Multilateral Negotiations

Political scientist Fen Osler Hampson, with the assistance of trade specialist Michael Hart, studies the component parts of the multilateral negotiation process to identify those factors making for success or failure. The authors argue that multilateral negotiation is, in essence, a coalition-building enterprise involving states, nonstate actors, and international organizations. Among the questions they raise are: How do issues get to the table in multilateral negotiations? Who sits at the table and who composes the tiers of relevant stakeholders? What are the procedures for managing complexity? What are the obstacles - strategic and psychological - to reaching agreement? Ranging from the 1963 Test Ban Treaty to the Climate Change Convention (1992) and the completion of the Uruguay Round of GATT (1993), individual case studies include discussions on security, environmental, and economic issues. Of particular interest is the attention given to nongovernmental actors - such as scientists and environmental groups like Greenpeace International - in prenegotiation and negotiation phases.

Multilateral negotiations on worldwide challenges have grown in importance with rising global interdependence. Yet, they have recently proven slow to address these challenges successfully. This book discusses the questions which have arisen from the highly varying results of recent multilateral attempts to reach cooperation on some of the critical global challenges of our times. These include the long-awaited UN climate change summit in Copenhagen, which ended without official agreement in 2009; Cancún one year later, attaining at least moderate tangible results; the first salient trade negotiations after the creation of the WTO, which broke down in Seattle in 1999 and were only successfully launched in 2001 in Qatar as the Doha Development Agenda; and the biosafety negotiations to address the international handling of Living Modified Organisms, which first collapsed in 1999, before they reached the Cartagena Protocol in 2000. Using in-depth empirical analysis, the book examines the determinants of success or failure in efforts to form regimes and manage the process of multilateral negotiations. The book draws on data from 62 interviews with organizers and chief climate and trade negotiators to discover what has driven delegations in their final decision on agreement, finding that with negotiation management, organisers hold a powerful tool in their hands to influence multilateral negotiations. This comprehensive negotiation framework, its comparison across regimes and the rich and first-hand empirical material from decision-makers make this invaluable reading for students and scholars of politics, international relations, global environmental governance, climate change and international trade, as well as organizers and delegates of multilateral negotiations. This research has been awarded the German Mediation Scholarship Prize for 2014 by the Center for Mediation in Cologne.

"In a single volume, a team of distinguished international scholars draws on a wide range of social science theory to explain the dynamics of bargaining and diplomacy when many parties and many issues are involved. Each contributor explores a different approach to reaching successful agreements among diverse governments, multinational corporations, and other international actors. To show how these approaches work in actual practice, the authors provide detailed analyses of two multilateral negotiations - the Uruguay round of negotiations under the General Agreement for Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the negotiations leading to the Single European Act consolidating the European Community." "The increased length and frequency of such events as the GATT talks, the Rio Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), and the Law of the Sea Conferences (UNCLOS) highlight the enormous challenges of complex negotiations among many competing interests. This work, sponsored by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, offers the first comprehensive understanding of the intricate and complex process of multilateral negotiation." "The book provides the tools for analyzing and managing the complexities of multilateral negotiations including how the roots of conflict, the distribution of power, and specific patterns of resistance and cooperation affect all stages of negotiation; how game theory, multi-attribute utility models, and other practical tools can be used to chart interests and identify strategic trade-offs before negotiations; how negotiation is organization in action, applying the rules and culture of organizations to change through a cybernetic process; how insights into the way small groups function can help advance negotiations; why different modes of leadership are needed to diagnose multinational problems, clarify options, and develop feasible solutions; how and why coalitions are formed - and how they can prompt meaningful bargaining and help forge positive, lasting agreements."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Multilateral Negotiation and Mediation: Instruments and Methods is a collection of papers that covers various areas of concerns in international mediation and negotiation. The materials examine the several aspects negotiation and mediation. The title first covers negotiations with security councils, and then proceeds to tackling regional and inter-regional negotiations. Next, the selection deals with the small-state factor in dispute settlement. The text also talks about disarmament negotiations and north-south negotiations. The last chapter covers international law and negotiation. The book will be of great use diplomats, government officials, and political scientists. Readers who have a keen interest on the mechanisms of diplomacy will also benefit from the text.

Multilateral negotiations on worldwide challenges have grown in importance with rising global interdependence. Yet, they have recently proven slow to address these challenges successfully. This book discusses the questions which have arisen from the highly varying results of recent multilateral attempts to reach cooperation on some of the critical global challenges of our times. These include the long-awaited UN climate change summit in Copenhagen, which ended without official agreement in 2009; Cancún one year later, attaining at least moderate tangible results; the first salient trade negotiations after the creation of the WTO, which broke down in Seattle in 1999 and were only successfully launched in 2001 in Qatar as the Doha Development Agenda; and the biosafety negotiations to address the international handling of Living Modified Organisms, which first collapsed in 1999, before they reached the Cartagena Protocol in 2000. Using in-depth empirical analysis, the book examines the determinants of success or failure in efforts to form regimes and manage the process of multilateral negotiations. The book draws on data from 62 interviews with organizers and chief climate and trade negotiators to discover what has driven delegations in their final decision on agreement, finding that with negotiation management, organisers hold a powerful tool in their hands to influence multilateral negotiations. This comprehensive negotiation framework, its comparison across regimes and the rich and first-hand empirical material from decision-makers make this invaluable reading for students and scholars of politics, international relations, global environmental governance, climate change and international trade, as well as organizers and delegates of multilateral negotiations. This research has been awarded the German Mediation Scholarship Prize for 2014 by the Center for Mediation in Cologne.

Deadlocks are a feature of everyday life, as well as high politics. This volume focuses on the concept, causes, and consequences of deadlocks in multilateral settings, and analyses the types of strategies that could be used to break them. It commences with a definition of deadlock, hypothesises about its occurrence, and proposes solutions. Each chapter then makes an original contribution to the issue of deadlock – theoretical, methodological, or empirical – and further tests the original concepts and hypotheses, either theoretically or through case-study analysis, developing or altering them accordingly. This is a unique volume which provides an in-depth examination of the problem of deadlock and a more thorough understanding of specific negotiation problems than has ever been done before. It will be directly relevant to students, researchers, teachers, and scholars of negotiation and will also be of interest to practitioners involved in negotiation and diplomacy.

The book examines the important role of the chairmanship office in multilateral negotiations within the UN setting, developing an analytical framework for the systematic study of the chairmanship office and its potential impact on multilateral negotiations. It elaborates on its origins, the parameters and conditions of chair’s effectiveness, and the performance of the chair’s functions.

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: Peace and Conflict Studies, Security, grade: 1,2, Free University of Berlin (Center for Global Politics), course: International Negotiation, language: English, abstract: The four illustrated aspects, i.e. number of actors and issues, communication process as well as the building of coalitions exemplary show that certain specifics are only inherent in multilateral negotiations, making them much more complex and with it, last but not least, fundamentally different from bilateral bargaining.