Failure to Search for and Recognize Potential Compromises

3. Factors That Make Conflict Intractable

This introductory article was written by ChatGPT at the direction of Heidi Burgess, who reviewed, edited, and approved the final content.
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June 14, 2026

One of the most common reasons why conflicts remain stuck is that the parties assume, often without really thinking about it, that they are in a win-lose contest. They come to the table determined to claim as much as possible, protect their side against betrayal, and avoid being seen as weak. In the language of conflict styles, they go into competing mode, rather than compromising mode, and certainly not collaborating mode. Sometimes this is necessary: there are real cases in which vital interests must be defended and in which one side is acting in bad faith. But in many conflicts, the competing frame blinds people to better possibilities. They stop asking whether the problem could be reframed, whether the parties’ underlying interests are different from their stated positions, or whether a solution could be found that would make both sides better off than continued struggle.

In many policy conflicts, this approach prevents decision makers from looking for better options: ways to enlarge the pie, trade across issues, sequence difficult decisions, protect each side's core interests, or craft partial agreements that make things better, even if they do not solve everything. A failure to search for and recognize potential compromises is therefore a serious conflict overlay problem. It turns solvable or partially solvable disputes into stalemates.

This is the central insight behind what Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton famously called “principled negotiation” in Getting to Yes. Instead of bargaining over fixed positions, the parties are encouraged to separate the people from the problem, focus on interests rather than positions, invent options for mutual gain, and use objective criteria to decide what is fair. This does not mean pretending that differences do not exist. It means recognizing that the first visible demand is often not the only possible way to satisfy the deeper concern. A labor-management dispute, for example, may look like a fight over wages, but it may also involve job security, scheduling flexibility, productivity improvements, training, health benefits, and dignity at work. A public-policy dispute may look like a fight over whether a proposal wins or loses, when the real challenge is to design safeguards, compensation, phase-ins, or local variations that make a broadly acceptable solution possible.

The 2024 U.S. border-security negotiations offer a clear recent example. For years, Republicans had demanded stronger border enforcement, while Democrats had wanted to preserve asylum protections and pair border measures with aid to Ukraine, Israel, and other allies. A bipartisan group of senators negotiated a package that tried to combine some of these concerns. But the deal collapsed before it could receive serious consideration. The Associated Press reported that the deal was at risk as Donald Trump called it "meaningless" and Senate Republicans became wary of an election-year compromise. Reuters reported that Republicans then defeated the months-long bipartisan effort. Whatever one thinks of the bill's details, the episode illustrates how parties can reject a potential compromise because keeping the issue alive seems more politically valuable than accepting an imperfect solution.

A similar failure occurred with the 2024 bipartisan tax package that combined an expanded child tax credit with business tax breaks. The bill brought together goals often associated with different constituencies: help for low-income families, support for businesses investing in research and equipment, low-income housing credits, and disaster tax relief. Reuters reported that leaders of the congressional tax-writing committees had reached a nearly $80 billion bipartisan deal, and the House passed the bill by a large bipartisan margin. But the Associated Press reported that the bill failed in the Senate, with many Republicans arguing that they might get a better deal after the election. This is a common barrier to compromise: rather than accepting a real but imperfect agreement now, parties gamble that future power will let them get more later. Sometimes that works. Often it leaves urgent problems unaddressed.

The 2023 government-funding fight showed another way potential compromises can be missed or punished. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy relied on Democratic votes to pass a temporary funding bill and avoid a government shutdown. Days later, he was removed as Speaker, in part because some members of his own party objected to his willingness to work with Democrats. The National Low Income Housing Coalition summarized the episode by saying that frustration over McCarthy's efforts to avoid a shutdown and negotiate with Democrats contributed to his removal. This sent a powerful message to other legislators: even a limited compromise to keep government functioning can be politically dangerous if one's own side sees cooperation with the opposition as betrayal.

There are also recent examples showing that compromises can be found when leaders look for limited but meaningful areas of agreement. After the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, Congress passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the most significant federal gun-safety law in decades. It did not satisfy gun-control advocates who wanted broader restrictions, and it did not satisfy gun-rights advocates who opposed any new federal regulation. But negotiators found a narrower package involving school safety, mental health funding, incentives for state crisis-intervention programs, and restrictions aimed at people considered especially dangerous. The law shows that compromise does not have to mean abandoning core values. It can mean identifying steps that reduce harm while leaving deeper disagreements for future debate.

For constructive conflict work, the practical lesson is that disputants, advocates, mediators, journalists, and citizens should be alert to moments when a conflict is being falsely simplified into a win-lose fight. They should ask: What interests lie behind the stated positions? What would each side need in order to say yes? Are there objective standards of fairness that could help decide the issue? Could the agreement be phased, tested, monitored, or revised if it does not work? Are there side payments, safeguards, or linked issues that could make a deal more acceptable? Failure to ask such questions does not merely make agreement harder. It can also destroy possibilities that would have served almost everyone better than continued escalation, stalemate, or a grudging settlement that leaves the underlying conflict ready to flare up again.

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This page was created by ChatGPT in response to this prompt. It was then reviewed, edited, supplemented and approved by Heidi Burgess. More information about how and why we are using AI in this way, and about the growing number of ways in which Beyond Intractability is using ChatGPT, Claude and other AI systems to generate content and build out the BI system, is available on our BI/AI Overview Page.