The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? by Jared Diamond Page B
Authors: Jared Diamond
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insurance adjusters. Despite Americans’ reputation for being litigious, the great majority of civil disputes in the U.S. are settled outside the courts or before going to trial. Some professions consisting of a small number of members monopolizing a resource—such as Maine lobster fishermen, cattle ranchers, and diamond traders—commonly settle member disputes by themselves without state involvement. Only if third-party negotiation fails to produce a settlement mutually agreeable to the parties do they resort to their society’s method of dealing with a dispute without a mutual agreement: violence or war in a non-state society, and a trial or formal adjudication in a state society.
A further similarity is that both state and non-state societies often spread the cost owed by the offending party over many other payers. In state societies we purchase automobile and homeowner insurance policies that pay the costs if our car injures a person or another car, or if someone is injured by falling on our house’s steps that we negligently left slippery. We and many others pay insurance premiums that permit the insurance company to pay those costs, so that in effect other policy-holders share our liability and vice versa. Similarly, in non-state societies the relatives and fellow clan members share in payments owed by an individual: for instance, Malo told me that his fellow villagers would have contributed tothe compensation payment for Billy’s death if Malo hadn’t been working for a company able to make the payment.
In state societies the civil cases whose courses are most similar to that of a New Guinea compensation negotiation are business disputes between parties involved in a long-term business relationship. When an issue arises that such business parties cannot work out by themselves, one party may become angry and consult an attorney. (That’s much more likely in the U.S. than in Japan and other countries.) Especially in a long-term relationship in which there has been a build-up of trust, the aggrieved party feels taken advantage of, betrayed, and even more angry than if it were just a “one-off” relationship (i.e., the first business encounter for the parties). As in a New Guinea compensation negotiation, channeling business-dispute discussions through lawyers cools off the dispute by substituting (one hopes) calm reasoned statements of lawyers for angry personal recriminations of the parties, and reduces the risk that opposing positions will harden. When the parties have the prospect of continuing a profitable business relationship in the future, they are motivated to accept a face-saving solution—just as New Guineans in the same village or neighboring villages, expecting to continue to encounter each other for the rest of their lives, are motivated to find a solution. Nevertheless, lawyer friends tell me that a New Guinea–style genuine apology and emotional closure are rare even in business disputes, and that usually the most that can be expected is a scripted apology produced as a settlement tactic at a late stage. If, however, business parties are involved in a one-off relationship and never expect to deal with each other again, then their motivation for amicable settlement is lower (just as is true of New Guinea or Nuer disputes between members of distant tribes), and the risk increases that the dispute will proceed to the state’s equivalent of war: a trial. Nevertheless, trials and adjudications are expensive, their outcomes are unpredictable, and even one-off business disputants experience pressures to settle.
Yet another parallel between state and non-state dispute resolution involves international disputes between states (as opposed to disputes between fellow citizens within the same state). While some international disputes are now settled by the International Court of Justice by agreement of the governments involved, others are dealt with by essentially thetraditional approach operating on a
A further similarity is that both state and non-state societies often spread the cost owed by the offending party over many other payers. In state societies we purchase automobile and homeowner insurance policies that pay the costs if our car injures a person or another car, or if someone is injured by falling on our house’s steps that we negligently left slippery. We and many others pay insurance premiums that permit the insurance company to pay those costs, so that in effect other policy-holders share our liability and vice versa. Similarly, in non-state societies the relatives and fellow clan members share in payments owed by an individual: for instance, Malo told me that his fellow villagers would have contributed tothe compensation payment for Billy’s death if Malo hadn’t been working for a company able to make the payment.
In state societies the civil cases whose courses are most similar to that of a New Guinea compensation negotiation are business disputes between parties involved in a long-term business relationship. When an issue arises that such business parties cannot work out by themselves, one party may become angry and consult an attorney. (That’s much more likely in the U.S. than in Japan and other countries.) Especially in a long-term relationship in which there has been a build-up of trust, the aggrieved party feels taken advantage of, betrayed, and even more angry than if it were just a “one-off” relationship (i.e., the first business encounter for the parties). As in a New Guinea compensation negotiation, channeling business-dispute discussions through lawyers cools off the dispute by substituting (one hopes) calm reasoned statements of lawyers for angry personal recriminations of the parties, and reduces the risk that opposing positions will harden. When the parties have the prospect of continuing a profitable business relationship in the future, they are motivated to accept a face-saving solution—just as New Guineans in the same village or neighboring villages, expecting to continue to encounter each other for the rest of their lives, are motivated to find a solution. Nevertheless, lawyer friends tell me that a New Guinea–style genuine apology and emotional closure are rare even in business disputes, and that usually the most that can be expected is a scripted apology produced as a settlement tactic at a late stage. If, however, business parties are involved in a one-off relationship and never expect to deal with each other again, then their motivation for amicable settlement is lower (just as is true of New Guinea or Nuer disputes between members of distant tribes), and the risk increases that the dispute will proceed to the state’s equivalent of war: a trial. Nevertheless, trials and adjudications are expensive, their outcomes are unpredictable, and even one-off business disputants experience pressures to settle.
Yet another parallel between state and non-state dispute resolution involves international disputes between states (as opposed to disputes between fellow citizens within the same state). While some international disputes are now settled by the International Court of Justice by agreement of the governments involved, others are dealt with by essentially thetraditional approach operating on a
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