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Political Science 760-001, International Negotiation

Tu 3:30-6:15 , Maxwell Hall 315 (Class Registration Number 40044)

Instructor James P. Bennett, jbennett@maxwell.syr.edu, 443-1749

Office 405b Maxwell Hall, office hours Tu 11-12:15 pm, Tu 2-3:30 pm & by appointment

Focus for Spring 2008: Utilization of the resources of the arctic

We shall spend half the time of this seminar analyzing selected explanations of and prescriptions for the conduct of international negotiation.  We shall spend half the time conducting a negotiating exercise.  The two activities will be closely linked.

The seminar requires work in small teams whose membership shifts during the semester.  In class we try to identify aspects of negotiating problems; then we ask a small team to investigate further.  Each participant in the seminar will by February 3 choose a person prominently involved in the on-going negotiations.  For the rest of the semester the participant will take the identity and role of that person. Persons may communicate at any time; additionally, two weekend days are scheduled for plenary negotiating sessions.

In response to suggestions made by participants in past years, we shall emphasize writing and editing negotiating texts.

The seminar is heavily "front-loaded" -- you will spend much more time during the first eight weeks than during the final six. This is necessary so that we can become familiar with matters relating to making available the resources of the arcttic, and also learn enough theory of negotiation to enrich the exercise.

Notations used below:

    *       Denotes required reading

    (R)    Bird Library Reserve

    (micro)   Bird Library microfilm collection

    (nil)   Not yet available in SU libraries

    (box)  Found in "the box," PARC office, 400 Eggers Hall 

Textbooks:

These books are available for purchase at Follett's Orange Bookstore in Marshall Square:

    G. Richard Shell, Bargaining for Advantage: Negotiation Strategies for Reasonable People. Viking, 1999. (R)

    Select two of the following five books:

        Richard H. Solomon, Chinese Negotiating Behavior: Pursuing Interests through 'Old Friends', USIP, 1999. (microfilm)

        W. R. Smyser, How Germans Negotiate: Logical Goals, Practical Solutions, USIP, 2003. (R)

        Charles Cogan, French Negotiating Behavior: Dealing with la Grande Nation, USIP, 2003. (R)

        Jerrold L. Schechter, Russian Negotiating Behavior: Continuity and Transition, USIP, 2001. (micro)

        Michael Blaker, Paul Giarra and Ezra Vogel, Case Studies in Japanese Negotiating Behavior, USIP, 2002. (nil)

Resources for negotiating theory and practice: Purchase these if you anticipate a career of interorganizational negotiation

    Michele J. Gelfand and Jeanne M. Brett, eds., The Handbook of Negotiation and Culture.  Stanford University Press, 2004. (R)

    Roy J. Lewicki, David M. Saunders and John W. Minton, Essentials of Negotiation, 3rd or 4th ed.,   McGraw-Hill. 

Resources for negotiations about the arctic:

     Oran R. Young, Creating regimes: Arctic accords and international governance. Cornell University Press, 1996. (box)

     Richard Vaughan, The Arctic, a history.  See Ch 11-12.  (box)

     Robert McGhee, The last imaginary place: a human history of the Arctic world.   (box)

     Participants offer these items.

Determination of one's grade:

• Quality of participation in the design and conduct of the negotiating exercise 25% (The two weekend meetings are not optional.)
• 'Literacy' test grade 25%
• Paper on negotiating instructions 25%
• Final double paper evaluating one's own role in the exercise and the exercise as a whole (explanation) 25%

Seminar Schedule (common readings are marked with *)

1.   January 15 Introduction -- Notes Exercise

• Conceptual boundaries of "international negotiation" How it differs from negotiation in other settings; ways in which it has been studied; how negotiators prepare; how progress is assessed.
• Tripartite analysis of negotiating: Game theory as an aid to strategic analysis, used to assess the range of feasible outcomes; contextually specific inventory of negotiating conventions and tactics; linguistic implementation of tactics as "moves" in a negotiation.
• Special challenges of the study of multi-session, multi-party, multi-issue international negotiations.

    Case study about the resources of the arctic:

• Can the status quo be prolonged? Who wishes change? Who wishes continuity? Who is undecided? Who doesn't (yet) care?
• What do we hope to achieve in the semester-long simulation? (Hint: We're interested in both theory and practice.)
• Practical constraints of time, space, and expertise. What should be the simulation's structure and processes? 
• How do we assign roles? How do the seminar participants obtain relevant information?

*Leigh Thompson, The mind and the heart of the negotiator, 2nd edition. Prentice-Hall 2001, Chapter 1.  [Same chapter from 1st edition will do, too.] (R)

    Strategic analysis for planning negotiations

2.  January 22 Notes

• Game theory: central concepts of 2-party game theory illustrated with the "man-woman game" (A. Rappoport 1957)
• Design of the negotiating exercise (1)
• Selection of parties for the negotiation (1)

"Very Brief Notes on Game Theoretic Analysis," and "The Man-Woman Game of Anatol Rapoport," Handouts.

3. January 29 Notes

• Rational expectations rational choice
• Previous negotiations about Iraqi autonomy and sovereignty: attitudes of the military occupiers, the Arab League, the UN, groups within Iraq, and neighboring states
• Choosing roles in the negotiating exercise

*G. Richard Shell, Bargaining for advantage: negotiation strategies for reasonable people. Viking, 1999, Chapters 1-6. (R)

Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld and Michael Watkins, "Toward a theory of representation in negotiation," and Lawrence E. Susskind, "Commentary," in R. H. Mnookin and Lawrence E. Susskind, eds., Negotiating on Behalf of Others, Sage, 1999, pp. 23-58. (You might find the following to be fun, too: Michael Wheeler, "First, Let's kill all the agents!", ibid., 235-262.) (R)

4. February 5

Prospect theory: instrumental rationality with foundations in individual psychology

*A gentle introduction: Jack Levy, "An introduction to prospect theory," in Barbara Farnham, ed., Avoiding losses / taking risks. University of Michigan, 1994, pp. 7-22. (R)

*Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, "Prospect theory: an analysis of decision under risk," in Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, Choices, values and frames. Russell Sage, 2000, pp. 17-42. (R)

*Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, "Rational choice and the framing of decisions," ibid., pp. 209-223. (R)

*Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, "Conflict resolution, a cognitive perspective," ibid., pp. 473-487. (R)

*Eldar Shafir, "Prospect theory and political analysis," in Farnham, ed., pp. 147-157. (R)

• Implications of rational expectations theory and prospect theory for analyzing conflicts and deciding whether or not to negotiate
• Implications of some other influential political theory about deciding whether or not to negotiate
• Emerging forces within Iraq

6.  February 12

The process of negotiation is predominately asking questions and responding to questions. Negotiating instruction.

• The importance of process
• Integrative and distributive bargaining
• Designing agreements (products) with incentives for implementation

*Thompson, ibid., Chapters 3-4. (R)

*Roy J. Lewicki, David M. Saunders and John W. Minton, Essentials of negotiation, 2nd, 3rd or 4th edition. McGraw-Hill, 2001. Chapters 3-4. (R)

*Shell, ibid., Chapters 7-12, and App. B.

Tactics of contemporary international negotiation

7. February 19

Negotiating norms and conventions shape negotiators' expectations.

• Historically derived conventions
• Third parties, facilitation and mediation

Raymond Cohen, Negotiating across Cultures. USIP, 1991. Ch 4 What is negotiable? Ch 6 Opening moves. (R)

*Fred C. Ikle, How nations negotiate. Harper & Row, 1964. Pages 1-255. (R)

Jeffrey Z. Rubin and Bert R. Brown, The Social Psychology of Bargaining and Negotiation, Academic, 1975, Chapters 5, 8-9 (R) [Note especially the summary about the relationships among IO, MO and power.]

Christopher W. Moore, The Mediation Process: Practical Strategies for Resolving Conflict. Jossey-Bass, 1996.

Christophe Dupont, "Negotiation as Coalition Building," International Negotiation Journal 1:1 (1996)

Friday February 22, Paper 1 due: One's negotiating instructions

8. February 24 (Sunday, 12-6 pm)  Exercise begins

9. February 26 Interim assessment of course and exercise

Janice Gross Stein, ed., Getting to the Table.  Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988, chapter 8. (box)

    Hearings continue.

10.  March 4  Negotiating in parallel

• Diplomatic negotiation
• 2nd Track negotiation
• "Negotiating while fighting"

*Charles W. Freeman, Jr., Arts of power: statecraft and diplomacy. United States Institute of Peace, 1997, pp. 3-21, 105-140. (R)

Thompson, ibid., Chapter 2.

11. March 18  Negotiating styles: stylistic differences exist; but are they consequential?

Seminar participants choose two books on negotiating styles from the list above

(Recommended: Yale Richmond on Russian negotiating style)

Do the negotiating styles of the parties interested in the arctic influence results? 

12. March 25  International negotiation within as well as between organizations

• Questions for the "literacy" test will be listed here.
• Problems and opportunities for intra-organizational communication

*Intra-organizational dynamics: Paul 't Hart, Groupthink in government: a study of small groups and policy failure. Johns HopkinsUniversity Press, 1990, Chapters 1-8, 13. (R)

Inter-organizational communications:

Thompson, ibid., Chap 9-10,12.

Portsmouth Peace negotiations  here.

Languages of negotiation

13.  April 1 Implementing tactics in language

• Interpersonal dynamics
• Communicative competence
• Documented "pathologies"
• "Literacy" test (90 minutes)

*Lewicki et al., ibid., pp. 123-129 and 134-154.

*Handouts (2)

J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words. Clarendon Press, 1962. (R)

14.  April 8  Introduction to the theory of speech acts

• Speech acts, "doing things with words"
• Communicative competence and negotiators' verbal repertoires
• (Non verbal communication)

*John Searle, Speech Acts, An Essay in the Philosophy of Language, Cambridge University Press, 1969, pp. 16-24, 54-71. (R)

*Thomas C. Schelling, "Promises," Negotiation Journal, April 1989, pp. 113-118. (R)

Keith Allan, "Meaning and Speech Acts" [This offers an excellent overview of linguistic analysis from the perspective of speech acts.]

• Discourse analysis for negotiation; "politeness"; linguistic facilitation

*H. Paul Grice, Studies in the Way of Words, Harvard University Press, 1989, pages TBA. (R)

Kent Bach, Speech acts," and Speech acts and pragmatics," 2003.

15.  April 13 (Sunday 12-6 pm) Exercise ends

16. April 15  Evaluation of negotiation exercises

• Can one learn from simulation exercises?
• Is negotiation training possible?   Must we learn only from experience?
• Limits to 'understanding' as an objective in the study and practice of negotiation

17. May 5 "Double" Paper 2 due

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