To Appease or to Concede? Contrasting Two Modes of Accommodation in International Conflict

Abstract

It is sometimes necessary in serious interstate disputes for a party to unilaterally accommodate an opponent’s demands or claims. Such unreciprocated or one-sided accommodation, however, does not only pose political and psychological risks, it also seems to conflict with the basic bargaining norm of reciprocity. Yet the imperative of ending deadlocks that can degenerate into belligerent conflicts demands such unreciprocated accommodation. This imperative also calls for a positive and principled concept for understanding unreciprocated accommodation. With the perhaps unjustified and continuing discrediting of appeasement as a legitimate accommodative bargaining strategy, this article highlights the notion of concession as a valuable, non-pejorative concept of accommodation. The article offers a framework of concession that helps determine when/why a strong state would undertake the unreciprocated accommodation of an opponent. The argument is empirically illustrated using the Anglo-American conflict over Venezuela at the end of the nineteenth century.