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Abstract

Showing flexibility by being willing to add and subtract issues in an effort to find a solution to internal militarized disputes can be vital to success. Examples drawn from recent negotiations involving Angola, Cambodia, El Salvador, Mozambique, and the former Yugoslavia provide a number of lessons concerning the manipulation of issues and how that might facilitate agreement or make it less likely. In some instances, these involve certain dilemmas, since subtracting issues may help agreement, but the resulting agreement may not mean much; efforts to punish perpetrators of violence on the other side will impede negotiations, but failure to do so may undermine popular support for the agreement; and regionalizing the negotiation may bring in other parties and issues, allowing more tradeoffs, but can delay the negotiation by adding complexity.

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References

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Issue Flexibility in Negotiating Internal War

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