International Negotiation
A Journal of Theory and Practice
| This issue | Guest editors |
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Methods of Negotiation Research: I |
Peter Carnevale, New York University Carsten K. W. De Dreu, University of Amsterdam |
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Abstracts Vol. 9, no. 3 2004
The Joys of Field Research |
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| JAMES A. WALL, JR. College of Business, Univeristy of Missouri, Columbia, 506 Cornell Hall, Columbia, MO 65211-2600 USA (wall-AT-missouri.edu) |
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| Field research contributes valuable findings to many fields; in addition, it's fun. In this article, I note that lostness, mistakes, scientism, the participants, stuckness and discovery -- which I've found in field research -- are pure joys. They excite me and hopefully others, motivating us to ferret out knowledge in the real world. | |
| How Much Do We Know About Real Negotiations? Problems in Constructing Case Studies | |
DAVID MATZ |
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| Much of our theorizing, and indeed much of our “wisdom,” about negotiation is based on what we claim to know about real, highly publicized negotiations. Examples from those historically prominent negotiations are cited and re-cited. This essay raises questions about the reliability of the accounts we use from those negotiations. Though documents produced during the negotiation are often useful for scholars, what we know about the actual process of the negotiation - as distinguished from the outcome - depends mainly on what the participants are willing to tell us. The scholar’s remedy for this problem is a deep skepticism about any individual account, in depth interviews (where available) of participants, a comparison of various versions, and the use of an explicitly articulated “plausibility test” in sorting out conflicting views. This essay suggests that negotiation scholarship may have depended too readily on individual recollections and thus given us a distorted “data base” from which to generalize. The essay delves deeply into one negotiation (Israeli-Palestinian negotiation at Taba, January 2001) to illustrate how the comparative approach yields quite different results than does a reading of any one memoir, and then describes more briefly how some of the field’s favorite examples may not, on close inspection, illustrate what we previously thought they did. | |
| Studying Negotiations in Context: An Ethnographic Approach | |
RAY FRIEDMAN |
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| Ethnographic research offers an alternative approach which can provide insights into the types of complex situations that negotiators really face. This approach is not easy – it can be more time consuming, costly, and difficult than other research methods – but the payoff comes from the way these in-depth studies challenge scholars to develop new ideas and theories, based on what really happens in negotiations rather than on the logical next step in a series of experiments. | |
The Problem-Solving Workshop as a Method of Research |
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RONALD J. FISHER |
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| Early proponents of the problem-solving workshop cast it as a method of research to study the phenomenon of social conflict, not only as a method of practice. As a research technique problem-solving workshops can serve as both a forum for applying and testing concepts and models about conflict, and as a laboratory for inductive theorizing based on information provided by participants. Workshops can also be useful for identifying the typical barriers that hamper effective negotiation and for proposing ways to overcome these resistances. As a form of action research, workshops constitute a social intervention and serve as the central element in a program of activities directed toward social change through conflict resolution. Unfortunately, both the potential of workshops as a research method and the need for evaluating them as interventions are inadequately addressed by current practice. | |
Time-Series Designs and Analyses |
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DANIEL DRUCKMAN |
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| This article describes the way time-series designs are used in research on international negotiation and related processes. Both quantitative and qualitative applications are discussed. One use of the techniques is to predict known outcomes of historical cases of negotiation. Both inductive and deductive approaches have been used in studies that evaluate alternative models of the way that negotiators respond to each other through the course of the talks. Another use of the techniques is to evaluate the impacts of such interventions as mediations or combat (referred to as interruptions) on the dynamics of conflict between nations. A third approach involves probabilistic forecasting with Bayesian analysis. This consists of revising initial probabilities of events (coups, peace agreements) based on current information about indicators that signal the occurrence of the event. Qualitative techniques have also been used to capture changes in conflict processes over time. These include charting changes in typological categories or in the use of influence strategies used by national actors in enduring rivalries. They also include tracing of paths to agreement or stalemate in negotiation, documenting progress in small-group dialogues, and developing chains of communication leading to peace agreements. By combining several of these techniques an analyst can draw conclusions about the likeliness that an event will occur (Bayesian analysis), its impact on a process (interrupted time series), and the way it emerged from prior events (process tracing). | |
| Social Research and the Study of Mediation: Designing and Implementing Systematic Archival Research | |
JACOB BERCOVITCH |
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| As the study of negotiation and mediation has grown rapidly over the last three decades, so have the number of approaches to it. Behavioral scientists of all persuasions bring their ideas and methods to bear on the study of mediation. This paper identifies some of the more significant of these approaches, and argues that many of them are predicated on erroneous, even unrealistic, assumptions. It argues that the best way to conduct research on mediation is to study such behavior in the real, not the simulated, world, and choose data that is directly generated by parties or mediators in conflict. The paper argues for a systematic archival research, and presents the broad outlines of such an approach can be organized and conducted. The findings presented suggest the importance and relevance of this method of research into mediation. | |
| Reflections on Simulation and Experimentation in the Study of Negotiation | |
| JONATHAN WILKENFELD Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742 USA (Jwilkenf-AT-gvpt.umd.edu) |
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| This article discusses the application of simulation and experimental techniques to the study of international negotiation and mediation. It explores some of the origins of experimental and simulation work in political science, and some of the particular difficulties facing researchers in this area. As an example of such work, the article discusses a specific experimental design in which a human-computer simulation was used to examine hypotheses pertaining to the impact of mediator style on the processes and outcomes of crisis negotiations. The article ends with a discussion of some of the areas in international negotiation study where simulation and experimental techniques can significantly add to the type of knowledge we can develop from more conventional sources, such as case studies and cross-national empirical analysis. | |
| Quantitative Coding of Negotiation Behavior | |
| LAURIE R. WEINGART Graduate School of Industrial Administration, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 USA ( weingart-AT-cmu.edu) MARA OLEKALNS Melbourne Business School, University of Melbourne, 200 Leicester Street Carlton VIC 3053 Australia ( m.olekalns-ATmbs.edu) PHILIP L. SMITH Department of Psychology, University of Melbourne, Victoria, 3010 Australia (philipls-ATunimelb.edu.au) |
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| The examination of negotiation processes is seen by many researchers as an insurmountable task largely because the required methods are unfamiliar and labor-intensive. In this article, we shed light on a fundamental step in studying negotiation processes, the quantitative coding of data. Relying on videotapes as the primary source of data, we review the steps required to extract usable quantitative data and the lessons we’ve learned in doing so in our own research. We review our experience working with one large negotiation dataset, Towers Market II, to illustrate two steps within the larger research process: developing a coding scheme and coding the data. We then go on to discuss some of the issues that need to be resolved before data analysis begins | |
| The Use of Questionnaires in Conflict Research | |
| AUKJE NAUTA University of Groningen and TNO Work and Employment, P.O. Box 718, 2130 AS Hoofddorp, the Netherlands (a.nauta@arbeid.tno.nl) ESTHER KLUWER Department of Social and Organisational Psychology, Utrecht University, P.O. Box 80, 140 NL 3508 TC Utrecht, The Netherlands (E.S.Kluwer@fss.uu.nl) |
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| An earlier article examined the conditions
under which it is reasonable to negotiate with rogue states. This
article extends the argument to non-state terrorist “villains.” Despite
the risks inherent in negotiating with terrorists, the risks of
following a no-negotiation policy are likely to be more deadly.
States need to assess terrorist interests and intentions to find
if there are reasonable entry points for negotiation and take advantage
of these to transform the conflict. Key words: negotiating with terrorists; rogue states; appeasement |
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