This paper develops and tests a game-based model of enduring international rivalries. The model is embedded in a theoretical framework that conceives of interstate conflicts as series of temporally related games. Transition across games is governed by learning, which occurs when actors revise their perception of the opponent in response to previous interactions. The model shows that learning can sometimes produce patterns of repeated conflict. An empirical analysis of four enduring rivalries reveals a high incidence of conflictual games in their early years. As posited by the model, learning does account for game transformations (or evolutionary patterns), but changes in relative capabilities also have an important effect on how actors define their preferences and perceive the opponent.

Peace initiatives to resolve enduring rivalries are launched in a two-level setting, where foreign policy imperatives interact with domestic imperatives. Public opinion, the support and mobilization of which is required for sustaining an extended conflict, plays a critical role in its resolution, especially when government preferences diverge from majority opinion. This article uses the war-proneness literature to define the domestic context in which public opinion becomes a constraint on accommodation or a trigger for it. In each context, the government must weigh the benefits of pursuing its preferred course of action against the prospects of losing office as a result of public dissatisfaction. This dilemma involves three parameters: the conflict-related beliefs of the leadership, its sensitivity to public opinion, and the structure of public opinion. The values that these parameters assume, and their configuration, comprise the domestic conditions that govern leadership decisions on peace initiatives. A case study of Israeli decision-making on the 1993 Oslo Accord serves to demonstrate the applicability and plausibility of the theoretical analysis.

Abstract.  Efforts by governments to affect foreign public opinion through direct communication – and in competition with rival governments – have been a stable and consistent feature of international diplomacy since the turn of the twentieth century. Yet public diplomacy and its use in propaganda wars has not been sufficiently theorized, a lacuna that this article seeks to address by means of the social‐psychological theory of self‐presentation and impression management. The discussion suggests that public diplomacy is a form of self‐presentation for social empowerment, in which rhetorical strategies and associated tactics are means of addressing image predicaments in foreign public opinion. The analysis is illustrated by means of the recent Israeli‐Palestinian conflict and its presentation in the official websites of the parties.

Despite the growing importance of public diplomacy in current international politics, its practice—and particularly its relationship with hard power—remains largely unexplored by diplomatic or strategic theory. This paper applies a grand‐strategic perspective to analyze the challenges of “winning hearts and minds” in the new communications and normative environments. Israel's experience in the second Intifada serves to draw empirically based lessons on the grand‐strategic relationship between propaganda and counterterrorist operations. This relationship, the case study shows, is shaped by the close proximity of tactical‐level events to the “surface” of grand strategy, to which their effects tend quickly to rise in the new communications environment. In this context, the proactive role of public diplomacy becomes a key to grand‐strategic success.

This paper applies a theory-of-moves game model to analyze the effects of misperception on crisis initiation. The analysis indicates that the effects of misperception on initiation vary across player types and their level of dissatisfaction with the status quo: the initiation behavior of hard-line and middle-line players is adversely affected - they initiate crises they would otherwise avoid - at low and moderate levels of dissatisfaction, but not at high levels, where dissatisfaction is a sufficient condition for initiation; softline initiators, on the other hand, are nearly always adversely affected. Misperception may also result in noninitiation, which may be detrimental to satisfied players who wish to protect the status quo but beneficent to would-be targets. These conclusions, which support prior game-theoretic work, have important implications for deterrence and crisis-prevention strategies.