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Metaphors of
International Negotiation
Bertram I. Spector
Center for Negotiation Analysis
11608 Le Havre Drive,
Potomac, MD 20854, USA.
Metaphorical reasoning can offer new perspectives on familiar or unusual
ideas and things. It can be especially useful in providing new insight and
understanding into a field, such as international negotiation, that is
undergoing an upsurge in activity and rapid change by freeing up old
conceptions and enabling creative thought. By cutting across traditional
fields of study, metaphors can help to refresh and reframe the study of
international negotiation and provide a new point of departure for research
and practice. The role of metaphors in the physical and social sciences and
how they have been employed to explain international issues is discussed. The
remaining articles in this issue are introduced in relation to their
metaphorical orientations.
Key Words. analogies, creativity,interdisciplinary
models, metaphors, negotiation
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All in the Family:
Ancient Near Eastern Diplomacy
Raymond Cohen
Department of International Relations
Hebrew University
Jerusalem 91905
Israel
An unusual perspective on international negotiation is obtainable from The Amarna Letters, a recently published 14th century B.C.E.
archive of correspondence between pharaonic Egypt
and its vassals and other contemporary great powers, known as 'Great Kings'.
Although the language and ostensible content of the letters appear obscure,
they involve detailed negotiations over dynastic, commercial, strategic,
legal, and other issues. The prevailing metaphor in the correspondence,
reflecting the world-view of the Ancient Near East, is that of brotherhood
and the family. This was not simply a form of words but the way in which
contemporary Great Kings conceived of international relationships. Viewing
themselves as members of a community in the Gemeinschaft
sense, Great Kings derived political obligation and action from friendship
and kinship ties rather than abstractions such as the national interest.
Negotiating, it is suggested, was conducted at two levels: minor issue subgames in which the nature of the relationship between
the parties was assumed, and major relationship metagames
in which the parties negotiated, crucially from their point of view, their
relative status and mutual, 'familial' obligations.
Key Words. Amarna Letters, ancient Near East,
diplomacy, international negotiation
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Negotiation as
Friendship Formation
Otomar J. Bartos
Department of Sociology
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309-0327
USA.
Friendship between negotiators can play an important part in bringing about a
lasting agreement. A theory of friendship helps to explain why friends often
behave in generous fashion towards each other, and why they tend to
reciprocate. A simple model is used to show how generosity and reciprocation
affect the negotiation process and the chances of an agreement.
Key words. friendship, generosity, mathematical models, negotiation,
reciprocation
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Negotiation as Coalition Building
Christophe Dupont
77, Avenue de l'Esplanade
Wezembeek 1970
Belgium.
Multilateral negotiations can be understood through the metaphor of
coalitions -- deliberately constructed networks of actors having differing
interests or values, priorities and goals, yet showing general or limited
common objectives. Coalition building highlights the commonality of interests
among parties and reduces the complexity of multilateral transactions, thus
offering a powerful parallel to international negotiation processes. In
coalitions, as in multilateral negotiations in general, members assume
certain roles that may drive or defend the process, exercise differentiated
behaviors to manage power struggles and mutual dependence relationships, and
develop strategies that move them closer to shared goals while protecting
them from destabilizing counterstrategies. Minority coalitions, resembling
weak negotiating parties, can still be effective actors in the process of
achieving common objectives. Coalition building sheds valuable light on all
types of negotiations, especially those in an international setting. Indeed,
close similarities in concepts and language, variety of approaches,
identification of major forms, determinants, and process and outcome
variables are found in both activities.
Key Words. multilateral negotiations, coalitions, power, competition,
cooperation, conference diplomacy, decision-making in groups, consensus
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Negotiation as
Interactive Problem Solving
Herbert C. Kelman
Department of Psychology
Harvard University
William James Hall 1430
33 Kirkland Street
Cambridge, MA 02138,
USA.
The use of the term interactive problem solving as a metaphor for negotiation
implies that conflicting parties have a shared problem - essentially a
problem in their relationship - which needs to be solved by addressing the
underlying causes and the dynamics of the conflict in an interactive process.
The term has been used to describe an unofficial third-party approach to
conflict resolution, which typically brings together politically influential
representatives of two parties in conflict for direct communication in
problem-solving workshops. The present article draws on the experiences from
this micro-process to develop a framework for the macro-process of
negotiation. Within this framework, it describes the ultimate goal of
negotiation as transformation of the relationship between the parties, which
requires an agreement that addresses the fundamental needs and fears of both
parties on a basis of reciprocity. It then discusses four components of
negotiation - identification and analysis of the problem, joint shaping of
ideas for solution, influencing the other side, and creating a supportive
political environment - and procedures that the metaphor of interactive
problem solving suggests for each. Finally, it identifies vehicles for
integrating the perspective of interactive problem solving into the larger
negotiation process.
Key words.. human needs, joint thinking, mutual
reassurance, problem-solving workshops, public discourse, reciprocity,
relationship building, responsiveness, unofficial diplomacy, working trust
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Negotiation as
Diplomatic Rule-Making
Winfried Lang
Austrian Embassy
Rue de l'Abbaye 47
B-1050 Brussels
Belgium.
Diplomatic methods contribute to the making of rules (both hard law and soft
law), once legal and political conditions prevailing at the domestic and
international level are appropriate for take-off. The point of departure is a
consensus among involved countries and relevant non-state stakeholders that a
new transboundary regulation is needed because the
matter cannot be adequately managed in the domestic arena or the problem to
be settled concerns a plurality of states. This diplomatic rule-making
process is viewed as a metaphor of international negotiation.
Lawyer-negotiators, steeped in their professional culture, are a key factor
in this negotiating process; they are experts in law, procedure and
institution-building. Their main concern is the linkage between new rules
being made and existing law, as well as the future implementation of these
rules. Important tools for rule-making are leadership, precedents,
flexibility and draftsmanship. A major constraint is sovereignty which is at
the basis of all intergovernmental activities. However, as a consequence of
growing interdependence, more and more states accept the intrusion of
international regulation in their hitherto domestic affairs. Thus, the
metaphor of negotiation as diplomatic rule-making has become well
established.
Key words. customary law, diplomatic methods, rule-making, draftsmanship,
flexibility, hard law, implementation and compliance, lawyer-negotiator,
leadership, negotiating environment, precedents, professional culture,
rule-making, soft-law, sovereignty, time-factor
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Negotiation As A
Search For Justice
I. William Zartman,
Daniel Druckman, Lloyd Jensen, Dean G. Pruitt, H.
Peyton Young
SAIS, The Johns Hopkins University
1740 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036, USA.
Current theories hold either that justice is absent from negotiation or that
it hovers over negotiations as a single validating principle. This article
maintains that neither is correct. There is no single validating principle of
justice, but justice is not absent from negotiation. In the process of
negotiation, negotiators themselves come to an agreement on a notion of
justice which will govern the disposition of the items in conflict, and if
they do not, negotiations will not be able to proceed
any further to a conclusion. After a review of various competing approaches
to negotiation, the article identifies three different types of simple
justice, priority, equal and unequal, and also introduces the notion of
compound justice. It examines the limited role of process justice in
negotiations and then examines the search for justice in negotiations
relating to arms control and regional security issues, as well as the role of
justice in experimental work on negotiation. It concludes with an indication
of the need for further research, particularly in regard to the choice of the
type of justice which would be applicable to individual cases.
Key Words. arms control, distribution, division, justice, negotiation,
principles, process, regional security
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Negotiation as
Drama: How "Games" Become Dramatic
Nigel Howard
Nigel Howard Systems
10 Bloomfield Rd.
Moseley
Birmingham B13 9BY, UK
The metaphor of drama has recently been proposed as a means of extending
game-theoretic methods of analysis to include an understanding of
irrationality, emotion and the way in which players "reframe" their
situation so as to create for themselves a new, different game. This paper
attempts to describe in terms accessible to non-mathematicians how to model
and analyze a negotiation process as a drama. The central idea is that by
analyzing a game (renamed a "frame") and certain objects within it,
we can find its gradient, i.e., the tendency of its different parts to change
under the pressure of the emotions generated by its perceived fixity. Thus
rather than an analysis of what must happen inside a given game, we have an
analysis of the transformations the game -- now a "frame" -- must
undergo in order to solve the problems it generates. To illustrate, the
endings of two recent films -- Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction -- are analyzed
to show why the "truel" in the first case
ends in a shoot-out while in the second case, it ends peacefully. The same
model, with a few changes, is then used to model "peace-keeping"
negotiations such as might take place between the UN and a group involved in
ethnic conflict.
Key words. communication, drama theory, emotions, frames, games,meta-games,
negotiation
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Negotiation as
Adaptive Learning
John G. Cross
College of Literature
Science and the Arts
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.
The main theses of this paper are 1) that there are such things as
"negotiating strategies," 2) that negotiating strategies are
acquired from experience from a variety of often dissimilar events, and 3)
that when those strategies are brought together at the bargaining table, they
usually bring about agreements that are sub-optimal from an overall social
welfare standpoint. This perspective is set up to contrast with a variety of
models and views that tend to treat negotiations as self-contained events, as
though they were individual "games" that could be analyzed solely
with respect to their particular parameters -- in isolation from other
negotiations and experiences that may have shaped the behavior and
expectations of the bargainers. A by-product of this approach is the
proposition that there is no single answer to the question "how should
one negotiate?" and that instead we should expect to find a variety of
dissimilar strategies in use, and that the effectiveness of a strategy will
depend upon which other strategies it encounters in practice. The paper is
constructed around the concept of "learning," and builds its theses
from explorations of the various definitions and interpretations of that
word. The paper begins with a short explanatory background, proceeds to
explorations of three different applications of the term "learning"
in negotiation theory, and then goes on to develop a model of adaptive
learning that is relevant to negotiating strategies. Following this is a
discussion of the social "optimality" of the negotiating strategies
that can be expected to evolve in a society. Then there are a few numerical
examples that are intended to highlight the properties of the theory, and,
finally, a few comments on insights that may be useful for negotiators
themselves.
Key words. evolutionary equilibrium, learning, negotiation
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