Bargaining under polarization: The case of the Colombian armed conflict
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343319892675 |
| Author | David Tobón-Orozco,Sigifredo Laengle,Gino Loyola |
| Published date | 01 July 2020 |
| Date | 01 July 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Regular Articles |
Bargaining under polarization: The case
of the Colombian armed conflict
Sigifredo Laengle
Department of Management Control and Information Systems, University of Chile
Gino Loyola
Department of Management Control and Information Systems, University of Chile
David Tobo
´n-Orozco
Department of Economics, Universidad de Antioquia
Abstract
A bargaining framework and a measure of conflict polarization are developed from two elements: (i) hatred-based
negative externalities experienced by the parties to the conflict, and (ii) penalties the parties impose on their delegated
negotiators when concessions are made in the bargaining process. The framework establishes agreement and dis-
agreement regions and it is shown that a necessary condition for a negotiated solution is the adoption of a dual policy
that combines dissociative political and military strategies. This analytical approach is applied first to polarized
conflicts generally and then to the specific case of the internal conflict in Colombia between that country’s govern-
ment and the FARC guerrilla group. The model provides a rationale for the complex dynamic of Colombia’s current
peace process, which has involved a preliminary agreement and its subsequent rejection in a national referendum.
Our analysis highlights the successful dissociative political-military strategy followed by the negotiators that enabled
them to reach the agreement and the negotiators’ underestimation of the hatred levels that led the majority of the
Colombian society represented in the referendum to vote the agreement down because they considered the conces-
sions made by the government too generous to be acceptable.
Keywords
bargaining theory, Colombian conflict, Nash demand game, polarization
Introduction
Peace talks, disarmament discussions (to decommission
terrorist groups), political transitions and many other
negotiation-related processes take place in highly polar-
ized environments. The parties involved in these pro-
cesses often prefer to let them stagnate into a deadlock
or break down altogether, implying that they are willing
to assume the costs of failing to reach an agreement.
There is an abundant literature based on game theory
that attempts to explain the trade-off between conflict
and cooperation and the conditions for an agreement/
disagreement. Examples of such studies are the classic
conflict and cooperation analyses by Hirshleifer
(1991), Skaperdas (1992) and the bargaining approaches
of Anderlini & Felli (2001), Crawford (1982), Fernan-
dez & Glazer (1989) and Haller & Holden (1990).
However, none of these works consider the roles played
by negative sentiments like hatred or envy and the result-
ing polarization in either the breakdown of a negotiation
processortheemergenceofanequilibriumwithout
cooperation.
To fill this gap, we propose a modified version of the
classic Nash demand game in which negotiators dele-
gated by the parties to the game conduct a bargaining
process in a polarized environment. This polarization
Corresponding author:
david.tobon@udea.edu.co
Journal of Peace Research
2020, Vol. 57(4) 551–563
ªThe Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0022343319892675
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