BERTRAM I. SPECTOR
Center for Negotiation Analysis
11608 Le Havre Drive, Potomac
Maryland 20854 USA
AMANDA WOLF
School of Business and Public Management
Victoria University of Wellington
P.O. Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand
The concept of national security and the process by which it is negotiated has changed. No longer is security synonymous only with the physical well-being of the state; it is now associated with achieving safety from transboundary threats related to the environment, the economy, human rights, and access to food and resources, for example. This transformation of security from a primarily traditional military dimension to a multidimensional range of interests is accompanied by changes in the way these issues are negotiated among states. This article offers a framework and propositions that can help explain the differences. This thematic issue of International Negotiation on nontraditional security negotiation provides detailed cases and analyses that demonstrate and contrast how the negotiation process performs in resource, economic, food, and military security talks.
Negotiating Formal and Informal Agreements in the Arab-Israeli Peace Process
SHAUL MISHAL
Department of Political Science
Tel Aviv University
Israel
NADAV MORAG
Department of Political Science
Tel Aviv University
Israel
Contracts and Trust are ends of a continuum on which negotiations and interstate relations are based. Both arrangements are common in political negotiation and they played a significant role in Israel’s peace negotiations with Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. Contractual relationships are more likely in the case of states with a traditionally hierarchical order whereas trust plays an important role in relations with states based on a traditionally networked system. As boundaries within societies and between states and communities become increasingly blurred, there is a greater need to approach negotiated issues between states by simultaneously exploring contract and trust dimensions.
JIM ROLFE
Victoria University of Wellington
PO Box 10-291, The Terrace
Wellington, New Zealand
Traditional security is not a major concern for Pacific Island countries and has not been for at last 50 years. Instead, the region has for some time identified non- traditional issues, especially relating to the environment and resources as among those that could affect the security of its members, collectively and individually. Non- traditional security issues in this region are generally externally imposed. These vulnerabilities are generally beyond the ability of individual states to control or mitigate. As a result, there is little need for conflict and a considerable reliance on cooperative processes to resolve the issues. The main arena for resolving issues is the Pacific Islands Forum (until recently, the South Pacific Forum). Forum decisions are based on consensus decision making in which standard setting and norm-based behavior have taken root. There are signs, though, that as issues of traditional "high politics" become more salient within the region, consensus could become strained.
The Impact of Plurality on Weak-Strong Negotiations in the International Economy
J.P. SINGH
Communication, Culture and Technology Program
Georgetown University
3520 Prospect Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036 USA
Can developing countries effect outcomes in their favor in negotiations with developed countries? This article shows that as global politics move toward a multi-issue ‘diffusion of power’ in which states and other actors interact in a considerably less hierarchical fashion than one characterized by a state-centric security-dominated distribution of power, developing countries are afforded negotiation processes they lacked earlier. First, the negotiation environment is changing. Developing countries are negotiating in scenarios increasingly marked by pragmatic ‘rules of the game’ rather than authoritative or confrontational scenarios of earlier periods. Developing country alternatives have also improved in the diffusion of power. Second, developing countries can now use a host of negotiation tactics effectively. These include inclusion/agenda setting, trade-offs/issue-linkages, coalition building, technocratic and legalistic strategies and direct lobbying in other countries. The article emphasizes the links between issue- specific power structures and negotiation processes and draws attention to the underlying historical context in which these structures and processes arise. Several examples from bilateral and multilateral negotiations are introduced in the article although these examples do not constitute empirical proof of this article’s conceptual arguments. In conclusion, given diffusion of power and the resulting pluralism, developing countries are not completely resigned to global liberalism without effecting anything in their favor. Global liberalism is thus not just a top-down process -- it can be amended from below. Negotiations matter.
AMANDA WOLF
School of Business and Public Management
Victoria University of Wellington
P.O. Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand
Informed consent is at the center of the Rotterdam Convention on Prior Informed Consent and the Cartegena Protocol on Biosafety. Consistent with the idea of a negotiation "formula," it encapsulates the principles underlying parties’ demands by balancing the efficiency of unconstrained trade with ethically charged support for autonomy and self-determination. As a negotiated rule, informed consent translates the formula into specific procedural requirements based on risk assessment. Parties’ fundamental interest to enhance food security via the two treaties is used to illustrate both the principle and rule aspects of informed consent. In addition, the value of formula analysis in negotiation theory is investigated. The article supports increased attention to informed consent in international relations, to the merits of formula analysis, and to the possibility of better understanding a fundamental objective such as food security through a formula-guided analysis of these and related negotiated outcomes.
EYTAN GILBOA
Department of Political Studies
Bar-Ilan University, Israel and Department of Social Sciences
Holon Institute of Technology, Israel
This article offers an analytical framework to investigate levels of media coverage and effective international negotiation. The framework includes three theoretical models based on the degree to which officials and negotiators allow diplomatic negotiations to be exposed to the media and public opinion. In the secret diplomacy model, the media and the public are totally excluded from negotiations, while in closed-door diplomacy they are partially excluded. In the open diplomacy model, negotiations are much more open to the media and coverage is more extensive. The framework helps to explore fundamental theoretical and professional implications of each model for government officials and negotiators, journalists and public opinion. This article demonstrates the analytical usefulness of the models through applications to various examples and case studies of significant contemporary diplomatic processes.
JANET MARTINEZ
The Consensus Building Institute
131 Mt. Auburn Street
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 USA
LAWRENCE SUSSKIND
The Consensus Building Institute
131 Mt. Auburn Street
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 USA
Recently adopted international environmental treaties on climate change and biodiversity represent some of the most complex agreements ever negotiated, involving science-intensive policy questions and implicating not only governments, but industry and a range of nongovernmental organizations. The inter-connections that should have been taken into account in drafting these agreements were difficult to achieve, given the fractured structure of multilateral institutions. Even if the parties were willing to expose their interests as necessary for effective problem-solving, commitments made to home constituencies made it impossible to be flexible. The Consensus Building Institute has pioneered efforts to design a process that can overcome such barriers in high stakes, high profile, multi-party negotiations. Each has involved senior diplomats in what is best described as collaborative problem solving. This article will use the lessons learned from three experiences to show how parallel informal negotiation provides an alternative -- or complement -- to more traditional second track diplomacy.
