Framing and fighting: The impact of conflict frames on political attitudes
| Author | Carly Wayne,Aviad Rubin,Ibrahim Khatib,Daphna Canetti |
| Published date | 01 November 2019 |
| Date | 01 November 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0022343319826324 |
| Subject Matter | Regular Articles |
Regular Articles
Framing and fighting: The impact
of conflict frames on political attitudes
Daphna Canetti
School of Political Science, University of Haifa
Ibrahim Khatib
Berlin Graduate School for Social Sciences,
Humboldt University of Berlin
Aviad Rubin
School of Political Science, University of Haifa
Carly Wayne
Department of Political Science, University of
Michigan
Abstract
How does the subjective conceptual framing of conflict impact the warring parties’ attitudes towards political
compromise and negotiation? To assess strategies for conflict resolution, researchers frequently try to determine the
defining dispute of a given conflict. However, involved parties often view the conflict through fundamentally distinct
lenses. Currently, researchers do not possess a clear theoretical or methodological way to conceptualize the complex-
ity of such competing frames and their effects on conflict resolution. This article addresses this gap. Using the Israeli–
Palestinian conflict as a case study, we run a series of focus groups and three surveys among Jewish citizens of Israel,
Palestinian citizens of Israel (PCIs), and Palestinians in the West Bank. Results reveal that three conflict frames are
prominent – material, nationalist, and religious. However, the parties to the conflict differ in their dominant
interpretation of the conflict. Jewish Israelis mostly frame the conflict as nationalist, whereas Palestinians, in both
the West Bank and Israel, frame it as religious. Moreover, these frames impact conflict attitudes: a religious frame was
associated with significantly less willingness to compromise in potential diplomatic negotiations among both Jewish
and Palestinian citizens of Israel. Interestingly, differing frames had no significant impact on the political attitudes of
West Bank Palestinians, suggesting that the daily realities of conflict there may be creating more static, militant
attitudes among that population. These results challenge the efficacy of material solutions to the conflict and
demonstrate the micro-foundations underpinning civilians’ conflict attitudes and their implications for successful
conflict resolution.
Keywords
conflict, conflict resolution, framing, Israeli–Palestinian conflict, perception
Framing and fighting
Why does violent conflict persist? To outside partieslook-
ing in at protracted conflicts around the world, the mate-
rial concernsat the core of the conflict seem fundamentally
resolvable,if difficult to implement in practice. Conversely,
to those directly involved in the conflict, differences often
appear totally irresolvable. Why are the views from the
outside and inside so different?We contend that involved
parties often view the conflict throughdistinct conceptual
frames from both outsiders and from each other. As a
result, they can fail to speak the same language on
everything from the origins of the conflict, to the issues
under dispute, to avenues for its possible resolution.
Attempts to categorize conflict types (Caplan, 2011;
Dowty, 2005; Tessler, 2009) in order to develop viable
conflict resolution strategies are important but may over-
look variation in perceptions among and between the
parties that could inhibit successful conflict resolution.
It is not necessarily the ‘objective’ third-party
Corresponding author:
dcanetti@poli.haifa.ac.il
Journal of Peace Research
2019, Vol. 56(6) 737–752
ªThe Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0022343319826324
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understanding of the conflict type that matters most, but
the way in which the groups and individuals involved
perceive the conflict. These conceptual frames can be best
understood as a way of constructing meaning (Snow &
Benford, 1988), implying that the conflict ‘reality’ is in
fact constructed – and contested – by the parties involved
(Benford & Snow, 2000). Frames are used to diagnose the
conflict (e.g. What type of conflict is this? What is at
stake? Who am I fighting?). They also entail downstream
effects on behavior, leading to different prognostic assess-
ments about the conflict (Benford & Snow, 2000).
The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is an important
laboratory for evaluating the impact of these conflict
frames on political attitudes. This conflict has alterna-
tively been framed as: (1) a material conflict over scarce
natural resources in a tiny, resource-starved land (Dowty,
2005; Selby, 2003); (2) a nationalist conflict between
competing ethnic groups with distinctive nationalist
ideologies for territorially based self-determination (Gha-
nem, 2010); or (3) a budding religious war between two
religious communities (Maoz, 2014; Inbari, 2012;
Rubin, 2014). Using a combination of focus groups and
surveys of respondents in Israel and the Palestinian Ter-
ritories, we study the prevalence of these frames among
Jewish citizens of Israel, Palestinian citizens of Israel
(PCIs), and West Bank Palestinians and their impact
on willingness to compromise.
This research results in three main findings. First, Pales-
tinians and Israelis frame the conflict distinctively, even
after accounting for the potentially confounding role of
political ideology, partisanship, and religiosity. Palestinians
(in both Israel and the West Bank) view the conflict as
religious (to varying degrees), while Jews view the conflict
as nationalist. Thus, the groups frame the conflict differ-
ently from each other (nationalist vs. religious) and from
outside observers (e.g. as fundamentally identity-based
rather than material). Second, the way the conflict is
framed is significantly associated with willingness to com-
promise to resolve the conflict: those with a religious frame
are less supportive of compromise than those with a mate-
rial frame. Third, West Bank Palestinians’ attitudes toward
compromise are both more militant than their Israeli (both
Jewish and Palestinian) counterparts and more static – that
is, they are unaffected by conflict frame. This suggests that
the explanatory power of conflict frames is qualified and
contingent on real life circumstances related to the occu-
pation, such as higher levels of daily exposure to violence
and recurrent humiliating experiences.
This study adds to the conflict literature in four key
ways. First, this study complements international rela-
tions scholarship, which has identified various realpolitik
factors as determinants of the length and intractability of
protracted conflicts, by exploring the way the psycholo-
gical micro-foundations of civilian political attitudes can
stoke or ease these conflicts. Second, we also contribute
to the body of research on the complex role of belief
systems and attitudinal frames in the prevalence and
severity of violent conflict. Third, this study problema-
tizes the assumption that a conflict can be defined as one
coherent ‘type’ or that the understanding of this type is
shared by all parties. This point is highly relevant for
policymakers and practitioners, as the presence of mul-
tiple, competing conflict frames may necessitate more
complex conflict resolution strategies than the traditional
emphasis on material approaches (e.g. the distribution of
material goods and resources).
Fourth, this study adds a layer of understanding to
previous research on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. For
one, that the parties to the conflict frame it in different
ways – national on the Jewish Israeli side and religious on
the Palestinian side – implies a need to direct effort to
exploring the causes and effects of this discrepancy on
strategies for reconciliation. In addition, the finding that
Palestinians and Jews in Israel hold different frames but
are still more willing to compromise compared with
West Bank Palestinians, regardless of the frame held by
the latter, suggest that other important dynamics of the
conflict, such as its deeply asymmetric nature and
extensive exposure to violence, may broadly harden the
attitudes of the weaker population to compromise
(Hirsch-Hoefler et al., 2014). The distinction between
different conflict frames may thus have less of an impact
as conflict intensity increases.
Material vs. identity-based frames of conflict
Rationalist approaches to conflict rely on a variant of
realistic group conflict theory to argue that the issues
triggering political violence are material – rooted in
rational competition over scarce resources (e.g. land, oil,
water). Essentially, it is zero-sum competition over mate-
rial assets that promotes intergroup conflict (Campbell,
1965; Harvey et al., 1961). If competition over tangible
resources could somehow be eroded, the ‘side-effects’ of
the intergroup competition – prejudice and violence –
should dissipate. Using this frame, violence and conflict
are situational and will wane in the absence of disputes
over the distribution of resources. In other words, if a
material resource is contested due to its tangible value
(Carter, 2010; Goertz & Diehl, 1992), a bargaining
space should theoretically exist (Fearon, 1995). This
assumption underlies conflict resolution practitioners’
738 journal of PEACE RESEARCH 56(6)
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