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Role and Perception in International Crisis: The Cases of Israeli and Egyptian Decision Makers in National Capitals and the United Nations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Randolph M. Siverson
Randolph M. Siverson
Affiliation:
Randolph M. Siverson is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at theUniversity of Californiaat Davis.
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Extract

This research reports an exploration of the relationship between a decision maker's role and his perception during an international crisis. Research on the social and political processes of the United Nations suggests that a variety of factors, including communication patterns, nonnational roles, and learning experiences may produce a role orientation in delegates that would have an impact upon their perceptions even when their nation is involved in an international crisis. This proposition is explored using content analysis data from the 1956 Suez crisis. The decision makers whose perceptions furnish the data are the Egyptian and Israeli Permanent Representatives to the United Nations and the occupants of high foreign policy positions in the national capitals of Egypt and Israel. The initial analysis of the data indicates only very small differences in the perceptions. The analysis of the data does not support the original proposition. Finally, some caveats concerning the research are raised.

Type
Articles
Information
International Organization , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , Summer 1973 , pp. 329 - 345
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1973

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References

1 Snyder, Richard C., Bruck, H. W. and Burton, Sapin (eds.) Foreign Policy Decision–Making (New York: The Free Press, 1962).Google Scholar

2 Holsti, Ole R., “Individual Differences in ‘Definition of the Situation,’” The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 14 (09, 1970), 303–310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 For a study which indicates that high conflict is related to increased cohesion among the nations of an alliance system, as measured by the similiarity of the perceptions of foreign policy elites, see Hopmann, P. Terry, “International Conflict and Cohesion in the Communist System,” International Studies Quarterly, 11 (09, 1967) pp. 212–236.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Admittedly, the terms used in this role distinction may not be the most satisfactory. True international decision makers are persons who actually occupy administrative and political positions within the United Nations. The identification of national and international decision makers here is a convenient way of identifying two categories of national roles.

5 Alger summarizes most of this research in his “Personal Contact in Intergovernmental Organizations,” in Herbert Kelman (ed.), International Behavior (New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1965), pp. 521–47.Google Scholar More detailed statements of the research are available in his “United Nations Participation as a Learning Experience,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 27 (Fall, 1963), pp. 411–26Google Scholar; and “Decision–Making Theory and Human Conflict,” in Elton B. McNeil, The Nature of Human Conflict (Englewood–Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1965), pp. 274–294.Google Scholar

6 Alger, (“Personal Contact in Intergovernmental Organizations,” p. 529)Google Scholar points out that there is little personal contact between the Arabs and Israelis at the United Nations. Such contact, however, is only one of the several factors hypothesized to have an impact upon role orientation.

7 In this instance much of Alger's data, reported in ibid., is drawn from the unpublished dissertation of Best, Gary, “Diplomacy in the United Nations,” Northwestern University, 1960.Google Scholar

8 ibid., p. 532.

9 Alger, “United Nations Participation as a Learning Experience.” Also see Alger, “Personal Contact in Intergovernmental Organizations.“

10 For a discussion of these three dimensions and their relevance to human cognition, see Osgood, Charles E., Suci, George J. and Tannenbaum, Percy, The Measurement of Meaning (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1957).Google Scholar

11 ibid., pp. 72–73.

12 Siverson, Randolph M., “Inter–Nation Conflict, Dyadic and Mediated: Egypt, Israel and the United Nations, 1956–57,” unpublished doctoral dissertation, Stanford University, 1969.Google Scholar

13 The two international decision makers, Omar Loutfi of Egypt and Aba Eban of Israel, had both been members of their respective United Nations delegations since 1949. Loutfi served from 1949 to 1954 as the chief legal officer of the Egyptian delegation, and in 1954 was made Permanent Representative. Eban had served since 1949 as Permanent Representative.

14 For each nation, only one international decision maker is included. While it may be desirable to have more sources of perceptual data from this role, the only authoritative and reliable sources of data for the Egyptian and Israeli delegations to the United Nations emanated from these men. To be sure, contemporary newspaper accounts reported the comments of various officials, but the full text of the statement and the identity of the perceiver, often an “informed member of the delegation,” were usually missing.

15 In almost any international situation, there are numbers of documents and communications which do not become public for a substantial number of years. For example, the major actors in the Suez crisis have not yet declassified the documentation surrounding this conflict and are not likely to do so in the foreseeable future. Because of this, most content analyses of political communication have used materials that were entirely public in nature. The studies of the 1914 crisis, which were based upon both public and nonpublic communications, are the exception rather than the rule.

The documents used in the present content analysis were gathered from a variety of sources. These included the New York Times, the United Nations General Assembly Official Records, United Nations Security Council Official Records, the United States Foreign Broadcast Information Service, the Jerusalem Post and the Middle East Journal. Most of these sources were either in original English or were translations into English. In the few cases in which a translation was not directly available, a person native to the language undertook to translate the document. Space limitations preclude an enumeration of the documents here, but a listing is available from the author upon request.

There is another point relevant to the documents that deserves attention, and that is authorship. It might be asked, were the documents actually the words of the person to whom they are attributed, or were they the views of others? In the present case, concern might be expressed that the speeches given by the individuals at the United Nations were, in actuality, written by persons in the respective national capitals. This, of course, is a legitimate concern, and, no doubt, in many instances the speeches of United Nations representatives are written by officials within the national foreign policy organization. In the present instance, there are several reasons for accepting the view that the perceptions of the international decision makers were preponderantly theirs. First, many of their recorded preceptions were given in situations in which they were responding directly to the statements of their opponents only moments before. Secondly, given the speed with which the events of the Suez crisis unfolded, it seems unlikely that there was sufficient time available for the preparation and transmission of full speeches to the United Nations delegations, particularly in the early days of the crisis. What is more probable is that each representative's foreign policy organization suggested or directed certain lines of policy but left much of the language to the discretion of the representatives.

16 Stone, Philip J. et al. , The General Inquirer: A Computer Approach to Content Analysis (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1966).Google Scholar

17 Holsti, Ole R., Content Analysis for the Social Sciences and Humanities (Belmont, Mass.: Addison–Wesley, 1969), pp. 150–190.Google Scholar

18 The scale runs from 1 (very positive) to 6 (very negative).

19 While a more extensive discussion of this system of content analysis might be useful, considerations of space do not permit it. Interested readers will find an extensive discussion of the method in ibid, and Holsti, Ole R., “A Computer Content–Analysis Program for Analyzing Attitudes: The Measurement of Qualities and Performance,” in George, Gerbner et al. (eds.), The Analysis of Communication Content: Developments in Scientific Theories and Computer Techniques (New York: Wiley, 1969), pp. 355–80.Google Scholar In addition, the method used in the present investigation is virtually identical with that used in several previously published studies; see Holsti, O. R., Brody, R. A. and North, R. C., “Measuring Affect and Action in International Reaction Models: Empirical Materials from the 1962 Cuban Crisis,” Peace Research Society 2 (1965), pp. 170–190;Google Scholar P. Terry Hopmann, “International Conflict and Cohesion in the Communist System“; and Choucri, Nazli M., “The Perceptual Base of Nonalignment,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 13 (03, 1969), 57–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

For an analysis of the surprisingly negative self–evaluation by the Egyptian decision makers, see Siverson, Randolph M., “The Evaluation of Self, Allies and Enemies in the Suez Crisis,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 16 (06, 1972), pp. 203–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 The measure of correlation used here, w2 (the small Greek omega squared), is derived from the following formula:

This measure is discussed in Palumbo, Dennis J., Statistics in Political and Behavioral Science (New York: Appleton–Century–Crofts, 1969), pp. 239–40Google Scholar, and Hayes, William L., Statistics (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston) pp. 381–84.Google Scholar

21 Holsti, , “Individual Differences in ‘Definition of the Situation’,” 1970.Google Scholar

22 CR, the correlation ratio most frequently used in two–way analysis of variance is found through the following:

For a discussion of this measure, see Palumbo, , Statistics in Political and Behavioral Science, 1969.Google Scholar

23 Hopmann, “International Conflict and Cohesion in the Communist System.“

24 The Israelis, however, continued to occupy positions in Gaza and Sharm el Sheikh for several months, and it was not until March 6–8, 1957, that the UNEF occupied these.

25 Holsti, Ole R., North, Robert C., and Brody, Richard A. “Perception and Action in the 1914 Crisis,” in Singer, J. David (ed.), Quantitative International Politics (New York: Free Press, 1968), pp. 147–49.Google Scholar

26 Unfortunately, because the data were originally gathered for other purposes, it is not possible at this time to change the research design so as to precede the high conflict with low conflict.

27 Siverson, , “Inter–Nation Conflict, Dyadic and Mediated,” 1969.Google Scholar

28 Block, Jack, The Q–Sort Method in Personality Assessment and Psychatoric Research (Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas, 1961).CrossRefGoogle Scholar For an application of the Q–sort, see Holsti, , North, and Brody, , “Perception and Action in the 1914 Crisis,” 1968.Google Scholar

29 Holsti, Ole R., “The 1914 Case,” American Political Science Review, 59 (06, 1965), 365–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar