How Nations Negotiate

This book offers a comprehensive practitioner's guide to negotiating at the United Nations. Although much of the content can be applied broadly, the guide focuses on navigating multilateral negotiations at the UN. The book is a tool to help new UN negotiators, explaining basic negotiation concepts and offering insight into the complexities of the UN system. It also offers a playbook for cooperation for negotiators at any level, exploring the dynamics of relationships and alliances, the art of chairing a negotiation, and the importance of balancing the power asymmetries present in any multilateral discussion. The book proposes improvements to the UN negotiation process and looks at the impact of information technologies on negotiation dynamics; it also shares stories from women UN delegates, illustrating what it means to be a female negotiator at the UN. This book is an exploration of the power of the individual in any negotiation, and of the responsibility all negotiators have in wielding that power to speak for a better world. This book will be of much interest to students of diplomacy, global governance, foreign policy, and International Relations, as well as practitioners and policymakers.

Focusing explicitly on negotiations between states unequal in power capabilities, Habeeb proposes a mode for understanding such asymmetrical dialogues and their outcomes. He argues that conceptualizing power primarily in terms military capabilities is misleading. Although such capabilities are important determinants of negotiation outcomes, they operate on the basis of the parties' commitments to achieve a settlement; their abilities to unilaterally control an outcome; and the number and feasibility of each party's alternatives to continuing the negotiations. ISBN 0-8018-3620-4: $25.00.

The negotiations of the Paris Agreement on climate change come to life through detailed insider accounts and in-depth analyses.

Even before it led opposition to the recent war on Iraq, France was considered the most difficult of the United States' major European allies. Each side tends to irritate the other, not least at the negotiating table, where Americans complain of French pretensions and arrogance, and the French fulminate against U.S. hegemonisme and egoisme. But, whether they like it or not, the two nations are going to have to deal with one another for a long time to come. Charles Cogan's timely and insightful study can't guarantee to make those encounters more fruitful, but it will help France's negotiating counterparts understand how and why French officials behave as they do. With impressive objectivity and authority, Cogan first explores the cultural and historical factors that have shaped the French approach and then dissects its key elements. Mixing rationalism and nationalism, rhetoric and brio, self-importance and embattled vulnerability, French negotiators often seem more interested in asserting their country's "universal" mission than in reaching agreement. Three recent case studies illustrate this distinctively French mélange. Yet agreement is by no means always elusive. Cogan offers practical suggestions for making negotiations more cooperative and productive--although he also emphasizes the long-term damage inflicted by the crisis over Iraq. Drawing on candid interviews with many of today's leading players on the French, American, British, and German sides, this engaging volume will inform and stimulate both seasoned practitioners and academics as well as students of France and the negotiating process. This book is the recipient of the Prix Ernest Lémonon from L'Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, 2006

The United States was once seen as a land of broad consensus and pragmatic politics. Sharp ideological differences were largely absent. But today politics in America is dominated by intense party polarization and limited agreement among legislative representatives on policy problems and solutions. Americans pride themselves on their community spirit, civic engagement, and dynamic society. Yet, as the editors of this volume argue, we are handicapped by our national political institutions, which often— but not always—stifle the popular desire for policy innovation and political reforms. Political Negotiation: A Handbook explores both the domestic and foreign political arenas to understand the problems of political negotiation. The editors and contributors share lessons from success stories and offer practical advice for overcoming polarization. In deliberative negotiation, the parties share information, link issues, and engage in joint problem solving. Only in this way can they discover and create possibilities, and use their collective intelligence for the good of citizens of both parties and for the country.