Interagency cooperation failures are a generic problem in intergroup relations
Evidence
There is nothing new, the report noted, about the failure of the FBI and CIA and other agencies to cooperate with each other. As Congress noted in its own investigations and hearings, this general problem has been pervasive and long term. In putting this general problem in broader perspective, however, it should be noted that the breakdowns in interagency cooperation described in the 9/11 Report are but one specific example of a generic and widely recognized problem in intergroup relations. The problem of securing cooperation between interdependent groups has been a central and recurring theme in the study of intergroup relations from its inception (Sherif, 1966; Sumner, 1906). Whether they are minimal groups created in a laboratory setting (Tajfel, 1970), groups of boys at a summer camp (Sherif, Harvey, White, Hood, & Sherif, 1961), or even nationstates (Kahn & Zald, 1990), reciprocal antipathy between groups seems to develop with surprising frequency and alacrity. So pervasive and overdetermined is this phenomenon, in fact, that intergroup antipathy has been viewed as an almost inescapable feature of intergroup contacts wherever they occur (see Brown & Gaertner, 2001, for a comprehensive overview of the current state of our knowledge about this). — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1972
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- XREF: Connects to findings that simple categorization into arbitrary groups creates intergroup hostility, and to Milgrom’s work on how institutions emerge to solve cooperation problems between trading groups.