ANALYZING DOCUMENTS

Documents are important sources of mate­rial about conflict and conflict-resolving approaches. Often they are the primary source of information about a conflict that occurred in the past.

An important contribution of content analysis is to the comparative analysis of conflict processes. Comparison is facilitated when the same categories are used to code conversations among disputing parties or their representatives in different negotiations. Recorded conversations between negotiators were the material used for coding labor - management disputes (Landsberger, 1955), religious conflict (McGrath and Julian, 1963), industrial wage negotiations (Stephenson et al., 1977), arms control talks (Bonham, 1971; Jensen, 1984), base rights negotiations (Druckman, 1986), and a variety of laboratory simulations (Zechmeister and Druckman, 1973; Pruitt and Lewis, 1977; Beriker and Druckman, 1996). Many of the coding sys­tems used in these studies evolved from Bales’ (1950) interaction process analysis. The changes reflect differences between problem­solving and negotiation groups, particularly with regard to the mixed-motive (cooperative and conflictual) features of negotiation.

The BPA system has been used to evaluate a number of hypotheses in a variety of cases. Hopmann’s (1978) analysis of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe showed that threat potential (how much a country stands to lose by no agreement) influenced the outcome (portion of the text authored by each member state). Exercising their right to use a veto over the agenda, the more powerful parties effectively prevented unfavorable decisions from being made. They acted together to preserve their joint interest in domination over their blocs and the nonaligned states. On the other hand, countries with low threat potential (Yugoslavia, Romania, France) became some­what influential by acting together on the basis of their common interest to change the prevailing structures.

Further evidence for super-power domi­nance - or structural asymmetry - comes from King’s (1979) study of the UN Special Session on Disarmament and from a study of the Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction talks discussed by Druckman and Hopmann (2002). Both these studies provided content­analysis evidence for a “bilateral condo­minium” between US and Soviet negotiators: they were more responsive to each other than to any of their allies. Many of these BPA studies were included in a multi-case analysis of responsiveness by Druckman and Harris (1990). These researchers found that a particular model, referred to as comparative reciprocity, best captured the way that bargainers responded to each other. Bargainers responded to each other's moves in similar ways across a variety of types of security talks: different parties, issues, time periods, and length. This study demonstrates the value of content analysis for creating data points in a time series used for comparative analyses.

The BPA system has also been used to compare processes in historical negotiations with those that take place in a laboratory simulation of those talks.

As is apparent from the studies reviewed above, content analysis has made many con­tributions to our understanding of negotiation processes. This may be due, in large part, to the quality of public documentation available for many cases. It is also due to the efforts that have been made to develop reliable and valid coding systems tailored to this kind of interaction. Add to this the care that has been taken to insure a systematic procedure, and the ingredients for a successful study are in place.