cs.AIAug 16, 2026

Argumentation for Common Ground: Finding Zones of Possible Agreement between Individuals in Conflict

Authors: Elisa Cavatorta, Antonio Rago

Organizations: King’s College London, UK

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Abstract

How can common ground between societies in conflict be identified when citizens' acceptability of peace agreements is shaped by contested narratives? Such acceptability is mediated not only by the clauses that agreements include or exclude, but crucially by citizens' subjective reasoning concerning agreements' clauses. In this paper, we leverage computational argumentation to introduce a novel approach to identifying mutually acceptable agreements among individuals in conflict, i.e. a Zone of Possible Agreement (ZOPA). First, we introduce a quantitative bipolar argumentation framework tailored to represent each side's reasoning about peace agreements. We then show how merging these frameworks can enable negotiators to identify peace agreements that are mutually acceptable. To evaluate our approach under conditions of real-world relevance, we focus on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, where long-standing policy, practitioner and public interest underscores the demand for methods capable of analysing polarised public reasoning. We show how our framework identifies a ZOPA through theoretical analysis and preliminary experiments using survey data from both existing work and retrieved by a large language model. The results illustrate how argumentation can empower negotiators and conflict-resolution teams in mapping feasible ZOPAs grounded in citizens' reasoning.

Figures & tables

Figure 1: Two QBAFs Qi=⟨Xi,Ai,Si,τi⟩\mathcal{Q}^{i}=\langle\mathcal{X}^{i},\mathcal{A}^{i},\mathcal{S}^{i},\tau^{i}\rangle (left) and Qp=⟨Xp,Ap,Sp,τp⟩\mathcal{Q}^{p}=\langle\mathcal{X}^{p},\mathcal{A}^{p},\mathcal{S}^{p},\tau^{p}\rangle (right) representing the reasoning of users uiu_{i} and upu_{p} , resp., on P={P1,P2,P3,P4}\mathcal{P}=\{P_{1},P_{2},P_{3},P_{4}\} , in which C={C1,C2}\mathcal{C}=\{C_{1},C_{2}\} where C1=C_{1}= Settlement building stops and C2=C_{2}= Palestinians officially recognise Israel , C+i=C−j={C2}\mathcal{C}_{+}^{i}=\mathcal{C}_{-}^{j}=\{C_{2}\} , C−i=C+j={C1}\mathcal{C}_{-}^{i}=\mathcal{C}_{+}^{j}=\{C_{1}\} , XPi=XPp={p1,p2,p3,p4}\mathcal{X}_{\mathcal{P}}^{i}=\mathcal{X}_{\mathcal{P}}^{p}=\{p_{1},p_{2},p_{3},p_{4}\} , XCi={c1i,c2i}\mathcal{X}_{\mathcal{C}}^{i}=\{c_{1}^{i},c_{2}^{i}\} , XCp={c1p,c2p}\mathcal{X}_{\mathcal{C}}^{p}=\{c_{1}^{p},c_{2}^{p}\} , XRi={r1i,r2i,r3i}\mathcal{X}_{\mathcal{R}}^{i}=\{r_{1}^{i},r_{2}^{i},r_{3}^{i}\} and XRp={r1p,r2p,r3p}\mathcal{X}_{\mathcal{R}}^{p}=\{r_{1}^{p},r_{2}^{p},r_{3}^{p}\} . Arguments are represented by nodes, attacks by red edges labelled “ −- ” and supports by green edges labelled “ ++ ”. The QEM gradual semantics is used to calculate argument strengths.
Figure 2: Merged QBAF representing the reasoning of {ui,up}\{u_{i},u_{p}\} on P\mathcal{P} from Figure 1 , where the values in each argument represent its base score (in normal font) and its strength (in bold font, calculated with the QEM semantics ).
Figure 3: For the data retrieved by the LLM, a comparison, for each clause, of the difference in change endorser versus change opposer clause strength with number of agreements in the ZOPA which contain the clause.
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