Transforming International Agreements into National Realities: Marketing Arab-Israeli Peace in Jordan

This study takes a marketing perspective to focus on the transformation of an internationally negotiated Jordan-Israel peace accord into a workable domestic reality. Such an approach suggests that promoting domestic support for an international peace initiative involves concern both with the actual attributes of peace and with communicating these to the groups to which they will most appeal. A survey-based experiment tests presentation and dimensional framing effects on support for a peace process among a Jordanian sample. The results corroborate similar findings by Geva and Mintz (1994) and suggest that national leaders in Jordan can encourage public support for negotiated peace by (1) identifying attributes of a peace accord most salient to various population groups; and (2) appealing to opposition groups on the basis of low-risk gains over key attributes. Again, from a marketing perspective the analyses represent empirical support for the contention that to encourage popular support for a negotiated peace, state leaders cannot rely on popular perceptions of peace as a worthwhile common good but must also succeed in communicating the real benefits of that agreement to domestic groups.