ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the familiar view of de-escalation in protracted and violent conflicts as being simply the reverse of escalation, suggesting that even in the model there are major differences between positive and negative modes of de-escalation. It attempts to formalise this approach as a ‘reversion-restoration model’, and to point out some of its shortcomings, among which is a neglect of the fact that de-escalation involves intra-party as well as inter-party processes. The chapter suggests some typical types of thresholds through which de-escalation processes pass and end by proposing a number of key features of successful de-escalation processes. De-escalation periods contained fewer acts of physical coercion than even periods of ‘normal’ relations between adversaries, such as the USA and the USSR. Cases of de-escalation can also consist at least partly of increases of rewarding behaviour, which sometimes go hand in hand with the lessening of cost imposition, and sometimes follow them.
