CATHARSIS, ACTION-GOAL ATTAINMENT, AND SUBSTANTIVE NONDECISION

This article develops the catharsis–nondecision argument originally proposed by Choi and Wigand (2004) through a historical-process analysis of the conflict over the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO). The original model proposed that frustration may generate aggression, that aggressive action may produce nondecision, and that cathartic effects may follow aggressive response. It also left unresolved a critical question: whether cathartic effects are merely outcomes of aggressive conduct or whether the completion of aggressive action may itself form part of the actor’s goal. The present study develops that unresolved possibility. It distinguishes substantive policy-goal attainment from action-goal attainment and proposes that the two may coexist from the outset. Under this formulation, an actor may fail to obtain a substantive transformation while nevertheless attain a goal embedded in the aggressive political action itself, producing completion or satisfaction and permitting substantive nondecision to persist. The empirical analysis is organized around contemporaneous records from the Non-Aligned Movement, UNESCO, the United Nations, the United States Congress and executive branch, the U.S. General Accounting Office, declassified U.S. intelligence records, and contemporary press reporting. Evidence is examined separately for the Third World/NWICO side and for the Western side, with particular attention to the United States. On the Third World side, documentary evidence shows simultaneous pursuit of material and institutional changes in communication structures and explicit expressions of satisfaction or success regarding collective action, agenda recognition, institutional development, and progress toward a new information order while substantive objectives remained unfinished. On the U.S. side, the record shows simultaneous pursuit of UNESCO reform and use of withdrawal, the threatened removal of a 25-percent financial contribution, and broader claims concerning U.S. influence and leadership as instruments of action. The resulting model is an overlapping goal-attainment model: frustration may generate aggressive action; aggressive action may be directed simultaneously toward substantive policy attainment and action-goal attainment; completion or satisfaction may follow action-goal attainment even where the substantive objective remains unresolved; and substantive nondecision may therefore coexist with meaningful goal attainment. The evidence further suggests, without establishing, a coupled relationship in which one side’s aggressive action may become the other side’s frustration or aggressive cue. That reciprocal mechanism is reserved for subsequent research. Keywords: catharsis; aggression; nondecision; NWICO; UNESCO; policy process; goal attainment; Non-Aligned Movement; United States withdrawal