Introduction
Compromise is a general feature of social life. However, it is thrown into particularly vivid relief in post-conflict societies, where the processes and resources that underpin compromise operate in extremis. It is when feelings of compromise are most difficult to garner and sustain, when stress is at its height, that we get a better handle on how compromise works. This is because compromise is paradoxicalâit is easier to compromise when the level of disagreement is large and over many issues; it can be more difficult to compromise when the remaining issues left are perhaps the central or key ones over which the communal conflict was fought (or get reopened after these issues were thought to have been closed and agreed), or when the peace process opens up questions about identity, shared futures and common interests that touch on moral rather than political agreements, getting to the heart of what it means for people to live together after conflict (on the social and cultural dynamic of peace processes, see Brewer 2010; Brewer et al. 2011). Compromise is thus truly paradoxical: the more concentrated, narrow and focused the issues are over which agreement has to be reached, the more difficult it is to achieve. It is for this reason that in addressing here the very important topic of the meaning and practice of compromise, we use settings where it is difficult to reach, namely, amongst victims in societies emerging out of communal conflict.
Compromise is seen as a moral imperative in late modernity (see Walker 2006), part of the âmoral turnâ in peace and humanitarian studies (a phrase used in Brewer et al. 2017). Ethical approaches to the political task of post-conflict reconstruction thus abound. Philpott (2012) defined what he called the ethic of political reconciliation, Shriver (1995) the ethic of political forgiveness, which he referred to as an ethic for former enemies, and Blustein (2014) the ethic of remembrance. The point about ethical systems is that they refer simultaneously to the personal emotional interiority of the practitioner, in that they attend to their senses of trauma (see Alexander 2012), vulnerability (see Misztal 2011a; Turner 2006) and need for human dignity (see Margalit 2010; Misztal 2012; Wolterstorff 2008), while at the same time describe cultural and normative practices that are social and collective. Ethical standards thus go to shape whole societies as much as individual behaviour.
The attention this volume gives to the meaning and practice of compromise in first-generation victims is therefore consistent with the late modern emphasis on the ethics of post-conflict peacebuilding, in which moral imperatives define both personal modes of conduct and social normative systems. The ethical imperative to practise compromise does not, however, make compromise any easier to understand or define.
Compromise is a little-understood process. It is sometimes confused with tolerance, a term in vogue (OâNeill 1993). The paradox of tolerance, however, is that where tolerance exists already, compromise is redundant and unnecessary; where it does not exist, tolerance is the outcome of compromise, not its cause. Tolerance is not a component of compromise but its consequence. Compromise is also thought of as an emotionâwhich is why lay people talk of âfeelings of compromiseââbut there is no sense of what emotions it encompasses. Compromise also describes a particular type of relationship. It refers to what happens between people who were formerly opponents as much as a solipsistic attitude an individual reflects upon when interrogating their feelings in the quiet of their personal space. Compromise is a social relationship based on reciprocity, involving mutual concessions to act towards each another in the future in agreed ways. The parties to it can be individuals, groups of people or whole communities and nations, describing mutual concessions that shape the future social relationships between widely different parties.
Understanding these sorts of issues is the purpose of this book. We want to know what compromise is so that it can be better practised. However, the book is much more than this. The argument of this volume is that the discipline of sociology can answer all these issues, and this chapter sets out a prolegomenon towards the sociology of compromise, a concept that hitherto the discipline has ignored.
If sociology defamiliarises the familiar, in Baumanâs characterisation (see Bauman and May 2014), and renders ordinary peopleâs private troubles into public issues, as Mills argued (1959), then sociologyâs neglect of the notion of compromise following communal violence is a serious concern for the discipline that requires correction. Compromise is a much-used word, common in everyday speech, but is little understood as a process; it is a process that, as the philosopher Avishai Margalit (2010: 5) puts it, âis neither at center stage, nor even on [the] back burnerâ. This is despite compromise being practised all the time to the point that it is mundane (Leopora and Goodin 2013: 17).
Theology lists compromise alongside other religious virtues that mark the process of reconciliation, like turning the other cheek and loving oneâs enemies, which associate it with a sacred eschatology to be practised above all by people with personal faith. For Christian theologians in particular, the figurehead of Jesus Christ renders compromise unproblematic to believers, for it is a necessary part of the Christian ethical value system and practised as part of this tradition. However, these religious connotations marginalise the notion of compromise in secular societies, especially in societies where religion was itself wrapped up in the conflict.
Outside of bargaining theory in economics, social science largely neglects the term, especially when applied to post-conflict societies. The emergence of political and peace psychology came very lateâthe American Psychological Association developed a separate division of peace psychology only in 1991âand this field is still dominated by social identity theory. This gives it a valuable focus on victims of conflict but psychology is inhibited from separating out compromise as a process independent of the attitudinal correlates of peace or the mental health consequences of trauma. Studies of the mental health issues around peace processes by psychologists thus neglect mention of compromise (e.g., Hamber 2009). The disciplines of political science and international relations roll the process into conflict resolution itself, making it part of the skill set for undertaking negotiations. Sociology ignores the notion completely.
Sociologyâs neglect is unfortunate because compromise is a severe problem in post-conflict societies. By drawing on work on post-conflict societies where peace agreements have been successfully negotiated, it is clear that the agreements are usually very fragile and such societies are subject to ongoing conflicts and threats (see Brewer 2010; Call 2008; Paris 2004). The problem of victims is particularly acute in post-conflict societies, for the peace settlement often leaves victimhood unresolved as an issue. Victimhood has generated a considerable literature, particularly on who counts as a victim (Breen-Smyth 2007) and whether or not the reconciliation process demands the repression of their feelings of righteous anger (Brudholm 2008, 2009; Muldoon 2008). Problems around victimhood are widespread, since most post-conflict societies involve multiple victimhood, where the distinction between victim and perpetrator is blurred and everyone can be considered a victim of the conflict in different ways, even ex-combatants (a point emphasised by Borer 2003; Brewer 2010).
Compromise, tolerance, reconciliation, forgivenessâthese are the terms of debate within everyday life in societies emerging out of conflict. The prevalence of the term compromise in lay discourse and in popular culture suggests there is need for sociology to catch up with the reality of ordinary peopleâs experiences in post-conflict societies. Lay discourse suggests, therefore, that compromise is a process that sociology must begin to problematise. This chapter offers one kind of sociological approach.
Its contribution is threefold. The following formulation transcends the simplified distinction that portrays compromise as either a form of reconciliation or retreat; it privileges agency by representing compromise after conflict as a social practice, a set of performed behaviours and language scripts that can be practised irrespective of feelings; and it locates these practices within a series of interpersonal and social structural conditions, called compromise mediators, that do not require religious faith in order for them to be performed.
Compromise in Political and Moral Philosophy
It is first useful to review the extensive literature on compromise within political and moral philosophy to establish its contrast with sociological approaches. The philosopher and ethicist Avishai Margalit (2010) theorised the concept in order to identify whether there are any moral grounds on which certain compromises ought to be rejected. He refers to these as rotten compromises. David Archard has also written on what he calls âmoral compromiseâ (2012). These are compromises made for the sake of achieving a consensus, in order to secure a morally desirable outcome when the compromise is preferable to continued disagreement. Leopora and Goodin (2013, also Leopora 2012) focus on the reflexive, intrapersonal decision-making that actors are required to undertake within themselves when making choices between conflicting and competing beliefs and principles in order to later compromise with others (Benjamin refers to this as âinternalâ compromise, 1990: 20). They refer to this as âbeing compromisedâ (2013: 18) by oneâs internal conflicts and they see this as the core to the notion of compromise (2013: 19), since it involves people sacrificing something that is of principled concern to them (2013: 27).
Intrapersonal or âinternalâ compromise, however, while clearly an important part of the process, is not the appropriate level of reductionism where the sociology of compromise must begin. The sociology of compromise is about interpersonal compromises, since the focus on intrapersonal compromise risks solipsism. Interpersonal compromise between people is sociologyâs starting place.
We first need to make a simple distinction when applying philosophical ideas to the sociology of compromise. It is clear that compromise enters into conflict resolution at two distinct phases. The first is during the conflict transformation process itself, where compromise represents a willingness amongst parties to negotiate a peace agreement that represents a second-best preference in which they give up their first preference (victory) in order to cut a deal. Just as important is the second phase, when compromise is part of post-conflict reconstruction, in which protagonists come to learn to live together despite their former enmity and in face of the atrocities perpetrated during the conflict itself. In the first, compromise describes reciprocal agreements between parties to the negotiations in order to make political concessions sufficient to end conflict; in the second, compromise involves victims, perpetrators and bystanders developing ways of living together in which concessions are made as part of shared social life.
Margalitâs sole concern is with the formerâwith political compromises, as he describes them, not personal ones (2010: 1), âcompromises between states rather than compromises bet...