The Cyprus Game: The Evolutionary Approach to Conflict Resolution Revisited

Abstract:

The Cyprus conflict has usually been treated as a simple Prisoner's Dilemma game in which players (i.e. leaders) are encouraged to develop cooperative policies based on the United Nations framework. However, a Prisoner's Dilemma constitutes only the first level of the Cyprus negotiations, which, in fact, more closely resemble a sequential two-level (and a simultaneous nested) game. Still, the democratic setting that prevails in Cyprus poses particular challenges, forcing leaders to apply manipulative political tactics to appease their constituencies. Taking the Cyprus negotiations' complex characteristics into consideration, this paper discusses the importance of multi-level game structure and heresthetics in the Cypriot setting. Then, an evolutionary conflict resolution model for Cyprus is presented, improving its earlier application on theoretical grounds by supporting the evolutionary model's basic premises with functionalism.