The Backstabber Forgiven? Repair Processes in Interstate Alliances.

In any small group, members occasionally disagree with each other and then find some way of moving past that episode: e.g., forgiving each other, agreeing to put the problem behind them, or bracketing the dispute until later. These types of ?repair processes?, as they are called in micro-sociology, are typical not only of groups of individuals but of groups of states, notably alliances. In this regard, it is striking that although disputes have often been studied in particular alliances (especially NATO), very little work has been done on alliance repair processes. My argument in this paper is that these processes cannot adequately be described solely by reference to instrumental or strategic considerations; instead, they are distinguished from each other, and triggered, by group norms about permissible and impermissible interaction sequences. To this end, I develop several stylized repair processes and model the branching relations between them. The model is illustrated by two specific cases of serious disputes, and their repair, involving members of the Atlantic alliance: the Suez crisis of late 1956 and the Iraq crisis of early 2003. The paper concludes with reflections on whether the repair processes could have existed in earlier eras marked by different norms of great power interaction. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]