Negotiation and Conflict Management: Essays on Theory and Practice ( Security and Conflict Management)

308 Pages·2008·1.16 MB·English

Negotiation and Conflict Management
This book presents a series of essays by I William Zartman outlining the
evolution of the key concepts required for the study of negotiation and
conflict management, such as formula, ripeness, prenegotiation, media-
tion, power, process, intractability, escalation, order. Responding to a lack
of useful conceptualization for the analysis of international negotiation,
Zartman has developed an analytical framework and specific concepts that
can serve as a basis for both study and practice.
Negotiation is analyzed as a process, and is linked to other major
themes in political science such as decision, structure, justice and order.
This analysis is then applied to negotiations to manage particular types of
conflicts and cooperation, including ethnic conflicts, civil wars and
regime-building. It also develops typologies and strategies of mediation,
dealing with such aspects as leverage, bias, interest, and roles.
This book of essays by the leading exponent of negotiation and media-
tion will be of great interest to all students of negotiation, mediation and
conflict studies in general.
I William Zartman is the Jacob Blaustein Distinguished Professor of Inter-
national Organization and Conflict Resolution at the Nitze School of
Advanced International Studies of The Johns Hopkins University. He is
author of over 20 books on conflict management and negotiation.
Security and conflict management
Edited by:
Fen Osler Hampson
Carleton University, Canada
Chester Crocker
Georgetown University, Washington DC
Pamela Aall
United States Institute of Peace, Washington DC
This series will publish the best work in the field of security studies and
conflict management. In particular, it will promote leading-edge work that
straddles the divides between conflict management and security studies,
between academics and practitioners, and between disciplines.
1 Negotiation and Conflict Management
Essays on theory and practice
I William Zartman
Negotiation and Conflict
Management
Essays on theory and practice
I William Zartman
First published 2008
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007.
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collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2008 I William Zartman
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN 0-203-94525-5 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0-415-42950-1 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0-203-94525-5 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-42950-4 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-94525-4 (ebk)
Contents
List of illustrations vii
Introduction 1
PART I
Negotiations in concept 11
1 The study of negotiation 13
2 The 50% solution 32
3 Negotiation as a joint decision-making process 51
4 Negotiation as a search for justice 68
5 Justice in negotiation 82
6 The Structuralists’ Paradox in negotiation 100
7 Prenegotiation: phases and functions 117
8 In search of common elements in the analysis of the
negotiation process 128
9 Order as a political concept 140
PART II
Negotiation to manage conflict 153
10 International mediation 155
11 Negotiations and prenegotiations in ethnic conflict:
the beginning, the middle, and the ends 174
vi Contents
12 Structures of escalation and negotiation 193
13 Negotiating the rapids: the dynamics of regime
formation 208
14 Ripeness revisited: the push and pull of conflict
management 232
15 Negotiating with terrorists: when, how and why? 245
16 Methods of analysis: case studies 257
Notes 267
References 271
Index 293
Illustrations
Figures
2.1 Negotiating fronts 39
2.2 Pareto-optimality and the negotiating front 40
6.1 Power as an added value 105
Tables
5.1 Principles of justice 98
12.1 The stairs of escalation 203

Introduction
International security is achieved by conflict management, and conflict
management is accomplished above all by negotiation. It is not the expen-
sive military hardware that assures the security of a state and its inhabit-
ants, but the diplomacy associated with its use and non-use. Insecurity
arises from problems unsolved and conflicts unmanaged; it is the solution
of problems and the resolution of conflicts that bring security to states in
their relations with each other and to the populations they contain. Only
when insufficient attention and effort are devoted to solutions and resolu-
tions, are defense and armaments – ultima ratio regis (“the king’s final
argument”) as a seventeenth-century cannon bore on its barrel – brought
into action. At that point, even military means may not assure security,
and in any case, negotiation and management of conflict are more neces-
sary than ever.
Hence negotiation has a role to play in three acts – in the “prologue,”
when the conflict is merely an issue or a problem, to prevent it from
getting worse; during the conflict if the first has failed, to provide solu-
tions and resolutions; and in the crisis, if the first two have failed, to bring
the escalation and violence to an end. Negotiation is a calling for all
seasons, the means of devising cooperative solutions to problems and
political alternatives to violence. For conflict situations are omnipresent in
human and social relations. Conflict refers simply to an incompatibility of
positions, a static situation when mutually exclusive views are present.
Escalation is dynamic conflict, an effort to prevail in a contest between
those incompatible positions. When one party decides to increase its
efforts, the other may decide to give in or to increase its own efforts too.
And so it goes. In either case, negotiation is needed to bring the conflict
to an end, to decide the terms of the outcome jointly whether one party
prevails or all parties stalemate in their efforts to prevail.
Thus, negotiation is a universal and fascinating topic. But it is more.
Conflict too is universal and inherent in social activity, and deadlock and
violence – escalated conflict (Chapter 12) – are frequent, instinctive possi-
bilities, despite their cost, pain and ultimate ineffectiveness. Some things
are worth that escalation and not everything is negotiable, but for the