Negotiation, the process of combining con­flicting positions into a joint agreement, is synonymous with conflict resolution, and is the most common (although not the only) way of preventing, managing, resolving, and transforming conflicts.

Indeed, there is little negotiation that does not have to do with conflict resolution. If one adopts a rational choice definition of war or violent conflict as bargaining failure (Fearon 1995; Reiter 2003), then successful bargaining or negotiation is the means of preventing or resolving violent conflict.

Such an understanding requires a return to the antecedent notion of conflict. Conflict arises from incompatible positions; it is ubiquitous, and not especially troublesome— worthy of resolution—in its static phase (Coser 1956; Aron 1957; Bernard 1957; Schelling 1960; Powelson 1972; Pruitt & Kim 2004). But when conflict becomes active and the parties take measures to make their particular position prevail, it does become troublesome; thus, escalation is the active form of conflict (Smoke 1977; Zartman & Faure 2005). It may block agreement that would permit cooperation to resolve a prob­lem, or it may continue to rise to the point of violence. Conflict continues to escalate until one of three outcomes are reached: victory of one side, painful stalemate forcing the parties to consider deescalation, and stable stalemate. Thus, negotiation as conflict resolution may be used to prevent conflict from escalating or from turning violent; it may be used to manage conflict—that is deescalate the means of its pursuit from violence to politics; or it may be the means to actually resolve the basic incompatibilities of positions or to transform them into cooperative relationships.

Since World War II, negotiation to produce a peace agreement has accounted for only about a sixth of the inter- and intrastate conflicts terminated and an eighth of those temporarily managed in a ceasefire, together accounting for something less than the number terminated by victory of one side over the other. Fully a quarter of those conflicts terminated by a conflict-resolving peace

Table 16.1 Conflict outcomes over time, 1946-2005

Source: Kreutz 2006

agreement during this period occurred in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War and another quarter in the decade since then.

These distinctions are all subsumed under the label of conflict resolution as used in this volume but they break down into two very distinct negotiation subtypes (Zartman 2007). Negotiating can be used to deal with conflict in the more common sense of reduc­ing violence, either by deescalating violent conflict or by preventing impending vio­lence from occurring: peace-making, peace enforcement, and part of peace-building, in UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros Ghali's (1994) operative distinctions. But it is also used in building cooperation, to reduce incompatibilities in positions even where no violence is involved, for conflict prevention or conflict transformation. Cooperative nego­tiations contain conflicts too or else there would be no need for negotiation, but they are not impelled by impending prospects of violence (Taylor 1987; Stein 1990; Stein & Pauly 1993; Zartman & Touval 2008). In addition, cooperative negotiations are most frequently multi- (or pluri-) lateral and only recently have been subject to systematic analysis, whereas bilateral negotiations have been the subject of most advanced theo­rization. While one might object that the two types are irreconcilably different and only the case of violent conflict resolution need be considered here, they are integrally tied together by the fact that untreated problems of cooperation may turn violent or may give rise to secondary violence. In addition, negotiation analysis is often equally relevant to cooperative and (violent) conflict negotiations, even though at times the distinction becomes analytically important and will be highlighted below at those junctures. Other distinctions in the type of conflict, between intrastate and interstate, may also have an impact that will be noted where relevant.

Given the relation of negotiation to conflict resolution, this chapter will focus on the ways in which negotiation is studied, in order to bring out current advances in the conceptualization of the subject and to highlight salient questions and areas where further advances are needed (Jonsson 2000; Telhami 2002; Carnevale & deDreu 2004).

Within the definition as the process of combining conflicting positions into a joint agreement, negotiation has certain character­istics that distinguish it from the two other basic types of decision-making, voting (coali­tion) and adjudication (hierarchy) (Zartman 1978; Lewicki et al. 2003, 4-6). It operates under a decision rule of unanimity, with a three-fold choice: yes, no, or continue negotiating (Ikle 1964). It creates a positive­sum outcome, in that no party would agree to the outcome unless it feels itself to be better off than without an agreement (its security point). Thus, negotiation involves an exchange of goods rather than a unilateral victory: negotiation is giving something to get something, so it involves moves by both/all sides, although not necessarily to an equal degree. It can be conducted in one of three ways: concession, compensation, and construction (reframing). Power in the process lies not in numbers or in authority but in alternatives (security point, again) and in persuasion.

The negotiation process operates under a loose bundle of norms that can be termed the Ethos of Equality. Like any norm, this ethos is not absolute, but it does underlie the conduct of negotiation around the world (Faure 2002). It begins with the formal structural equality of the parties, based on the fact that each has a veto over any agreement; therefore, the parties need to grant each other recognition with equal standing in the negotiations. From this, it extends to the behavioral setting that facilitates exchanges through the courtesy of symmetry that each party gives the other, even if the encounter is asymmetrical in other terms.

But first, the question of Why negotiate? needs to be addressed, before discussing the question, How negotiate? While parties— states, groups or individuals—generally pre­fer to resolve their problems unilaterally, where they can be in control of decisions and do not have to bend to other parties' interests, they find they have to involve others when resolution of the problem or conflict is beyond their unilateral means. Resolution may mean ending a conflict with another party or overcoming a problem that needs the participation of another party; it may mean ending a costly situation or creating a beneficial one. However, since there are a number of ways to provide social decisions with their own decision rules, including voting and hierarchy, parties resort to negotiation when there is no authoritative hierarchy and no decision rule of division. Those conditions describe the anarchy of the international relations system and the informality of personal relations. In addition, parties turn to negotiation when they want a sense of ownership over the outcome, which neither voting nor hierarchy provides (at least in the same measure).

Between the inability unilaterally to end (i.e. win) the conflict or solve the problem and the decision to negotiate (and then to agree on the terms created) bi- or multilaterally lies a large area of indecision, dominated primarily by the cost of alternatives, above all the cost of continued conflict or unsolved problems. The cost/benefit value of what a party can obtain without negotiating has many names, includ­ing security point, best/worst alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA/WATNA), reservation price, threat point, and others, and is the most important reference point in understanding and conducting a negotiation (Pillar 1983). It is the source of relative power and determines whether a party can play it tough or soft in negotiating (tough, if the security point is close to the expected outcome; soft, if the gap is great and there is much benefit to gain or much loss to be protected) (Kahneman & Tversky 1979;

Zartman 2006). If the estimated gap between the two is too small, parties are likely to let the unresolved conflict or problem continue, and may even bog down in an S⁵ situation (soft, stable, self-serving stalemate).