International Negotiation Process and Strategies

THE NEGOTIATION process and bargaining models presented in earlier chapters provide a guide in narrowing down the predicted outcome, but they are in themselves incomplete. In game-theoretical models, actors have stable and well-defined preferences based on utility calculations in striving to maximize their gains and minimize their losses. In formal models (presented in Chapter 5), a “bargaining set” for a given problem is intricately deduced from the value of a negotiator's alternating offer. As negotiators interact through different stages (seen in Chapters 6 and 7), their preferences have to be adjusted to a new understanding of their counterpart's interests and priorities. In Chapter 8, we saw how bargaining actions reset mutual expectations through a series of adaptations to each other's offers. When bargaining is understood in the traditional utility formation (e.g., payoff maximization), its process is largely considered separate from psychological or institutional decision-making process. However, a negotiator's choices tend to be subject to a decision-maker's bias and are also shaped by institutional and political constraints.

This chapter starts from the premise that understanding a real-world negotiation process and its effect on outcomes has to go beyond the examination of negotiator interactions based on their preferences and utility functions. The chapter discusses the interference of negotiators' perceptions and attributes as well as system influences on a negotiation process and its consequences. It will begin with motivational and cognitive models that explain the role of perception and emotions in decision-making. Recognizing that international negotiation is likely to be propelled by decisions involving larger groups, in the second half of the chapter, I will also incorporate institutional decision-making procedures and the interference of concerns of subgroups on each side in our analysis. In general, government decision-making is entangled with organizational rivalry and bureaucratic politics. The growing number of subactors makes issues that were originally invisible or less visible gain new prominence since parochial interests now have to be satisfied in an external negotiation. With the intervention of more subactors, intraparty (and crossparty) coalition-building plays a crucial role in shaping the final outcome of negotiation.