Actual Negotiation Process Research Articles

Diligence, Secrecy, and Intrigue: Guido Cavalcanti and the 1559 Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis

ABSTRACTThe traditional description of the 1559 Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis that marked the end of the Italian Wars is that it was the logical culmination of a generation’s worth of warfare. However, this interpretation dismisses the fact that most contemporaries feared that the 1558–1559 negotiations could produce no peace more permanent than other recent treaties between the Spanish Hapsburgs and French Valois, and that the actual process of negotiation happened along several parallel channels. In particular, the new English government under Queen Elizabeth I used the negotiations, and the services of an unofficial diplomatic agent, to explore the possible terms of peace and to begin establishing relations with both France and Spain.

Achieving Effective International Cooperation: How Institutional Formalization Shapes Intergovernmental Negotiations

This article explores how formalization of institutions and domestic constraints influence the outcomes of international cooperation and negotiation processes—particularly in a regional setting like the European Union (EU) or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Examining different forms of institutional setup along the formal‐informal continuum, this study evaluates their impact on the successes and failures of intergovernmental negotiation processes. While some scholars have been vocal about the importance of institutional setting on negotiation outcomes, there has not yet been any systematic analysis of the impact of institutional variations on the actual negotiation process. This project specifies under what conditions domestic actors constrain governments, and how these conditions depend on institutional structures. I analyze the impact of institutional variations, concentrating on negotiation failure and deadlock situations, to form a framework that can differentiate between various bargaining situations and to understand their impact on the possibility to facilitate successful negotiation outcomes. The central argument highlights the need for more nuanced connections between institutional design, domestic constraints, and the level of formalization to understand the likelihood of success or failure of intergovernmental negotiation processes.

Ups and Downs: Emotional Dynamics in Negotiations and Their Effects on (In)Equity

Organizational scholars now acknowledge the relevance of emotions in virtually every aspect of organizational life, including negotiations and conflict resolution. Integrating negotiation phase model theory with social functional models of emotion, we test hypotheses about the development of emotions in negotiations and their effects on the degree of economic (in)equity of the counterpart’s subsequent offer during the actual negotiation process. By comparing stalemate dyads with efficient settlement dyads, the study identifies emotional dynamics that characterize successful as opposed to unsuccessful negotiations. Results show that observed differences are primarily the result of impasse dyads spiraling into a negative emotional climate rather than efficient settlement dyads having overall higher levels of positive emotions or increasing them throughout the negotiation process. As predicted by social functional models, the study further confirms that emotions are not only a reaction to the economic (un)fairness of a proposed offer, but their display also influences the payoff (in)equity of the counterpart’s subsequent offer. Whether a specific emotional expression increases or decreases the economic fairness of the counterpart’s subsequent offer, however, differs across negotiation phases and between dyads that reached an agreement or not. Furthermore, the results show distinct differences between emotions that address individual goal realization in negotiations and emotions that focus on the relational, interpersonal aspect of negotiations, both with regard to their development as well as their function. Taken together, the results shed light on the mechanisms leading to the emergence of conflict spirals.

A NOVEL FRAMEWORK FOR MODELING VALUE FOR THE CUSTOMER, AN ESSAY ON NEGOTIATION

This paper proposes a novel framework for modeling the Value for the Customer, the so-called Conceptual Model for Decomposing Value for the Customer (CMDVC). This conceptual model is first validated through an exploratory case study where the authors validate both the proposed constructs of the model and their relations. In a second step the authors propose a mathematical formulation for the CMDVC as well as a computational method. This has enabled the final quantitative discussion of how the CMDVC can be applied and used in the enterprise environment, and the final validation by the people in the enterprise. Along this research, we were able to confirm that the results of this novel quantitative approach to model the Value for the Customer is consistent with the company's empirical experience. The paper further discusses the merits and limitations of this approach, proposing that the model is likely to bring value to support not only the contract preparation at an Ex-Ante Negotiation Phase, as demonstrated, but also along the actual negotiation process, as finally confirmed by an enterprise testimonial.

Bargaining When the Future of an Industry Is at Stake: Lessons from UAW-Ford Collective Bargaining Negotiations

The 2007 American automobile industry labor negotiations involved fundamental challenges for labor and management, including a historic shift of responsibility in the management of retiree health care, a need for new approaches to core employment security issues, identification of ways to create new unionized jobs in the industry, and a joint commitment to the competitive viability of U.S. operations. Less visible, but no less important in the United Auto Workers–Ford case, has been unprecedented levels of information sharing and unique innovations in the bargaining process designed to enable problem solving even when tough issues were on the table. More than 300 people were directly involved in the negotiations, serving at the main table and on twenty-four subcommittees. This case study covers the context for the negotiations, key events leading up to the bargaining, a unique process of “bargaining over how to bargain,” the actual negotiation process, and the results achieved. Implications are generalizable to the broader concept of pattern bargaining and many other types of negotiations when transformation is on the table.

Between the USA and the South: strategic choices for European climate policy

Abstract This article discusses Europe's strategic choices in current climate policy. It argues that the future climate governance architecture must pass four tests: credibility, stability, flexibility, and inclusiveness. Drawing on this, I review the strategic choices for Europe, structured around three levels of analysis in political science: climate polity, that is, the larger institutional and legal context of policy making; climate policy, the instruments and targets that governments agree to implement; and climate politics, the actual negotiation process. At each level of analysis, I look at the interests and expectations of two non-European actors or actor groups: the USA, which accounts for over a third of all Northern greenhouse gas emissions, and the group of developing countries, which accounts for the vast majority of humankind. I argue that Europe must take clear principled positions on a number of key issues, in particular the need to have a strong multilateral framework as the sole and core institutional setting for climate policy and to accept the principle of equal per-capita emissions entitlements as the long-term normative bedrock of global climate governance. Both positions, however, will alienate the USA, and both will make it more difficult for the USA to rejoin the international community on the climate issue.

Between the USA and the South: strategic choices for European climate policy

This article discusses Europe's strategic choices in current climate policy. It argues that the future climate governance architecture must pass four tests: credibility, stability, flexibility, and inclusiveness. Drawing on this, I review the strategic choices for Europe, structured around three levels of analysis in political science: climate polity, that is, the larger institutional and legal context of policy making; climate policy, the instruments and targets that governments agree to implement; and climate politics, the actual negotiation process. At each level of analysis, I look at the interests and expectations of two non-European actors or actor groups: the USA, which accounts for over a third of all Northern greenhouse gas emissions, and the group of developing countries, which accounts for the vast majority of humankind. I argue that Europe must take clear principled positions on a number of key issues, in particular the need to have a strong multilateral framework as the sole and core institutional setting for climate policy and to accept the principle of equal per-capita emissions entitlements as the long-term normative bedrock of global climate governance. Both positions, however, will alienate the USA, and both will make it more difficult for the USA to rejoin the international community on the climate issue.

Towards a New Method of Constitutional Bargaining? The Role and Impact of EU Institutions in the IGC and Convention Method of Treaty Reform

This paper looks at the impact of the change from negotiating EU treaty reform within intergovernmental conferences to the new convention method. As most existing studies of treaty reform explain actor influence based exclusively upon relative actor power and preferences prior to negotiation, in effect 'black boxing' the actual negotiation process, a bargaining model is created that theorizes on the impact of the change in negotiating context and conduct of negotiations for the ability of actor to translate bargaining resources into influence. The paper then describes three 'ideal types' of negotiating treaty reform, and the proceeds to investigate the opportunities for influence for EU institutions that each type of negotiating method opens. The paper finds that while the Council Secretariat has traditionally had many possibilities to gain influence in treaty reform negotiations, the new convention method had opened up many opportunities for both the Commission, and especially the European Parliament (EP), to gain influence. Yet to have influence these possibilities must be translated into real influence through the successful use of appropriate strategies in the negotiations. In the present European Convention, while the Commission has had too ambitious and often conflicting positions, central members of the EP delegation have had up to now relative success in building coalitions around their positions, although it is still too early to conclude on whether the MEP's will prove successful in translating their bargaining resources into influence over the final Constitutional Treaty. The conclusions point to the necessity for students of treaty reform of opening up the 'black box' of the actual treaty reform process to investigate how the context and conduct of negotiations matter – enabling us to better explain which actors won in a treaty reform negotiation and why.

The Role of Negotiation in Planning, Management, and Policy Analysis

Over the past two decades planners, analysts, and managers have all been urged to become more involved in the actual process of negotiation that surrounds all public policymaking. The article both summarizes the literature on how negotiation is emerging as a central feature of these three professions and provides three cases, all derived from litigation, in which the role of negotiator is required of the technician or neutral advisor. The article then suggests what is at stake when negotiation is adopted as a primary professional role.