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Part II: Negotiating Skills
9. The Handicapped Negotiator
Introduction /
The negotiator in the domestic context - the hollow mandate /
The negotiator at the negotiations - the handicapped negotiating power /
Negotiating strategy /
Tips and tricks
9.4 Negotiating strategy
The hollow negotiating mandate leads to a defensive negotiating strategy, which has the following characteristics (Gupta 1997; 2000a,b):
Negotiators tend to ad lib. This method is legal but lacks legitimacy since it is not necessarily based on ideas and views prevalent in the country. In such situations, many negotiators use proxy indicators of legitimacy. This means that they re-use ideas, principles and positions that their government has negotiated in other issue areas. However, this does not guarantee that the position is relevant to the issue being discussed.
Negotiators do not dare or care to make new proposals; they prefer to err on the side of caution. If a negotiator were to try and be constructive without support from his or her government and if the idea either backfires, fails or succeeds, the negotiator may not be able to explain to the government on what he or she based that position.
Negotiators tend to oppose ideas coming from the other party, in this case - the developed countries. As Anil Agarwal once put it - they use their power to oppose, because they do not have the power to propose.
Negotiators tend to reduce the issues to a few ideas on which they develop reactive positions. The rest tends to be accepted by default. They tend to focus on "damage control" as opposed to maximizing gains.
Negotiators tend to vacillate in their position if financial gains are offered.
Negotiators tend to see issues holistically and link the issue to all other international issues. Thus linkages are made to international debt, trade and other environmental issues such as desertification.
Negotiators tend to feel cheated by the negotiation results. Since the negotiations proceed fairly rapidly, and since the developing country negotiators are handicapped and focused on damage control, while the developed countries have a better idea of what they want to achieve from the negotiations, the negotiations may favour developed country interests. This then leads to developing country negotiators feeling cheated by the results.
Negotiators are more vulnerable to the use of indirect side-payments and issue-linkages.
The handicapped coalition-forming power leads to a brittle, defensive strategy which is characterized by (Gupta 2000a,b):
Confusion between the coalition of like-minded country approach and the G-77 and China approach. While some developing countries feel that they are more advanced than the rest of the developing countries and should try to develop coalitions with other developed countries, the other developing countries (e.g., AOSIS and OPEC) feel the need to adopt the G-77 approach.
Lack of leadership at present among the developing countries. On the other hand, leadership of the G-77 and China implies representing the interests of other countries and that is a heavy price to pay if these interests are against national interests.
Susceptibility to divide and rule tactics. Four elements of the divide and rule tactics can be distinguished: (a) the use of the word "voluntary" (See Box 4); (b) the selective use of side-payments along lines established by old colonial relations; (c) the selective use of "reprisals" in other bilateral relations with the developed countries; and (d) the fear of the richer developing countries that they may be the next group of countries that need to take on commitments.
Finally, the handicapped negotiating power leads to a threadbare, brittle and defensive strategy which is characterized by:
Inadequate participation in terms of sheer numbers at all relevant meetings;
Inability to cover all the issues;
Inadequate support and lobbying from the presence of domestic scientists, NGOs and industry; and
Inability to deal with the informal processes where decisions tend to be made (see Figure 3).
Box 4. The use of the word "voluntary"
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The word "voluntary" has been strategically used in the negotiations. For example, the word was introduced in the article on Activities Implemented Jointly (AIJ) at COP-1 suggesting respect for the position of the majority of the developing countries who were opposed to Joint Implementation in 1995, while allowing a minority to participate in such a program. Clearly once AIJ became voluntary all countries would compete to participate in it rather than lose access to the resources and technologies that could become available through AIJ.
The word "voluntary" was used again at COP-3. The developed countries attempted to introduce an article on the voluntary adoption of measures by developing countries. This was successfully blocked in the Kyoto negotiations, but reappeared in the following discussions of the Conference of the Parties in Argentina, creating more dissension in the developing world. Argentina and Kazakhstan stated that they would be willing to adopt voluntary measures. This immediately put the remaining developing countries in a difficult negotiating position. The developing countries are afraid of the use of the word "voluntary" participation in relation to different obligations because in their view it is used to divide and rule the developing countries.
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