Diplomatic Negotiation

Chapter I: Introduction and Disquisition
33
factors influencing the process of international negotiation, such as personal conditions,
information, and structural issues like time.
Different cultures have different perceptions of negotiation processes. Americans and
Europeans tend to see the process in a linear way, going from the awareness of having a
problem and the need to solve it, to exploration, pre-negotiation, agenda-setting, further
exploration, selection of issues, give-and-take, decision-making, closure, implementation,
evaluation, and perhaps renegotiation, etc. This view holds that there is a specific starting
and concluding point. In Africa, and foremost in Asia, negotiators tend to see the process
as a circular, and thereby never–ending, stream. Connected to this is the importance
attached to the relationship in that process, while Westerners often give priority to the
issues at hand. Such differences in approaches have grave consequences for the flow of
the process and thereby for its outcome.
In his chapter, Victor M. Sergeev clarifies international negotiation in a series of
metaphors: the metaphor of bargaining, the bidding as we know it in the marketplace; then
the metaphor of joint choice, the love child of the Harvard Project on Negotiation (PON);
and the metaphors of joint research and joint construction of the future (Sergeev, 2002:
64–70). Metaphors can be useful and misleading at the same time. They are useful in
enhancing understanding because of linkage to a well-understood concept, but counterproductive
because they simplify, while negotiation is a complex process with many
factors and actors. As far as the joint choice metaphor is concerned, this seems to be
a cultural perspective applicable first of all to North America, but already less valuable
for parts of Europe like the Balkans and the Caucasus, and much more problematic for
regions in Asia and Africa such as the Middle East or the Great Lakes Region. Win–win
solutions tend to be win–lose or even lose–lose, and practitioners and academics have
to struggle with that. The metaphor of the marketplace is nevertheless valuable, as it
highlights many elements of the negotiation process. A customer who can choose from
different shops has the power of choice, of alternatives, a strong BATNA (‘best alternative
to a negotiated agreement’, or ‘best alternative to no agreement’). The merchant will have
to lure the customer into the shop. If the merchant manages to do this, the context changes
in his or her favour. The merchant can now use his or her power: knowledge about the
merchandise, or the dossier in diplomatic terms. The merchant, or negotiator, needs time
to do this, as the weaker party normally needs more time than the more powerful one in
an asymmetric negotiation process. Exploration, selection and bargaining will unfold and
the customer might leave the shop with more – and more expensive – merchandise than
he had wished for at the start of this negotiation. The process and the time that it takes
are ingredients of the power of the seller, helping him to undercut the BATNA of the buyer
by creating his own alternatives.
The structure of negotiation is the approach used by William Zartman in his chapter in
International Negotiation (Zartman, 2002: 71–84). To him,
Negotiation is a process by which contending parties come to an agreement,
but that process neither occurs nor can be analyzed merely by its own terms.
It begins with a certain distribution of actor characteristics, which then become
independent variables through which the process and its analysis are conducted
(Zartman, 2002: 71).