Multi-stakeholder Negotiation Research Articles

International Negotiations in the Digital Age

The digital revolution has a significant impact on world politics, including the practice of international negotiations and diplomacy, which, being extremely conservative areas of human activity, still have to adapt to the new digital reality conditions. The practice of digital diplomacy, which involves using social networks to interact with a wide international audience, is becoming widespread. New diplomacy formats are emerging that focused on working with big data, machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies. This study explores the impact of the digital revolution on the practice of international negotiations. Methodologically, the analysis is based on the structural-functional approach, according to which international negotiations act as a structural element of diplomacy and foreign policy. At the same time, the authors single out the invariants of negotiations, which include the stages of international negotiations - preparation phase, discussions and implementation of the results of negotiations. The digital revolution is changing the nature of international negotiations, creating new opportunities for negotiation tactics, as well as new challenges, primarily related to information security and confidentiality. In addition, the development of digital technologies produces new subject areas of international negotiations that focus on Internet regulation, information security and other digital society problems, and contributes to the emergence and development of new international negotiations formats - multistakeholder negotiations and online remote negotiations. The authors conclude that the main negotiation invariants remain the same. However, digital technologies are transforming the available negotiating tools and tactics. Under these conditions, new knowledge and competencies are in demand among diplomats, in particular, in the field of data management and information security.

Editorial Issue 2/2022: The Heritage of Water-Related Infrastructures and Governance

Editorial Issue 2/2022: The Heritage of Water-Related Infrastructures and Governance

The political logics of EU-FLEGT in Thailand’s multistakeholder negotiations: Hegemony and resistance

The reduction of illegal logging and related trade has been on the international policy agenda since the 1990s. The EU's Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade initiative (EU-FLEGT) seeks to address illegal logging through a scheme that rests on multistakeholder negotiations. However, past initiatives seeking to reform forest governance in the global South have reproduced the uneven outcomes of colonial forest governance by further empowering national government authorities. In the case of Thailand, FLEGT negotiations between November 2013 and April 2021 succeeded in opening a political space for civil society to engage with government actors. However, FLEGT negotiations during this period failed to address the uneven outcomes of forest governance, benefiting elites at the expense of the rural poor due to an 'anti-politics effect. The FLEGT multistakeholder negotiations did not consider the uneven historical relations to land and resource rights nor the intrinsic power dynamics of different actor groups. As such, dominant actors from the government and private sector succeeded in structuring the terrain of the FLEGT negotiations to determine which civil society demands for reforms to tenure and resource rights they would concede, and which they would not.

Competing claims in land-use policy: property development and mineral aggregates industries

This paper offers an empirically grounded understanding of the historical processes by which economic and institutional actors, particularly industry networks operating over time, influenced regional-scale land use policies at critical junctures involving land conflicts. The research addresses understudied discourses, practices and relationships associated with changes in land use policy. The paper draws on theories of land conflicts and industry networks to examine multi-actor contestations over land use and growth. It highlights the role of industry networks of the property development and aggregate industries in influencing provincial land use policies. Using a multi-method approach, we examine a case of Ontario provincial government brokerage of conflicting proposals for the development of regional-scale lands on Toronto’s urban periphery. A key finding is that fundamental differences in the organization and bargaining power of the two industries translate into differential effectiveness in multi-stakeholder negotiations.

A Classroom Simulation of the Syrian Conflict

ABSTRACTThis article describes a semester-long classroom simulation of the Syrian conflict designed for an introductory international relations (IR) course. The simulation culminates with two weeks of multi-stakeholder negotiations addressing four issues: humanitarian aid, economic sanctions, ceasefire, and political transition. Students randomly play one of 15 roles involving three actor types: states, non-state actors, and international organizations. This article outlines the costs and benefits of simulation design options toward encouraging students’ understanding of IR concepts, and it proposes a course plan for tightly integrating lectures, readings, assessment, and simulation—regardless of class size or length. We highlight this integration through a discussion of two weeks’ worth of material—domestic politics and war, and non-state actors—and the incorporation of bargaining concepts and frameworks into the two weeks of simulated multi-stakeholder negotiations.

Cameron's pre-Brexit settlement for the UK within the European Union- failure or missed opportunity

While the vote on Brexit showed a narrow yes to leave the EU, the most stunning effect was the end of former Prime Minister (PM) Cameron's political career. The vote was a surprise to many including Cameron himself who negotiated intensely with the EU members before the Brexit vote and got a surprisingly high number of concessions with the hope that the Brexit vote would be negative and that the UK would remain a member of the EU. This article endeavours to assess these concessions PM Cameron obtained before the vote, and how they were obtained. Multi-stakeholder theory and multi-actor negotiation theory have been applied to shed light on the negotiation process and a final closing section assesses whether these concessions were insufficient or whether the concessions were not communicated adequately by PM Cameron and his government.

Business diplomacy and international strategic alliances

Many of the pressures that internationally active enterprises have to face are related to social issues in management rather than the traditional business of international strategic management. Some of these pressures are linked to non-state actors who can engender conflicts between states and between states and enterprises, often with significant economic impact and can play a powerful role in promoting either the resolution or renewal of conflict. Both companies and government agencies must take this into account in the event of a conflict. Business diplomacy can greatly help prevent a sliding into an impasse of a strategic alliance negotiation and if already in the process of negotiation, business diplomacy competence can help a company face multi-stakeholder issues and multi-actor negotiations which are often part of complex strategic alliance negotiations.

Exploring Cooperative Transboundary River Management Strategies for the Eastern Nile Basin.

A water resource modeling process is demonstrated to support multistakeholder negotiations over transboundary management of the Nile River. This process addresses the challenge of identifying management options of new hydraulic infrastructure that potentially affects downstream coriparian nations and how the management of existing infrastructure can be adapted. The method includes an exploration of potential management decisions using a multiobjective evolutionary algorithm, intertwined with an iterative process of formulating cooperative strategies to overcome technical and political barriers faced in a transboundary negotiation. The case study is the addition of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) and considers how its operation may be coordinated with adaptations to the operations of Egypt's High Aswan Dam. The results demonstrate that a lack of coordination is likely to be harmful to downstream riparians and suggest that adaptations to infrastructure in Sudan and Egypt can reduce risks to water supplies and energy generation. Although risks can be substantially reduced by agreed releases from the GERD and basic adaptations to the High Aswan Dam, these measures are still insufficient to assure that no additional risk is assumed by Egypt. The method then demonstrates how improvements to water security for both downstream riparians can be achieved through dynamic adaptation of the operation of the GERD during drought conditions. Finally, the paper demonstrates how the robustness of potential management arrangements can be evaluated considering potential effects of climate change, including increased interannual variability and highly uncertain changes such as increases in the future persistence of droughts.

The CLIOSjre Process: A Flexible Multicriteria, Multistakeholder Decision Framework for Transportation Planning under Uncertainty

Transportation investments determine the long-term success or failure of a transportation provider. It is therefore vital for decision makers to have an in-depth understanding of the alternatives available before they choose to invest. However, often, the process of evaluating alternatives is lengthy, costly, and contentious, particularly for transportation infrastructure investment decisions that are large, complex, and interconnected with other economic development and sustainability goals. Furthermore, transportation investments involve many decision makers, each with different priorities and expertise. Therefore, there is a need for transparent, accurate, flexible, and practicable decision-making aids that can handle the complex challenges facing the decision-making bodies of transportation providers and planning organizations. This paper introduces a new decision aid—the CLIOSjre Process—that combines insights from multicriteria decision analysis, multistakeholder negotiation theory, and uncertainty analysis. The CLIOSjre Process helps decision makers compare multiple alternatives across multiple objectives and seek an informed collective transportation investment decision. Unlike other multicriteria decision aids, the CLIOSjre Process accounts for differences of opinion among decision makers and is designed to facilitate constructive negotiation among them. Finally, the CLIOSjre Process formally accounts for sources of uncertainty inherent in these decisions. In this way, the CLIOSjre Process provides a unique and flexible framework for investment analysis that can adapt to changes in transportation alternatives, decision-maker priorities, and emerging real-world conditions. The usefulness of this new decision aid is illustrated for the East Japan Railway Company’s consideration of a transportation investment opportunity in high-speed rail development on the Northeast Corridor of the United States.

Learning on ecosystem services co-production in decision-making from role-playing simulation: Comparative analysis from Southeast Europe

Role-playing simulations (RPSs)—a type of serious games—involve face-to-face mock decision making with multi-stakeholder negotiation. In decision making, they are often adopted to operate representations of central features of reality, highlighting rules and trade-offs, knowledge and learning-by-doing, motivations and negotiation processes.This study applies an RPS to investigate the mechanisms of activation of ecosystem services (ES) flow, as a result of co-production of the actors involved in a decision-making process. Against a common setting and predetermined objectives, arrangements negotiating ES and associated motivations are analyzed in relation to the RPS characters and their roles in the ES flow. This study applies a comparative experimental approach to support a transnational capacity-building process on sustainable local development through renewable energy sources. The RPS was replicated in 10 sessions in eight Southeast European countries, with almost 230 participants from marginal rural landscapes.From the results, we highlight the variability of the selection of ES, and the arrangements and motivations within each RPS session. ES arrangements emerge from group-based decision-making processes, where pools of players are pivotal in analyzing, assessing, and orienting decisions, beyond pre-existing expert knowledge on ES. Strengths and limitations of the method are discussed in the context of simulation practices.

When the Default is No Penalty: Negotiating Privacy at the NTIA

Consumer privacy protection is largely within the purview of the Federal Trade Commission. In recent years, however, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) at the Department of Commerce has hosted multistakeholder negotiations on consumer privacy issues. The NTIA process has addressed mobile apps, facial recognition, and most recently, drones. It is meant to serve as a venue for industry self-regulation. Drawing on the literature on co-regulation and on penalty defaults, I suggest that the NTIA process struggles to successfully extract industry expertise and participation against a dearth of federal data privacy law and enforcement. This problem is most exacerbated in precisely the areas the NTIA currently addresses: consumer privacy protection around new technologies and practices. In fact, industry may be more likely to see the NTIA process as itself penalty-producing and, thus, be disincentivized from meaningful participation or adoption.

Participant perceptions of consensus-based, marine mammal take reduction planning

This study employs Structural Equation Models (SEMs) to systematically analyze the components of a multi-stakeholder negotiation in an applied setting. It characterizes participant perceptions of a multi-stakeholder, consensus-based negotiation process used to reduce harmful interactions between marine mammals and fishing gear in U.S. waters (marine mammal Take Reduction Teams). From April to July 2013, 234 current and former participants of eight Take Reduction Teams received a survey with 15 questions about the negotiation process, outputs (Take Reduction Plans), and outcomes. The SEMs depict relationships among the latent variables of social capital and shared learning, fairness, stakeholder satisfaction with the Take Reduction Plans, and their perceived outcomes. The SEMs also explain the influence of independent predictors of team identity and age, geographic region, and stakeholder affiliation on the latent variables. Results indicate that stakeholder views of fairness significantly influenced their satisfaction with the Take Reduction Plans, which in turn, significantly affected their opinions of the outcomes. While the majority of participants believed the plans were at least slightly successful at reducing marine mammal bycatch, this varied among teams and was significantly influenced by stakeholder affiliation, region, and Take Reduction Team age.

From Co-Management to Landscape Governance: Whither Ghana’s Modified Taungya System?

Natural resource management literature has documented three paradigm shifts over the past decade: from co-management to adaptive co-management and adaptive governance respectively and, more recently, towards landscape governance. The latter is conceived as a governance approach towards negotiated land use at the landscape level to deal with global challenges such as food insecurity, climate change and biodiversity loss. There is not a lot of clarity about how co-management systems could actually evolve into landscape governance. This paper aims to address the gap by exploring how a stalled co-management system for the reforestation of degraded forest areas—the modified taungya system (MTS) in Ghana—could be revitalised and redesigned as a landscape approach. Drawing on case studies and expert consultation, the performance of the national MTS and the MTS under the Community Forestry Management Project is reviewed with regard to five principles (integrated approach, multi-stakeholder negotiation, polycentric governance, continual learning and adaptive capacity) and three enabling conditions (social capital, bridging organisations and long-term funding) distilled from the literature. The authors conclude that some of these principles and conditions were met under the Community Forestry Management Project, but that continual learning, transcending jurisdictional boundaries, developing adaptive capacity, and long-term funding and benefits still pose challenges.

A model of the science–practice–policy interface in participatory land-use planning: lessons from Laos

An essential task of participatory action-research is to help close the policy implementation gap that leads to large discrepancies between policy frameworks and local practices. Too often, official regulations, laws and decrees fail to translate into concrete action on the ground. Loose institutional linkages between research, extension and local communities are often blamed as the main culprits for this gap. In turn, many stakeholders call for enhanced participation as a way to bring together scientists, development practitioners and local communities in negotiating competing claims for natural resources and designing realistic pathways towards sustainable development. Despite such general consensus about the value of participation, the latter cannot be decreed nor imposed. Participation is an emerging quality of collective-action and social-learning processes. In this paper, the experience of participatory land-use planning conducted in Laos serves to illustrate a model of the science–practice–policy interface that was developed to facilitate the interactions between three groups of stakeholders, i.e. scientists, planners and villagers, in designing future landscapes. Emphasis was put on developing an approach that is generic and adaptive enough to be applied nationally while engaging local communities in context-sensitive negotiations. The set of tools and methods developed through action-research contributed to enhanced communication and participation from initial consultation and cooperation stages towards collective decision-making and action. Both the activity of landscape design and the resulting patterns can be improved by incorporating landscape science in strategic multi-stakeholder negotiations.

U.S. Food Aid Reform Through Alternative Dispute Resolution

The United States is the single largest provider of international food aid, yet maintains some of the most controversial food aid policies. Public and political critique of these policies — primarily concerning fiscal and humanitarian efficiency — has been strong since early 2005; however, these critics and the movements for reform they have spurred have been largely unsuccessful. This Note examines the recent pushes for U.S. food aid reform, beginning with those of the Bush administration, and continuing up to the recent reforms proposed in President Obama’s FY2014 budget proposal, and the Food Aid Reform Act (H.R. 1938). This Note aims specifically to highlight the key stakeholders on each side of the reform debate: the bipartisan alliances vying for reform, and the agricultural, maritime, and international development industries opposing reform. Through an examination of the divergent stakeholder interests and goals, as well as of the tactics used to achieve reform, this Note concludes that the success of reform could have been improved with the use of key alternative dispute resolution (ADR) tactics; namely, multi-stakeholder negotiations moderated by a facilitative mediator.

Understanding Integrated Environmental Assessment in a Multi-Stakeholder Negotiation via Role-Play

This article explains how a role-play game (RPG) can allow participants to get insights on the dynamics of incorporating scientific advice into adversarial policymaking. A RPG called GROUND-LEVEL OZONE (GLO) simulates a multi-stakeholder negotiation based on the recommendations of an integrated environmental assessment (IEA) for urban air quality management. Structured debriefing of the RPG used questionnaire survey of participants’ perceptions of IEA usefulness as well as participants’ feedback about the use of the IEA and performance of the facilitators during negotiations. By linking those perceptional and behavioral patterns to the negotiated outcomes, the debriefing drew much broader insights on the importance of upstream engagement for enhanced legitimacy of the IEA and constructive roles of a facilitator in a multi-stakeholder negotiation. This article also critically reviews the debriefing method and suggests a new design of more sophisticated debriefing method and a new RPG for more effective learning of the dynamics of the use of IEA in a multi-stakeholder negotiation in the future.

A Landscape Planning and Management Tool for Land and Water Resources Management: An Example Application in Northern Ethiopia

Land and water degradation due to on-site soil/nutrient loss and off-site pollution/sedimentation are serious environmental problems. Landscape planning and management tools are essential to implement best management practices targeted at locations where they are needed most. Although many soil/water-landscape studies have been published in the last 2 decades, progress in developing operational tools for supporting landscape planning to minimize land and water degradation in developing regions is still modest. Some of the existing tools are data demanding and/or complicated to be useful to data scarce regions. Some require detailed understanding of the hydrological and modelling processes and thus less applicable to local stakeholders involved in land use planning and management. A user-friendly LAndscape Planning and MAnagement Tool (LAPMAT) developed to facilitate land management decision-making. LAPMAT is a menu-oriented interactive graphical user interface that can aid decision makers identify hotspot areas of soil erosion and evaluate the effects of alternative land use management practices at a catchment scale. The modelling framework and its interfaces are designed to guide the user through a series of menus that: 1) allow input model parameters, adjusting coefficients, visualizing input parameters and executing the model; 2) enable changing land use and management practices and re-evaluating potential consequences; 3) allow viewing results in tabular, graphical or map form side-by-side; and 4) (re)-evaluating the respective impacts of management/conservation options. The framework has been applied to assess the severity of soil erosion and simulate the impact of different land management practices using the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) adjusted for sediment delivery ratio in an example catchment of northern Ethiopia. The results showed average sediment yield rate of 55 t ha−1 y−1. Conservation measures targeted at high soil loss areas and gullies gave the maximum reduction in sediment yield by about 80 %. Since LAPMAT allows users handle the selection of management/planning options and provide fast and responsive outputs, it can assist in effective multi-stakeholder negotiations over land-use planning where the minimization of land/water degradation is the ultimate goal.

Transboundary Dialogue and Cooperation: First Lessons from Igniting Negotiations on Joint Management of the Mayombe Forest in the Congo Basin

This paper questions the conduct of key processes and outcome of preliminary actions leading to national engagements and commitment for the management of transboundary protected areas and how these fit into the broader picture of multi-stakeholder negotiation and collaboration framework. Using the participatory learning and action method, authors accompanied stakeholders (consultants, facilitators, experts and Ministers from Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Congo) in negotiating the Mayombe forest transboundary protected area. Main activities carried out were baseline studies, internal meetings and multiparty meetings organized in the respective countries, Kinshasa (DRC) and Cabinda (Angola). Results show that the negotiation process was initially win-lose during the first multiparty meeting. These worsen to a lose-lose scenario in the second meeting. At this stage the process was rather externally-driven. After serious internal meetings and the intervention of senior officials it finally moved to a win-win situation as a result of increased national ownership. Since the ministers from the three countries were able to reverse the negotiation outcome, it appears that the views of high level government authorities are essential in preliminary arrangements in transboundary dialogue and cooperation. As such, protected areas negotiation schemes should not be limited to technical expertise but rather be inclusive of politics at the national and regional level. It is expected that increased national-level and local-level ownership would further improve the win-win tendencies

Analysing national practices after European state aid control: are multi-stakeholder negotiations beneficial for public service broadcasting?

This article analyses the increasing emphasis on multi-stakeholder approaches in the development of public broadcasting policies. The European Commission, in particular, reinforces this trend, having pointed to the necessity of ‘third parties’ being involved in procedures that allow public broadcasters to expand activities to new media markets. The article’s research question is twofold. First, what type of multi-stakeholder approach has been advocated for by the Commission? Second, are multi-stakeholder approaches, implemented by Member States after an encounter with the Commission, adding to more democratic (understood as more inclusive) decision-making on public service broadcasting or, rather, simply providing an additional forum for private sector interests? Evidence derives from two case studies in the Netherlands and Flanders, where some form of ex ante evaluation has been developed and a multi-stakeholder consultation has been set up in preparation for management contract renewals. Findings show that the newly developed multi-stakeholder policy practices are far from inclusive and fail to meet several aspects of deliberative democracy. Essentially, they have been created in response to market pressures (and, hence, over-focus on market questions) and rarely take as their starting point the improvement of public service broadcasting as a democratic policy project.

Integrating human rights in emerging regulation of Corporate Social Responsibility: the EU case

AbstractThis article analyses the EU Commission's policy-based approach to regulating Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and the role of international human rights law as a normative source for the regulatory output in two initiatives launched in 2002 and 2006. The article argues as a starting point that the understanding of CSR as ‘beyond law’ tends to shroud the contributions that international human rights law and legal theory based regulatory technique lend to CSR normativity and regulation, not only outside the EU but also within. The EU experience shows that due to power relations and their impact on multi-stakeholder negotiations and their outcome, this potential does necessarily unfold. It also shows that the procedural design of reflexive multi-stakeholder regulatory processes is significant for bringing forth the normative contributions of international law to CSR in public–private regulation. Finally, the article suggests that within the public policy context in which EU CSR regulation is emerging, the normative role of international human rights law which the Commission suggests for CSR in Europe and the application of the reflexive regulatory technique contribute to a substantive as well as procedural juridification of CSR, especially in the formative stage of defining CSR normativity. The latter adds a significant new perspective to the understanding of CSR and its relation to law, although it need not conflict with the understanding of CSR being ‘voluntary’ in the sense of action beyond direct legal obligations.