Bertram I. Spector

Resiliency in Negotiation: Bouncing Back from Impasse

Deadlocked international negotiations risk prolonged uncertainty and, worse, the possible onset of hostilities. While the negotiation research literature is replete with strategies and tactics that seek positive sum outcomes, there is a paucity of reliable advice for negotiators faced with stalemate on what they can do to avert failure and get back on the negotiation track. This study suggests that international negotiations can learn from the field of developmental psychology about the concept and practice of resiliency. Resiliency is the human capacity to face, overcome and be strengthened by experiences of extreme adversity. It is a basic and powerful human competency that negotiators, faced with impasse, need to master to avert failure and achieve successful negotiation outcomes. If people have the capacity to bounce back from adversity in their personal lives, negotiators in their professional lives should be able to mobilize this capacity to bounce back from impasses, as well. Several propositions based on research findings are examined.

Negotiating International Development

Negotiation over international development assistance is an understudied but frequently practiced form of international dialogue. The primary issues involve financial, technical, logistical and physical support provided by developed countries or multilateral organizations to developing countries. But the process, strategies and structure of negotiation often need to cope with the complexities of diverse interests, issues of sovereignty and governance, power asymmetry, post-conflict stabilization, democratic transitions, coalition building, and conditionalities, among others. This collection of articles demonstrates the array of issues, contexts, and problems confronting practitioners involved in negotiating international development aid.

Negotiation Consulting: Applying Theory and Research to Practice

Negotiation is a common transaction within government, between governments, and between government and its citizens. Consulting to improve the skills and competencies of negotiators and to develop “cultures of negotiation” in government organizations is a practice that appears to be gaining currency. Five sample assignments are described from both substantive and business perspectives. From these illustrations, a typology of the available points of entry for negotiation consultants is presented. Some of the problems and reasons for hesitancy on the part of prospective clients in employing such consulting support are discussed, and ways of overcoming these objections are suggested.

Metaphors of international negotiation

Metaphorical reasoning can offer new perspectives on familiar or unusual ideas and things. It can be especially useful in providing new insight and understanding into a field, such as international negotiation, that is undergoing an upsurge in activity and rapid change by freeing up old conceptions and enabling creative thought. By cutting across traditional fields of study, metaphors can help to refresh and reframe the study of international negotiation and provide a new point of departure for research and practice. The role of metaphors in the physical and social sciences and how they have been employed to explain international issues is discussed. The remaining articles in this issue are introduced in relation to their metaphorical orientations.

Citizen Negotiation: Toward a More Inclusive Process

Negotiation is becoming a more inclusive activity. More and different types of actors are taking part at national and international levels to resolve conflicts and seek agreement. At a national level, non-governmental organizations and individual citizens are partaking in mass demonstrations that often evolve into negotiation. At the international level, ngos working through issue networks have been participating more and more in formal negotiations with state parties. By reviewing several cases at these different levels, this article identifies useful questions for future research focusing on the sources of legitimacy and power of these new actors and how they are changing the organization, structure, process and outcomes of negotiation.

Multilevel Regimes and Asserting the 'Right to Negotiate': Fitting the Public into Post-Agreement Negotiation

Emerging changes to post-agreement negotiation structures and actors can have important implications for the process and outcome of negotiated agreements. These innovations include the coexistence of negotiated global and regional regimes on the same policy issue, as well as civil society organizations that assert their “right to negotiate” at the domestic level to promote national compliance with regime standards and provisions. The evolution of these factors within the post-agreement negotiations of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) is used as a case study. Globalization and communications technology trends play a major role in promoting these changes.

Twenty Years of International Negotiation

In this 20th anniversary issue of International Negotiation, we reflect back on past accomplishments and look forward to new areas of inquiry. The journal has focused on promoting four goals: concentrating research attention on challenging topics through thematic issues, supporting researcher-practitioner dialogue, stimulating interdisciplinary discussion, and providing a platform for new research frameworks and approaches. The articles in this anniversary issue consider the state of the field over the past two decades, highlight critical areas that demand further attention, and offer research agendas to fill those gaps.

Post-Agreement Negotiating within Multilateral Regimes

AbstractThis thematic issue of the journal revisits the thesis introduced ten years ago in the book, Getting It Done: Post-Agreement Negotiation and International Regimes, that regimes are recursive negotiations and not merely one-off settlements that turn next to ratification. Seven cases are presented in the issue and discussed in this article that develop a number of reasons why regimes are marked by post-agreement negotiations. They examine the dimensions of these different types of encounters, all negotiations to be explored by established negotiation analysis but incomplete and incomprehensible without the context of the previous agreement, which then they complement.

Negotiating Peace Agreements with Anticorruption Provisions: The Role of International Development Assistance

Peace agreements that end internal conflicts are most likely to be sustainable when they include negotiated provisions that resolve corruption and governance abuses that were among the initiating causes of the conflicts. A four-staged process appears to be an underlying theme for the post-conflict period: essential to achieving effective results: ceasefire negotiations, negotiations over future governance and the reestablishment of integrity to government, implementation of the negotiated agreements with the support of development assistance, and continuing dialogue through post-agreement negotiations. Six recent cases of peace negotiation and their implementation are analyzed to yield lessons and recommendations for diplomatic and international development analysts and practitioners. In particular, the role of development assistance is considered both as an impetus to agreement and as an essential stimulant of the post-agreement period.