Back Channel Diplomacy: Implications for Practice and Theory

Abstract

Leaders recognize the vast power of a mobilized constituency, and themselves try to shape it, manipulate it to reduce their own scope for concessions, empower themselves to be 'powerless' in the face of cries for flexibility from their international adversaries and internal political opposition. The mutual dependence between leader/negotiator and public/constituency is well known. And yet it can work against the interests of the negotiator. Rubin & Brown noted a marked tendency for negotiators to make moves damaging to the negotiator's and constituents' interests, ironically, because of the audience effect. Walton & McKersie observed that in labor management negotiations, principal negotiators would sometimes deliberately resort to secrecy to keep their own side in the dark about concessions. Between the negative effects of publicity and the positive advantages of bargaining in the shadows, it is a wonder that more negotiations are not conducted in this manner. This paper discusses a negotiation strategy that arises from the audience effect: Back Channel Diplomacy (BCD), using the Palestinian-Israeli negotiation cases as data. BCD has been largely ignored in the negotiation literature. Analysts look - legitimately - to factors such as political will of leadership, internal opposition, international obstruction and the structural injustices of the Israeli occupation to explain the lack of progress toward a just settlement of the Palestine-Israel conflict. This study, in contrast, looks to the diplomatic methods themselves that the parties employ, as a supplementary variable that mitigates or exacerbates the effects of the other factors.