International
Negotiation: A Journal of Theory and Practice
Vol. 18, No. 3 2013
This issue
Revisiting Post-Agreement
Negotiation and International Regimes
Guest editors
Bertram I. Spector, Center for
Negotiation Analysis
I. William Zartman,
The Johns Hopkins University
Post-Agreement Negotiating within Multilateral Regimes
I. William Zartman and Bertram I. Spector
This thematic issue of the journal revisits the thesis introduced ten
years ago in the book, Getting It Done: Post-Agreement Negotiation and
International Regimes, that regimes are recursive negotiations and not merely
one-off settlements that turn next to ratification. Seven cases are presented in the issue and
discussed in this article that develop a number of
reasons why regimes are marked by post-agreement negotiations. They examine the
dimensions of these different types of encounters, all negotiations to be
explored by established negotiation analysis but incomplete and
incomprehensible without the context of the previous agreement, which then they
complement.
A Forty-Year Search for a Single-Negotiating Text:
Rio+20 as a Post-Agreement Negotiation
Lynn M. Wagner
This article
elaborates on the place of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable
Development (UNCSD, also known as Rio+20) in a forty-year trajectory of
international sustainable development negotiations, particularly through the
processes placed in motion during the 1992 Rio Earth Summit event. The
negotiation of the final UNCSD document also can be evaluated in its own right,
and the article examines this process in the second section, keeping in mind
the negotiating system in which the talks took place. The final section focuses
on the process as a post-agreement negotiation and considers the role of the
twenty-year milestone negotiations in shaping the sustainable development
regime. The paper explores in particular the role that consensus negotiated
agreements have played as the regime’s decision-making procedure, and how this
procedure has faltered as the complexity – including the number of issues,
actors and obligations incorporated into the regime – has increased. Two
elements from the Rio+20 outcome – a “take-it-or-change-it” facilitation
approach of the Brazilian hosts and the adoption of a process to create
“sustainable development goals” as a different means to focus international
expectations – are presented as new directions for decision making in the
regime’s next rounds of regime governance and regime adjustment negotiations.
Post Agreement Negotiations in the Comprehensive
Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Regime
Mordechai (Moti) Melamud
When considering
the concept of post-agreement negotiations (PAN), the CTBT presents a
particularly interesting case, because of its elusive status caused by the
unusually long time lag between the treaty’s adoption in 1996 and its still
unattained entry into force. For almost two decades, negotiations on key
elements have been ongoing in the Preparatory Commission (PrepCom)
in preparation for entry-into-force as required by the treaty. This article
explores the challenges of PAN in the framework of the PrepCom
and its place in the CTBT regime evolution. Using four factors in regime
development -- adjustment, maintenance, cybernetics and exogenous factors --
the work of the PrepCom concerning verification is
analyzed. Technical and political issues are described as examples from the PrepCom's work since the opening of the CTBT for signature
illustrating regime building through post agreement negotiations.
Nuclear Politics of Denial: South Africa and the
Additional Protocol
Joelien Pretorius
South Africa was one of the first states to
conclude an Additional Protocol with the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) in 2002, allowing the IAEA greater right of access to safeguard nuclear
activities and material. In light of this, some observers in the arms control
community find it odd that South Africa’s representatives at the Nuclear
Suppliers Group (NSG) would be the main objectors to making the conclusion of
an Additional Protocol a precondition for states wishing to import uranium
enrichment and reprocessing technology (classified as sensitive nuclear
technology and material). The South African objection should be viewed as only
the most recent in a series of objections to measures that may seem obviously
in line with nuclear non-proliferation. This emerging pattern in South Africa’s
nuclear diplomacy and, more specifically, the objection to the Additional
Protocol condition are related to its membership in the Non-Aligned Movement
(NAM) and can be investigated through the lens of a politics of denial. Denial is the act of saying “no”, but it is
also in psychological parlance the unconscious thought process manifesting a
refusal to acknowledge the existence of certain unpleasant aspects of external
reality. It will be argued that South Africa’s opposition to the Additional
Protocol condition can be explained in the context of two instances of denial:
(i) a perceived denial by the nuclear haves of what
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty codifies as an inalienable right to
peaceful nuclear technology – something that South Africa is cautious to be
complicit in; and (ii) the nuclear weapon states’ denial (the psychological
meaning) of the unpleasant reality of a hypocritical nuclear order – something
that South Africa wants to expose or at least something with which to engage to
limit the effects for itself and other NAM members. The politics of denial does
not yield to a pragmatist/utopian dichotomy in the nuclear realm, but instead
reveals the dialectic nature of realism and idealism in nuclear politics,
especially as reflected in South Africa’s nuclear diplomacy.
CTBT On-Site Inspection: A Special Case of
Post-Agreement Negotiation
Mordechai (Moti) Melamud
This article
examines negotiations expected to be conducted during actual implementation
after entry-into-force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). It
analyzes the negotiations to be undertaken with regards to on-site inspection
(OSI) procedures, and their unique character as post-agreement negotiations
(PAN) is identified. In particular, the OSI negotiations will be conducted at
the Executive Council (EC) level and will analyze whether violations of the
treaty have occurred. This discussion further explores another level of
negotiation that will occur during the OSI, between the inspected state and the
inspection team, concerning the technical details of implementation. Our
analysis demonstrates how these inspection negotiations will likely have an
impact, well beyond the OSI itself, on the PAN in the EC regarding OSI, and
further on PAN in policymaking organs, and thus on regime evolution.
Multilevel Regimes and Asserting the “Right to
Negotiate:”
Fitting the Public into Post-Agreement Negotiation
Bertram I. Spector
Emerging changes
to post-agreement negotiation structures and actors can have important
implications for the process and outcome of negotiated agreements. These
innovations include the coexistence of negotiated global and regional regimes
on the same policy issue, as well as civil society organizations that assert
their “right to negotiate” at the domestic level to promote national compliance
with regime standards and provisions. The evolution of these factors within the
post-agreement negotiations of the United Nations Convention Against
Corruption (UNCAC) is used as a case study. Globalization and communications
technology trends play a major role in promoting these changes.
Philipp Brugger, Andreas Hasenclever and Lukas Kasten
In this article
we argue that trust is fundamental to post-agreement negotiations in the field
of international security. We present our concept of interstate trust and
discuss its relation to two core mechanisms of international cooperation:
control and policy integration. Our main hypothesis is that growing trust
reduces a dyad’s reliance on control and leads to intensified policy
integration. To specify how the trust-control nexus and the trust-integration
nexus structure post-agreement negotiations, we first assume that
post-agreement negotiations are likely to follow interstate crises. Second, we
theorize crisis reactions and differentiate between low-trust and high-trust
situations. In low-trust situations, a crisis indicates a failure to control
the actions of others. As a response, demands for institutional reform will
stress new and improved control mechanisms. In high-trust situations, the
trusting bias defuses most of the doubts about the other’s cooperative
preferences and points to miscommunication as the principal issue. Therefore,
negotiations will be about intensifying policy integration. States do so for
three purposes: sustaining valuable integration, overcoming the crisis, and
building trust. As a first plausibility probe for our argument, we look at
post-agreement negotiations between France and Germany.
Is Reconciliation Negotiable?
Valérie Rosoux
The purpose of this article is to
question some basic assumptions regarding reconciliation after wars and mass
atrocities. Indeed, how can numerous policy-makers, practitioners, and scholars
contend that reconciliation is necessary while it is often distrusted and
rejected by victims? Are there not cases where calls for reconciliation would
prove to be fruitless and even detrimental for peace and/or democracy? To
answer these questions, it is worth looking at the interactions between
reconciliation and negotiation. Beyond a theoretical interest, this question
has a direct impact for practitioners; a better understanding of the issue is
actually a sine qua non condition for more efficient interventions. In terms of
methodology, this study refers to various examples as illustrative cases
(Afghanistan, Rwanda, South-Africa, and the Franco-German case). Its objective
is not to capture the complexity of each case study but to determine to what
extent reconciliation can be considered as negotiable.
