Pew Case Studies in International Affairs

Case 413

Understanding Negotiation: The Academic Contribution

Richard Cottam

Distributed by the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, School of Foreign Service,. Georgetown University, Wr hington, D.C 20057 (2 1)687-8971

Copyright ©1986 by The Pew Charitable Trusts. ISBN: 1-56927-413-4

Case #413

UNDERSTANDING NEGOTIATION: THE ACADEMIC CONTRIBUTION

Richard Cottam

COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL Do not Duplicate – This is Copyrighted Material for Classroom Use – Available Only through the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy.(202 687-8971)

Negotiation evokes increasingly serious attention among today’s students of international relations, foreign policy, and diplomacy. The case for such attention, however, is far from self-evident. Many, perhaps most, interstate negotiations concern routine matters in which the various parties have no difficulty coming to agreement. Many others deal with fairly trivial problems, usually easily solved.

Even when the subject of the negotiations is of critical importance and involves, for example, arms reduction or the resolution of a long-festering regional conflict that threatens to complicate other more serious disputes, the negotiations are likely to occur only after diplomacy has already created a receptive environment. This generally occurs when the various parties are clearly predisposed to accept a formula for a settlement, the general out-lines of which will be well understood by all. When this is the case, the actual negotiations can be turned over to technicians or trusted third parties.

Turning to negotiations prematurely, that is, before the favorable environment has been created, may well lead to serious damage. There are, for example, a large number of competing formulae for the settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict, but the environment has not been receptive to any of them. Moving to the negotiation stage before agreement on a formula has crystallized may well exacerbate rather than ease the conflict.

Nevertheless, the case for an analytic focus on negotiations is easily made. In a major conflict, negotiations are comparable to the eye of an hour-

glass. They provide a concrete vantage point for viewing the environment within which a settlement will become possible and for gaming understanding about the way such environmental receptivity was achieved. How were attitudes and perceptions altered? What varieties of leverage were applied in the bargaining process? What objectives of the various parties to the conflict were altered and in what directions? Is the altered environment likely to lead to progress in the settlement of other disputes? In other words, it is the context of the negotiations that is of primary interest, and focusing on negotiations should reveal much about the context. The process of negotiations and the techniques used by the negotiators, it follows, will be of far less significance. The fact is, however, that much of the literature concerned with negotiation deals precisely with the process and techniques of negotiation.

The world of the diplomatic negotiator is one of great, even excessive, complexity and richness. Those individuals directly involved in negotiations are likely to include many who are exceptionally clever, subtle-minded, and well trained. Each will bring to bear an individual style and a personal manipulation strategy. Some will appear brusque, tough, and intimidating. Others will be ingratiating, warm, and understanding. The stance adopted is likely to reflect temperamental preference, cultural background, past experience, and an assessment of the demands of the situation. Yet, every negotiator is playing a role, and each must have a

Richard Cottam

reasonably good awareness of the governmental constraints under which he or she must operate and, hence, of the decisional latitude allowed. Among the various negotiators, the decisional latitude granted by respective governments may vary widely, and each will understand the limitations within which the other participants must operate.

This will be the immediate operating milieu within which the negotiators will endeavor to achieve their objectives at as near an optimal level as possible. They will measure success in terms of personal achievement, that is, the advancement of career or other more personal goals, as well as in terms of the goals specified by their government. The government’s goals are likely to be imprecise, and post hoc evaluations can, to a considerable degree, be self-serving rationalizations of the results. They can for example, be described, as the best results achievable given the negotiating environment. Because documentary evidence of the details of the negotiations will often be classified for a generation, the academic evaluator will often be left with little more than public statements by those involved and the published outcome of the proceedings.

The limitations thus placed on the academic analyst are profound. A model that could serve to bring analytic order to descriptions of the negotiating milieu would have to be so elaborate as to be unmanageable. Furthermore, the data necessary to describe the actual negotiating process and to identify such important matters as negotiating intent and bargaining strategies followed are likely to be inadequate. Therefore, it is questionable whether the academic interested in negotiations can contribute much to an understanding of the process of negotiation.

What we know about negotiation

Not surprisingly, the academic literature on con-temporary diplomatic negotiations is dominated by accounts of specific negotiating episodes. These accounts tend to be narrative in construction and essentially descriptive, most commonly of episodes focusing on serious problems of short duration. Largely unconsidered in this literature are the host of less critical problems involving mid-level officials who are themselves generally unknown to all but the cognoscenti and who deal with chronic problems that will continue to preoccupy succeeding generations of diplomats.

Korea, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Camp

David are examples of favored topics. In such cases, there is a substantial amount of data, including a great many public statements and interviews with those directly involved. The accounts in question often contain significant insights and analytic judgments. This is particularly true when the analyst brings to bear a strong, although almost always implicit, frame of reference. However, such cases do not lend themselves easily to the discovery of major universal patterns.

Efforts to generalize across cases or to construct analytic frameworks for looking at diplomatic negotiations are less common. The preferred approach is to abstract from successful negotiating experiences some common patterns that seem associated with success. The appeal of such an approach is hardly surprising, given the exceptional difficulty in developing a scheme for conceptualizing what appears to be meant by negotiation. An early example of such work is Fred Ikl's How Nations Negotiate.¹ The same approach is used in analyses of mediation or arbitration. The results are inevitably contradictory because very different negotiating strategies, often dramatically opposed strategies, have been successful in different cases. Still, the generalized patterns are interesting and will be of use, as are the case studies, in courses dealing with negotiation.

What negotiation means

Thomas Schelling in Arms and Influence, makes the bold assertion that “diplomacy is bargaining.”² Had he said simply that “diplomacy involves bargaining,” the statement would have been a truism and of little interest. As stated, it is seriously misleading; yet, a number of scholars, apparently in agreement with Schelling's assertion, look at negotiation largely (even exclusively) in terms of bargaining strategies. Their preferred approach is theoretical gaming, often concentrating on the zero-sum game. Their presumption is that an analysis of negotiation can be done within this most parsimonious of frameworks, one in which only a few select variables are considered, in which objectives (or values) can be translated quantitatively, in which the achievement of the objectives will be approached with full rationality, and in which information regarding variables and objectives is perfect.

Such presumptions are highly questionable. Most case studies seem to show that negotiations are characterized by great diversity in perception

UNDERSTANDING NEGOTIATION: THE ACADEMIC CONTRIBUTION

(and, it follows, in interpretations of what “information” is); by a broad range of values (most of which are held unconsciously and, hence, difficult to evaluate as to “rationality”); and by a need to accommodate the demands of several governments, each of which follows the dictates of an elaborately interactive foreign policy decision-making process.

The danger of such an approach is that it will bias the selection of cases to be investigated in favor of those it can reasonably handle. Further-more, this approach, in attempting to reduce the situation to its bare essence, may produce an apolitical bias, because most political variables will be purged in the interest of parsimony. Conflict Among Nations by Snyder and Diesing is a successful application of the approach in some carefully circumscribed cases.³ The authors conclude, nevertheless, that they needed to take a much harder look at the psychological milieu, and such an endeavor is most unlikely to lend itself to parsimonious analysis. The assumption of the game theory approach is that the structure of the negotiating situation can be teased out and that the analyst can then apply the appropriate bargaining strategy to that particular structure. Skeptics, who see an almost infinitely complex bargaining milieu in all but a few—usually low-level—cases, are unlikely to be convinced.

Another mode of approach is the psychologycal.⁴ This approach, however, has thus far been applied largely to individual negotiators to discern a psychological explanation for their negotiating style. The promise of using concepts drawn from psychology, such as perception and imagery, to examine a larger aspect of the milieu, has so far not been realized. Here, as elsewhere in the literature concerned with negotiation, conceptual development is in its infancy.

Then there is the considerable and growing literature of the "how to do it" genre. This style is best exemplified by the writings of Roger Fisher and those of I. William Zartman.⁵ This literature includes many impressive and sometimes brilliant essays. However, these writings tell us, in sum, that negotiators should be (like the authors) intelligent, socially sensitive, flexible, empathetic, and capable of achieving detachment in any negotiating situation. They are far more useful for the classroom than for instructing experienced practitioners.

Finally; a number of authors have identified general characteristics of the decisions and decisional styles that have led to success in negotiations. Zartman is particularly useful here.⁶ He makes the point that the decisional

style of negotiations is one of convergence and that the successful conclusion of negotiations occurs when a formula for resolution can be agreed upon. The contribution here is one of bringing conceptual clarity to the end product of the negotiating process. According to this approach, negotiations end successfully when there is a convergence of views around an acceptable formula. But the approach offers little help in explaining, for example, how to identify a preferred formula or the strategic elements necessary in achieving convergence around a chosen formula.

There is little doubt that the literature on negotiations serves an important educational function. Case studies, in particular, cover a broad range of situations, and the student is shown both the mistakes and the successes of negotiators attempting to deal with these situations. The generalized literature, in its attempt to discover some conceptual unity, is at the very least suggestive. Yet, one is left wondering whether the academic analyst has anything useful to say to the experienced negotiator. Or, far more important, does the academic analyst have anything to say that could lead to improvements in diplomatic negotiation even in the face of resistance from practitioners? The contention of this essay is that the answer to both questions should be affirmative. Furthermore, any progress made at the required level of abstraction would directly improve the teaching of negotiation.

However, although academic analysis can ultimately be of help to practitioners, that contribution will likely be primarily at a higher level of concern. Any contribution at lower levels will likely be rather modest. Academic analysis, for example, is unlikely to suggest any useful insights for the day-to-day interactions of those directly engaged in negotiating. Individuals who have risen to leadership positions as a result of much and varied experience have done so because of their skills in interpersonal relations. They have achieved the ability to understand an interactive situation of enormous complexity to the point of being able almost instantly to sense the implications of situational change when it occurs and, almost as quickly, to seek to manipulate the new situation to their own ends. Absorbed in the immediate task of negotiation and usually interested only in that which is directly relevant, such individuals are unlikely to consider seriously the broader political environment within which the negotiations are occurring. Whatever assumptions they have about that political context are likely to be implicit.