Public Commitment in Crisis Bargaining

The "audience cost" literature argues that highly-resolved leaders can use public threats to credibly signal their resolve in incomplete-information crisis bargaining, thereby overcoming informational asymmetries that lead to war. If democracies are better able to generate audience costs, then audience costs help explain the democratic peace. We use a game-theoretic model to show how public commitments can be used coercively as a source of bargaining leverage, even in a complete-information setting in which they have no signaling role. When both sides use public commitments for bargaining leverage, war becomes an equilibrium outcome. The results provide a rationale for secret negotiations as well as hypotheses about when leaders will claim that the disputed good is indivisible, recognized as a rationalist explanation for war. Claims of indivisibility may just be bargaining tactics to get the other side to make big concessions, and compromise is still possible in equilibrium.     

Bargaining When the Future of an Industry Is at Stake: Lessons from UAW–Ford Collective Bargaining Negotiations

The 2007 American automobile industry labor negotiations involved fundamental challenges for labor and management, including a historic shift of responsibility in the management of retiree health care, a need for new approaches to core employment security issues, identification of ways to create new unionized jobs in the industry, and a joint commitment to the competitive viability of U.S. operations. Less visible, but no less important in the United Auto Workers–Ford case, has been unprecedented levels of information sharing and unique innovations in the bargaining process designed to enable problem solving even when tough issues were on the table. More than 300 people were directly involved in the negotiations, serving at the main table and on twenty‐four subcommittees. This case study covers the context for the negotiations, key events leading up to the bargaining, a unique process of “bargaining over how to bargain,” the actual negotiation process, and the results achieved. Implications are generalizable to the broader concept of pattern bargaining and many other types of negotiations when transformation is on the table.     

“一带一路”倡议背景下中国的国际能源合作

中国的国际能源合作与能源安全是"一带一路"倡议的重要组成部分。"一带一路"战略的实施将从能源来源、战略通道、合作机制、基础设施等多个方面为解决我国能源安全问题提供有力支撑。"一带一路"背景下中国的国际能源合作布局,有效避免了对某一国家或者某一地区能源进口的过度依赖。中国与"一带一路"沿线国家不断推进合作,积极利用现有双多边合作机制,有力推动了区域与跨区域能源合作。"一带一路"沿线国家油气资源丰富、资源国出口多元化和消费国进口多元化需求契合、炼油化工技术和建设施工能力较弱,为中国企业提供了大量新的合作机遇。但中国企业在能源合作环境复杂多变、大国因素的干扰、非传统安全威胁、合作国的能源政策因素等方面也存在挑战。论文最后提出了在新形势下对中国国际能源合作的战略思考。     

Back-Channel Negotiation: International Bargaining in the Shadows

Back‐channel negotiations (BCNs) are officially sanctioned negotiations conducted in secret between the parties to a dispute. These extraordinary negotiations operate in parallel with, or replace, acknowledged front channels of negotiation. Back channels are like the black markets of negotiation; they are separate tables where bargaining takes place in the shadows. When front‐channel negotiations fail, they are sometimes eclipsed by successful BCNs even though the same principals, conflicts, and sociopolitical contexts are involved. This article asks: Why do decision makers deploy back channels? What is the impact of BCN on international peace processes? The Palestinian–Israeli peace process, in which both back and front channels have been used consistently, provides the basis for comparing channels and offering initial answers to these questions. The author concludes that while BCN can facilitate breakthrough agreements, it can also damage a peace process by helping to reinforce some of the uncertainties that gave rise to the use of back channels in the first place.     

美洲自由贸易协定谈判中主要谈判方的博弈

由于美国和一些拉美国家(南共市成员国)对建立美洲自由贸易区的预期有着根本的不同,因此在农业、环境、知识产权、劳工标准、服务贸易等关键性问题的谈判中相持不下。自2004年以来,美洲自由贸易协定的谈判一直陷于停滞状态。本文从主要谈判方的立场和方式的变化来分析美洲自由贸易协定谈判的博弈过程,并着重分析主要谈判方在农业和环境领域的谈判中为何陷入僵局以及打破僵局的可能性。     

“后猛虎时代”斯里兰卡反分裂形势及民族关系分析

在斯里兰卡,民族关系与分裂主义始终呈双线演进的态势。在军事上击败猛虎组织之后,斯里兰卡的民族问题并没有得到彻底的解决。在后猛虎时代,斯里兰卡反分裂形势及民族关系仍然严峻。一方面,国内的暴力分裂主义和国外泰米尔散居者的非暴力分裂主义仍然存在及加速整合;另一方面,国内的民族关系未见好转,泰米尔政治势力不断被边缘化,而政府的民族政策仍未明朗。     

Immovable Positions: Public Acknowledgment and Bargaining in Military Basing Negotiations

Why might public acknowledgment of cooperative security negotiations generate bargaining constraints that provoke stalemate? Previous scholarship points to aroused public opinion. Yet in many cases where hard-line bargaining stances develop and talks collapse following public acknowledgment, it is not domestic political pressures that tie leaders’ hands. This article examines instead an international constraint attendant to publicity: opposition by third-party states. I argue that international power position shapes the balance of vulnerability between the negotiating parties to abandonment and entanglement. The act of official acknowledgment can constrain the more vulnerable partner by enabling third-party states to credibly scrutinize its intentions. By threatening strained relations, such scrutiny can create a security dilemma that reduces the weaker partner's bargaining range to a choice between cooperation on its terms and noncooperation. I evaluate this argument by studying foreign military basing negotiations. Statistical analyses and a comparative case study produce strong support for my argument.     

Collective Bargaining in the Twenty-First Century: A Negotiations Institution at Risk

Collective bargaining, a core social institution, faces a fundamental transformational challenge. National survey data provide unique insights into the current status of the bargaining process — revealing challenges and opportunities. Awareness and use of interest-based bargaining principles is widespread but complicated by underlying tensions between labor and management. The findings illustrate the value of conducting an institutional-level analysis of a negotiations process.     

Hard Bargaining in the Classroom: Realistic Simulated Negotiations and Student Values

Empirical research into the negotiation practices of lawyers shows that “hard bargaining,” including at least some unethical conduct, is an inescapable fact of a lawyer's life. To prepare students for legal practice, negotiation instructors must expose them to hard bargaining in the classroom. In doing so, however, instructors should be sensitive to the moral and ethical values of their students, so that the classroom experience does not unduly pressure students to compromise their values. The simulation is the primary tool of negotiation instruction. By selecting and manipulating simulations, a negotiation instructor can expose students to a wide range of negotiating behaviors, from distributive negotiations marked by the use of power tactics to value‐creating negotiations in which participants must consider many interests and collaborative strategies predominate. With that flexibility, however, comes the potential for classroom exercises to pressure students, in ways both subtle and overt, to adopt behaviors that feel uncomfortable. In this article, I examine the use of simulations to teach different types of negotiating behavior, including hard bargaining. Referring to a number of widely available simulations, I suggest ways to focus student attention on three dimensions of negotiation behavior — the issues over which the parties are bargaining, the objectives the parties seek, and the tactics the parties use to achieve their objectives — in order to push students to reflect on their own negotiation behaviors and to prepare for the tactics of others. I assess the potential for simulations to pressure students to compromise their values, and I conclude with my own thoughts on the goals of a negotiation course.     

Buyer and Seller Differences in Business‐to‐Business Negotiations

The purpose of this article is twofold: first, to examine the differences between buyers' and sellers' use of negotiation tactics in face‐to‐face business‐to‐business (B2B) negotiations and second, to explore how negotiators' professed negotiation styles influence buyers' and sellers' use of tactics. The methodology is a multiple case study analysis of eighteen negotiators representing twelve companies in six real‐life buyer–seller negotiations in B2B settings analyzed using qualitative research methods, including both comparative analysis and frequency analysis. We found some difference between buyers' and sellers' use of negotiation tactics, which suggests this question deserves further empirical study. Buyers' and sellers' use of specific tactics differs according to which overall strategy the negotiators chose, and sellers generally use a greater number of negotiation tactics than buyers. The findings challenge previous findings that suggest that B2B negotiations are collaborative and that negotiators communicate in a collaborative manner. The findings also increase our understanding of buyers' and sellers' variable use of tactics in the course of everyday practice as well as the interplay between negotiation tactics and strategies.     

Revisiting Global Governance in Multistakeholder Initiatives: Club Governance Based on Ideational Prealignments

Multistakeholder initiatives that bring together actors from the state, the business sector and society to formulate, implement and/or monitor rules governing different policy fields have assumed a prominent role in global governance since the 1980s. In the governance literature, it is generally assumed that the actors from the three sectors have diverse interests, but contribute different resources. This should allow to address transnational problems more effectively. While cooperation among the various collective actors in these initiatives might be based in part on complementary resources, we argue here that such cooperation is also shaped and conditioned by ideational prealignments of the participating actors. Such ideational prealignments are consequential, because they predetermine (1) the composition of multistakeholder forums in terms of which actors participate and which do not, (2) the processes that govern these forums, (3) the results of these forums and (4) the relations among the collective actors who participate in these forums and the stakeholders they are deemed to represent. When viewed from this perspective, multistakeholder initiatives are a form of club governance that is based on ideational factors. We illustrate this argument by drawing on research that examines the setting of standards for private military and security companies (PMSCs).     

Bargaining Styles and Negotiation: The Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument in Negotiation Training

Many negotiation courses and executive training programs cover the subject of bargaining styles. The Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI) is a commonly used psychological assessment tool that helps students and teachers probe this topic. The TKI measures the five conflict management facets proposed by the Dual Concerns Model: competing, collaborating, compromising, accommodating, and avoiding. The author has used the TKI extensively in teaching executives about bargaining styles, and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of it as a teaching aid. He also presents research on the frequency with which various TKI scores are reported in business programs. Finally, he provides thumbnail sketches of typical bargaining behavior exhibited by people with very strong and very weak predispositions for each of the five conflict modes. Some implications of these behaviors for specific professional audiences are explored.     

The Walk in the Woods: A Step‐by‐Step Method for Facilitating Interest‐Based Negotiation and Conflict Resolution

In this article, we describe a method we have used successfully in both academic and professional settings to rapidly introduce novice negotiators to the principles and practice of interest‐based negotiation: “the walk in the woods.” The walk incorporates much of the principles of interest‐based negotiation: fostering self‐awareness, cultivating curiosity, and understanding the importance of world view. The walk's effectiveness is illustrated in this article using the case of the merger of two large, complex health‐care organizations.     

The Political Enforcement of Liberalism: Bargaining, Institutions, and Auto Multinationals in Hungary

The demise of communism triggered large flows of foreign direct investment into Eastern Europe. This article examines the impact of recent changes in the international environment—the transformation of world production systems and the rise of neoliberalism—on bargaining between multinational corporations and post-communist governments. It focuses on the Hungarian automobile industry, one of the region's largest recipients of FDI. The Hungarian case illustrates the ability of small, open, and geopolitically weak states to parlay shifts in the global environment into a bargaining asset. The ascent of lean production heightened pressure on auto MNCs to develop local supplier systems capable of fast delivery of components to East European subsidiaries. The pull of backward integration was particularly strong for Japanese producers, whose non-European status enabled Hungarian state authorities to secure commitments to raising domestic content. Transplanting Japanese-style production in Eastern Europe proved less vexing for European MNCs, whose status as EU-based companies freed them of local-content requirements and whose preexisting supplier networks obviated heavy investments in the Hungarian components industry. But while Western auto producers enjoyed highly favorable terms of entry into Eastern Europe, even they could not elude the paradoxical effects of global changes on MNC/host state relations. The very eastward extension of the European Union's nondiscriminatory rules that facilitated EU-based firms' entry into Hungary also permitted host state authorities to parry efforts by MNCs to obtain particularistic concessions after entry. The Hungarian case thus demonstrates that MNC/host state bargaining in the post–Cold War period hinges more on the global positions of multinationals than on the structural vulnerabilities of capital-importing states ( per dependency theory) or the internal capacity of host states ( per statist theories).     

“一带一路”倡议下中国企业投资印度尼西亚的深层问题——以雅加达—万隆高速铁路项目为例的分析

印度尼西亚是东盟最大的经济体,也是"一带一路"沿线重要的支点国家。雅万高铁项目是"一带一路"框架下中国与印度尼西亚合作的重要成果,也是"环球高铁"建设的重要一环,对两国甚至在全球范围内都有着深远的政治和经济影响。但项目推进艰难,面临着政权更替、域外势力干扰、征地难、资金压力大、上座率低和电力供应不足等问题,背后反映的是印度尼西亚国内的深层问题,即民主化水平有限、中央与地方不协同、法律制度不完善、基础设施落后和"反华"情结等。基于此,本文对投资印度尼西亚的中国企业提出针对性的建议,以期最小化印度尼西亚深层问题造成的负面影响,包括正确认识投资环境,重视可行性调研,理性选择策略;适应法律的复杂性,加强与地方政府的沟通合作;与当地企业协同合作,树立本地化经营的观念;树立正面的企业形象,积极承担社会责任等。这将有利于"一带一路"倡议在印度尼西亚的推进,深化两国的合作与双边关系,加强中国与周边国家的互联互通。