Ideally, the negotiator should test and reexamine

Richard Cottam

operating assumptions throughout the negotiating process. However, so all- consuming is the negotiating task that, far from testing and reexamining assumptions, the negotiator is more likely to be unaware of their importance in giving definition to what he or she sees as the negotiating environment. As a consequence, negotiators often fail to consider potentially damaging effects on the broader political environment and may ignore potentially damaging political consequences, including damage to the larger interests the negotiations were originally undertaken to serve. For example, in its determination to deny pipeline equipment to the Soviet Union in 1982, the Reagan administration came close to damaging the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance. Or, more common, the potential for achieving higher-level goals in a negotiation will go unnoticed. A rather extreme case in point is the now infamous negotiations with the Iranian government for the release of hostages held in Lebanon. Complicated secret negotiations designed to persuade the Iranians to use their influence to release the hostages resulted in a strengthening of an Iranian aggressive purpose that adversely affected basic U.S. objectives in the Persian Gulf area.

What academic analysis can provide is primarily a sense of context. Specifically, this involves the following: developing a means of identifying the operating assumptions of negotiators; explicating this largely implicit definition of the situation, including that of the broad political environment in which the negotiations are occurring; identifying and stating the broad foreign policy and strategic objectives directly relevant to the negotiating objectives; developing a means for charting the probable impact of various negotiating strategies on broader strategic objectives; suggesting means by which negotiating strategies could be adapted to test operating assumptions; constructing a picture of the full range of bargaining levers available to the negotiator; and assessing the fit of the available capability base and the negotiating objectives.

TOWARD A TYPOLOGY OF NEGOTIATIONS

Examining the negotiation process along the foregoing lines should lead us to generalizations about what is likely to work when. First, however, one needs to distinguish among the types of negotiations. Otherwise, generalizations may be based on markedly different cases. Some suggested criteria for classifying negotiations include centrality, actor

Involvement, range of objectives, bargaining dimension, and time span.

Centrality

How vital is the objective sought in negotiation to the main objectives of a government's foreign or defense policy? How important are these objectives relative to the same government's domestic objectives? In a crisis, the first are likely to take precedence over the second, as, indeed, an impending crisis takes precedence over more routine or less urgent foreign policy goals. During such periods, foreign policy aims will be sharply hierarchical, with those relating directly to the crisis given highest priority. In the United States, for example, policies relating to containment of the Soviet Union were given priority throughout the Cold War era because the Soviet Union was perceived to be the preeminent threat. On the other hand, if a government is neither worried by a threat nor eager to seize some opportunity, it will not pay much attention to negotiations even on relatively important matters. For example, the British were so (relatively) indifferent to the Falkland Islands issue prior to the Argentinian invasion of 1982 that British Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington was heard to refer to the islands as “priority no. 242.”

The relative freedom of the negotiator from supervision of political superiors varies a great deal depending on whether or not a serious crisis is at hand. In times of crisis, those negotiators dealing with the crisis will be under close scrutiny. Those dealing with more marginal concerns will likely have a good deal of freedom; they will also have a lesser claim on resources and, hence, fewer options from which to choose. In periods in which no crisis exists, political superiors will be less preoccupied and will exercise greater supervision over a broader range of negotiations. During such periods, overall resources available for foreign policy objectives will be less than in periods of crisis, but the percentage of those resources available to negotiators concerned with secondary aims will be greater than in the first instance.

In dealing with centrality, one should also ask whether the negotiations in question deal with a government's strategic or tactical objectives. Strategic objectives are the general objectives planners have in mind for achieving foreign and defense, policy aims, tactical objectives are those objectives planners have in mind that serve the purpose of achieving strategic objectives. The second are, or should be, subordinate to the first. Negotiations

UNDERSTANDING NEGOTIATION: THE ACADEMIC CONTRIBUTION

relating to strategic objectives, especially those that are designed to achieve high priority foreign policy objectives, should differ greatly in a number of characteristics (such as the freedom of the negotiator or decisional latitude) from negotiations relating to low-level tactical objectives, and especially from those that are designed to achieve strategic objectives relating to low priority foreign policy aims.