Are the best international agreements products of mutual understanding? The conventional wisdom in economics, sociology, and political science is that accurate perceptions of others’ interests, beliefs, and ideologies promote cooperation. Obstacles to international cooperation therefore emerge from misperception and misunderstanding. In Constructive Illusions, Eric Grynaviski challenges this conventional wisdom by arguing that when nations wrongly believe they share a mutual understanding, international cooperation is actually more likely, and more productive, than if they had a genuine understanding of each other’s position. Mutual understanding can lead to breakdowns in cooperation by revealing intractable conflicts of interest, identity, and ideology. Incorrectly assuming a mutual understanding exists, in contrast, can enhance cooperation by making actors confident that collaborative ventures are in both parties’ best interest and that both parties have a reliable understanding of the terms of cooperation. Grynaviski shows how such constructive misunderstandings allowed for cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union between 1972 and 1979.
During détente, the superpowers reached more than 150 agreements, established standing consultative committees, regularly held high-level summit meetings, and engaged in global crisis management. The turn from enmity to cooperation was so stark that many observers predicted a permanent end to the Cold War. Why did the superpowers move from confrontation to cooperation? Grynaviski’s theory of the role of misunderstanding in cooperation provides an explanation that is significantly different from liberal institutionalist and constructivist approaches. This book’s central claim is that states can form what French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing called "a superb agreement based on complete misunderstanding."

Constructive Illusions: Misperceiving the Origins of International Cooperation

History

Grynaviski, Eric

Americas

Cornell University Press

Price Of Empire

Evers, Miles

New York : Cambridge University Press

The Price of Empire

The Price of Empire: American Entrepreneurs and the Origins of America's First Pacific Empire

Evers, Miles M.

Australia & Oceania

Cambridge University Press

America's Middlemen: Power at the Edge of Empire

Throughout American political history, the US government has formed alliances with militias, tribes, and rebels. Sometimes, these alliances have been successful, dramatically reshaping the battlefield. But these alliances have also risked creating larger wars in regions where the United States had no real interest. Understanding these alliances - and much of American political history - requires moving beyond our normal focus on traditional diplomats or social elites. Traders, missionaries, former slaves, and low-level government employees drove these alliances. These intermediaries used their relationships across borders to shape security politics, affecting American and thereby world history. Skillfully integrating political science with history and sociology, Eric Grynaviski provides a novel account of who matters and why in international politics. By developing broader views about political agency - how people come to make a difference in world politics - he brings into focus new histories of world politics and how they matter for scholars and the public.

Throughout American political history, the US government has formed alliances with militias, tribes, and rebels. Sometimes, these alliances have been successful, dramatically reshaping the battlefield. But these alliances have also risked creating larger wars in regions where the United States had no real interest. Understanding these alliances - and much of American political history - requires moving beyond our normal focus on traditional diplomats or social elites. Traders, missionaries, former slaves, and low-level government employees drove these alliances. These intermediaries used their relationships across borders to shape security politics, affecting American and thereby world history. Skillfully integrating political science with history and sociology, Eric Grynaviski provides a novel account of who matters and why in international politics. By developing broader views about political agency - how people come to make a difference in world politics - he brings into focus new histories of world politics and how they matter for scholars and the public.

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Books by Grynaviski, Eric