Transforming Power Relations: Leadership, Risk, and Hope

Abstract

Longstanding, bitter communal conflicts resemble the prisoner’s dilemma of game theory: rational, self-interested political actors make choices that perpetuate the battle even if most people wish it resolved. Hopeful but politically risky acts of leadership that bridge communal divides are indispensable for transforming apparently zero-sum struggles into positive-sum outcomes. Such leaders implicitly view power itself in variable-sum terms: one needs an opponent strong enough to secure an agreement.

The hopeful, risk-accepting leadership of Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk in South Africa is illuminated through rational choice and transformational models of leadership, Thomas Schelling’s theorization of mixed-motive conflict, and Robert Axelrod’s work on the evolution of cooperation – especially his attention to interdependent preferences and restorative strategies. Mandela’s and de Klerk’s improbable accomplishment in dismantling apartheid without civil war is contrasted with less successful leadership episodes from Northern Ireland and Israel-Palestine, and with American slaveholders’ rejection of any compromise on slavery.

Keywords: Power, Prisoner's Dilemma, Leadership, South Africa, Northern Ireland, Palestinian Conflict, Robert Axelrod, Thomas Schelling, Josep Colomer, Nelson Mandela, F.W. de Klerk