The Structure of Negotiation: Lessons from El Salvador for Contemporary Conflict Resolution

During more than a decade of violent conflict (1980–1992) involving the military, rebel forces, and paramilitary "death squads," El Salvador suffered some 75,000 casualties, mostly civilians. After three years of negotiations, the government and the largest rebel group signed a historic comprehensive peace accord that brought an end to the war and instituted wide-reaching political and social reforms. This agreement, and the peace process that produced it, has been widely hailed as a successful example of a negotiated end to civil war. In order to understand the conditions that led to the 1992 Chapultepec Peace Accords ending the war, this article tests ripeness theory in the context of the Salvadoran peace process.
This article affirms the validity of theories of ripeness and the mutually hurting stalemate as structural explanations for the initiation of dialogue and notes the role of "indicators of ripeness" in forcing the parties to recognize a hurting stalemate that may already exist. It also proposes several hypothesized explanations for the effectiveness of the Salvadoran negotiations themselves. These explanations include the presence of strong, empowered policy entrepreneurs on both sides with the political will and capability to make credible commitments; the combination of internal and external pressure for a negotiated solution that raised the cost of defection; and the active involvement, based on consent of both parties, of a neutral, empowered, and credible mediator who provided both technical assistance and vigilance to move the process forward. After analyzing the Salvadoran case through this theoretical lens, the article applies the same concepts to contemporary conflict cases such as Iraq and Colombia, discussing how the lessons learned in El Salvador do and do not provide instructive guidance for managing civil conflicts today.     

Enhancing Community Leadership Negotiation Skills to Build Civic Capacity

Most intra‐ and interorganizational decision making entails negotiations, and even naturally talented negotiators can improve with training. Executive trainings for managers and leadership programs for publicly elected officials, public managers, and nongovernmental organizations frequently include negotiation modules. These efforts, however, have yet to reach community leaders who also need to develop their negotiation skills. We propose that members of disadvantaged low‐income communities who lack educational and economic opportunities, and are less able to advocate for their own interest, need to build and strengthen their civic capacity, including their negotiation skills, to become more effective parties to decisions affecting them. While many professionals and executives have access to training, such opportunities are less accessible to the leaders of these disadvantaged communities. Although such leaders draw from their own heuristic knowledge, skills, and abilities, they could also benefit from sharpening their negotiation skills. We propose that the multidimensional understanding of their community that members accumulate through direct experience is indispensable, nontransferable to outsiders, and not teachable through in‐class activities. Leaders with the ability to leverage knowledge and assets to connect effectively to community insiders as well as to outside people, institutions, and resources, however, possess some specific inherent personality traits as well an understanding of social structures, strategies, and agency, which can be taught and learned. Such skills as how to conduct negotiations around the table and away from it and how to identify community members who can help and how to rally them are also teachable. The cases were chosen to illustrate the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) that make these leaders effective in and beyond their communities. We highlight those KSAs that we think are teachable in the framework of a negotiation module in community leadership training to enhance civic capacity for community betterment.     

Negotiating Classroom Process: Lessons from Adult Learning

Learning by doing is standard fare in negotiation courses across disciplines, and techniques such as learning contracts, self-reflective essays, and small-group work are commonly used. In addition, teachers must resist the temptation to "teach the canon" without regard to the needs, interests, and concerns of the students in the room. Learner-centered education requires that teachers build from the beliefs and preconceptions that students bring to the classroom, including their cultural beliefs and norms about conflict resolution, some of which may be at odds with the North American canon. A discussion-based approach to teaching not only engages students more actively in the learning process but also models many of the skills negotiation teachers seek to develop in their student-negotiators.     

An Exploration of a Model of Social Networks and Multilateral Negotiations

Multilateral (many-party) negotiations are much more complex than traditional two-party negotiations. In this article, we explore a model of social network activity, especially clique formation, among parties engaged in multilateral negotiation and the implications that such networks might have on the negotiation process and outcome. Using data collected from 375 subjects participating in a negotiation simulation, our results reveal that, primarily, the negotiator's perspectives of clique formation (coalition building) — both his or her own and the other party's — have unique effects on the integrative, problem-solving approaches used in the process and on the negotiator's satisfaction with outcomes. Secondarily, centrality (manifest as emergent power) has a positive effect on both problem solving and satisfaction. Interestingly, we found that those players who emerged as the most dominant and powerful were not as satisfied (in relative levels) as those who were less powerful.     

The Next Generation: Creating New Peace Processes in the Middle East

This essay describes how Israeli students in a course on mediation and consensus building taught in an Israeli university law department by an American law professor and an Israeli instructor analyzed and studied the conflict in the Middle East. It describes the suggestions they made for process design for the next stages of whatever peace process might emerge for the region. In light of the students' suggestions, the authors present some ideas as to how different approaches to reconciliation and peace might be used, managed, and coordinated.     

Culture and Negotiation: The Pedagogical Dispute Regarding Cross-Cultural Simulations

This article examines one especially challenging aspect of active-learning international studies courses—the use of cross-cultural simulations. What is the significance of culture for negotiation? What difficulties might cross-cultural negotiations pose, and how might negotiators work with cultural differences to achieve successful outcomes? Is it possible to model the effects of cultures on negotiators in a classroom role-play? What are the advantages to using cross-cultural simulations, and what difficulties do they entail? How might an instructor make best use of materials that focus on cultural issues and their effect on negotiation? When teaching students of different cultures by active-learning methods, what ought an instructor to bear in mind? What cross-cultural simulations are available, and what readings might be assigned to accompany them?     

Decoding Negotiation Systems in the Middle East and North Africa: A Framework for Analysis

Regional conflicts are becoming increasingly complex due to the involvement of an ever more numerous and interconnected set of actors. Previous research has focused on regional conflict systems and has generated theoretical approaches such as the regional security complex paradigm. However, when complex, multifaceted, seemingly contradictory webs of relationships are spun in a region, new tools are needed to analyze and evaluate them. Drawing on previous regional conflict models, we propose a negotiation-oriented framework of regional conflict analysis that explores the type and intensity of relationships between state and nonstate actors in a conflict system. We offer a seven-step scale of relationships (ranging from ally to active armed opponent) that represents a novel contribution to the methodological efforts to analyze relationships in conflict systems. This framework brings to light the relational imbalance of the MENA region and has the potential to contextualize for negotiators and mediators the complex system of conflicts within, and possibly outside, the region.     

Hard‐Core Toughie: Donald Trump’s Negotiations for the United States Presidency

This paper examines the negotiation tactics employed by Donald Trump in his 2016 presidential campaign. Drawing on data from multiple sources (interviews, debates, articles, books), our analysis begins with a brief overview of Trump’s personality and philosophy, which offers a basis for understanding his general negotiating approach. We then highlight six competitive tactics and four principles of persuasion that Trump employs, with specific examples of how he used them during the campaign with his primary negotiating counterparts – the other candidates, the Republican Party, the press corps, and the American electorate. Finally, we discuss some of the implications of his negotiating approach and preferred tactics in dealing with domestic and international issues as president of the United States.     

核出口控制的国际规则制定:美国在多边谈判中的行为模式

美国向来被视作国际核不扩散机制的主导者。然而,尽管积极倡导实行核出口控制,美国却未能始终对该领域的国际规则制定施加影响。在核供应国集团中,相较于利益诱惑与威胁这一动用物质实力的谈判方式,美国更倾向于为规则主张的正当性提供辩护,以此推进核供应国集团准则的修改。不过,基于核不扩散规范的此种辩护,也未能保证美国达成其目标。多边谈判中两种参与谈判的行为方式分别为“议价”与“论辩”,在现有研究中对其给予了理论上的区分。在大多数情况下,美国在两种谈判方式之中选择“论辩”。对美国这一选择倾向的分析,从成本导向的理性选择着眼。此外,为解释在正当性论辩这一谈判方式之下影响谈判结果的要素,提出了基于利益分配关系的心理机制。案例分析聚焦卡特、老布什、小布什三届政府在核供应国集团中发起的四次准则修改行动,四次行动在谈判方式的选择和谈判结果上呈现鲜明对比。文章旨在深入认知大国在多边规则制定中的权力及其界限。国家行为体对于正当性论辩的关注及其在论辩中面临的困境,在规则与规范之争趋于激烈化的国际安全领域,都是日益普遍的现象。