether Northern Ireland should be in the
Irish Republic or the British Union - Republicans and Unionists both saw their stand as
one of democratic principle: Unionists believe Northern Ireland should remain in the
Union because the Protestant majority of Northern Ireland want it so; Republicans
believed the initial partition of the six counties was illegitimate and thus the question
should be put to the democratic wish of the Irish people as a whole.10 Between these
groups there are also the Irish nationalists, associable with figures like John Hume and
the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), who are ultimately a nationalist
Catholic party (seeking unification of Ireland) but have consistently promoted
nonviolence and reform, generally accepting Northern Irish political institutions, and
traditionally emphasizing equal rights within Northern Ireland over unification, accepting
that the answer to the Constitutional Question relies upon the democratic wish of the
Northern Irish population. The position of the British state, at least until the government
of John Major, was largely just to contain the threat of violent Republicanism, which they
saw as simple and unequivocal terrorism, through a persistent application of force and
10
This is often called the problem of the two minorities. Protestants are a minority – and feel marginalized
– within Ireland as a whole, while Catholics are a minority – and feel marginalized – within the borders of
Northern Ireland.
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intelligence. The Irish state had consistently renounced the violence of the IRA and
treated IRA captured in the Republic as criminals, yet the Irish Constitution retained a
clause stating explicitly that Northern Ireland belonged legitimately to the Irish Republic,
and Tonge claims “two-thirds of the citizens on the island support a united Ireland
(Tonge, 2006, p 14).
Yet over the decades of the conflict there were changes to these perspectives that
made peace possible. Today Republicanism (disregarding active violent splinter groups)
has by and large accepted the British state as a neutral actor with no selfish interests in
the region and it has moved towards accepting the British ethnic character of Unionists as
authentic. As where for many decades Republicans were deeply antagonistic with their
fellow nationalist Catholics and the SDLP, who supported nonviolent political reform,
today Republicans have shifted away from a focus on reclaiming northern territory from
the British and have accept and endorsed as their own the originally SDLP principle of
rule by democratic consent within the political institutions of the Northern Irish state. In
doing so Sinn Féin now takes away votes from the traditional SDLP constituency,
becoming acceptable enough to middle class Catholics that Sinn Féin is now the
dominant Catholic party. “These themes” writes one commentator, “…mark a
fundamental transformation in the ideological and analytical framework of
Provisionalism which turns its former worldview on its head” (Bean, 2002, p 138).
Illustrating the starkness of the shift, Patterson, writes of how Republican leadership
today has accepted “a settlement which contains nothing that can realistically be seen as
even “transitional” to a united Ireland” (Patterson, 2000). The British state has moved
from a partial view of the situation, treating Republicans more than Loyalists as terrorists
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to be squashed or contained, to an attempt at neutrality, attempting to play the role of a
disinterested “honest broker” genuinely working for an equitable resolution to conflict. In
this British decision-makers have had to alter their visions of Republicans as simply
terrorists to reasonable human beings that can be trusted to live peacefully and abidingly
within a working modern political order. In many ways the middle and upper class
Unionist community has been the most resistant to shifting perspective, and I think it is
no coincidence that they have been the least directly affected by the violence of the
Troubles as well. Unionists tend to describe the Troubles as something that has been
foisted upon them by a number of irrational Catholics, and Unionist politicians have
tended to see shared government with Republicans as a distasteful moral compromise.
Nonetheless, Unionism has had to make shifts in their perception of Republicanism as
well. Unionists do now share government with Republicans and have made concessions
along the way in order to do so. Working class Loyalists, on the other hand, have been
the forgotten children of the Northern Ireland peace process. Largely unrepresented
throughout most of the political machinations, today Loyalist paramilitaries are still
armed and active, though floundering, unsure of where to go and how to redefine
themselves in a time of burgeoning peace. As we will see in this chapter, some working
class Republicans and Loyalists are beginning to make important alliances for peace in
working class communities, affirming that within the Loyalist community as well
important perceptual shifts are being made.
How did these perspectives shift to a place where we can now say there is a
degree of peace in Northern Ireland? There are ways, I believe, in which empathy played
a crucial role. For the next three sections I will consider instances of empathy in the
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peace process at three levels: elite-level influences and negotiations, wide society,
political and international institutions.
Section 3: Elite-Level Influences and Negotiations
Hurting Stalemate, Early 1980s
Zartman has offered that the resolution of conflict is all in the timing. “Parties
resolve their conflicts only when they are ready to do so” (Zartman, 2000, p 225). This
seems poignant for the case of Northern Ireland. As I have already noted, the agreements
that all the main political parties in Northern Ireland agreed to in the 1990s and 2000s
have been “in [their] defining elements, indistinguishable from the 1974 Sunningdale
Agreement” (Maloney, 2008, p 485). But in 1974 Northern Irish society apparently was
not ready for the agreement. The powersharing government of 1974 was ultimately
overturned. But what brings relevant groups to readiness? Zartman speaks of mutually
hurting stalemates (MHS) as the prime causes of ripe moments. “The concept is that,
when the parties find themselves locked in a conflict from which they cannot escalate to
victory and this deadlock is painful to both of them, they seek a way out… The basic
reasoning underlying the MHS lies in cost-benefit analysis… [A] decision to change is
induced by means of increasing pain associated with the present (conflictual) course”
(Zartman, 2000, p 228). One of the widely commented upon aspects of the Northern
Ireland conflict is something like a hurting stalemate recognized between the IRA and the
British state in early 1980s. When the IRA began its armed struggle against the British it
imagined a relatively quick war, with the British leaving Northern Ireland after only a
few years of a war of attrition (English, 2003). One decade later the IRA held a different
perspective, foreseeing that they may never be able to completely oust the British through
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violence means. At the same time, the British concluded that while they could forever
contain violent Republicanism they could never be ride of it. For some authors the power
realities that comprised this stalemate are in themselves the best explanation for the peace
process. Tonge reads the peace process as a case of the IRA folding first in this stalemate
“face-off:” ““Demilitarization [of the IRA] came after the British security forces had won
the long war, despite suffering thousands of casualties. The crude initial responses of the
[British] security forces to legitimate civil rights protests had partly created that war, but
it was also the subsequent physical force response, albeit only when aided by
intelligence, that had defeated the most sustained IRA campaign since partition. The
IRA’s defeat was not total in military terms… but nonetheless the IRA’s inability to
inflict a decisive defeat upon the security forces led to its eventual channeling down
political routes and a shelving of historical objectives” (Tonge, 2006, p 82). Similarly,
Richard English suggests that while the hurting stalemate may not be the entire story of
the peace process it is its most important aspect. The “sharper elements” in the IRA,
English suggests, recognized that in the context of hurting stalemate political avenues
offered greater promise for their goals than violence did.11
Were we to accept this hurting stalemate as the root cause for peace in Northern
Ireland we would be accepting that realities of Power ultimately played the most vital
role. Yet there are reasons why the “hurting stalemate” should not be taken as something
like a central independent variable explaining the peace process, nor even as important as
authors like Tonge suggest. The actual fact of the power stalemate is prevalent enough in
authoritative accounts on Northern Ireland that we can safely say it did occur and had an
important effect. Yet, notice, the IRA’s reaction to the stalemate was not to give up
11
Interview with Richard English, March 8th, 2007. Though, also see English (2003, pp 307-9).
185
violence. The switch in tactics was to the infamous “Armalite and the ballot box” two-
track approach of juggling political pressure on Britain (via Sinn Féin) with pressure
from continued violence. The counterargument may be that, ultimately, in order to
succeed at the political approach a withering away of violence was required, and indeed
Sinn Féin has been increasingly successful in terms of capturing votes the more they are
associated with the peace process and the less with IRA violence. Yet, there is something
terribly incongruent about the thought that Republicans chose the political avenue instead
of violent revolution to achieve their goals of a post-British, united Ireland given that the
cost of peace and success in the political approach was a significant sacrificing of those
original goals. If the stalemate was the only – even main – factor driving Republicans to
explore political avenues, at the point that the IRA realized their vision of a united,
British-free Ireland needed to be compromised in order to have success along the political
tract we should have seen them pull away from politics. Something along with the early
recognition of stalemate must have motivated those shifts towards moderation within
Republicanism. Even with the recognition of a stalemate the IRA were prepared to keep
fighting rather than simply abandon their vision of a united Ireland, evident simply in the
two or more decades in which conflict continued. Finally, taking the hurting stalemate as
the root explanation for the peace privileges the reading of the conflict as predominantly
a war between the British state and the IRA, and ignores the ethnonational gutter-war that
was waged between Catholic and Protestant neighbours. Stalemate between the IRA and
the British state is hardly a sufficient explanation for efforts at peaceful reconciliation of
Catholics and Protestants, Loyalists and Unionists.
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Where the hurting stalemate is important (and it is important) is that it disallowed
either the British or the Republicans to simply drive the other out of Northern Ireland via
Power-oriented means. What the stalemate did was ensure Peace-through-Power, in the
form of ending conflict by crushing one’s enemy, was not a viable route to peace. That is
important. But it does not itself explain the many shifts and motions that have had to
occur beyond that stalemate to move towards peace.
Gerry Adams and the Redemptorist Priests
The dynamic between elites and the community in Northern Ireland in regards to
the peace process is interesting. On one hand, it appears that the opinions of the general
populace held surprising little influence over the paramilitaries. Fitzduff writes in
memory of one bomb that killed nine people on the working class Protestant area of
Shankill Road: “The following day I made my way to the scene of the murders, to leave a
wreath of sympathy. There was just a pile of rubble left to indicate where the fish shop
had been. In front of it, a mound of flowers and letters for the families and friends of the
dead had begun to grow. Many of the messages of sympathy to the Protestants of the
Shankill Road were from Catholics angry at the murders that had been committed in their
name… and all spoke of their desire for peace. A week later, in Greysteele, a quiet
village in the northwestern part of Northern Ireland, the paramilitaries struck again. This
time it was Loyalists who attacked… And once again the bereaved, mostly Catholic,
were not left to mourn by themselves. Their local Protestant neighbours came to join in
their wakes and their funerals…” (Fitzduff, 2002, p xi). Arguing for the role of Empathy,
I might want to make a case that a high degree of sympathy throughout most of the
Northern Irish population (the silent masses) and across sectarian lines ultimately played
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a role in pressuring paramilitaries to put down their guns. However, there is evidence to
the contrary, with public movements for peace never appearing to reduce the conflict.
The most prominent example of this is the Peace People movement, Northern Ireland’s
largest mobilization of the public in direct protest of the violence, which occurred and
eventually fizzled out over the 1970s, the height of the Irish conflict in terms of deaths
and destruction. Hume writes, “A long time ago, commentators invoked Mao and
predicted that, as the water of popular approval dried up the guerilla fish would have to
abandon the struggle to survive. We saw that the fish needed less water than we had
thought. The Provisionals for several years received only insignificant support from the
population of either Northern Ireland or the Republic [of Ireland], yet they retained the
ability to disrupt” (Hume, 1996, p 92-3). That being said, the situation does seem to be
more complex. Richard English sees the IRA receiving legitimacy from about “10%” of
the Catholic population, and there does appear to be reason to believe that when the
waters of legitimacy dried up within that specific 10% of the population it did indeed
affect the IRAs capacity to act. Commented one former IRA member, “At the end of the
end of the day they [the IRA] have to face up to the fact that there is no longer the
support for a military campaign. The water that the fish swim in is not there anymore. It’s
there for a political organization. It’s there for Sinn Féin” (BBC1, 1997). But if
legitimacy for IRA violence dried up within the Republicans’ own community, was it
sympathy for the dying that dried it up? We cannot know for sure to make a point of it.
But I can point to the role that the leader of Sinn Féin, Gerry Adams, has played for
decades in developing sentiment for a peace process within the Republican community,
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steadily taking support away from the violent armed struggle and transferring it over to
Sinn Féin.
When I spoke to one former IRA man and now a Sinn Féin community worker
Gerry McConville, I asked McConville what role the community had played in
convincing Republican soldiers to cease their violent armed struggle. McConville
explained to me that the force for change had not come from the community but rather
from Gerry Adams and the increasing numbers who took to his plans, so that it was
largely Adams who lobbied the idea of a peace process to the community and, over
decades, painstakingly laid the solid groundwork for it within Republicanism. Adams,
McConville explained, has had to “drag the community” from a perspective of conflict to
a perspective that sees peace as possible. Adams’s role in shaping Republicanism is
indisputably pivotal, and complex. Several key chroniclers of the IRA place Adams as a
leading figure in the organization in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and as a key architect
of the IRA’s armed struggle during some of its bloodiest periods (though Adams himself
denies IRA involvement) (Moloney, 2002; English, 2003; Taylor, 1997). At the same
time, these authorities also emphasize along with Bréadún that if “Curious readers will
want to know who started it all [the peace process] and made the first moves which
brought such sweeping and significant results[, t]he first name that comes to mind is
inevitably Gerry Adams” (Bréadún, 2008, p 18). Yet we cannot understand Adams’s
journey from architect of the Republican armed struggle to architect of the Republican
participation in the peace process, and what role Empathy plays in it, without first
considering the strong influence of one particular Redemptorist monk named Fr. Alec
Reid. Much of what led to Adams’s acceptance of the principle of democratic consent in
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the Hume-Adams declaration of 1993 had to do with this monk. According to Moloney it
was Reid’s “often highly secret and protracted dialogue and interaction with Gerry
Adams that ultimately led to the Provisional IRA’s decision to quit armed struggle… To
say that Father Alec Reid is the unrecognized inspiration of the Irish peace process would
be an understatement” (Moloney, 2002, p 224-5).
Empathy has had everything to do with the motivations of the Redemptorist
priests in their activities for peace in Northern Ireland. While Reid is notorious for his
secretive (and in the eyes of Adams and the IRA, trustworthy) nature, and thus is
notoriously difficult to find for interviews, I did interview Fr. Gerry Reynolds, a
colleague of Reid’s and the current head monk at Clonard Monastery, the church that
serves Adams’s home area of Belfast. Importantly, Moloney notes that Adams attended
Clonard as he grew up and the priests had a significant influence on him (Moloney,
2002). Reynolds described to me that the motivations of the Redemptorist priests come
from the religious conviction of a “common humanity,” where neither disparate faiths nor
identity groups are seen as justification enough to kill or maim or treat others as less than
oneself. This wide sense of Humanizing Empathy guides Reynold’s efforts at peace
through creating ecumenical ties with Protestant churches: a project which I will come
back to later. Reid’s own mediation activities with Adams came from the same
motivations of Humanizing Empathy, indeed even sympathy. For Moloney, the
beginning of the peace process can be traced back to 1982 when Reid went to Adams to
plead for the life of a Protestant who had been kidnapped by the IRA (Moloney, 2002, p
224).
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Reid’s role in Republicanism largely involved playing mediator between in-
fighting Republicans, attempting to calm Republicans and Loyalist tensions, and secret
communiqué-carrier between Republicans and the British. There was “a bond of trust
between him and the West Belfast leader [Adams]” (Moloney, 2002, p 225). Importantly,
Reid and other Redemptorist priests “rejected the IRA’s violent methods but believed it
was important to understand why it was that people joined the IRA and supported the use
of violence. He believed it was vital that he talk to republicans…” (p 226). That is to say,
Reid was very concerned with seeking ways to peace through Perspective-Taking, to
understand the other, even if the other holds convictions anathema to one’s own.
Moreover, Reid hoped his work might have a Perspective Taking effect on Republicans,
pulling them out of their own parochial, violence-oriented perspectives and perhaps
finding possibilities for peace. Reid’s approach – of communicating with violent
Republicans and hopefully spurring PT and perhaps even HE – was contrasted by the
majority of Irish Catholic religious figures of the time. The opposite tactic was taken by
Bishop Cahal Daly, who oversaw a region of Northern Ireland that included Belfast.
Daly’s approach was to castigate the IRA’s armed struggle for its morally incorrect
nature. In this Daly not only urged Catholics not to support the IRA, but he refused to
meet or communicate with them, to exchange ideas or encourage them towards peace, in
the same way Reid did. On one hand, this moral castigation on religious grounds may
have had the outcome of discouraging support for the IRA (as English expressed to me,
the IRA armed struggle never sat with Irish Catholics, not least for religious reasons12),
but it was nonetheless very important that some Catholic priests were willing to back
Reid’s work with Republicans, even given their “terrorist” immorality. Beginning in
12
Interview with Richard English, May 8th, 2007
191
1982 Reid began to work with Adams to intellectually construct a way out of armed
struggle and a means of furthering their goal of an Irish Republic without violence.
Recall that at this time, in the early 1980s, the various groups in Northern Ireland had
been through ten to fifteen years of intense conflict, and they were in isolation from one
another. They did not communicate, did not speak, and did not understand each other’s
perspectives. What they understood were their own parochial ideologies and perspectives.
However with “The Reid-Adams initiative,” writes Moloney, “Adams himself was
clearly willing to discuss an alternative to the IRA’s violence, and to contemplate huge
ideological shifts” and widened perspectives that would ultimately become cornerstones
of the Republican participation in the peace process. (Moloney, 2003, p 240). This
widening of perspective began with talks between Adams, Reid and the Catholic Church,
whose aim it was to end Republican violence. Moloney describes how by 1985 Reid met
with the then Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Charles Haughey with a set of principles
upon which Sinn Féin, Adams felt, could work towards peace. Two of those principles
were a drastic shift in what had always been the Republican stance. Republicans had
always rejected the idea that the Constitutional Question should be subject to the vote of
the population of the six counties alone and not the whole of Ireland, and they called this
the “Unionist veto.” However, in their “Concrete Proposal for a Political Strategy for
Justice and Peace” Reid and Adams had “redefined the principle of Irish self-
determination to embrace the need for unionist consent.” More, the proposal accepted
that “the Irish people consist of two traditions, Unionist and Nationalist” (Moloney,
20002, p 275). Not only was this a sharp change in the Republican perspective, but also
an example of how Adams was attempting to utilize Perspective Taking to work towards
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understanding what the unionists would ultimately need to agree to peace (within a united
Ireland).
At this point, Adams and Reid were largely working in secret from the rest of the
IRA high command and soldiers. Adams’ ideas were far from Republican policy. Yet, by
1993 they had begun the public line for Republicanism, or at least Sinn Féin, when
Adams and Hume went public with secret meetings that had been held at Clonard
Monastery, and again, within the year the IRA committed to a cease-fire. It had been
important that these talks had been close, intimate, face-to-face talks within the small
meeting rooms of Clonard Monastery. Writes Murray, “Bitter animosity between the two
parties gave way to a surprising tone of moderation, demonstrated by the amicable
rapport between the two political leaders” (Murray, 1998, p 175).
Humanizing the Other
In the previous section I noted Fr. Gerry Reynolds’s commitment to projects of
ecumenicalism. Reynolds was engaged for years in cross-sectarian workshops with a
Protestant pastor, Ken Newell, called the Clonard-Fitzroy Fellowship (Wells, 2005).
Their workshops largely use religion as a common ground for Catholics and Protestants
to empathetically humanize and even sympathize with each other.13 The guiding visions
behind these workshops are entirely Peace-through-Empathy oriented. Newell and
Reynolds express their visions of peacemaking in remarks before a conference featuring
Adams and leaders from Unionist and other nationalist parties called Talking to One’s
Opponent. Newell: “Archbishop Tutu once said that genuine peace required enemies to
talk to each other’s fears and anxieties, as well as their hopes and aspirations. For it is
13
George Mason University conflict resolution author and practitioner Marc Gopin also stresses a positive
role for religion in developing a sense of empathy amongst competing groups, including (in fact,
especially) when religion is taken seriously by the combatants and is even art of the feud. (Gopin, 2002).
193
only when you understand your opponent, where they are coming from, what makes them
hold the positions that they do, what frightens or emboldens them, or fills them with hope
and expectation – or them you – that real attempts at peace can be made. It is a dialogue
of the deaf if opponents do not put themselves in the other’s position.” Reynolds concurs:
“We need to cultivate a deep kind of bonding with one another… You will only
understand the other person, and indeed you will only be able to give the other person
their rights, when you have opened your heart to the other person in order to understand
them as people. The basic idea behind this program of lectures is to get into the other
person’s shoes in a warm, human way… Progress has to be about each other’s humanity
and listening to each other’s story, not arguing about principle” (Ervine et al, 2002). Here
again we have the expression of an approach that seeks peace through Perspective Taking
and Humanizing Empathy against strict rejection of the other on moral principle, as we
saw Reid disagree with Daly over.
These workshops were grassroots level reconciliation building efforts, but in the
late 1980s, between the first failed and the later more successful Hume-Adams dialogues,
Adams and a group of Republicans, on Reid’s insistence, attended Reynolds and
Newell’s workshops, “twice and sometimes three times a month (Mallie and McKittrick,
1996, p 135). “At first the meetings were fairly stiff, partly because positions were so far
apart, but in time they came to speak frankly, and in doing so Adams showed a side of
himself not usually seen by outsiders.” Newell recalls how what began as Perspective-
Taking (“knowing each other very well”) moved, over eighteen months, first to
Humanizing Empathy (“touching each other”) and then to developing maneuvers for
peace. “At the time it was high risk stuff. We told our stories… it was like exploring each
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other’s life experiences… We took a pastoral approach to Sinn Féin: we weren’t there to
condemn we were there to listen… During our first year and a half we were still polarized
because we were meeting with a general defense of the armed struggle. We reached a
point where we knew each other very well but didn’t touch each other… Suggestions
were then made on the republican side that if they couldn’t connect with us they couldn’t
connect with Unionists at all… Then, after eighteen months of meetings… there was a
definite shift. In spring 1992 we noticed Sinn Féin were preparing to make peace…
[Adams] had a growing respect for Presbyterian and Protestant tradition… There was a
feeling of a genuine willingness to try to make peace on the basis of the principles of self-
determination of the Irish people, consent, and a democratic resolution of conflict. There
was a new agenda. The old frozen stereotypes of republican responses was giving way to
the impact of genuine friendship and real concern for each other. The emotional warmth
of the meeting began melting the iceberg of traditional responses… Ideas were floating
such as how Sinn Féin could replace lost military influence if a cease-fire was called…
Those meetings left a real legacy of friendship. Adams suggested a second group of
republicans should become involved in meetings and that is still [in 1995] going on”
(Mallie and McKittrick, 1996, p 136-7). For Adams’s part he says of these meetings: “I
found these engagements energizing and thought-provoking. The people we met… All
were unionists, though few if any of them were involved in party politics. They had never
been subjected to republican arguments. Few if any of us had been subjected to unionist
arguments. These discussions informed Sinn Féin’s developing peace strategy” (Adams,
2003, p 18).
195
English points to three reasons why Republicans shifted hard towards a strategy
for peace in the early 1990s, the third of which is a point of growing Republican
Perspective Taking and Humanizing Empathy for the Unionists.14 He writes, “In May
1991 Danny Morrison candidly referred to “the lack of republican understanding of the
unionist/Protestant people,” and another of republicanism’s most intelligent figures, Tom
Hartley, has offered similarly crisp comment upon the former republican approach to
their unionist neighbors. “In a way we made them a non-people. We just said: you can’t
move the unionists until you move the Brits. So we didn’t even see them as part of the
problem, never mind as part of the solution.” But this began to change, with Republicans
such as Morrison noting that a more nuanced approach was required. “When you are
engaged in a struggle, you fight with basics in mind. It’s a united Ireland or nothing; the
unionists are basically tools of British imperialism; they don’t know what they’re doing;
they’ll come into a united Ireland like sheep once you break the will of the British. It was
a very simple view of unionism” (English, 2003, 312). Simple, yes, but also
dehumanizing: “tools,” “sheep,” “they don’t know what they’re doing.” As previously
mentioned, the Republican view of Unionists was that they were pawns of the larger
British enemy, sad Irishmen duped into a foreign culture and allegiance. For much of the
conflict the Republican perspective encouraged seeing Unionists as ciphers. In our
interview English expanded on this point for me, expressing that the problem was for
Republicans that they were meeting unionists, coming to see them as human, and “it is
14
English’s other two reasons: the first reason has to do with the hurting stalemate, and the growing
recognition that violent actions were hurting the Republican cause by alienating the British and Unionists
who might otherwise be willing to make compromises. Here we have the realities of Power (the stalemate)
but we also have a degree of Perspective Taking required to realize what Republican violence must look
like from the other side of it. The second point is entirely Power-oriented. Sinn Féin was looking forward,
English suggests, to the new opportunities for greater political legitimacy and gains that the 1990s appeared
to be affording them.
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harder to kill somebody you see as human.”15 As the forward motion towards Irish peace
grew, Republicans appeared increasingly willing to recognize Unionists not only as
human beings but also as a people with a unique identity that deserves to be maintained
by Unionists and recognized by Republicans. This growing sense within Republicanism
represents a massive shift in perspective that has allowed for peace where the original
Republican perspective did not. As we shall see later, in what I think is one of my most
important points in this chapter, the shift in both Republicanism and Unionism towards
humane and even friendly recognition of each other’s unique cultures and perspectives is
not as pronounced in broad society as it has become amongst elites, and work towards
making it pronounced is one of the highlights of the society-level peace process.
Perspective Taking and Humanizing Empathy had this effect on the political
elites of Loyalism, as well. Again, working class Loyalism never developed the political
organization and coherence that Republicanism did. Yet the small group of Loyalists that
did speak for their community in the political realm carried some influence in the peace
process. The leading figure amongst Loyalist politicians was David Ervine, whose efforts
towards peace also exhibited characteristics of a Peace-through-Empathy approach. In the
late 1980s Ervine worked to make ties between Loyalist politicians and working class
peace organizations in the Republic of Ireland (enemy territory for Loyalists) (Sinnerton,
2002). In Talking to One’s Opponents Ervine expressed his view for peace. “We have to
realise that [tribalism in Northern Ireland] exists, it isn’t going to go away but we as
people have a responsibility to understand it and in the understanding of it perhaps we
realise what stops us dealing honourably with the other side… What is the “other
side?”… Growing up I didn’t know where “they” lived – there was a chapel close to my
15
Interview with Richard English, March 8th, 2007
197
home – but as a child we were fed this constant diet of misunderstanding. It allows one to
develop bitterness. How much easier is it to blow somebody’s head off, how much easier
is it to deny them employment, if you know nothing of the man; if you have no concepts
that their wants are similar, that they have similar pressures and similar problems”
(Ervine et al., 2001). When we look at the few leaders within working class Loyalism that
made an impact politically toward peace we find an amazing correlation. Virtually all of
them were prisoners in the 1970s in the same jail (Long Kesh) that the British had
interned IRA prisoners. Here a small handful of the Loyalist prisoners in Long Kesh
undertook in-prison education, taking classes and making personal contact with
Republicans. Sinnerton writes that Ervine “was conscious, too, that ‘there was something
healthy being exposed to somebody with a different opinion…’ A loyalist accepted that a
republican had a case, he saw value in that case, even though he disputed it
fundamentally and no agreement had been reached.” Says Ervine, “We had a relationship
that was cordial and respectful. I think there may have been a couple of friendships that
grew out of it. But we were us and they were them. Maybe we proved something: that
“them and us” can actually cohabit, that ‘them and us’ can get on, that ‘them and us’
without losing one ounce of principle, can function together. That was important.
Another lesson learned” (Sinnerton, 2002, p 66).16 Notice the important theme, which I
will return to later, of Humanizing Empathy that allows different groups to function and
cohabit without a sense of strong identification with each other: thus unique identities and
principles can be maintained, yet a sufficient degree of empathy exists and creates an
16
Ervine continues: “And remember, these guys came from Catholic working backgrounds. They came
from Catholic, working class areas. They came from sectarianism, as did we in many ways, and yet we
learned the capacity to cope with each other, and they only had one head, two arms and two legs, just like
me” (Sinnerton, 2002, p 66).
198
insight that allows for peaceful existence. Further, to stress the point, every one of the
handful of Loyalists that engaged in these contacts with Republicans in close quartered,
educational setting went out to be activists for peace within the Loyalist community
(Sinnerton, 2002).
The British State: Talking with the Enemy
One of the persistent questions in the post-Sept. 11th international atmosphere has
been whether states should “talk with terrorists.” The US Administration has consistently
insisted, in rhetoric at least, that states should not talk to terrorists, with the reasons for it
generally being a combination of moral castigation of terrorism as an evil - such that it
would be a moral compromise to engage with terrorists in any way other than force - and
a sense that talking to terrorists is a weak tactic that only serves to accommodate terrorist
interests. A full seven years after Sept 11th, 2001, the US retains a list of terrorist states
and organizations that it holds a policy of not talking to, and the US President recently
said this: “Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if
some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have
heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an
American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might
have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is - the false comfort of
appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history” (Reuters, 2008).
Similarly, Western nations have avoided talks with the Palestinian political and
paramilitary group Hamas. Recently, however, “cracks are beginning to show in the wall
of resistance to Hamas, with some officials (and even a few Israelis) wondering publicly
if it is time to engage an organization that continues to lead a large part of the Palestinian
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people” (LaFranchi, 2008). Moreover, Walsh of the MIT Security Studies program notes
that during the Bush Administration the US has dealt with North Korea regarding its
nuclear weapons program, negotiated with Libya for a rollback on that nation’s nuclear
weapons program, with Iran on Iraq, and with Sunni militia in Iraq in efforts to have them
“switch sides and attack al Qaeda instead” (Walsh, 2008, p 2). Says Walsh, “President
Bush’s few foreign policy achievements have come as a direct result of talking to
“terrorists and radicals” (p 1).
Arguments for talking with the enemy can be Power-oriented arguments: in
dialogue and diplomacy pressure can be applied to the enemy groups in effective ways.
However, if the goal in talking to the enemy is to find some avenue to peace, dialogue
tends to inherently carry with it Peace-through-Empathy aspects. Most obviously,
dialogue and contact is perhaps the best way for political actors to develop Perspective
Taking with each other, and in this PT actors can shift and alter their perspectives,
positions, demands and behaviours in ways that work towards compromise and
consensus. But arguably there is an inherent aspect of Humanizing Empathy within
dialogues for peace as well. In order to engage in discussions with the enemy for the sake
of trying to find avenues for peace one must first have some sense that the tactic of
dialogue will be productive, and in order to have that sense one must see the other as a
human being that, if nothing else, is rational and human enough to work and negotiate
with. Over the past year, as commentators have been offering their take on what has
made the Northern Irish (elite level) peace process a success, the overwhelming message
coming forth from British politicians engaged in the process has been the need to “talk to
terrorists,” and particularly for the opportunities for PT and even HE that such dialogue
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provides. For Jonathan Powell (2008), the Blair government’s chief negotiator in
Northern Ireland and for former UK Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Peter Hain
(2008a), “it is always right to talk to your enemy however badly they are behaving”
(Powell, 2008, p 66). The Northern Ireland case tells us two important things in this
regard: first, officers in the British government began and, to the degree that they could,
maintained communication links with Republicans (including Gerry Adams) beginning in
1972. Signals through these channels and through other intermediaries shaped British
understanding of Republicans, and as officials within the British state came to better
understand their perspective of Republicans the British shifted their positions and
behaviours in order to accommodate; Second, there is a direct correlation between the
willingness of the British state to engage with Republicans and the success of the peace
process. There is a linear progression of engagement with Republicans from the Thatcher
government to the Major government to the Blair government: with each government the
British engaged more directly in dialogue, more directly in efforts at PT and even HE,
and with each government the peace process was more successful than the last.
The first meeting between a British operative and Republicans was in 1972,
attended by Gerry Adams. Through established secret backchannels, members of the
British state received, over time, messages and signals that gave them a better perspective
on what the republicans were looking for from the British and what Republicans might
accept in order to engage in peace. In the work done by Reid and Adams in the 1980s,
one of the defining principles drawn up was that, for Republicanism to move past armed
struggle, the British would have to take a position of genuine neutrality on Northern
Ireland and be willing to accept that the fate of Northern Ireland was solely a matter of
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Irish self-determination. Feeding into the Republican view of the British as colonialists,
British law books had declared in the 1920 Government of Ireland Act that Northern
Ireland could not be removed from the British Union without British authorization.
Reacting to this glimpse into the Republican mentality, then Secretary of State for
Northern Ireland Peter Brooke made two crucial statements which sent messages to
Republicans that began a transformation in how the British and Republicans saw each
other and how they felt about the possibilities of working together for resolution to the
conflict. The first, in 1989, involved an interview where Brooke expressed publicly that
the British recognized a hurting stalemate and that the government would be
“imaginative” and receptive in its response if Republicans ceased with violence. The
second, in 1999, proclaimed publicly that Britain had no strategic or economic interests
in Northern Ireland.17 These proclamations were the result of secret communications that
Reid-Adams (via Reid) were having with Tom King, Secretary of State for Northern
Ireland prior to Brooke. Prior to the public proclamations King had secretly responded to
Reid-Adams: “the British government has no political, military, strategic or economic
interest in staying in Ireland or in the exercise of authority there… [T]he British
government is prepared to withdraw from… the central forum of political debate… so
that the parties to the conflict… can engage freely, independently and democratically in
the political dialogue and agreement-making which would bridge the divisions…”
(Moloney, 2003, p 251-2).
By the late 1980s, then, Republican leaders (i.e., Adams) and members within the
British state were signaling each other that each could be prepared to clear ground for
17
Powell writes of this statement by Brooke: “a crucial step in the view of SDLP leader John Hume in
making it possible for the IRA to lay down weapons” (Powell, 2008, p 64).
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peace negotiations should the right conditions be met (genuine British neutrality and a
Republican cease-fire). However, as with the example of PT from McNamara in the
previous chapter, each side had not to just receive the messages but interpret them as
well. Republicans and British alike were prone to mistrust each other’s messages. At the
time Thatcher was the UK Prime Minister, and Thatcher, who had herself been a target of
IRA violence and whose personal friend was killed in the bombing attempt, was
notorious for her hard approach to Republicans. She was not one to engage in PT and
certainly not HE with Republicans. Thatcher consistently rejected the perspective
Republicans might be individuals that can be worked with for peace. Said Irish politician
Martin Mansergh, “‘I was always fairly clear that there was little hope of an end to
belligerence in Ireland while she remained British prime minister.’ He and everyone else
would have to wait until November 1990 before she left the political stage” (Moloney,
2003, p 274).
The first IRA cease-fire and serious negotiations began during the John Major
government. Even still, Major’s government can be pointed to for a significant lack of PT
when it came to Republicans. With the Republican cease-fire, Britain established
preconditions that it would require before it would engage in actual peace talks. The third
of three was that the IRA decommissions some degree of their armaments. This
decommission was, from the perspective of Republicans, impossible. From the
republican perspective, to disarm would be to leave them at the mercy not only of the
British if the British turned around and reneged on peace talks, but (perhaps primarily) at
the mercy of Loyalists on the Northern Irish streets. Further, we can assume,
psychologically, Republicans probably saw the demand for decommission by their
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traditional enemy as a kind of emasculation. The British showed a serious lack of PT in
regards to what this particular demand would look like from the Republican perspective,
and what an obstacle to the peace process it would create. Ultimately, even after the
British did away with insistence on this point, the Unionists later took it up so forcefully
that, as Powell says, it “snagged the process for a decade” (Powell, 2008). Second, after
the cease-fire Major’s government stalled on negotiations largely due to internal
Westminster politics. Republicans interpreted this as confirmation of their old
understanding of the British – that they had duped Republicans into a cease-fire and not
delivered on further peace talks. The IRA responded by bombing first Canary Wharf in
the UK and then Manchester. These showings of force brought the British state back to
negotiations with Republicans, which Powell chastises the Major government for as it
sent the message that Britain responds to power and does not reward efforts towards
peace (Powell, 20008, p 85-6). In the meantime US Senator George Mitchell, chairing
talks between other parties in Northern Ireland, exhibited more PT by proposing that
decommissioning be removed as a precondition and that the IRA be given room to
decommission while peace talks go on. Ultimately this and other of Mitchell’s principles
became the framework for future all-party peace talks.
When the Blair government came into power they took a decidedly different
tactic. Adams has said, “British policy in Ireland has changed dramatically… [I]t didn’t
start, and was not embraced fully, until Blair came into Number 10 Downing Street…”
The difference, as Adams sees it, has been, “the willingness to embrace an
accommodation or to explore the possibility of an accommodation with the republicans”
(Stadlen, 2007). With the Blair negotiation team there was a noticeable emphasis on
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concessions to the violent elements, put particularly Republicans. Hain describes how
these concessions were ultimately a factor of PT and perhaps even HE.
“What is so destructive in terrorism is not just the wrecking of lives but the
impact on the psychology of a community… [I]t’s not hard to see that
almost every family felt the horror of ‘The Troubles’. Above all terrorism
obscures the natural desire of the majority for peace by entrenching
bitterness and creating an entirely understandable hysteria in which voices
of moderation can no longer be heard. It is desperately hard for people to
focus on politics when they are under attack: when, in the case of
Republicans, their communities have felt under assault or siege by agencies
of the state, and in the case of Unionists, many friends and relatives have
been murdered or maimed under the constant shadow of IRA terrorism.
This for our Government meant making concessions that went deeply
against the grain, not only for unionists, but also for much mainstream
British opinion. An example was the controversial and painful republican
and loyalist prisoner releases at the time of the Good Friday Agreement,
including individuals who had committed unspeakable atrocities. But it was
essential to show paramilitary groups that a commitment to peace brought
gains which could not be achieved by violence (Hain, 2008b).
In these concessions and accommodations the Blair government largely disarmed
themselves of negotiation power and capacities to pressure Republicans, opting for a
tactic of trusting Republicans to work with Britain and Unionists in a reasonable, trust-
based, business-like fashion. Unionist leader David Trimble complained that Blair gave
away all of his “carrots and sticks” too soon (Millar, 2004). US Special Envoy to
Northern Ireland Mitchell Reiss also complained that Britain had given too many
concessions to Republicans (Moloney, 2008, p 428). These concessions included a great
flexibility on the part of the Blair team to allow Adams time to ease Republicans towards
the vast changes in perspectives and policies that the peace process demanded they make.
Unionists often accused Republicans of stalling and “dragging their feet” through the
process but the Blair team managed a great deal of PT with Republicans and accepted
that Republicans needed to move in that fashion to ensure violent factions did not splinter
and spoil the peace process. Indeed, slow, careful, even Machiavellian maneuvering had
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worked for Adams so far in preparing the groundwork within the community for a cease-
fire and peace talks. Adams notes the success of his careful approach in building up to the
cease-fire: “we had no Hamas in that situation” (Bréadún, 2008, p 39). They also
included flexibility on decommissioning. Powell describes how the British were busy
navigating perspectives: “it was really the symbolism [of decommissioning], which was a
problem on both sides: for them, the IRA, a symbolism of surrender, and for the other
side a symbolism of making the other side back down. And in a negotiation like that you
don’t want either side to surrender you want both sides to come out feeling that they have
succeeded” (BBC One, 2008). Importantly, the Blair team realized through PT that as
Republicans prepared for decommissioning both Republicans and the Irish state would
appreciate reciprocal displays of British demilitarization and so lessened the presence of
British forces on the island (Watt, 2008).
If trust is a crucial component of successful negotiation, the Blair team had
allowed for and sought to build trust between British and Republicans in direct and
human ways that previous governments had not before. Within the symbolic language of
the Northern Irish conflict, handshakes between enemies have carried particular
significance. Particularly on the Unionist and British side, for decades it was insisted that
leaders should not shake hands with terrorists. To this day, despite the many friendly
public relations opportunities exhibited by Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness as First
Ministers of Northern Ireland, Paisley still has not shaken a Republicans hand in public.
When Blair first met Adams and McGuinness it was the first time a British Prime
Minister had personally met a Republican leader since partition. For the historic event,
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Blair shook their hands.18 Asked later whether Blair had shaken their hands he replied
yes, and that “I treated Gerry Adams and the members of Sinn Féin in the same way I
treat any other human being” (Lyall, 1997). Not only was this an exhibition of personal
HE, it was a symbol, in a British/Irish conflict, recall, where Republicans were widely
perceived as terrorists that could never be negotiated with peacefully, for the wider
population to take perspective and redefine that perception, indicating the first steps in
moves towards the creation of Relational Empathy between British (including Unionist)
and Republican people. The relative levels of human trust that developed within these
talks would be important as a glue to keep the negotiations together through difficult
times. At one point Powell relates a story of being told by a Belfast local during a
troublesome spot in the negotiations that the British might as well go home because the
Troubles were ultimately insoluble. Powell replied that he had learned enough of the
players involved to trust them and know the conflict was ultimately solvable (Powell,
2008).
Negotiations
The peace negotiations that were conducted primarily over the span of the Blair
government were fraught with difficult issues, stalls, setbacks, disagreement and stubborn
refusals. I do not mean to suggest in this analysis that negotiations were smooth and easy
due to a great flood of empathy amongst the players. Indeed, typical carrot and stick-style
power negotiations did play a crucial role, particularly when it came to the Unionists.
Trimble, the leading Unionist in the negotiations, finally conceded to agreement with
Republicans largely because he felt he had little other choice: the political momentum
18
Powell notes that he himself and other British officials were reluctant to shake hands, even given Blair’s
lack of misgivings.
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had simply swung that way (Bréadún, 2008, 164-5). Nonetheless, considering traditional
animosities and disparate perspectives, empathy played its role in occasional moments
and details. Roy Garland, a Unionist negotiator, describes his experience of the peace
talks. “[Trimble] insisted that successful negotiation requires solid preconditions. One
assumed minimal precondition – respect for opponents – was largely absent and is still
sometimes lacking… [Yet] In my view dialogue can help break stalemates between
estranged peoples and republicans are to be congratulated for instigating much of it… My
experience of dialogue led me at a very early stage to realize that the IRA was serious
about entering negotiations and ending violence. But misconceptions were common on
both sides. Sinn Féin doubted the willingness of David Trimble to engage while unionists
doubted the sincerity of republicans when they expressed an interest in negotiations. I
tried to reflect the feelings of unionists to republicans and - with greater difficulty – the
reflect concerns of republicans to unionists” (Garland, 2007).
In this milieu, characterized for decades by a combination of historic mistrusts,
stubborn refusals to listen to the other, efforts to hear each other anew and efforts to
develop new trusts, it was often when Perspective Talking and Humanizing Empathy
broke through that peace negotiations moved forward. Here is one example from US
Senator George Mitchell, chairing initial rounds of the peace talks and resorting to
methods of Humanizing Empathy to facilitate negotiation. “Mitchell was to recall: “the
first meetings were disastrous – angry, harsh recrimination…” Mitchell McLaughlin of
Sinn Féin summed it up: “No discussion, no dialogue and no trust…” To experiment,
Mitchell moved the negotiators to the isolation of a US-owned mansion in the UK.
“[T]he switch to Winfield House began to pay dividends, as an element of social mixing
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took place. Mitchell remembered: ‘I insisted that there not be any discussion of issues at
the meals, that we just talk about other things. So they could come to view each other not
as adversaries but as human beings, and as people living in the same place and the same
society and wanting the same thing.” One Unionist negotiator recalls of Winfield House:
“Martin McGuinness [of Sinn Féin] laughed, and maybe for the first time I saw him ever
really laugh. Let me put it like this. It probably didn’t change Martin McGuinness’s
attitude to me: he sees me as part of the establishment. It doesn’t change my attitude to
him: I see him as the active IRA man… It doesn’t make a personal change for us, but I
think it could perhaps have given us a vision for the future. Our children, or our
children’s children, perhaps won’t have this animosity and distrust.” One government
source said “Winfield was the psychological breakthrough,” and after that point parties
began to moderate their positions to accommodate the other (Mallie and McKittrick,
2001).
Section 4: Society
Saunders writes, “peace is not made by governments alone. Important as
government is, ultimately peaceful relationships are built by people” (Saunders, 2000, p
252). Within elite level processes towards peace empathy has played a role, primarily in
the form of Perspective Taking and a rudimentary Humanizing Empathy, in order to set
the conditions and changes in perspective required to allow former combatants to come to
a place where they can share in the governance of the region. Yet beneath those
governing structures, forms of empathy have perhaps an even greater role to play in
efforts at peacebuilding within broader society. Let us recall the criticisms of institution-
heavy peace efforts that we encountered in Chapter I from, for example, Mac Ginty and
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Halpern and Weinstein. Growing within current literature is the argument that peace
processes must spend much more effort on psychosocial healing and reconciliation if
peace processes are to be successful in the long term, and thinkers must spend more time
considering what those efforts must look like.
A War Spawned by Psychological Trauma
As political scientists we tend to think of conflicts in terms of the pursuit of
political or economic interests or ideologies, or the rational response to security
dilemmas. With the Northern Ireland conflict, authors have often treated the conflict as a
clash of beliefs about the political status Northern Ireland. But these explanations of the
conflict can have the effect of ignoring the basic psychosocial roots of the conflict.
Alonso (2007) interviewed “seventy activists and former members of the IRA” to discern
their motives for joining the violent Republican movement and found that
overwhelmingly, if not unanimously, motivations for joining, and to a large degree
staying, in the violent movement were predominantly psychological rather than
ideological. Most of the interviewees had joined in their early teens – around eleven to
sixteen, at ages far too undeveloped to fully understand Republican political arguments
for justifying violence. Many had been socialized within Republican communities to
romanticize militarism and Republican history. Several reported joining simply for the
rush of power received from handling a gun. A primary reason for joining was often a
traumatic witnessing or being touched by the brutality of the state. For many the political
ideology of Republicanism was something that came later, as a rationale and a
justification for the militarism they engaged in. Alonso writes, ““I never considered
myself a great nationalist,” declared Mickey McMullan, expressing an opinion shared by
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many of those who joined the republican movement.” For many interviewees Republican
ideology “just gave added justification for killing soldiers and policemen” (Alosno, 2007,
p 38). Outside of the paramilitaries, social divisions have been maintained within society
by historic social structures. Historic prejudices, stereotyping and senses of separation
have of course only been exacerbated by the conflict. The sense of victimization is strong
on both sides of the conflict, and persistent hurts and resentments make it difficult for
many in Northern Ireland to pursue normal prosocial societal relations. Exposure to
violence, and the trauma it leaves behind, is itself one of the main obstacles to peace in
Northern Ireland (and presumably all conflict-torn areas). Hewstone et al. report “levels
of trust and forgiveness were lower among respondents living in areas that had
experienced high levels of sectarian violence” and Hayes and McAllister report that
greater exposure to violence correlates with greater support for paramilitarism (Hewstone
et al., 2006, p 116; Hayes and McAllister, 2002).
Empathy-Building as Peacebuilding: “It’s Not About Agreement”
Efforts at peacebuilding in society, beyond economic restructuring, can be seen as
primarily revolving around attempts to engender empathy in society. Notes Maureen
Hetherington of the community group the Junction in Derry: “promoting empathy is
everything we do here.”19 Efforts generally occur at two levels: 1) developing HE and
sympathy interpersonally, between individuals, with the goal of forgiveness, increased
interpersonal relationships and trust, and; 2) developing Relational Empathy: that is,
transforming social norms that define the relationship between Northern Ireland’s groups
as necessarily and naturally acrimonious to norms of workable and even amicable
relationships. That being said, the two tactics appear to be intertwined.
19
Personal interview with Maureen Hetherington, March 27th, 2007
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Recall from a previous chapter that empathy tends to produce, and can even be
called crucial for, forgiveness, trust and reconciliation.20 Ed Cairns of Ulster University
has pursued the question of empathy’s role in peacemaking in his interest on how
psychosocial research can aid peace in Northern Ireland. In quantitative studies Cairns
and colleagues confirm, “the Empathy-Forgiveness link is strong.” Cairns also finds that
there is a strong link between empathy and contact with others as variables for
forgiveness and reconciliation (Moeschberger et al., 2005). Cairns and colleagues have
argued, “one of the keys for positive intergroup relations is positive, cooperative
intergroup contact” (Tam et al., 2008, p 310). The contact hypothesis – which, basically
stated, is that increased proximity and contact amongst individuals will cause them to
have better, prosocial relations with each other – is important for the approach towards
reconciliation in Northern Ireland. Again, Northern Ireland is deeply divided, though
more so in certain areas (particularly working class areas) than others, and incidents of
violence, paramilitaries, and inability to forgive or relate positively with out-groups tends
to correlate with the higher degrees of segregation in society (Hew stone et al, 2006).
Efforts at increasing intergroup contact in Northern Ireland have included integrated
schools, an educational program in schools called Education for Mutual Understanding
(EMU) and local community groups that attempt cross-community reconciliation events
and workshops. Integrated schools are encouraged by the government through financial
incentives, though still, as quoted earlier, only an estimated less than 10% of Northern
Irish children attend integrated schools.
20
For the following discussion regarding Cairns research on peacebuilding through psychosocial means in
Northern Ireland by “empathy” we mean the more affective forms: Humanizing Empathy, or sympathy, or
perhaps Empathetic Identification.
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However, we all know from experience that increased contact with others does
not always reliably lead to empathy, forgiveness and reconciliation. Indeed, increased
contact can often lead to increased violence. Again, the most troubled spots of the
conflict were, and remain, those places where Catholics and Protestants meet.
Interestingly, two community workers I met from a community group called Finaghy
Crossroads Group (which I shall speak much of later in the chapter), explained to me that
where there is sectarian violence now in their community it is amongst school children
that meet and arrange to fight in their integrated school.21 Cairns’s assessment of how
increased contact leads to forgiveness and improved relations, then, develops two
nuanced points.
First, it is not just contact with others but contact of a particular quality of contact
that is most likely to produce positive social outcomes contact where empathy for the
other is present. “This relation [between empathy and contact] is probably best
conceptualized as a feedback loop in which both variables strongly influence each other.
This finding is important because not only is it helpful to create social programs that
increase the amount of contact with members of the other community but also it is more
effective when affective empathy is fostered” (Moeschberger et al., 2005, p 211). Thus
programs of integration for the sake of peacebuilding, according to Cairns’s work, need
to be not only programs of increased contact but of empathy building, designed perhaps
by psychologist who are expert in the development of empathy.22
Second, for cases like Northern Ireland, where acrimonious intergroup relations
are normalized within society, there is yet another qualification for the sort of empathy
21
Personal Interview with Harry Smith and Stiofán Long.
22
Here I would refer you back to Chapter III, the brief section on how empathy can be learned.
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and contact that must be taught and applied. Psychologically studies show that empathy
for an individual tends to expand and produces empathy not just for the individual but for
the wider group that the individual belongs to as well (Batson et al., 1997). However, in
deeply divided societies such as Northern Ireland, where social structures encouraging
individuals not to empathize with those from other groups (out-groups) are powerful and
deeply ingrained, we can expect to see much less of this effect. Cairns writes, “research
suggests that even if positive attitudes are formed towards members of the outgroup with
whom one comes into contact these attitudes fail to generalize to the outgroup in general
and outgroup stereotypes therefore remain intact” (Cairns, 1994). The effect in these
cases is that one can come to empathize with a single individual but in doing so cease to
associate that individual with the outgroup as a whole, with the effect that empathy does
not expand to the broad outgroup. In my interview with Cairns he illustrated this by
pointing out that we frequently see individuals who are friends with individual members
of minority groups but still promote hurtful stereotypes of the group in general. A person
may say, for example “I don’t like Blacks, but you’re o.k. because you’re not like the rest
of them.” Or, for example, Catholic Siobhan might come to be friends with Protestant
Billy, yet in doing so her understanding of Billy is now incongruent with the distasteful
stereotype she carries of Protestants in general, and in this dissonance she ceases to
associate Billy with the overall Protestant outgroup, conceiving of Billy as unlike other
Protestants.23
23
Cairns (1994) gives another example: Margaret Thatcher. He notes that even though Margaret Thatcher
is deemed a highly successful Prime Minister in British history her time in power did relatively little in the
eyes of the British public to alter views about the ability of women in general to rule, and he attributes this
to the tendency of the populace to disassociate Thatcher from women-hood. Thus she is continually
referred to as “the Iron Lady” and associated with maleness and manhood.
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So it turns out that in order to promote empathy not just for other individuals but
also for their group – that is, not just interpersonal empathy but intergroup empathy – we
need to empathize with others not just as their individual personal selves, but as selves
situated and defined within particular identity group. Writes Cairns:
“In order for stereotype change to occur what recent research has
suggested is necessary is for the stereotype disconfirmers to be seen as
typical of the group rather than as individuals… [C]ontact must occur at
the intergroup end of the continuum rather than at the interpersonal end.
Paradoxically, therefore part of the solution may be to make people’s group
affiliations more salient in the contact situation and not less, thereby
ensuring that the participants see each other as representatives of their
groups and not merely as exceptions to the rule” (Cairns, 1994). Further,
Cairns tells a story of a teacher in a Protestant school in Northern Ireland
who had taken her class on a day trip to a museum with a class from a
Catholic school. “Both school heads instructed the children not to wear
their school uniforms for the day but rather to wear track suits – thus of
course facilitating interpersonal contact rather than intergroup contact. All
this work has implications for those who advocate trying to alter, perhaps
even eliminate, the categorization process itself… I fear that this is a pious
hope which is bound to fail. All the research above indicates that
categorization is an important and normal process. Rather than waste time
trying to alter their essential psychological processes it would be much
better to spend time trying to alter the content of stereotypes as opposed to
trying to eliminate stereotyping entirely” (Cairns, 1994).
So, allow me here to stop and retrace this argument (all of which, again, comes
from Cairns studies of the Northern Irish people). Increased contact can lead to improved,
prosocial relationships, which is itself peacebuilding within society. Thus one policy
prescription is to increase efforts at integration and intergroup contact. However, we
know that simply increasing contact does not necessarily produce prosocial results.
Contact should be coupled with empathy, and thus a further policy prescription for
peacebuilding is that efforts to integrate and increase contact must include efforts at
teaching and engendering empathy. But further, this empathy in cases of divided,
conflicted societies such as Northern Ireland, must be of a sort that creates not just
interpersonal empathy but Relational Empathy. That is, empathy must be aimed at
eroding the normalization of acrimonious and stereotyped relations between out-groups
215
(Catholics and Protestants) and it must be aimed at defining as the norm the out-group
relationship as workable, prosocial, even amicable.
Where I see psychosocially-oriented peacebuilding efforts in Northern Ireland
(i.e., beyond economic efforts) that appear to be having an impact, they have developed
this character that Cairns is talking about. That is, they work to facilitate interpersonal
empathy across community lines, developing new and positive relationships between
traditional enemies – Loyalists and Republicans, Nationalists and Unionists, so that the
development of a new definition of the intergroup relationship (Relational Empathy) is
beginning (tentatively) to develop.
But to add even another layer, my research on peacebuilding efforts across
communities has suggested another very important theme, which will become key when I
summarize my main findings in Northern Ireland. In order to redefine the relationship
between the two groups and attempt to work together for the sake of peacebuilding,
Republicans and Loyalists working for peace have had to completely endorse two
themes: 1) accepting and seeing the worth of the other’s identity and perspective
(Humanizing Empathy), 2) even though Protestant and Catholics, Loyalists and
Republicans, retain the right to hold no agreement on key issues.
Brian Lennon is a Jesuit priest who has founded a community group in Northern
Ireland called Community Dialogue, in which he runs workshops with former
participants or civilians touched by the Troubles in efforts at reconciliation. Crucially,
workshops bring together participants from across societies divides. “The process aims at
understanding,” he explains, “not agreement.”24
24
Personal Interview with Brian Lennon, March 15th, 2007
216
“If people agree with each other, then they have nothing to dialogue with
each other about. So we want to bring together people who have real difficulties with
each other, and in that I don’t mean just intellectual difficulties. I mean difficulties of
faith, difficulties of cultures, difficulties of the past. There has been over 3 and a half
thousand people killed in our conflict and the people we bring together are people
whom have often either killed or have had relatives killed in that conflict. And in the
process of community dialogue they learn, very often in the process, to understand
each other. By understand each other I mean that they begin to understand why it is
that the other group did what they did. And all though they remain absolutely
opposed to them and continue to disagree with them they can perhaps see how,
maybe if they were in the other’s shoes, they might possibly have done the same
thing. And that understanding often happens when the humanity of the other person
comes out…
I have often told the story of the Loyalist and Republican who were on one
of our [workshops]… The Republican was from a well-known Republican family so
the Loyalist would have known exactly who he was, and would in his own mind have
blamed members of that family for killing a lot of Protestants. [The Loyalist]
interrupted the group he was in on the second morning, and there were some young
people in it… He addressed the young people. “I want you to know that just because
I am sitting here, with him” - and he looked over and the Republican and pointed to
him – “I want you to know that that has not been easy for me. And then he paused
for a moment… [and said] “well actually, come to think of it, I suppose it hasn’t
been easy for him either…” The Republican looked at him and said, “no it hasn’t
been easy, but I am glad you are here.” And the Republican held out his hand, and
the Loyalist took it… It’s not about agreement. It’s not about the Republican
becoming a Loyalist or the Loyalist becoming a Republican. It’s something about
recognition… about recognizing that the other exists. And it’s more than that, and I
don’t actually have the words to tease out what recognition means in that context.
But it’s something about their human story that you can some way related to”
(Lennon, 2006).
Here we see that Lennon’s work is aimed at creating peace by engendering Humanizing
Empathy, and perhaps ultimately even sympathy, without engendering consensus on
issues and perspectives. This story should hearken us back to something we saw in
Chapter III, when Kohut, totemic advocate of empathy as merely Perspective Taking,
lectures on the therapeutic effects of Humanizing Empathy. With the Finaghy Crossroads
Group, and with the growing connections between Republicans and Loyalists to which I
was privy, we see this theme of empathy without agreement furthered, by developing a
quality of Relational Empathy that emphasizes diversity.
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Finaghy Crossroads is a traditionally troubled interface area in southern Belfast.
For years now Republican and Loyalist “interface workers” have been networking in
efforts to cease conflict in interface regions. When trouble brews, a Catholic interface
worker, for example, will call his Protestant counterpart, who will arrive on the scene and
the Catholic will police the situation from his side while the Protestant will arrive and
police from his. That being said, the collaboration has generally not gone beyond sharing
phone numbers. At Finaghy Crossroads community workers from either side of the
conflict have developed what they describe as the first joint community venture featuring
Loyalist/Unionist and Republican/Nationalist members in Northern Ireland, for the
purpose of community peacebuilding (to build “A Finaghy where all people from all
communities feel safe, happy and proud to live, work or socialize together”) and “to
reduce and prevent the incidence of inter-community violence particularly in the
crossroads area.” For Loyalist Harry Smith and Republican Stiofán Long, there are
advantages to coming together as a formal group over the loose collaboration seen in
other areas. Smith explains that loose collaborations based on shared phone numbers,
while a huge step towards cooperation between traditional enemies, are prone to easy
disintegration.
Harry Smith (HS): “[O]ne of the advantages of being together in one group was that
you’ve got that constant contact. We meet regularly, we have a strategy, we develop a
whole strategy together, we’ve become good friends with each other, we’ve built a
high level of trust with each other. So something happens in another part of Belfast
that has implications at the entire Loyalist area, we know at Finaghy here that we’re
still going to be talking. We’re still part of one group… [I]ts going to take a whole lot
more than individual pieces of trouble or issues in other parts of Belfast, it’s going to
take a lot more than that to break us up and to loose good communications and to
loose all those relationships that we’ve built up over the years.”25
25
This and all further quotes from either Harry Smith or Stiofán Long come from a personal interview with
the two, March 14th, 2007
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Importantly, then, ties binding and facilitating this Loyalist/Republican working
relationship include empathetic understanding and trust. Yet the advantages of
Loyalist/Republican cooperation go beyond the unifying effect of secure, formal bonds
with each other. Smith continues:
HS: “The potential [of Finaghy Crossroads Group] for us is… as a model for good
practice, if you like, it’s not just all about firefighting [community policing]. Interface
work is about developing community safety initiatives; developing community
development initiatives, together, as a team. And that’s what has been, for me, the
success story. It’s the fact that we’ve gone beyond simple mobile phones... We
actually went to the Crossroads one night and stood together, twelve of us, six from
each community, monitoring an alcohol shop that sold alcohol to young people. And
we stood together as one group, and the impact of that amongst our young kids was
absolutely amazing. Our kids see us there, and they can identify us on both sides.”
It is hard to understand the symbolic power such shows of solidarity and other
cooperative community ventures must have. For virtually four decades Republicans and
Loyalists have remained isolated from each other, living as enemies. Such public displays
must work towards a redefinition in the community of the relationship between
Republicans and Loyalists from one of enmity to the possibility of Relational Empathy.
The self-reported results of these activities have been to secure a notable degree of
freedom from Troubles-related violence in Finaghy, as Long attests to.
Stiofán Long (SL): [T]he steps that we’ve taken have been really really small, but
certainly significant. In terms of their impact on the area… very significant. You
know, people now don’t use Finaghy as the sectarian flashpoint that it once was.
People feel safe to walk about the place. Even at night, I mean, it was always a lovely
place during the day, but even at nighttime it never actually gets a bit hairy. Mostly
now… there’s occasional trouble, and there’ll be occasional trouble anywhere
involving young people. But the thing we can guarantee is that, 1) it isn’t organized,
and 2) there are no organizations involved causing the troubles. We can guarantee
that. Where there are sectarian influences, they’re sporadic; or, as we find mostly
now, they’re more related to alcohol, they’re more related to…
HS: Football…
SL: Absolutely. Anything apart from sectarianism…
HS: The last two years here have been unbelievable. You know, you’re talking people
who in the past on my side would have seen their role as solely defending Finaghy
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Crossroads, and perhaps even supporting some of the sectarianism that occurred
their. And their whole mindset has just changed.
This in itself is an important example of a Peace-through-Empathy approach having an
impact on peacebuilding in Northern Irish society. But moreover, as Smith’s last
comment suggests, just the fact that Finaghy Crossroads Group exists is a form of
reconciliation between Loyalists and Republicans in itself. I first met Harry Smith when I
interrupted his meeting with Director of the Falls Community Council26 and former IRA
man Gerry McConville. The meeting between the two, it turned out, was highly
clandestine. Smith remarked later that there are still members of his Loyalist community
who would shoot him for the connections he is making with the Republican community. I
was witnessing the first stages of fresh reconciliations, and even efforts at political
connections, between grassroots level Republicans and Loyalists. McConville and Smith
explained that elements in Loyalism wanted to learn from the political success of
Republicans. McConville’s impression was that empathy has been a “massively
important” component to efforts at peacebuilding in Northern Ireland.27 It is now widely
recognized within peace-oriented Republicanism that the shift in strategy has been to re-
envision a united Ireland that must include Unionism: a thought we saw develop in elites
like Adams in the previous chapter. Today, McConville explained, Republicans
recognize Unionists not only as fellow human beings with a unique identity that they
have a right to preserve, but also crucial players in the fate of Northern Ireland. As such
Republicans have engaged in Perspective Taking with Unionists and have modified their
behaviours in order to accommodate and recognize the perspectives of Unionists and
26
Falls Road, the area that the Falls Community Council serves, is the main seat of Republicanism in
Belfast. Sinn Féin headquarters is located on the Falls Road.
27
This and all other quotes from Gerry McConville come from a Interview with Gerry McConville, March
9th, 2007.
220
Loyalists. McConville explained: We talked to Loyalists and we asked, ‘what about us
bothers you?’ They answered, ‘we hate it when you say “Brits Out.” It deeply offends
us.’ So we said, ‘Why? Why would that offend you?’ And they said, ‘because we’re
Brits.’” Again, the traditional Republican view has been that Unionists are ultimately
Irishmen duped into a cultural false consciousness that incorrectly sees itself as British.
But today the trend in Republicanism is to accept Unionists as a native strain of
Britishness within Ireland. “So we stopped saying “Brits Out,”” McConville continued.
“Now we say, “The British state has no right to be in Ireland.” Further, he explained that
Sinn Féin no longer uses the term “united Ireland” because that term has also sat poorly
with Loyalists, and today they speak of a “new Ireland.” These Perspective-Taking
informed accommodations and recognitions of the Unionist mindframe are endeavours
that Republicans have engaged in as their definition of the relationship between
Republicanism and Loyalists begins to shift from enmity to empathetic partnership. The
emphasis in the conversation between Smith and McConville was on cooperation
between Loyalists and Republicans to create a “shared safe space,” indicating a shifting
perspective from seeing the other as the cause of violence and conflict to seeing violence
and conflict as a tragic joint venture: as a product of the relationship between the two
groups and not of any one group. This insight in itself not only betrays a significant
degree of at least Perspective Taking, but it demands, for the sake of the “shared safe
space,” the promotion of relational Empathy. Further, in another show of Perspective
Taking, McConville expressed that if Sinn Féin were to achieve its goal of a re-unified
Ireland it would not want to create a “Unionist IRA.” That is, entirely contrary to
traditional Republican thought, Republicans have considered what the experience of a
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united Ireland would look like from the perspective of the Unionist, and has realized that
Unionists may feel in the minority and marginalized in the same way Catholics feel
marginalized in Northern Ireland. Republicans, McConville explained, are deeply
concerned to develop the groundwork where Unionists could feel comfortable in the idea
of a united Ireland.
The empathetic spirit of recognizing each other’s diverse perspectives and
identities, and working with them rather then fearing or seeking to defeat them, is evident
in Smith and Long’s endeavours as well, to the point that one of the official missions of
Finaghy Crossroads is to promote acceptance of diversity in Northern Ireland. Here
Smith and Long discuss what they think needs to be improved in Northern Irish
integrated schooling.
SL: The other thing about integration, you were saying that academics very much see
it as the way forward… integration to certain degrees is about integrating Loyalism,
Republican, Unionism, Nationalism, you know, Chinese and all that type of thing;
but it’s not about making them all one. It’s about respecting that diversity of opinion.
Our integrated education system is trying to make everybody “nice;” trying to make
everybody an Alliance Party member, you know?
The Alliance Party in Northern Ireland has been an attempt by some Northern Irish
politicians to transcend the ethnonational divisions of Catholic and Protestant. Their
conception of the human individuals is what we might think of as the non-
communitarian, liberal conception of the individual: a being who at core is first and
foremost a unique and complete individual, for whom cultures, languages, histories, etc.,
are ultimately added onto, which can be relatively easily chosen or transcended by the
individual. The Alliance Party’s answer, then, is to neutralize the ethnonational tensions
by neutralizing the ethnonational differences: either by watering down one’s own
ethnonational identity to a certain innocuous tepidity, or by the people of Northern
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Ireland coming to align themselves with a higher common allegiance: for example, the
common nation of Northern Ireland. For the Alliance Party, then, education should be
integrationist of the sort that seeks to engender an abiding sense of commonality by way
of minimizing the sense of unique ethnicity. Long and Smith continue to suggest that the
view which we can associated with the Alliance Party is not the way to build peace in
Northern Ireland. Notice how they directly associated the maintenance of diversity with
peacebuilding in Northern Ireland.
HS: My kids, all my children have gone to integrated education and enjoyed it and
they’ve gone for all the right reasons, and they have a good spectrum and range of
friends. My son for example was bringing home young lads from [the Catholic area
of] Poleglass in terms of to stay with us. Never a problem. And to me that’s real
understanding… But the school themselves don’t practice that… There’s nothing
like promoting respect of cultural diversity.
DW: So it’s not in the program?
SL: Oh sure it’s in the program, but it’s to make everybody “nice.” It’s not to get
people from West Belfast to say, “I’m from a Republican tradition, I’m proud of my
Republican tradition, and, you know, why should I change it,” or “I’m from a
Loyalist tradition, I’m proud of my Loyalist tradition, what is wrong with that?”
Integration is about getting people from different and diverse backgrounds to live
together; it’s not about making them all neutral, making them all “nice” and pleasant
and skipping about. You know, I don’t want that type of integration.
HS: [T]he issue with integration is that it sounds great, looks good, financially
attractive: turn your school into an integrated centre, because there are incentives
there. But the bottom line is unless you start delivering realistic, I don’t mind saying
peacework because that’s what it’s about… unless you deliver realistic peacebuilding
within those establishments it’s a waste of time.
DW: So can you tell me what you’d like to see in school?
SL: You’d like to see a system develop… I mean we have here what’s called EMU,
which is “Education for Mutual Understanding,” and this is about Catholic and
Protestant. I mean, for a republican, I don’t even understand that because for me it’s
never about religion, you know? But we call EMU “Education for Making
Unionists.”
[EMU is] teaching them how to play rugby and how to play hockey how to assimilate
themselves to be British as best as they can, you know. You know? It’s wrong. It’s
wrong. We study a British history curriculum, you know, so the Hunger Strikes
didn’t happen, so 1916 didn’t happen, so there was no War of Independence, there
was no Cannon War. Well, they didn’t happen, our kids don’t learn that here from a
Protestant or a Catholic background. We don’t learn it. We study an English analysis
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of the Irish problem. So, there first of all needs to be some sort of understanding
about where we came from, but there needs to be some understanding about where
we’re going, too also, and where we’re going has to be saying to people that it’s o.k.
to be an Irish Republican, that it’s o.k. to be British Loyalist… So that’s not that you
have to bury your identity because it might make someone else feel uncomfortable.
HS: That’s correct.
DW: So it’s very important that the future of Northern Ireland for both of you is not
about assimilating into one massive identity and it’s not homogenizing this place.
HS: That’s right.
SL: You see, if you even have that approach the first thing that you’re doing is
getting it wrong because we’re talking about the future of Northern Ireland and
everybody assimilating into a Northern Ireland ain’t happening. That will never
happen to forty percent of the population here who consider themselves nationalist
Republican. ‘Cause we’re Irish. We don’t recognize democratic Northern Ireland as a
state. But we recognize it’s right to exist, as such…
HS: But now we can talk about these things. And we accept that there is mutual
respect that, “fine, that’s your opinion, that’s where you go.”
SL: And that’s what it is all about. It’s not me saying, “ ok, I was wrong for twenty
years, I was wrong for twenty years, I’m not going to be a Republican any more,” or
Harry saying “I was wrong.” So that’s recognizing where we both are at, the
objective reality of where we’re at, and saying, “let’s move on.”
Here in these last few statements we begin to see the conversation shift towards
the Constitutional Question - should Northern Ireland be Irish Republic or British Union?
– and it is here exactly where we have to wonder what is the extent of this newfound
empathetic recognition of the other. How far does this new, peacebuilding promotion of
diversity carry? Can it accept disagreement on the key issue which, for many people, the
long and bitter conflict in Northern Ireland was about?
DW: Should [Northern Ireland] be a part of a united Irish state or should it be a part
of the UK? I know it’s o.k. to be a Republican and it’s o.k. to be a Loyalist and to
work together, but where does that go in the end?
SL: Ok. You’re talking about it down to the issues, you’re talking about sectarianism.
I’m an Irish Republican. Sectarianism is the antithesis of everything that I believe in.
I believe that sectarianism was a tool carefully fostered by the British to divide and
conquer Ireland, to perpetuate that divide, to perpetuate the partition of Ireland.
Therefore as an Irish Republican it is my duty to tackle sectarianism from wherever it
manifests itself. O.k., so if that comes from a Loyalist or Unionist community then it
is my job to tackle it, but likewise if it comes from a Republican or Nationalist
community then it is my job to tackle it. Because I see sectarianism as probably the
key building block, one of the key building blocks, of this State. And I don’t want
this State to exist. I want it to be a united Ireland, thirty-two counties, socialist
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Republic. So it’s my job to tackle sectarianism, and in doing so, I believe I am
advancing my cause. So, for me, there is no divergence. And it’s no big secret, that,
either.
HS: And I’m going to sit here and accept that? Sinn Fein only started combating
sectarianism whenever they stopped their war. Sinn Fein bred as much sectarianism
if not moreso, as far as my community is concerned… Sinn Fein has this argument
that this political process will lead, eventually, to some form of all Ireland; the
Unionist politicians will argue this process has enshrined the Britishness in this
country, remaining part of a United Kingdom through issues of consent being dealt
with, through getting rid of Articles 2 and 3 of the Republican government’s
Constitution, through the very fact that Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein are actively now
promoting one of the biggest British bastions in Northern Ireland: Stormont [the
Northern Ireland Assembly]… Once our community begins to develop to it’s full
potential, if Unionism could get its act together, if we have two Unionist parties in
Northern Ireland, and we could actively get our people out to vote, and do all that
necessary stuff that Sinn Fein and the SDLP have done over the last few years,
Northern Ireland will remain part of the United Kingdom for many, many, many
years to come.
Despite their agreement to work together to create a “shared safe space,”
Republican and Loyalist still do not agree on the fate and future of Northern Ireland. For
many commentators, this may seem like a problem, and perhaps a seed for future
conflicts. But in my analysis this is exactly where we are seeing empathy at work. Why is
it that in previous decades Republicans and Loyalists were killing and dying over this
Constitutional Question yet today a small but perhaps increasing number28 are working
together for peacebuilding purposes and to create “shared safe spaces” even though this
most crucial question has not been resolved? Cairns’s empathetic contact creates
intergroup empathy as Long and Smith, and other Republicans and Loyalists, continue to
cooperate and come to understand each other as others – as Republicans and Loyalists –
not as extensions of their own selves. This requires, exactly, the respect for and
recognition of diversity that Long and Smith show by not agreeing yet working together
anyway. As Arthur writes, “Communication entails recognition of the other, and ‘the
28
Long and Smith tell me the Finaghy Crossroads joint Republican/Loyalist venture is a model being
repeated in other places in Northern Ireland. More specifically they mentioned Donegal Pass and
Derry/Londonderry.
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awareness of being separate and different from and strange to one another opens up
potentials for creative search for dialogue and for understanding the other… reaching
common ground [in this case, a “shared safe space”] is not necessarily a product of
similar opinions” (Arthur, 20002, p 147).
Building Relational Empathy
Prevailing social structures within Northern Irish society tend to promote the view
of the other as a natural or historic enemy rather than encourage Relational Empathy. As
such, the development of Relational Empathy may seem to be some of the most
important efforts to take in Northern Irish peacebuilding. That being said, there has to
been a great deal of explicit and obvious effort in Northern Ireland towards that point,
though there are points to speak of.
First, Relational Empathy will probably, ultimately, be established within the
Catholic/Protestant relationship primarily by means that I just described – through
interpersonal contacts and networks redefining the relationship a person at a time.
However, change within individual minds and social structures must be reciprocal and
support each other. The main normative messages that individuals receive within their
society must change to be congruent with a shift towards Relational Empathy.
Walker writes “Modern day divisions and conflicts are often regarded as linked in
a special, deterministic way to the past, or as involving “ancient enmities” or “ancient
hatreds” (Walker, 2007, p 103). But Walker rejects the notion that these enmities are
essentially historical and rather argues, “perceptions of the past, the sense of history or
the popular historical narratives, held by individuals and communities, can be a very real
factor [in conflicts]… The different communities [in Northern Ireland] possess their own
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historical narratives. Often these accounts of the past are selective or based partly on
myths, and are closer to what Walker Connor has called “sentient or felt history” rather
than “chronological or factual history”” (p 103; 108). To some degree, the empathy-
without-agreement between Republicans and Loyalists that I have just offered above as
an optimistic sign for peace building creates a problem if we wish to moderate historic
narratives. I have suggested that it is best to empathize, and in that create peaceful and
prosocial relations, with the other as a representative of their own other group, and in the
case of Northern Ireland that may at first seem to mean retaining historic stories that can
be inherently hurtful to the other. For example, one of the major flash points throughout
the conflict has been the issue of parades. Republicans want to celebrate the Easter Day
Rising, when the original IRA first rose against the British, while more hardline
Unionists will celebrate the Orange order with Orange Order parades. The Orange Order
is a group that celebrates the victory of the Protestant King William the Orange over
Catholic King James II at the Battle of the Boyne. These historic celebrations are hard to
moderate in a way that can become palatable to the other.
Nonetheless, there have been gestures throughout the peace process designed to
send signals to society that the historic relationship between Catholic and Protestant,
needs to be redefined along more positive and cooperative lines. Some of these gestures
have come in the form of apology, such as Blair’s apology to the Irish for not coming to
their aid during the Potato Famine of 1845-9, which was, according to Powell, one of the
first things the Blair government did coming into office. Similarly, in November of 2007
Gerry Adams apologized in person to the parents of a 12-year-old boy who was killed in
the IRA bombing of Canary Wharf in London in 1993, and subsequently apologized to
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the British people in general for all of the “hurt inflicted by Republicans during the
Northern Irish Troubles” (Johnson, 2007). Earlier in 2002 he apologized for hurts caused
by Republicans to the people of Northern Ireland. Others have been symbolic gestures of
state from Northern Irish leaders. Recently, for example, Northern Irish First Minister Ian
Paisley, who historically had been one of the loudest voices for a conservative, hardline
Unionism and a frequent marcher in Orange Order parades, visited the battle site of the
Battle of the Boyne in the Republic of Ireland (the first Northern Irish leader to do so)
and there shook Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s hand. Perhaps the strongest symbol from state
leaders that times have changed has been the public friendship of DUP and Sinn Féin co-
First Ministers Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness. Once fierce enemies, their public
appearances together have been so amicable and even jovial that the Northern Irish press
has renamed them the “Chuckle Brothers.” The friendly public displays have displeased
many in Paisley’s own party, who seem to take the possibility of Relational Empathy
between Unionists and Republicans as distasteful (Moloney, 2008), yet these constant
images were probably helpful in normalizing the notion of Republicans and Unionists
working together effectively. Finally, there has been a greater willingness in general
within Northern Ireland for leaders to show a certain solidarity for the other in the name
of keeping peace, order and good governance: witness a recent plea by Gerry Adams to
the public to stop attacking Unionist Orange Order Halls after a spat of 30 incidents of
arson (BBC, 2007).
Though perhaps the most obvious symbolic gesture towards Relational Empathy
has been the nascent trend of transformation the most offensive of the famous Northern
Irish murals and memorials. Across Belfast and Derry murals have been painted
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commemorating in some cases events of the Troubles (i.e., Bloody Sunday) and in others
simply romanticizing paramilitarism. Murals are often placed throughout common public
areas so that communities are constantly reminded of the death and conflict. On the
Shankill Road, the working class Loyalist area of West Belfast, murals surround, for 260
degrees, the only playground in the area. The possibilities for socialization into
mentalities of “historic enmity” are obvious. A number of these murals now serve as
public tourist attractions as well as banners of community pride and will likely not be
altered for a long while, if ever, nor perhaps do they need be. But slowly the more
militaristic and obviously hateful of these murals and memorials are being altered for
more positive purposes. One UVF mural was recently painted over to depict a scene from
a C. S. Lewis novel, while one UVF memorial was turned into a playground (Rowney,
2008; BBC, 2008a).
That being said, the divisions within Northern Irish society, as well as the
normalization of violence such that it is accepted to too high a degree, particularly
amongst youths, as well as, finally, anecdotal evidence that where violence and
sectarianism is still occurring it tends to be with youth, there is the strong suggestion that
peacebuilding work in Northern Ireland has only just begun, that transforming intergroup
relations from enmity to Relational Empathy may be a very long process that may require
generations to fulfill. Yet suggestions I have explored especially in our look at Cairns’s
work and my own findings regarding cross-community initiatives point to the
engendering of empathy as a crucial component to that peacework.
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Section 5: Political and International Institutions
Northern Ireland is somewhat unique in that it was a longstanding conflict in a
small nation set within a very wide and powerful security community: later 20th century
Europe. As such Northern Ireland was entirely incongruous with what had been occurring
throughout the rest of Britain since the end of World War II, particularly after the fall of
the Berlin Wall and the expansion of the European Union (EU). As one Belfast man said
to me, “we are the only place in Europe where walls keep going up.” One way in which
the international environment has affected Northern Ireland is as an inspiration,
particularly for John Hume, for who the historic transformation of the relationship
between Germany and France from centuries of enmity to close, integrated working
relationship reflected norms of Relational Empathy, which Hume wanted to infuse into
his own society.
John Hume in the early 1970s developed a vision for how to bring peace to
Northern Ireland that revolved around the respect for diversity, a principle of democratic
self-determination for the people of Ireland, both North and South, on the Constitutional
Question, a commitment to solving political goals and disagreements through nonviolent
means and working together cooperatively for mutual benefit. Ultimately Hume’s vision
has founded the Northern Irish peace process. As I have already mentioned, Sinn Féin
have adopted Hume’s vision so thoroughly that Sinn Féin now captures middle class
Catholic votes traditionally reserved for Hume’s SDLP. Hume makes it abundantly clear
that the major inspiration for his vision, and belief that his vision could work, comes from
the example of the European security community (Hume, 1996).
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But a perhaps more tangible way that the international level has featured in
regards to empathy has to do with a certain institutional facilitation of the empathy-
without-agreement factor that I earlier developed in the previous section on society. In
that section I spoke of the empathy-without-agreement that was being developed between
Republicans and Loyalists at the societal level. But we can also see this empathy-without-
agreement as a component of the new political structuring of Northern Ireland as well.
This is particularly clear in the current formulation of Republicanism. Adams says of the
strategy of today’s Sinn Féin: “that's why in terms of developing the strategy… we also
developed a notion of strategic compromises, and in many ways the need to
accommodate - defined as in the Good Friday agreement - some process where there can
be a level playing field… A level playing field, from our point of view, to pursue
republican objectives democratically and peacefully and from a unionist point of view,
for them to pursue the maintenance of the union through democratic and peaceful
methods as well” (Stadlen, 2007). Here we see a desire to pursue peace within a society
that can be flexible and accommodating to the vastly different perspectives of Unionists
and Protestants. International institutions have aided in creating the political conditions
for this flexibility. In the past the Constitutional Question of Northern Ireland was an
either/or question: either Irish Republic or British Union, because the idea of the state
was largely that of the classic Westphalian model: a unified political organization
bounded coterminously with a physical territory. Indeed, Republicanism began thinking
wholly in terms of the liberation of Irish territory from the British presence. But the
model of contemporary European integration hints at themes of a post-Westphalian
model, where notions of the state and the nation can be more flexible. Because of the
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integration of British and Irish political bodies and institutions in regards to Northern
Ireland that have been established throughout the peace process, beginning from the
Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985 and increasing in the scope and effect of the Irish bodies
in Northern Ireland, Northern Irish citizens can feel in a very real way subjects of the
British state and to some degree subject of the Irish state as well. For example, any
Northern Irish citizen who wants an Irish passport can have one. Such arrangements
institutionalize the recognition of different perspectives, which we can see as a norm of
Perspective Taking, at least, being reflected within institutions themselves. Moreover,
these institutions, in that they are a compromise for both of the either/or visions that were
originally held by both Republicans and Loyalists (either a purely Unionist or Republican
Northern Ireland) require an acceptance that certain sacrifice must be made for the sake
of accepting the other. As Kearney wrote in his early bid (1983) for a “post-nationalist
Ireland,” “We Irish must accept, each one of us, that none of us can get what we ideally
want” (Kearney, 1997, p 74).
Similarly, the powersharing institutions of domestic politics institutionalize the
need to take the perspective of the other into account.29 McGarry and O’Leary
consistently argue against what they call the “integrationist” position in Northern Ireland
and promote consociational powersharing agreements as the answer. The authors feel
strongly that the conflict in Northern Ireland must be understood as a clash of
ethnonationalism which cannot pragmatically be solved by calls for “an erosion of ethno-
nationalism on both sides, a fading of Orange and Green, in favour of a commonality
around the need for genuine structures of democracy and justice” (McGarry and O’Leary,
29
For an account of consociational government as an aspect of peacebuilding in Northern Ireland see Byrne
(2001).
232
2004, p 161). We have earlier seen Republicans and Loyalists express the same view.
Empathy works when we see the other as an other, and the consociational arrangement in
Northern Ireland allows for that arrangement rather than attempting to neutralize or
nullify ethnonational perspectives.
Section 6: Concluding Remarks
In 2005 the US Special Envoy to Northern Ireland under President George W.
Bush released a paper through the U.S. Department of State called the “Lessons of the
Northern Ireland Peace Process” (Reiss and Green, 2005). When one looks at his lessons
it is hard not to sense the US’s own concerns about what to do regarding sectarian
violence in Iraq. To Reiss’s credit he recognizes that the case of Northern Ireland
suggests a need for flexibility in negotiation and the need to support local heroes in social
reconciliation efforts (which ranks 8th in his list of 8 lessons). Nonetheless, the emphasis
is much more on establishing a strong state, controlling structures of violence and on
supporting the economy (all primary policy approaches at the time of the US regarding
Iraq). Reiss’s first lesson is a very strong proclamation that “the state must defend itself at
all costs” (p 469). Reiss’s third lesson is to never engage in political negotiations with a
group that has not yet committed to rejecting violence as a means to its goals: a lesson
that can be interpreted as “ do not negotiate with terrorists.” But are these in fact the
major lessons that should be placed up front when considering what Northern Ireland has
to teach us about peacemaking? Has Northern Ireland been brought to relative peace by,
first and foremost, the British state protecting itself at any cost? This lesson is not the one
we might draw from what Queens University Belfast History Professor and IRA expert
Richard English expressed to a US representative in early 2003, who had telephoned him
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before the invasion in Iraq to ask if the Northern Ireland experience suggested any
lessons for the US in their planned endeavor. English responded with a short but pointed
list that amounted to a strong admonishment to limit the use of state power and to use it
in culturally sensitive ways. “Don’t use soldiers as police officers. Don’t send soldiers
that can’t possibly understand the ethnocultural conditions they are engaging with. Don’t
allow yourself to be portrayed as an aggressive imperialist power.”30 Has peace been
secured in Northern Ireland by refusing to engage with groups that have not yet rejected
violence? Nothing about the story of the Northern Ireland peace process suggests this
lesson. The British state had maintained channels of communication, secret or otherwise,
with what the British had considered the main terrorist organization in the conflict – the
IRA (or Sinn Fein) – for almost the entirety of the conflict (Powell, 2008).
My analysis of the Northern Ireland peace process in this chapter is anything but
exhaustive. There is far more to say on the role of Power, of Justice and probably even of
Empathy than I have managed here. Yet our exploration has brought some insights into
the nature of empathy as a factor for peacemaking in Northern Ireland.
1) In the earliest days of the Troubles a basic vision of what would have to be the
foundation of peace within Northern Ireland was drawn up largely by John Hume and the
SDLP, and that vision has continued to be the basic foundation for the Northern Ireland
peace process. Hume’s vision for peace in Northern Ireland is a subtle and complex one.
It revolves around the Western traditions of democracy and equal rights, and as such it
certainly features a strong component of what I have been identifying in this dissertation
as Justice. But the Empathy-oriented flavour of this vision is crucial. “When people are
divided as we were in Ireland,” says Hume in a 2001 lecture, “they cannot be brought
30
Interview with Richard English, March 8th, 2007
234
together by guns and bombs. That only deepens the divisions. The history of conflict
resolution in Europe is based on three principles: respect for difference, creation of
institutions that respect difference, and a healing process based on working together for
our common interests. The essence of unity is respect for diversity” (Hume, 2001). One
of Hume’s favourite ‘soundbites’ is that the Northern Irish must learn “to spill our sweat
together and not our blood.”31 Hume says in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech:
“All conflict is about difference, whether the difference is race, religion or nationality…
[But] difference is not a threat, difference is natural. Difference is of the essence of
humanity. Difference is an accident of birth and it should therefore never be the source of
hatred or conflict. The answer to difference is to respect it. Therein lies a most
fundamental principle of peace - respect for diversity… Once [the new Northern Irish]
institutions are in place and we begin to work together in our very substantial common
interests, the real healing process will begin and we will erode the distrust and prejudices
of our past and our new society will evolve, based on agreement and respect for diversity.
The identities of both sections of our people will be respected and there will be no victory
for either side” (Hume, 1998). The Peace-through-Empathy aspects of this vision have
continually been emphasized by those looking for solutions to the Northern Irish conflict.
Writes former British MP Peter Mandelson: “I want to see a society which celebrates its
diversity; a society in which the Orange and Gaelic can live side by side in mutual
respect, as keen to protect each other’s rights as their own” (Mandelson, 2002, p 117).
Writes former Irish Senator Maurice Hayes: “[N]o one tradition should be allowed to
dominate the other, but that both should have equal respect. It should be plural and
inclusivist rather than narrow and exclusivist: both [Orange] march and [Irish] jig should
31
Interview with John Hume, March 28th, 2007
235
continue, but not in competition and not at each other’s expense” (Hayes, 2002, p 92). A
key, secret communiqué to Republicans in the late 80s declared the British government
had come to see the conflict in these terms as well: “The central issue of the conflict
therefore is not to persuade the British government to decide on the question of self-
determination in Ireland but to bridge the divisions between the people of both traditions
there in a way that will enable them to decide it freely and democratically for themselves
(Moloney, 2002, p 251-2). Ultimately it is upon this vision of different groups
maintaining their unique identities (as opposed to integration into a homogenous sense of
one nationality) but still working together in empathy and amity that the current
powersharing institutions in Northern Ireland have been built. Further, it is through this
vision, as we have seen in considering new connections between Republican and Loyalist
community workers, that peace is being built between former combatants at the level of
Northern Irish society.
The key to this vision is that divergent groups can cohabite with each other
without agreement upon many of the vital issues in their lives, and without coming to
consensus on many of the incommensurate, competing perspectives around which they
had originally fought. We have seen this time and again throughout our discussion of
Northern Ireland: peaceful cohabitation without agreement or without group
identification with the other. Often it is assumed that conflict resolution occurs when
positions have shifted such that agreement is made on previously contested issues. In
Northern Ireland they have managed to lay down a peace without coming to consensus on
crucial disagreements. This is important. The Northern Irish conflict was so intractable
exactly because no agreement could be found on certain issues (i.e., the Constitutional
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Question). In order to reach consensus one group would have to shift so radically they
would be seen to have “lost,” and in this the conditions for a stable peace, free from
residual resentments, would not be achieved. Indeed, as already suggested, some
Republicans do feel Republicanism lost. But the reason why this sentiment is not
widespread enough to spoil the peace is that institutions and behaviours have been put
into place that allow for disagreement on the Constitutional Question to remain. Again,
the peace of Northern Ireland is a balancing act between different phenomenological
perspectives, balanced at the very thin point of a shared consensus regarding these three
principles: 1) respect for the other’s diverse identity, 2) democratic self-determination
and, 3) commitment to nonviolent politics. It is an Empathetic Modus Vivendi: an
agreement to disagree on many issues and perspectives, held together by an empathetic
recognition (primarily of Humanizing Empathy) of the other’s worth. That vision, of
accepting multiple phenomenological perspectives and not forcing any one side into a
position of submission and of having “lost” the conflict, requires an empathetic
understanding to conceive of, to establish and to maintain.
When we analyse this vision, then, we see, first, that it is a combination of themes
that I have placed into two separate categories – Justice and Empathy – and second, that
if we were to prioritize those themes it would seem that, in Hume’s articulation at least,
Justice appears to be primary. There is undeniably a strong Peace-through-Empathy
emphasis in Hume’s vision. Hume writes in A New Ireland “The healing of the divisions
between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, however difficult that may be, is the major
challenge and the major priority facing those who wish to exercise the self-determination
of all the Irish people and establish permanent peace in Ireland” (Hume, 1996, p 89).
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More, Hume expresses that institutions of interdependence, such as those of post-World
War II European integration (which are largely the inspiration for his vision of Northern
Irish power-sharing political institutions32) create a “psychological” condition by which
friendship and cooperation between distinct groups can be made normal (in my terms this
corresponds to the creation of Relational Empathy).33 But even in this we see that
Hume’s articulation of this vision sees the establishment of institutions of democracy and
rights coming first, and then from these institutions the groundwork will be laid for
Relational Empathy and empathetic forces of healing between different, traditionally,
divided, groups. This was a point he made very clear to me in my interview with him.
Now that the political institutions have been laid, he explained, societal reconciliation
will occur naturally and largely by itself within two or three generations. 34
But I disagree with the implications of this attitude in two ways. The first way is
that I do not think it is right to say that in the case of Northern Ireland Justice came first
and Empathy came after. If anything I think it is the other way around: working
governing structures in Northern Ireland had to be built on processes of perspective-
shifting through Perspective Taking and Humanizing Empathy. The second way is that
governance structures are not in and of themselves enough to manifest societal-level
healing and reconciliation. That form of peacebuilding requires the development of
interpersonal forms of empathy and Relational Empathy through work aimed exactly at
doing that. I’ll now elaborate on these two points, starting with the first.
2) Earlier in this dissertation, in Chapter I, we discussed Adler and Barnett’s
theory on security communities. It appeared that empathetic factors of trust and collective
32
This is apparent in many of Hume’s writings, including his Nobel Speech (1998) and Hume (1996).
33
Interview with John Hume, March 28th, 2007
34
Interview with John Hume, March 28th, 2007
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identification were the necessary conditions for security communities, but that they were
the outcomes of other processes, including factors of power and liberal democracy. I
suspect that many thinkers might think of empathy in this way: as, if anything, the
outcome of other processes rather than as a factor that creates conditions itself. But there
is reason to believe that the process that has moved Northern Ireland from a space of
conflict to where it is today has been a long journey often compelled forward by
Perspective-Taking and Humanizing Empathy. This is crucial. While the end product of
that journey may be institutions of governance and Justice by which Northern Irish
society can be peacefully organized, at the beginning of the Troubles Northern Irish
society was not ready to simply have these institutions presented to them and to respect,
obey and live in peace under them. The effort was made with the Sunningdale Agreement
in 1973 and the ensuing powersharing government, which collapsed due to massive
resistance from within Irish society because the groundwork within society for an
acceptance of such governance structures had not been developed.
The process of developing that groundwork was long and costly as violence
continued for decades while elites worked to re-imagine the conflict, to re-imagine
answers to it, and to change mentalities within Northern Ireland such that Northern Irish
could accept new perspectives on the conflict. I do not mean to advocate that we should
want conflicts to simmer for decades while this process goes on. Perhaps with Northern
Ireland as an example we can learn how to spur this development faster within societies
for future efforts at peacemaking. But over that time, as I suggested in the previous
chapter, development of the groundwork for acceptance of peace has necessarily and
crucially involved leaders taking the perspectives of others involved in the conflict and
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modifying their own positions and perspectives, then promoting those new perspectives in
their communities. Again, the vision of Republicanism forwarded by Gerry Adams as late
as 1986 is not the vision of Republicanism he espouses today. As where Republicanism
used to define a united Ireland in terms of territory, insisting that their goal was to drive
British influence off of the island, today Adams, McConville and others in the
Republican movement argue that a united Ireland means the self-determination of a
united Irish people, with British Unionists included in that definition of “Irish people.”
Adams accepts life within British political institutions in a Northern Ireland separate from
the rest of Ireland: ‘For the time being,’ Republicans qualify, yet with very little
foreseeable means of achieving democratic consent within Northern Ireland to return to a
unified, new Ireland. Republicans may remain optimistic or express a sense of betrayal,
yet all seem to recognize the original vision of a united Ireland has become something
ideal and for all pragmatic purposes largely unattainable. On the optimistic side, Stiofán
Long’s last words in our interview: “[Republicans] know where we’re going, we have a
vision. We’re working towards a Republic. That is our Utopia.” On the disgruntled side,
former IRA man, Anthony McIntyre: “Republicanism is effectively dead. It is dead as a
strategy that can deliver anything. It can’t cope with the principle of consent, it can’t out-
maneuver it and it can’t overcome it, so it has had to reconcile itself with the British
ground rules,” he told me. “Republicanism is just an aspiration — that’s what it has been
reduced to…” (Clarke, 2008).35 Similarly, Unionists have had to accept shared
government with Nationalists and Republicans – a concession they were not willing to
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make in 1973 – and the British and Irish have accepted a new neutrality in regards to
Northern Ireland, respecting unequivocally the democratic will of this tiny region.
Only through the long process of widening original perspectives, as I discussed in
the previous chapter, have these shifts, necessary for peace, been made. Perspective
Taking and Humanizing Empathy, at least, have been vital, on a pragmatic account of the
conflict, to get Northern Irish society to a place where Justice principles can unify them.
3) What keeps groups in Northern Irish society from simply rejecting the new
powersharing government and the current peace? We might ask, is it Power, Justice or
Empathy? Power has been a poor maintainer of the peace in Northern Ireland. Without
the degree of legitimacy within society state power is beginning to receive today, state
coercion in the past was often only one more factor in the continuation of the conflict.
Republicans failed to “bomb” the British off the island. Justice, on the other hand, has
mattered. Efforts at legitimating a just, democratic government in Northern Ireland
ultimately, over decades, have played a crucial role in creating conditions for peace. Yet
it is crucial to recognize that Justice itself is not enough. Northern Ireland, perhaps like
many conflict societies, is a place where rebellion against the state and a culture of
violence has been normalized. The law in itself is not enough to ensure that Catholics and
Protestants do not re-engaged in violence, spurred by the more psychosocial traces of the
conflict left within wider society. Finaghy Crossroads Group, for example, and the
connections being made between Loyalists like Smith and Republicans like McConville,
are not products of the law or state institutions, and they are seeking to address ground
level problems that elite state institutions of justice and rule of law have not fixed.
Beneath political structures, adherence to the peace must also be maintained at the
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psychosocial level of general society. While engendering empathy within society is
certainly not capable of staving off societal violence in and of itself, engendering
interpersonal empathy between individuals and Relational Empathy between out-groups
has been a necessary component for binding society within increasingly new norms of
peaceful behaviour.
4) Communities in war-torn societies must be prepared for peace – there must be,
in the words of Harri Holkeri, one of three leading members of the International Body on
Decommissioning in Northern Ireland, “a decommissioning of mindsets and mentalities”
– and Northern Ireland suggests elites should be actively leading that process. The
example of Gerry Adams suggests that elites need to persuade and prepare the
communities they represent to shift towards peace. As Adams sought ideas for a new
form of Republicanism that could pursue its goals nonviolently, he was throughout the
decades of the peace process preparing the community, “selling’ them the shifts in
perspective. Crucially, in the case of Republicanism this meant some massive changes,
such as coming to Perspective Take with and Humanize Unionists. Because Adams
worked to persuade his community as his own visions for peace came to fruition, today
we see Republicans largely accepting the peace process, with no splinter groups, engaged
in peacebuilding efforts and even spearheading cross community linkages with Loyalists.
We might contrast this with two situations. First, Gopin writes “Often, as I have
reflected on what went wrong in the Oslo peace process it occurs to me to examine what
went right but that ended up damaging the process anyway. What I mean by this is the
excellent relationships that developed between some of the major negotiators. These
people knew the names not only of each others’ children but also the grandchildren. They
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told jokes to each other about their respective leaders. In other words, they developed
trust and intimacy. But their major failing, at least in my assessment, is that they assumed
that millions of people were prepared to make the same compromises that they were
contemplating, paying a much higher price for such compromises, and yet without any of
the relationship building that they had experienced” (Gopin, 2002, p 210). Here we see
elites not seeking to encourage or engender the same bonds of empathy between their
cross-group constituents as they experienced for each other. On another hand, a second
situation might be the case of, for example, UN peace operations, where an outside force
comes into a conflict region and relatively quickly transforms institutions in society.
Again, my point is not to advocate for prolonging conflict so that leaders can prepare
their communities for peace, but perhaps UN peace operations could engage with leaders
and train them to, in turn, engage with their communities to engender greater acceptance
of the other and prepare for peace.
5) In the case of Northern Ireland peace process, where actors have had a choice
to either show flexibility and Perspective Taking or to insist on inflexible principle, the
result of choosing inflexible principle was often a stall in the peace process. The British
insistence on decommissioning before entering peace talks with Sinn Féin provides an
example. Perspective Taking on the part of the British would have helped them realize
that a sudden decommissioning of armaments, when Loyalists were not asked to do the
same, would be a very difficult very the elements of Republicanism that wanted peace
(presumably Sinn Féin) to convince the more recalcitrant elements of the Republicanism
(presumably the IRA). The fact that the principle on decommissioning was ultimately
relaxed and Republicans continued to pursue the peace process and eventually did disarm
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suggests that the British perhaps should have dealt with Sinn Féin and dropped the
precondition from the start (Powell called the decommissioning precondition a “huge
mistake”) (Powell, 2008). Similarly, the DUP stalled peace negotiations for several years
in the 2000s on the grounds that dealing with Sinn Féin was for them too much of a moral
compromise. The approaches of Fr. Daly as opposed to Fr. Reid may present another
example. Fr. Daly may have served a good cause by publicly denouncing Republican
violence, but it was important for the Northern Irish peace process that a figure like Reid
was there, willing to work with Republicans though his own principles were anathema to
their violence.
6) At the level of societal peacebuilding, it seems important to encourage
intergroup contact (in this case, contact between Catholics and Protestants). However, it
should be contact designed to induce empathy. Thus we can imagine more effort going
into programs to spur large percentages of the population into workshops and other
planned efforts at intergroup contact moderated by professionals.
CHAPTER V:
CONCLUSION
Psychologists have reported that there are a lot of reasons for us to like our human
capacity for empathy. Empathy, it turns out, tends human beings towards all manner of
positive behaviours, many of which seem particularly conducive to making or
maintaining peace. Empathy tends us towards general prosocial behaviours, such as
helping behaviours and accommodating others. It inhibits aggression, and can lessen the
desire for retaliation or retribution. It promotes forgiveness, trust, and reduces the
tendency to stereotype and prejudice. In fact, psychologists who work with the concept of
empathy have been impressed enough by empathy – and in the beginning of this
dissertation we saw at least three such psychologists (Baron-Cohen, Batson and O’Hara)
- to wonder whether more empathy at the level of politics and international relations
might not wind up improving human lives. Would our lives be “better” and “safer,”
Baron-Cohen asks, if our politics were imbued with a much greater degree of empathy?
In this dissertation I have narrowed this broad question down to the more manageable one
of what role empathy can, or should, play in efforts to make and maintain peace?
In this, questions of empathy are pushed beyond the discipline of psychology and
into the laps of political thinkers and scientists. But here, in the laps of political scholars,
the psychologist’s enthusiasm hits an obstacle, and the momentum which psychological
244
245
research on empathy has built potentially stalls inside a vacuum of disinterest. For
political thinkers and scientists traditionally have not thought or researched in terms of
empathy. Political scholarship has no immediately available, widely-recognized tradition
of dealing with the concept of empathy in an explicit, serious and focused manner. Indeed
the most prominent approach to dealing with questions of empathy, in IR at least (though
arguably this generally holds across the political sciences), has been simply to not deal
with them at all. As we saw in Chapter I with a quote from Robert Keohane,1
predominantly held basic assumptions about the rationality of actors and their behaviours
make it common for IR scholars to assume that questions of empathy can largely be
ignored. Instances of empathy are held to be too infrequent or insignificant in
international politics for IR theorists to concern themselves with. Where political thinkers
do touch upon the topic of empathy most often it is in ways that are undertheorized, or in
ways that hint at an important role for empathy in political life but then leave the topic
unpursued.
In my explorations in this dissertation I have suggested that it is wrong for
political scholars to assume that empathy has, or could have, little role to play when it
comes to making peace. By canvassing both IR literature and practice (in Chapter I) and
the case study of the Northern Ireland peace process (Chapter IV) I’ve suggested that
empathy can have important effects when it comes to making and maintaining peace.
Indeed, I have suggested that when we consider various approaches to peace we can
organize them into a three-fold scheme of ideal types: Peace-through-Power, Peace-
through-Justice and Peace-through-Empathy. I’ve suggested that empathy can play a
crucial role in elite level or person-to-person level mediation and negotiation, from
1
See p 42 of this dissertation.
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Lederach’s story of empathetic recognition amongst combatants to the “problem-solving”
approach of ICR adherents to the personal journey of Gerry Adams and the British
willingness to communicate with and take the perspective of Republicans in the Northern
Ireland case. I have suggested, along with a number of authors, that engendering empathy
is a crucial, indispensable factor for postconflict peacebuilding and the reconstruction of
normal, functional social relationships. I have suggested, along with Mac Ginty, that
today’s peacemaking efforts can often leave postconflict societies in a state of “no war no
peace,” where overt, large-scale violence has largely ceased, yet society continues to live
within a painful, and perhaps precarious, state of persistent hurts, hatreds, resentments
and social dysfunction. On one hand, the re-engendering of empathy appears to be a
major means of resolving this situation, returning society to some degree of positive
peace. On another hand, commonly noted methods for peacebuilding –healing rituals,
forgiveness, transforming hurtful historic narratives and symbols and redefining social
relationships – all hinge, I have suggested, upon appeals to empathy. Finally, I have also
suggested empathy can matter for peace at the level of political structures and
international relations. For example, in Chapter I I suggested that a number of
international phenomena can be read as revolving around the concept of empathy. In
particular, I had us consider literature on security communities, and the concept of
friendship at the international level and the construction of the “image” of the other as a
friend rather than an enemy.
But even as we point to these examples of empathy-oriented approaches to peace
making and maintaining, the over-all situation within both theory and practice is one of
Peace-through-Empathy approaches being significantly underemphasized in comparison
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to Power- and Justice-oriented approaches to peace. In regards to theory, scholars dismiss
empathy in the ways that Keohane suggests, and they do so not because questions of
empathy are not there to ask but because scholars adopt conceptual frameworks that tend
them to focus on other factors. For example, in Chapter I I suggested that Adler and
Barnett’s security communities offer the possibility of pursuing questions of empathy yet
the authors prefer, in accordance with prominent trends in IR thought, to pursue questions
of how Power and Justice (in the form of liberal democracy) affect security communities
far more diligently. Still, empathy does not simply abound in real political practice while
scholars are simply unresponsive to it. Rather, scholars can afford to dismiss questions of
empathy because real world practitioners themselves tend to emphasize Power- and
Justice-oriented approaches to peace as well. In this dissertation I have made this point
particularly in Chapter I by considering today’s main approach to making peace on the
international stage, which is primarily a Peace-through-Justice approach. In post-Cold
War international peace operations there has been some concern for Empathy-oriented
approaches, particularly in regards to the need for postconflict societal reconciliation. But
when it comes down to it, resources are hardly allotted for such efforts, with the vast
majority, and sometimes entirety, of resources being focused on the establishment of
democratic political procedures (i.e., elections) and market liberalization.
Should we want more empathy in our theories and practices of peacemaking?
Given that empathy and empathy-oriented approaches to peace have been undertheorized
and underemphasized amongst political thinkers and practitioners, there is still a lot of
work that needs to be done towards understanding empathy and its possible role in
peacemaking before we can definitively answer this question. That is to say, there is a lot
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of conceptual ground to be laid to get from here to there – far more conceptual ground
than could ultimately be covered in one dissertation. What I have done in this dissertation
is begin to lay that conceptual ground, and in doing so I believe I have laid a base for
future research on the topic, beginning to develop a conceptual framework for future
research on empathy and peacemaking to work within. Along the way I have inescapably
hinted at, I believe, a number of possible questions that I have not been able to answer in
this dissertation. For example, what is the best balance of Power, Justice and Empathy
when seeking peace? If the goal is to have the three factors interact in order to secure
peace, how can Power, Justice and Empathy be employed in ways that are consistent with
each other? What are the normative limits of relying on Empathy for peace (for example,
when have we empathized too much with the enemy)? What are the practical limits?
These questions arise, I believe, because the line of investigation I open in this
dissertation is enormously fruitful, and promises to produce important question after
important question for any scholar who seeks to pursue questions of empathy in political
life. Even as I have endeavoured to lay important groundwork for thinking about
empathy’s possible role in peacemaking I have brought up perhaps more questions than
answers.
Nonetheless, he groundwork I do lay here is an important start. Here, to conclude
my dissertation, is a brief reconsideration of some of the main contributions I have made
in this dissertation.
1) Empathy Matters
First and foremost, the dissertation as a whole makes a case for taking up the
concept of empathy within political scholarship. Empathy matters, more so than IR and
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other fields of political scholarship have given it explicit credit for. I have suggested that
despite the strong tendency for political scholars to not bring empathy into their
discourses empathy proves pervasive enough that it nonetheless appears implicitly, at
least, in many places within political scholarship. The concept deserves greater attention
and focus within political research, and I have even gone so far as to suggest that
empathy deserves the sort of attention major concepts like power and justice have
received over the years.
2) Conceptualizing Empathy
Empathy is a concept that most political scholars are not used to thinking of as an
important factor for their research. The first question that must be faced for any work that
wants to seriously tackle questions of empathy in political life is “what is empathy, and
how should political scholars conceive of it?” In this dissertation I have shown that
empathy is a broad, ambiguous and multidimensional concept, with a long (perhaps
ancient) and convoluted history. Contemporary psychologists have worked to tame this
concept for the purposes of their own studies and have devised a number of working
conceptual models for empathy. However, it is not the case that for investigating empathy
as a factor for social and political life we necessarily want to adopt a conceptual model of
empathy designed for psychological and neurological investigations. Certainly we must
want to draw from these areas, as no other academic discipline has furthered knowledge
on empathy to the degree that these disciplines have. Yet, for our purposes political
scholars will want to understand empathy as not just a neurological or conscious event
but as a practice, considered as both internal experience and social/political effect. To
this end I have asked us to operationalize empathy in at least five separate forms:
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Perspective Taking, Humanizing Empathy, Sympathy, Empathetic Identification and
Relational Empathy. It is important to break empathy up into various forms because, as
we have seen in the case of Northern Ireland, it may be that peacemaking is effected
when some forms are appealed to over others. For example, in Northern Ireland,
peacemaking seemed to be better served when Perspective Taking, Humanizing Empathy
and Relational Empathy were engendered, as where the engendering of Sympathy and
Empathetic Identification were perhaps too much to ask in the conflict/postconflict
situation. Moreover, normatively speaking, we should want to establish peace in Northern
Ireland in a way that manages to maintain diversity, and thus we may not want peace
making in Northern Ireland to hinge upon a strong sense of Empathetic Identification that
ultimately diminishes existing allegiances to each group’s particular ethnonational
perspective and culture.2
My conceptualization of empathy for political scholarship moves beyond two
limitations that we can assume most political literature would suggest. First, I suggest we
make much less of the traditional cognition/emotion divide than political scholarship
traditionally has. Instead I have suggest that cognition and emotion tends to interact
inextricably when it comes to empathy, though it may be possible to note different
degrees of emphasis upon cognition or emotion. Second, I have posed that empathy need
2
I do not mean to suggest that these are the only forms of empathy we can imagine. I have suggested these
five because we can suspect each may have positive effects in efforts at making peace. I considered
including a sixth form: Empathetic Anger. Hoffman notes empathetic anger, and he uses the term as well.
Empathetic anger can be seen as the motivation to revenge someone that we empathize with. So, for
example, if we witness a crime – for example a mugging – and empathize with the victim, our response is
likely to be that we wish to ease the hurt of the victim (i.e., return their stolen possessions) but also to hurt,
in the form of punishment, the victimizer. That angry (perhaps indignant) desire to hurt the other Hoffman
refers to as Empathetic Anger. This is certainly an important aspect of empathy – Hoffman considers that it
might be the seat of our claims for retributive justice (as does Robert Solomon, though Solomon does not
write in terms of “empathetic anger”) – yet I have not considered it in this dissertation simply because my
focus was to think about possible positive benefits of empathy for efforts at peacemaking. Any thorough
consideration of empathy in political life will, of course, have to consider effects such as empathetic anger.
See (Hoffman, 2000; Solomon, 2004, p 20-42).
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not be limited to internal psychological processes. Rather, empathy can also be seen as a
quality of relationships or structures that shape and guide our own individual
psychologies and actions. This suggestion is certainly a novel approach to empathy
within political scholarship, and opens avenues for greater explicit usage of the concept
by, for example, social constructivists, who are normally very interested in the normative
or ideational qualities of political relations, structures and institutions. The important
distinction, then, amongst my five forms of empathy is less which forms are strictly
cognitive and which are strictly emotive and more whether the form of empathy is
psychological (as are the first four of the five) or a quality of wider relations and
structures (as is Relational Empathy).
The four psychological forms of empathy represent different degrees of self/other
integration. Perspective Taking is the capacity to perceive a situation from the vantage of
the other without necessarily identifying, feeling connected to or even feeling any value
for the life of the other. Humanizing Empathy causes us to see the other as imbued with a
basic worth that compels us to value the life of the other and accept that the ways of the
other have an acceptable worthy for the other, even if we do not accept or value those
ways for ourselves. Sympathy causes us to care for the welfare of the other. Empathetic
Identification causes us to feel a sense of deep self/other integration, as we feel when we
believe we belong to or with others in, for example, kin groups, identity groups, etc. One
prominent theme in the psychology literature is that the cognitive and emotive aspects of
empathy, and the various effects of empathy, ultimately tend to be entangled and
facilitate each other, and so while we should distinguish these five forms of empathy
from each other because it is (theoretically) possible to engage in any one of them
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without the other, in actual practice we should often find these forms interacting with and
facilitating each other. For example, we should expect that Perspective Taking is often
accompanied by or leads to one of the other three forms of empathy that manifest greater
degrees of self/other integration and value for the other.
Understanding Relational Empathy requires a switch in perspective away from
psychology and towards sociology. To accept Relational Empathy we must first accept
the more sociological thesis that human psychologies and behaviours can be shaped and
guided by the relations and social structures that any given individual finds herself
embedded within. Thus, for example, how we behaviour towards each other will depend
on how we define the relationship between each other: teacher and student, Muslim and
Jew, judge and accused. Relational Empathy can be understood as a quality of relations
or structure that defines our understanding of self and other that tends us towards
behaviours that are amicable and empathetic. For example, in some parts of the world the
relationship between Jews and Muslims is defined as inherently and naturally
acrimonious so that to be an enemy of the Muslim is what it means to be a Jew, and to be
the enemy of the Jew is what it means to be a Muslim. Elsewhere in the world, the
relationship between Jew and Muslim is defined differently. But we can also imagine, if
it is not already so defined in some places in the world, that the relationship can be seen
as one of inherent friendship, and thus manifest Relational Empathy.
With the concept of Relational Empathy we can evaluate social and political
relations and structures for their empathetic or antagonistic qualities. I have already
suggested the example of religion. In the case of the acrimoniously defined relationship
of the Muslim and the Jew, turning the relationship from one of enmity to Relational
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Empathy would require reinterpreting scripture, reinterpreting history and emphasizing
different narratives. It would be a process of not only transforming minds but also
transforming the social structures that shape minds and emphasize certain mental patterns
over others. So too can we apply this approach to political structures. We can say that
some political structures tend to animosity, or division, or the reinforcement of elite/non-
elite relationships, than do others. In this dissertation I have suggested that consociational
democratic political structures in Northern Ireland might actually promote Relational
Empathy, despite the common charge that they only concretize ethnonational divisions in
society. It is not clear to me that the sort of society we should want to see in Northern
Ireland is one where different ethnonational groups are homogenized into one broad
group for the sake of unity and peace. Rather, we should want peace through the
acceptance and accommodation of diversity – if for no other reason than the pragmatic
one that the ethnonational groups in Northern Ireland are not likely to capitulate their
ethnonational allegiances and so easily blend. Consociational political arrangements
compel, institutionally, the other side to listen to and to some degree take the perspective
of the other (or at least well consider the perspective of the other) in a way that is not
guaranteed by non-consociational institutions such as, for example, parliamentary
democracies (where the opposition has a voice to be heard but often there is no obligation
on the government’s part to pay any attention to that voice if it is not inclined to do so).
Similarly, empathy is manifest to a certain degree in the Anglo-Irish institutional
arrangements that now feature in Northern Ireland. Previously, Republicans felt grieved
in that the political institutions they lived under had no association with the nationality
they felt aligned to (a non-British Irish nationality). Today, Britain and Ireland have
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shown a certain flexibility on the question of national sovereignty when it comes to
Northern Ireland that hints at post-Westphalian themes. Northern Ireland remains
primarily a part of the UK, yet the Irish Republic does have a certain hand in governance
of Northern Ireland through certain “institutional bodies” that have been established over
the peace process. Further, any Northern Irish person can carry a Republic of Ireland
passport and thereby directly identify with the state of the Irish Republic. This
arrangement shows Perspective Taking on the part of their architects in recognizing the
Republican desire to feel Irish in their own country. But more, it establishes that the
relationship between the British and the Irish is certainly one of friendly cooperation
(indeed, even direct integration), making any Northern Irish Anglo-Irish conflict (i.e.,
between Republicans and Loyalists) incongruent with the broader trend. Further, it moves
Northern Ireland itself towards a capacity for being a truly bi-national state, where British
Irish and Irish Nationalist/Republican can redefine their relationship from enmity and
tension to sharing and cooperation.
3) Power, Justice, Empathy
Traditionally scholars and practitioners have generally accepted that a focus on
either Power, or Justice, or some combination of the two, will be sufficient for
establishing peace (or, perhaps, are the only modes of peacemaking that we realistically
have recourse to). In this dissertation I have suggested that what we should want is to
imagine methods of peacemaking that incorporate Power, Justice and Empathy,
suggesting that a reliance on Power and/or Justice approaches alone will ultimately not
suffice for establishing the sort of robust, life-affirming conditions for positive peace that
we have assumed in this dissertation to be the normative goal of peacemaking efforts, and
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Empathy-oriented approaches should be incorporated in contemporary peacemaking
efforts to a greater degree than they traditionally have been. In making this point, I have
to stress that, like with many of the points in this dissertation, there is still much research
to be had, and what I have provided here is more of a strong suggestion than a definitive
argument. Yet the suggestions I have made are certainly strong enough for readers to find
significance in, and to want to continue researching.
Power-oriented approaches to peace have been deemed insufficient by a wide
number of thinkers going back to at least to the beginning of the 20th century, when
Wilson and other idealists argued against the traditional “balance of power” international
organization, which they felt had contributed to the collapse of the international order
into World War I. Critics of power-oriented approaches to international peace note that
Power approaches tend only to manage conflict, and at best temporarily contain it, but not
alter or transform the initial situations and causes that led to violence to begin with. As
such we see that advocates of Power approaches to peace are often comfortable with, or
at least accepting of, the idea that peace is always ultimately temporary, and that the very
nature of the international world is one of peace and violence eternally cycling. At the
level of mediation we can argue that Power approaches have a similar effect. They may
force parties into some form of compromise, but they tend to leave the hurts and
resentments from the conflict, or that originally spawned the conflict, in place, capable of
resurfacing and spoiling whatever compromise had been negotiated or enforced. Justice
approaches are largely an improvement on Power approaches in that they seek to
transform root conditions that lead to conflict. But the basic problem is that Justice
approaches assume those conditions can be sufficiently transformed via the establishment
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of liberal democratic political and economic institutions. While I am inclined to believe
that such institutions do have a crucial role to play in making and maintaining peace,
suggested even in our Northern Ireland case, they are not in and of themselves sufficient.
Now that post-Cold War peace operations, largely designed to effect positive peace
through Peace-through-Justice means, have been in existence long enough to undergo a
certain degree of evaluation and scrutiny, there is a widely held sense amongst both
critics and proponents of these peace operations that while they have proven relatively
successful at constraining outbursts of overt violence they have been much less
successful at transforming root, societal causes of violence and constructing conditions
for lasting positive peace. We have seen this particularly in criticisms made by the likes
of Lipschutz, Mac Ginty and Halpern and Weinstein. We have also seen this in the case
of Northern Ireland (though Northern Ireland’s peace process is not the result of a UN-
authorized peace operation). Moreover, I have suggested, by pointing not only to
criticisms such as those of Paris but also at mistakes made by the US’s efforts at
establishing security in Iraq via Western-style democratization and economic
liberalization, that Justice-oriented approaches have been shaped in such a way that they
may not suit the particular cultures and situations within the regions of the world that
they are applied. A greater empathetic recognition of the perspectives of those living in
the societies where Justice institutions are being applied may help temper problems with
the people of the conflict-torn regions in adjusting to these newly imposed institutions.
In Northern Ireland, Power-oriented approaches to peace sometimes exacerbated
the violence rather than solved it, as British heavy-handedness (exemplified by the totem
debacle of Bloody Sunday) and IRA terrorist activities most often served only to fuel
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resentments and grievances that in turn fueled the conflict. In other ways, Power
approaches served to move players towards peace but not in ways that were sufficient in
themselves. For example, it is widely held that both Britain and the IRA were motivated
to compromise due to the recognition of a power stalemate between the two. Evidence
suggests there is every reason to believe this stalemate was important, but I would argue
that its importance was that it ensured neither side “won” through military might alone.
But it did not bring violence to a close, and on this point we should make no mistake: the
IRA were willing to continue to use violence to achieve their goals, and indeed did so for
decades after the recognition of the stalemate. The stalemate created a sort of limbo of
low-level violence, with neither the British nor the IRA capitulating in the face of it. The
new approach the IRA adopted in response to the stalemate simply added political
pressure but did not do away with the violent pressure of military force. If the stalemate
caused both the British and IRA to change tactics, it did not impress upon either side
which tactics would move Northern Ireland towards peace. Those insights had to come
from other factors. Moreover, the stalemate only really affected the British and the IRA,
leaving the Loyalists out of the equation. As such, the peace process in Northern Ireland
was necessarily a product of more than just the stalemate, and if we had only had the
stalemate we would not today have Northern Irish peace.
For example, institutions of Justice made a difference. Democracy, in the later
decades of the peace process, played a role in moderating positions of the extreme
elements in society as those elements sought to win votes. More, peace negotiations
occurred within the framework of building democratic political institutions, and were
based on a consensus amongst all parties regarding some basic universal principles:
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particularly, the principle of Irish self-determination via democratic consent, and the
principle of pursuing a party’s goals through nonviolent means. However, again, these
factors are not sufficient in and of themselves to explain the peace in Northern Ireland.
The same institutions that all parties agreed to in 2007 were available to be agreed to as
far back as 1973. Yet in 1973 they were rejected, and violent conflict ensued for 35 years.
In order for institutions of Justice to play their part in securing peace, the Northern
Ireland case suggests, there must be a number of conditions set beneath the level of those
institutions in order to prepare the general society for accepting those institutions as
legitimate. Otherwise, even if those institutions manifest normatively correct principles
and goals, pragmatically, if violent factions do not legitimate them, peace will not be
achieved. Finally, as with power, we can note that claims of justice sometimes
exacerbated rather than helped solve the conflict. We must keep in mind that the
Northern Irish conflict was so intractable exactly because each side in the conflict was
convinced that they were right and the other side was acting in ways that were unjust and
illegitimate. From the British and the Loyalist perspective, Republicans were unjustified
terrorists. From the Republican perspective, British state rulership of Northern Ireland –
indeed, Northern Ireland itself as a political entity separate from the Republic - was
unjustified from the very beginning, and so there was no reason to assume that British
violence – which the British saw not as violence but as legitimate, lawful, political
coercion – was actually any more legitimate than Republican violence. A Peace-through-
Justice approach may want to solve this clash of perspectives by adjudicating between
them, with an objective, third party judge determining which of the perspectives is the
correct, legitimate one. But there are, I think, many reasons why this would be an
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insufficient approach to solving this clash of justice claims. First, who would do the
adjudicating? In the Northern Ireland case, with the exception perhaps of the influence of
the Americans, all players involved were embroiled in the conflict and every player was
held as bias by at least one other player in the conflict. But let us imagine that some
objective adjudicator was appointed - for example, the UN was called in to adjudicate
and was deemed (by whom?) a suitably unbiased third party. The second huge problem is
that in the case of Northern Ireland different claims to justice can be seen as legitimate.
The British and Loyalists have the advantage that their claims hinge upon the fact that
they have the state on their side, and Northern Ireland remains British on the basis of
democratic consent within the boundaries of Northern Ireland. However, the Republican
claim of historic colonialism is not unreasonable, and the Republican claim is also based
on democratic consent of the people, but the Irish people as a whole, not merely the
population of Northern Ireland. Third, if a judge did deem one of these perspectives on
justice as more legitimate than the other, how would that in itself solve conflict? It is
quite apparent that neither Republicans nor Loyalists would simply back down from their
causes just because an elite, objective judge or institution from the outside made such a
decision. Pragmatically, violence would persist.
In this dissertation I have tried to suggest that neither Power nor Justice
approaches have been entirely sufficient in themselves to effect robust, negative and
positive peace. That being said, it is probable that we should assume the same of
Empathy-oriented approaches to peace: that in and of themselves Empathy-oriented
approaches to peace would not be sufficient without some application of Power and
Justice. This is a point I have not explicitly explored in this dissertation, focusing my
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efforts rather on arguing for the benefits of empathy, due to the more immediate need to
heighten empathy’s profile within political scholarship. Yet it is likely that, ultimately,
what we want to consider is the right balance between Power, Justice and Empathy
approaches in any given case of conflict rather than to pit one against the other two. What
is entailed in such a balance – how much Power and Justice need be modified in order to
heighten concern for Empathy, for example, or what the normative limits of all three
factors are – are questions well worth pursuing in future research. Again, the contribution
of this dissertation is largely in laying the groundwork for such questions.
4) Northern Ireland’s Peace Process as an Example of Power, Justice and Empathy at
Work
In Chapter IV I have presented Northern Ireland largely as one case of a relatively
successful (though still ongoing) peace process where we can find empathy playing a
significant role in securing that peace. In accordance with the purpose of this dissertation
I basically had us sift through the events of the Northern Irish peace process in order to
put our finger on the moments where empathy seems to be making a difference in the
peace process. But in presenting the case that way, with the focus strongly on the
empathy-oriented aspects of the process, I fear I may have given the audience the
impression that I think empathy is the key factor in explaining the movement in Northern
Ireland from conflict to relative peace. That is not actually my point with the Northern
Ireland case. This is my point: many efforts at establishing peace in conflict-torn regions
emphasize Power and Justice. In Northern Ireland Power and Justice have played crucial
roles, but as I just suggested in the paragraphs immediately above, they have not been
sufficient, and where we see peace being planted in Northern Ireland we tend to see
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factors of empathy at work as well: particularly, Perspective Taking, Humanizing
Empathy and Relational Empathy.
This has been especially true in the case of Republican elites who have had to
refashion the Republican perspective in order to make it conducive to living peacefully
with Loyalists and with a British influence within Ireland. In order to refashion this
perspective elites like Gerry Adams have had to humanize and take the perspective of
Loyalists to understand how to accommodate their fears and needs within the Republican
perspective so that Republicanism can continue to exist alongside Loyalism. Adams has
also had to Perspective Take with the British, Republicanism’s enemy, in order to come
to trust that the British were willing to deal honestly with Republicans and that the British
would honour their new proclamations of neutrality. Conversely, the British had to
Perspective Take with the Republicans, whom at first British officials were prone to
perceive simply as irrational terrorists. In order to make a peace agreement the British
had to significantly shift their own perspective on the Northern Ireland situation, and they
had to send signals that would be effective in shifting Republican perspectives on the
British. In order to do so – in order to understand how Republicans saw the British and
recognize how the British must behave in order to change that image – the British had to
take seriously and understand the Republican mentality. The British had to Perspective
Take to the point that they realized Republicans needed the British to take a position of
neutrality, which the British attempted to oblige by abiding by the principle of Irish
democratic self-determination and by accepting increasing Irish input (via institutions and
a partnership with Irish politicians during peace negotiations) into the fate of Northern
Ireland. Finally, Unionists have had to re-perceive Republicans as well. Notice, however,
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that Unionists have had a harder time engaging in this process, and Unionist reluctance to
form a government with Republicans helped stall and create obstacles in the peace
process for over a decade.
We also see empathy at work, as I have already mentioned, in efforts to engender
empathy within Northern Irish society, to redefine the relationship between Catholics and
Protestants, as we have seen empathy in the shapes of political and international
structures and relationships.
In this way the Northern Ireland case has told us something about the broader,
theoretical framework of Power, Justice and Empathy that this dissertation has presented.
Particularly it tells us something about the need for some balance between Power, Justice
and Empathy when attempting to make peace (though, again, there is still much more
knowledge to pursue in this area). Further, Northern Ireland suggests that in emphasizing
Power and Justice approaches to peace, as thinkers and practitioners tend to do, we may
misunderstand the lessons of the more successful cases of peacemaking efforts, and
therefore we may misunderstand what to do in order to make peace in the future. Mitchell
Reiss’s reading of Northern Ireland presents the example. In interpreting the Northern
Ireland peace process with an eye for issues of Power and Justice I think he
underemphasizes the role empathy has played. Therefore the prescriptions for future
conflict situations that come from his list of lessons (or even for current conflict
situations, as Reiss’s lessons are quite obviously a thinly veiled reference to prescriptions
for the US in Iraq) may prove problematic.
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Yet if Northern Ireland tells us something about Power, Justice, Empathy, it also
reveals some more specific insights into how empathy itself may work to effect peace,
which we will look at now in the next two sections.
5) Empathetic Modus Vivendi
For John Hume, “All conflict is about difference, whether the difference is race,
religion or nationality… [Yet] Difference is of the essence of humanity. Difference is an
accident of birth and it should therefore never be the source of hatred or conflict. The
answer to difference is to respect it. Therein lies a most fundamental principle of peace –
respect for diversity” (Hume, 1998). The idea that conflict is the ultimate outcome of
difference and diversity can be traced back at least as far as Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes’s
argument on this point in the Leviathan is often misunderstood. For Hobbes, conflict
arises because human beings inherently value different things, ideas, feelings and
perspectives, and to different degrees. Our different values – our different commitments
to what is good and what is bad – clash, and those clashes eventually lead to
disagreement, quarrel, conflict and violence (Hobbes, 1991).3 Hobbes’s answer to this
problem, however, was not John Hume’s. For Hobbes, the only way to ensure against
such quarrels was to unify the people under one institution that held the monopoly on
power. This institution (the state) could then resolve conflicts by adjudicating disputes
according to its own sense of good and bad, right and wrong, and then constraining
dissenters into accepting its decisions by way of its overwhelming power for coercion.
(This we might want to see as primarily a Power-oriented approach to peace). Hobbes’s
3
In order to understand Hobbes’s true argument about the causes of conflict it is important to note that
authors like Hobbes and Locke wrote during a time when all of Europe was writhing in sectarian division,
manifest in the Thirty Years’ War, the English Civil War, and sectarian unrest in France (Tuck, 1989;
Toulmin, 1990).
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answer was of course deemed unsuitable by later liberal political thinkers, though their
answer to the problem was not quite Hume’s either. Kant, for example – the avatar of
Peace-through-Justice approaches – accepted that Hobbes’s reading of the causes of
conflict was correct,4 but like Locke before him, Kant believed that Hobbes had omitted
one deeply important factor: Justice. For Hobbes, justice was merely the abiding of
contracts one had agreed to (including the broad social contract, which obliged every
citizen to obey whatever laws the sovereign decreed). For authors like Locke and Kant,
Justice is something real and objective, above and beyond our particular, subjective
evaluations,5 such that disputes can be properly and legitimately adjudicated by appeal to
what is right. Thus the Justice approach, rooted in authors such as Kant and Locke, sees
effective and legitimate conflict resolution as a function of just courts of law and sees the
making and maintaining of peace as a function of the establishment of just institutions.
However, notice that this is not John Hume’s answer to the question of difference and
diversity any more than is Hobbes’s. With this Justice-oriented answer, when differences
lead to clashes, we need not appeal to respect for difference to resolve the dispute. What
we need is to find which of the competing claims is right, or, if they are both wrong, what
the right and just outcome should be.
4
Reiss tells us, “Kant’s approach also makes it clear that, for him, the philosophical problem of politics is
virtually that of Hobbes, viz. the transition of a state of war to a state of peace and security” (Reiss, 1991, p
23-4). Indeed, this quote from Kant makes it clear that he sees the basic practical problem of human
relations in the exact same way Hobbes did: “[B]efore a public and legal state is established individual
men, peoples and states can never be secure against acts of violence from one another since each will have
his own right to do what seems right and good to him, independently of the opinion of others. Thus the first
decision the individual is obliged to make, if he does not wish to renounce all concepts of right, will be to
adopt the principle that one must abandon the state of nature in which everyone follows his own desires…”
[italics Kant’s] (Kant, 2002, p 137).
5
For Locke, justice is an aspect of Natural Law, embedded in the make-up of God’s universe. For Kant,
justice is something determined by the free reasoning of human individuals – yet it is objective because for
Kant true, free reason is objective, and not subject to our own particular wants, desires and inclinations.
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Contemporary political thinkers such as Habermas and Rawls have paid much
more attention to the need to consider diversity and difference in an inclusive and
respectful way. In the work of John Rawls the reason for this switch is telling. His
question in Political Liberalism is, given that liberal societies are going to have a great
deal of diversity due to the freedom they afford citizens to choose their own beliefs and
lifestyles, how do we keep such a diverse society stable (Rawls, 1996)? Again, we see the
theme of diversity potentially leading to conflict.6 Rawls still wants to argue that Hume’s
answer – respect for diversity as a means of securing peace – is a Peace-through-Justice
approach. For Rawls, respect for diversity is an outcome of a just society legitimated in
what he calls an “overlapping consensus.” Yet the theme of empathy – particularly the
need to take the perspective of the other – has begun to seep into political philosophy
exactly on this point. Okin has argued that if we were to base a political organization on
concern for empathy it would have to look like Rawls’s scheme of an overlapping
consensus (Okin, 1989). Psychologist Martin Hoffman has suggested that ultimately
empathy is the motivating force behind Rawls’s scheme (Hoffman, 2000). With
Habermas, as I have already suggested in this dissertation, the recognition of the need for
empathy is even stronger, though Habermas traps himself by wanting to insist, in Kantian
fashion, on a purely cognitive, rational orientation towards principles of justice while at
the same time admitting an emotion-laden empathy is required in order to invite, respect
and consider all of the different voices in society to Habermas’s democratic debate.
As I suggested in Chapter III, how thinking about empathy affects contemporary
political philosophy is ultimately a question for a different dissertation, though I am
inclined to think that it would push and challenge political philosophy in new ways, and
6
Hampton (1989) remarks on this similarity between Rawls and Hobbes.
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my idea of an Empathetic Modus Vivendi in this dissertation hints at that to some degree.
My idea of an Empathetic Modus Vivendi resonates with these debates in political theory
but goes beyond what has been suggested by contemporary liberal political philosophers,
reaching farther into the realm of Peace-through-Empathy approaches.
When we are talking about peacemaking we are largely talking about societies
where differences have broke society down into a state of violent conflict. Can diversity
be maintained, as Hume suggests it should be, when it is fierce enough to cause war and
destruction? Interestingly, what we see in Northern Ireland is that where peace does
appear to be growing we find it hinged upon different groups in the conflict, particularly
Republicans and Loyalists, reaching a modus vivendi – an agreement to disagree about
key issues of difference – including the key issue that many feel the fighting has been
about: the Constitutional Question of whether Northern Ireland should belong to the
British Union or the Irish Republic. For many, modus vivendis are not stable methods of
securing peace. Agreements to disagree are prone to collapse, and it is generally preferred
amongst conflict resolution thinkers that conflict be resolved on the basis of shared
consensus on issues that had previously caused violence. However, in the case of
Northern Ireland, perspectives are so different that in order to achieve consensus on key
issues at least one of the groups would have to shift their perspective radically enough
that it would be a question whether their identity had been retained. Indeed this answer
has been suggested by thinkers that I called “integrationists” in Chapter IV after McGarry
and O’Leary. However, the integrationist approach is not a pragmatic one in Northern
Ireland, since ethnonational groups are not likely to shift perspectives and identities that
drastically. Moreover, normatively, it is not clear that we should want them to. In
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Northern Ireland it seems that peace would be better secured if, instead of forcing one
group to radically alter themselves (in ways that may be remembered, resented and
resulting in conflict in the future), the groups could redefine their relationship such that
each could retain their sense of self but neither felt differences between the two so
threatening that they must imply enmity and conflict. This, I have argued, is exactly the
approach that has worked (wherever peace actually has worked) in Northern Ireland. We
see it in the normative vision laid out by Hume. We see it in the societal-level peacework
of Finaghy Crossroads. We see it to a more narrow degree in peace negotiations and the
consociational institutions of governance. Importantly, these modus vivendis seem to be
held together by shifts in perspective that require recognizing the perspective of the other,
valuing the other’s life and valuing the ways of the other as important for the other even
if not important for one’s self. That is to say, these modus vivendi seem to be facilitated
and to some important degree bound together not by forces of Power and less by
institutions of Justice than by Perspective Taking, Humanizing Empathy and the steady
engendering of Relational Empathy.
6) Preparing for Conditions of Peace
Finally, Northern Ireland suggests that it is important for elites and important
community figures to prepare communities to accept the changed conditions and
perspectives that will secure peace. My research in Northern Ireland has suggested that
Republican leaders in particular made concerted efforts to make sure that with each step
of the peace process the Republican community was prepared to legitimate the changes,
while the Unionist community was much less prepared by its leaders. As a result, the
number of splinter and spoiler groups that could have arisen from the Republican
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community was vastly reduced. More, though there were complaints (probably
legitimate) that Republican leaders often stalled the peace process on the grounds that
they needed to move slowly enough to ensure Republican consensus, keeping the
community in resonance with the forward-moving peace process may have itself helped
the peace process along. I have suggested that the community that had previously granted
the IRA legitimacy for its violent methods eventually, at some stage in the peace process,
became much more aligned to peaceful methods and withdrew its legitimacy for violent
tactics. To the credit of the Tony Blair government, the British were willing to take the
perspective of Republicans, recognize to a degree the need of Republicans to keep the
community in tow, and to grant a certain flexibility and leeway in negotiations with
Republicans, despite many Unionists arguing for the British to be much harder on what
often seemed (and may in some cases have been) Republican stall tactics.
In regards to empathy, I have suggested that one aspect of this process of
preparation has involved changing the perspective of the Republican community at large
in the manner that elites themselves changed perspective, which has involved to some
degree Perspective Taking and Humanizing the Loyalists in Republican eyes.
Conclusion
In some ways with this dissertation I have brought up as many, if not more,
questions than I have answered. But this in itself is, I think, an important contribution to
political scholarship given that the questions raised revolve around a topic – empathy –
that many political scholars have never been given reason to believe holds any particular
salience for political thought and research. In this dissertation I believe I have managed to
make the point that empathy matters for making and maintaining peace, despite the
269
predominant, traditional view. Even if at the end of this dissertation we do not have an
entirely comprehensive, tight, parsimonious view of exactly how, bringing that
recognition into the light of political scholarship is itself an important achievement. To
expect a comprehensive, tight, parsimonious answer to the question “how and why does
empathy matter for peace?” is to underestimate the depth of the question. Empathy is a
factor that deserves discussions of the sort power and justice have enjoyed in modern
political thought and science, and one day, I predict, empathy will be see as an
indispensable concept for understanding political life, just as power and justice are today.
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