University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences / Department of Government and Public Administration

The Soviet-U.S. rapprochement in the late 1980s ended one of the bitterest rivalries of modern history. Before this landmark event, the study of accommodation as a security strategy hardly received its fair share of attention in international relations theories. This thesis attempts to add to the growing body of work on the dynamics of accommodation. Specifically, it analyzes accommodative moves of Pakistan vis-a-vis India, thereby studying the dynamics of accommodation in the context of developing states. Four cases are studied in depth: first, the Indus Waters Treaty (1960); second, the Tashkent Declaration (1966); third, Post-Brasstacks Accommodative Moves (1987); and finally, Post-1990 Accommodative Moves. This thesis argues that three factors are particularly important in the initiation of accommodation in the developing world, namely, (1) decision-makers' desire to minimize losses (in the external politico-military sphere, the internal economic sphere and the internal political sphere), (2) their commitment to serious domestic reforms and (3) the involvement of a powerful third party that exercises leverage over both adversaries.

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