International Negotiation Process and Strategies

THE FUNCTION of many international negotiations is to develop an explicit agreement for the allocation of benefits and/or costs. In resolving opposing interests, each side's demands need to be reconciled and transformed through a form of joint decision-making. As we shall see later, the efficiency of negotiation is often hampered by a lack of sufficient information about each other's priorities for effective decision-making. In fact, negotiators may not always find it easy to define even their own best interests and alternatives especially in a setting that entails multiple actors, evolving sets of issues and their linkages. Since many negotiations are neither self-contained nor stand alone, they navigate in the past history of conflict and other contexts of relationships. When the parties encounter uncertainties, negotiation behavior may evolve over time as they interact.

In the remainder of this book, we focus not only on a process internal to the negotiation (i.e., what is happening at the table) but also on its context. As is discussed in this chapter and the one immediately following, a negotiation process is examined by changes in negotiators’ activities, their interactions and effects. While Chapter 8 looks at bargaining behavior and mechanisms (e.g., concession-making patterns), Chapter 9 covers the role of “nonrational” factors (i.e., the interference of psychological biases and institutional and political interests) in shaping negotiation process and outcomes. In Chapters 10 and 11, we will look at how the increased number of disputants and issues, as well as the presence of interveners, has a direct bearing on the behavior and strategies of all participants.

In this chapter, negotiation functions are examined in light of the way they are instrumental in reaching a joint decision by overcoming substantial differences. A negotiation process is, in part, presented as segmented into a trend or a series of uninterrupted events, ranging from decisions on coming to talks, putting a serious offer on the table or reaching a closure rather than continuing to haggle. Such activities as information exchange, debate and bartering are involved in developing agreement packages. However, these activities are embedded in an overall mechanism of interactive dynamics of negotiating parties.