Lynn Wagner

Justice and Negotiation

This review article examines the literature regarding the role played by principles of justice in negotiation. Laboratory experiments and high-stakes negotiations reveal that justice is a complex concept, both in relation to attaining just outcomes and to establishing just processes. We focus on how justice preferences guide the process and outcome of negotiated exchanges. Focusing primarily on the two types of principles that have received the most attention, distributive justice (outcomes of negotiation) and procedural justice (process of negotiation), we introduce the topic by reviewing the most relevant experimental and field or archival research on the roles played by these justice principles in negotiation. A discussion of the methods used in these studies precedes a review organized in terms of a framework that highlights the concept of negotiating stages. We also develop hypotheses based on the existing literature to point the way forward for further research on this topic.

Breaking the mold: a new type of multilateral sustainable development negotiation

Participants in the Open Working Group (OWG) on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were reminded time and again that there is no model for the process to develop the SDGs. They resolved to not repeat the closed process used to develop the Millennium Development Goals, but the OWG began work when failures to reach consensus and fatigue with multilateral environmental negotiations dominated delegates’ minds, rather than examples of successfully negotiated outcomes. The OWG Co-Chairs were faced with the daunting task of guiding delegates’ efforts to develop a proposed set of crisp SDGs and targets that all could agree to, and thus, had to accomplish the following goals: (1) reduce delegation rigidity, both of individual Member States and within coalitions; (2) maximize the sense of participation, transparency, and ownership to get the most buy-in at the end; and (3) develop a sense of trust that would change the relationship between Member States. To do this, the OWG Co-Chairs broke the mold of UN multilateral negotiations that Member States and observers had become familiar with and created a different approach. This article examines how the OWG accomplished these goals and overcame the shortcomings of other multilateral negotiating processes on sustainable development to produce a widely supported consensus outcome at a time when governments have struggled to achieve agreement in many multilateral negotiation tracks.

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.

A Forty-Year Search for a Single-Negotiating Text: Rio+20 as a Post-Agreement Negotiation

AbstractThis article elaborates on the place of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD, also known as Rio+20) in a forty-year trajectory of international sustainable development negotiations, particularly through the processes placed in motion during the 1992 Rio Earth Summit event. The negotiation of the final UNCSD document also can be evaluated in its own right, and the article examines this process in the second section, keeping in mind the negotiating system in which the talks took place. The final section focuses on the process as a post-agreement negotiation and considers the role of the twenty-year milestone negotiations in shaping the sustainable development regime. The article explores in particular the role that consensus negotiated agreements have played as the regime’s decision-making procedure, and how this procedure has faltered as the complexity – including the number of issues, actors and obligations incorporated into the regime – has increased. Two elements from the Rio+20 outcome – a “take-it-or-change-it” facilitation approach of the Brazilian hosts and the adoption of a process to create “sustainable development goals” as a different means to focus international expectations – are presented as new directions for decision making in the regime’s next rounds of regime governance and regime adjustment negotiations.

Be Careful What You Compromise For: Postagreement Negotiations within the UN Desertification Convention

This article draws on principal-agent theories in the international organization literature and postagreement negotiation analysis in the negotiation literature to examine a case of international development negotiations among parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. The role of the “collective principal” ‐ the negotiating body of state actors that creates an international organization ‐ is described and the analysis examines subsequent negotiations when the parties, as principal, do not coalesce into a collective actor regarding the mandate for the organization ‐ or agent ‐ they created. The article suggests that postagreement negotiation analysis provides an understanding of the vehicle through which the “principal” provides “collective” oversight of the agent, and examines what we label the “regime interpretation” negotiations involved with this case.

Negotiating Peace: The Role of Procedural and Distributive Justice in Achieving Durable Peace

Many civil wars have been terminated with a peace agreement that ends the fighting, but these agreements have not always resulted in lasting peace. Earlier research on peace agreements has missed important points during which justice principles can play a role in establishing durable peace – during the negotiation process itself (procedural justice: PJ) and as incorporated into the negotiated outcome (distributive justice: DJ). Nor has the earlier research simultaneously considered the variety of dimensions that define durable peace, including reconciliation, security reform, governance, and economic growth. This study fills these gaps by examining the relationship between the justice and peace variables in 50 civil wars. Our analyses show that PJ and DJ led to more stable agreements and to a more durable peace: A significant time-lagged path from the justice to peace variables was demonstrated. The results suggest that just negotiation processes and outcomes are important contributors to peace.

Identifying US Preferences and a Way Forward in the Ozone, Climate and Forests Regimes

Negotiations in international environmental fora have become frustratingly slow for those who would like to see the adoption of effective environmental policies. Depledge has even called the lack of movement in climate change talks “ossiacation.”1 This situation is the result of a number of factors. Negotiations within a regime naturally progress from the relatively easy general agreement to cooperate to harder issues—the speciac details to resolve the problems identiaed in the arst rounds of negotiations.2 Changing economic indicators, changes in attitudes toward foreign assistance on the part of donor countries, and a generally increasing antagonism between North and South also have contributed to the lack of progress on many issues.3 In addition, negotiators are discussing complex issues that are not fully understood and depend in large part on scientiac hypotheses and predictions as to cause and effect. Moreover, the most powerful actor in the system, the United States, has not consistently pursued, or pushed its counterparts to adopt, effective global environmental agreements.

Justice Matters: Peace Negotiations, Stable Agreements, and Durable Peace

Attaining durable peace (DP) after a civil war has proven to be a major challenge, as many negotiated agreements lapse into violence. How can negotiations to terminate civil wars be conducted and peace agreements formulated to contribute to lasting peace? This question is addressed in this study with a novel data set. Focusing on justice, we assess relationships between process (procedural justice [PJ]) and outcome (distributive justice [DJ]) justice on the one hand and stable agreements (SA) and DP on the other. Analyses of fifty peace agreements, which were reached from 1957 to 2008, showed a path from PJ to DJ to SA to DP: The justice variables were instrumental in enhancing both short- and long-term peace. These variables had a stronger impact on DP than a variety of contextual- and case-related factors. The empirical link between justice and peace has implications for the way that peace negotiations are structured.