Coping Strategies of Engagement and Avoidance: the Case of Jerusalem

‘Coping’ has been used to describe the management of difficult problems in politics and policy making, typically without systematic concern for the various meanings of the concept. Psychologists have been more precise than political scientists in seeking to define coping. They have identified numerous coping behaviours as responses to stress, grouped them into categories, and constructed hypotheses linking coping behaviours with outcomes. While much might be learned from further specification of coping behaviours, coping is likely to remain a concept whose multiple meanings and ambiguities convey something of the setting that stimulates coping. An analysis of policy making for Jerusalem illustrates both the insights that can be derived from the concept of coping, and its limitations.