Bargaining with the Devil

"It was put together about 25 years ago. People from different faculties and disciplines at the university have been looking at the theory and practice of conflict resolution and negotiation. My reason for choosing this book (I also recommend the more-famous The Power of Yes that preceded it) is that for many years no one seemed to think of negotiation as a skill or discipline. It’s bizarre that some diplomats still don’t get negotiation training. The interesting thing about the Harvard Negotiation Project is that different people, even hostage negotiators, come together to learn lessons from different experiences. I get annoyed when people criticise me for saying there’s a Northern Irish model that I’m trying to export to other peace processes. I’m not saying the model applies everywhere. But there are certainly lessons that can be learned. The people at Harvard are sharing their common knowledge and approaching negotiation pragmatically. The aim is to find common ground that allows you to move forward. Mnookin quotes George W Bush as saying: ‘We don’t negotiate with evil: we defeat it.’ And, of course, British governments used to say: ‘We never negotiate with terrorists.’ Actually we do. We negotiated successively with groups like the PLO and the IRA. Negotiating doesn’t mean giving in; that’s what this book brings out. By talking to people, you are not conceding or accepting their points of view. You are simply trying to engage in a dialogue to find solutions that are acceptable to both sides. The real goal is to get to a situation where there’s mutual gain for both parties. One of the reasons it took so long to implement the Good Friday agreement was that there was a zero-sum game in politics. If one side came out of the negotiations smiling, the other side thought it had lost. After the IRA ceasefire in 1994, the Republicans drove around town honking their horns. The Unionists were in a state of complete gloom, even though they just got what they wanted for the last 30 years. They thought there was a secret deal they didn’t know about. In fact, we only managed to arrive at a lasting solution once the Republicans and Unionists agreed to sell the agreement as a win for both sides."