Description
While individuals gain perceptions of others through face-to-face interactions, how do individuals gain perceptions of others who they do not meet? This is particularly important for decision-makers who often have to make decisions about representatives of other states, organisations and conflict parties, without the benefit of face-to-face interactions. This article proposes a new concept - the trustworthiness entrepreneur - to capture the role that individuals can play in transferring perceptions, gained regarding representatives of another party, to their own leadership. To demonstrate the utility of the new concept, I discuss the activities of Dr. Yair Hirschfeld and Joel Singer as trustworthiness entrepreneurs in the 1992-1993 Oslo Channel, in convincing the Israeli decision-makers they answered to, that the PLO negotiations were trustworthy interlocutors for meaningful Israeli-Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) dialogue. I draw on a range of English-language discursive materials and elite interviews to argue that Hirschfeld and Singer’s roles were crucial for the development of the Oslo Channel from Track II initiative to Track I process.
