Trajectories Toward Peace: Mediator Sequencing Strategies in Intractable Communal Conflicts

The author identifies three distinct mediation sequencing strategies used in intractable communal conflicts: the gradualism model; a boulder-in-the-road approach; and the committee strategy. Using case examples of contemporary mediation efforts, he describes the three approaches and their advantages and disadvantages. A wider-angle approach to the differences in how mediators and conflicting parties achieve peace in these destructive conflicts is useful for both scholarly inquiry and practice.     

Ready for Prime Time: The When,Who, and Why of International Mediation

Most of the literature on international dispute resolution emphasizes timing and ripeness when considering whether or not a dispute is suitable for mediation. In addition to this focus, the authors believe analysts should consider whether a particular mediator is ready for prime time. Their framework posits that one may gauge the appropriateness of a mediator for a particular dispute along three different types of considerations: operational and political; strategic and diplomatic; and relationship and cultural fit. They provide numerous case examples illustrating how the choice of a mediator might apply in each dimension.     

The Cairo Stories: Some Reflections on Conflict Resolution in Egypt

The author relates three cases of conflict which he has observed in Cairo and recognizes patterns that cut across each of these stories. The stories shed light on how people in Egypt approach and deal with conflict; in addition, they may help readers understand conflict in their home culture as well as be instructive on how to listen to conflict in different cultures. Six general themes in the way Egyptians approach or handle conflict are identified, and each of these themes is analyzed.     

Caveats for Cross-Border Negotiators

Scholars and practitioners have detailed a number of ways that differences in national culture can affect bargaining behavior: from surface etiquette and protocol to deeper cultural characteristics and to systematic variations in decision making and governance. Such cross-national analysis can be quite useful but is prone to at least four hazardous fallacies described in this article and illustrated, in some cases, by probabilistic reasoning. Along with suggestions for avoiding them, these fallacies include: (1) The John Wayne v. Charlie Chan Fallacy (stereotyping); (2) The Rosetta Stone Fallacy (overattribution); (3) The Visual Flight Rules Fallacy (skewed perceptions and information processing); and (4) St. Augustine's Fallacy (When in Rome...).     

Sustained Dialogue in Managing Intractable Conflict

In the warn-torn new nation of Tajikistan, the author has been part of a five-stage dialogue for peace since 1993. The focus of the dialogue has been on transforming relationships and changing relationship dynamics so that this intractable conflict can be addressed positively. The author briefly describes this multilevel peace process both historically and substantively. He also discusses the continual process of evaluation of the Inter-Tajik dialogue effort as well as focuses on a series of questions that apply to intractable conflicts in general.     

Negotiation: The Chinese Concept

It is no understatement to say that negotiation activity has skyrocketed in China in recent years; however, these negotiations are frequently unsatisfactory. Part of the reason for this lack of success is that Chinese people have a conception of negotiation that is fundamentally different from that of people in the West. Based on extensive interviews with Chinese and non-Chinese negotiators over a period of five years, the author explains the Chinese approach by using two metaphors: mobile warfare and the joint quest. Understanding this approach has significant implications for negotiation practice.     

Framing “the Other”. A critical review of Vietnam war movies and their representation of Asians and Vietnamese

By considering a variety of films, in chronological sequence, I tried to make understandable the representations of Asians, and especially Vietnamese, by European and American filmmakers. While the themes changed from general war movies, through the depiction of bloodthirsty veterans and patriots towards the view of the victimized service men, the representation of the Vietnamese did not change dramatically. Vietnamese soldiers and civilians are portrayed as cunning, cruel, even sadistic, ambivalent, and irresponsible. These articulations of latent and manifest Orientalism in American movies about the Vietnam War are clear manifestations of a discourse which had broader consequences for the way Asians, or for that sake, Vietnamese, have been depicted. Where earlier movies showed a worldview, in which the Asian participants are reduced to simple pawns in a chess game between the superpowers, the post-1975 Vietnam syndrome genre betrayed a stereotype, which reified the Vietnamese as devious and unchanging. Even the films, which are considered to picture the war in more realistic terms, did not change the framing of the Vietnamese substantially. What changed was a manifest Orientalism, symbolized by stereotypes of the Yellow Peril, but the representation of latent Orientalism of the so-called anti-war movies remained. Current American and French cinematic production on Vietnam is not coming to terms with the past. The re-issued Apocalypse Now, Redux is part of a cultural memorial to remember the war in contradictory terms. We were soldiers is not about the Vietnamese and their war, but about we and us. The Other remains an unknown Oriental.This article is derived from a larger contribution to be published by Ravi Srilata and Mario Rutten (eds.) Europe in Asia, Asia in Europe. ISEAS and IIAS, 2003.     

Negotiating with Your Nemesis

The assumption that negotiators can and should eradicate emotions from negotiating is unrealistic. Instead, effective negotiators know how to handle emotional outbursts including how to respond when the other negotiator evokes their nemesis. A nemesis is the hidden part of ourselves that we project onto others who push our hot buttons. When emotions are intense, understanding the possibility that you may be giving or receiving a projection can help you sidestep escalatory behavior. This article explores the concept of the nemesis and offers practical steps for confronting it as well as responding to others' emotions at the negotiating table.     

Supplemental Joint Brainstorming: Navigating Past the Perils of Traditional Bargaining

Though decision makers in many domains use bargaining as their primary approach to negotiation, it has limited efficacy in multi-issue, nonquantifiable transactions. Nevertheless, many negotiators use back-and-forth bargaining rather than other approaches. The author explicates reasons for this choice and describes supplemental joint brainstorming, an innovative strategy to supplement the institutionally-entrenched bargaining approach to negotiation with interest-based negotiation.     

New Problem-Solving Scholarship: An Historical Tale with a Happy Ending

The teaching of negotiation in law, business, and other professional schools has greatly increased over the last quarter-century. The author sets the stage for a review of two negotiation texts and an educational video by opening with an historical overview of the development of negotiation pedagogy, which has been informed by scholars from many different academic disciplines. Teaching negotiation in law schools (which have a long tradition of the case method style of teaching, which often encourages an energetic but adversarial approach to problem solving) is still relatively new. The two texts and the educational video examined in this essay offer lessons in a wide angle approach to negotiation, which includes (among many other useful topics): ideas fundamental to theory and practice; social and emotional considerations; the role of cultural and gender difference; relationships between principals and representatives; differences among various types of ADR; and applications of various forms of negotiation in many different contexts.     

The Illusion of Transparency in Negotiations

The authors examined whether negotiators are prone to an illusion of transparency, or the belief that their private thoughts and feelings are more discernible to their negotiation partners than they actually are. In Study One, negotiators who were trying to conceal their preferences thought that their preferences had leaked out more than they actually did. In Study Two, experienced negotiators who were trying to convey information about some of their preferences overestimated their partners' ability to discern them. The results of Study Three rule out the possibility that the findings are simply the result of the curse of knowledge, or the projection of one's own knowledge onto others. Discussion explores how the illusion of transparency might impede negotiators' success.     

Techniques and sequences in mediation strategies: A proposed model for research

Most studies of mediation strategy focus on the how and what of the process, but fail to take into consideration when particular techniques are used. To improve our understanding of mediation strategies in general, the authors of this article propose a new methodological approach that includes an analysis of the particular techniques that are used as well as the order of their use.he is studying mediation in the Pacific Rim and international peacekeeping. John B. Stark, who is a doctoral student at the University of Missouri, plays chess and studies trust in organizations.     

Crafting the language of consensus

Conclusion In summary, the consensus process provides a necessary set of procedures and standards that provide the essential foundation for reaching mutually supported settlement of disputes. Adjudicatory or voting processes are antithetical to the very nature of the consensus process. When voting takes place, winners and losers are explicitly defined. This can lead to lessened support for implementation of solutions—and even to the losers preferring that implementation fail.As with any other processes, consensus-based processes can—and, at times, should—fail. Where consensus fails, participants will have recourse to other alternatives for making decisions, including administrative, legal, and political forums, the alternative forums which provided the impetus for disputing parties to seek mutually agreeable solutions through a consensus process. Gerald W. Cormick is a mediator specializing in public policy dispute settlement and a Senior Lecturer in the Graduate school of Public Affairs at the University of Washington. His mailing address is 15629 Cascadian Way, Mill Creek, Wash. 98102.This column is based on materials developed by the author for the British Columbia Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, 8 April 1991.     

Mediation and Psychotherapy: Two Sides of the Same Coin?

Some mediators believe that mediation and psychotherapy are quite similar, and that when doing mediation, the mediator also is practicing an art form similar to psychotherapy. On face value, some forms of mediation (e.g., evaluative) and some forms of psychotherapy (e.g., psychoanalysis) are so far apart in theoretical conception and in actual practice that they cannot be compared meaningfully. However, the forms of mediation known as facilitative and transformative and the forms of brief or focused psychotherapy that often involve families or couples do have considerable similarity. Overall, numerous resonances exist between these two approaches to mediation and to couples or family-oriented psychotherapies, especially when differences in terminology, licensure, and training requirements are not allowed to obscure commonalities.     

Analyzing linked systems of negotiations

This article presents a conceptual framework for analyzing the structure and dynamics of what the authors call linked systems of negotiations. Even such seemingly straightforward transactions as the purchase of a family car tend to involve linked negotiations. The framework highlights the importance of internegotiation processes in shaping Zones of Possible Agreement, and proposes a typology of linkage. By mapping out and reengineering linked systems, negotiators can enhance their ability to shape the structure within which their negotiations take place.     

The Wounded Bear and the Rising Dragon. The Sino-Russian relationship at the beginning of the 21st century: A view from Europe*

The evolving Sino-Russian relationship to a declared strategic partnership from the mid1990s until today is one of the most important strategic developments in the Asia-Pacific region. But despite an increasing strategic convergence between both sides in their foreign policy agendas, the pro-western foreign and security policies of the new Russian president Vladimir Putin have also complicated the bilateral Sino-Russian relationship already before September 11, 2001. While the Sino-Russian relationship is still guided by co-operation and common strategic interests in specific economic and foreign policy fields of both sides, it is also characterized by still existing mistrust as well as strategic rivalry. Meanwhile, Putins modified foreign policy has grown more cautious vis-à-vis China and, at the same time, has become more active in Central Asia, on the Korean peninsula, towards the United States and Europe in order to counterbalance the strategic trends of changing balances of regional forces to a perceived disadvantage of Moscow during the last years. In a broader context, however, the triangular relationship between these two great powers and the United States should no longer been exclusively seen through the prism of zero-sum games. A stable bilateral relationship between Moscow and Beijing that significantly contributes to both regional and global stability is also in the strategic interest of Washington and Europe.     

The Things Negotiators Do With Money

Deal-making negotiations, in the minds of most people, center on theamount of money that is involved in a transaction. However, the timing ofa money transfer, the different methods of payment, and the addition ofother parties to a negotiation are all factors that sometimes are just asimportant as the amount of the transaction. The author uses case examplesfrom a variety of recent negotiations to illustrate some of the ways thatthe who, when, and how of a deal can have significant impact on a negotiationprocess.     

Bringing Peace into the Room: The Personal Qualities of the Mediator and Their Impact on the Mediation

The training and development of mediators has focused primarily onenhancing mediators' technical skills and increasing their understandingof the theory behind the practice of mediation. This article focuses on athird aspect of the development of mediators - namely, their personalcharacteristics. The authors contend that a mediator'spresence - more afunction of who the mediator is than what he or she does - has a profoundimpact on the mediation process. Drawing on analogies fromresearch in the physical and social sciences, the article suggests that themost subtle influences of the mediator's affect and manner may in fact bepowerful influences in helping the mediator bring peace into theroom.     

Book Review: Facing the Decisions One Should Make and the Decisions One Wants to Make

Authors of two recent books, Smart Choices and The Win-Win-Solution, offer negotiation practitioners some new twists on how they can improve their decision-making processes. In the first book, Hammond, Keeney, and Raiffa present a five-part PrOACT system, which features: an assessment of the problem; determination of objectives; exploration of alternatives; comprehension of the consequences; and dealing with tradeoffs. The second book, by Brams and Taylor, outlines four settlement options that are available to decision makers, but advocates an adjusted winner approach. The authors have devised a system in which individuals' subjective assessments of particular items in dispute receive point totals, which can then be divided in an equitable manner. In effect, the authors show readers how to deal with the decisions they should make, and those they want to make.     

Fighting the wimp image: Why calls for negotiation often fall on deaf ears

Conclusion Must calls for war always dominate pleas for more serious negotiation? Not necessarily. But, if negotiation is to prevail, its advocates have to recognize which elements of their rhetoric sound weak and timid to others.Right after the routing of the Iraqis from Kuwait, the conventional wisdom was that American voters would repudiate those members of Congress who had argued for more negotiation — the surrender lobby, one belligerent called them. Iraq would teach elected officials not to talk of negotiation in the future. Now, barely a year from the start of hostilities, the verdict is not quite so clear. With Saddam still in power and the establishment of President Bush's new world order yet to be proven, opinion polls suggest that a growing number of Americans now regard the war as only a partial success. Public awareness of the costs of war, as well as its seeming benefits, can only be to the good, but apostles of negotiation should be careful not to read such numbers as vindication of their views. Skepticism about war still must be matched by some well-founded confidence in its alternative. Michael Wheeler is Director of the Undergraduate Program, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass. 02139. He is also Deputy Director of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.