International Negotiation and Political Narratives

A Comparative Study

Fen Osler Hampson, Amrita Narlikar, Fen Osler Hampson, Amrita Narlikar

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781032066462
• eBook ISBN: 9781000539813
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book shows that political narratives can promote or thwart the prospects for international cooperation and are major factors in international negotiation processes in the 21st century.

In a world that is experiencing waves of right-wing and left-wing populism, international cooperation has become increasingly difficult. This volume focuses on how the intersubjective identities of political parties and narratives shape their respective values, interests and negotiating behaviors and strategies. Through a series of comparative case studies, the book explains how and why narratives contribute to negotiation failure or deadlock in some circumstances and why, in others, they do not because a new narrative that garners public and political support has emerged through the process of negotiation. The book also examines how narratives interact with negotiation principles, and alter the bargaining range of a negotiation, including the ability to make concessions.

This book will be of much interest to students of international negotiation, economics, security studies and international relations.

Part ITheories, concepts, approaches

doi: 10.4324/9781003203209-1

1Narratives, political identity, and international negotiation

Fen Osler Hampson and Amrita Narlikar

DOI: 10.4324/9781003203209-2

Introduction

Underlying most of the established models of the negotiation process is the notion of rational expectations: parties are generally seen as utility maximizing actors subject to the important qualification that utility preferences will change as new information becomes available. The cost-benefit calculations of the negotiating parties shape, and are in turn shaped by, the negotiation process through exchanges of information, learning and the exchange of concessions (Bazerman and Malhotra, 2007; Hampson, 1995; Hampson and Zartman, 2012; Hopmann, 1998; Narlikar, 2010; Odell and Tingley, 2013; Raiffa, 2002; Zartman, 1989). Departures from the rational “mean” in negotiating behavior are typically explained by “biases of the mind” and/or “emotions.” These include, for example, the “fixed-pie bias” (whatever is good for the other side is bad for us, especially when it comes to the making concessions), non-rational escalation of commitment or what is sometimes referred to as the “winner’s curse,” and various kinds of self-serving attributions such as egocentrism, overconfidence, and irrational optimism (also see, e.g., Bazerman and Malhotra, 2007, pp.103–139; Bazerman and Samuelson, 1983; Dingwall, 2016, pp.103–124; Fisher and Shapiro, 2005). Scholars have also identified the importance of culture to help explain why parties may misread the signals, tactics, and negotiating behaviors of their interlocutors and tend to ignore the impact their own cultural biases and negotiating style may have on the way their messages are received on the opposite side of the negotiating table (Brett et al., 1998; Cohen, 1997; Lee, et al., 2012).

The purpose of this project is to explore another important dimension to international negotiation processes that warrants closer scrutiny in a world that is experiencing waves of right-wing and left-wing populism that are fueled by a fragmentation of politics at the national level defined more by identity and who people are in terms of race, ethnicity, and economic status than ideas of human equality, rule of law, and unified shared values (Fukuyama, 2018). It focuses on the intersubjective identities of the parties and the political narratives or “stories” they carry in their own minds, which shape their respective values, interests, and negotiating behaviors in ways that may not be utility maximizing in the conventional sense.¹ As we explore here, such narratives influence negotiating behavior and strategies in different negotiating settings and on different issues in a number of key ways. (1) They can influence key decisions about whether to negotiate, that is, key prenegotiation choices, especially when core political identities are threatened; (2) Identity narratives may be critical to the way parties view their best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA) and reservation price (the maximum price a party is prepared to pay or the minimum sale price) in negotiation; (3) Identity narratives can play a key role in the two-level games that are typically associated with any international negotiation (a compelling narrative may enlarge the win-win set between different domestic constituencies and build support for a “resolving formula” whereas a less-than-compelling narrative will reduce the likelihood of convergence); and (4) Persuasive narratives that bridge or cross different group identities can help build supportive international coalitions and/or social movements, which are crucial to managing bargaining processes, especially in a multilateral setting, and arriving at a successful negotiated outcome though they may be increasingly difficult to develop because of the power of populist-based, identity politics in many countries throughout the world.

Identity and narrative theory explained

Concepts of identity and narratives are used by constructivist international relations scholars (Barnett, 2013; Miskimmon et al., 2017; Suganami, 1999; Wendt, 1999) to explain how stories and frames of reference help to build intersubjective understandings, build consensus, and justify appropriate action. Narratives thus help to explain a social relationship or phenomenon.

Economists, more recently, have turned to narratives and concepts of social identity to help explain deviations from so-called rational or “optimal” outcomes where social actors pursue courses of action that are clearly suboptimal (Akerlof, 2007; Akerlof and Shiller, 2009; Akerlof and Kranton, 2011; Akerlof, 2017a, 2017b, 2018; Bruner, 1998; Fisher, 1984; Lamberson, 2016; Mokyr, 2017; Morson and Schapiro, 2017; Schiller, 2017). In traditional economic theory, motivations are derived from a priori assumptions about utility maximization. In identity theory, people are motivated by the stories they tell themselves at the time of their decisions. Such stories, or narratives, convey beliefs about who we are, how we should behave, what is important, and how the world works. Their impact on policy depends on the salience of the stories that get told. Policies, in turn, can shape and change stories (Akerlof, 2018; Davidson, 2016; Hall, 1993).

Importantly, narratives are also collections of stories that contain an understanding—no matter how rudimentary, crude (or just plain wrong)—about putative cause and effect in the real world. In other words, narratives are ways of organizing complex information to help understand reality and what may need to be done to deal with difficult and challenging circumstances. There are the memes that help us to understand and explain the world in terms of why things are the way they are and how we should act. The most successful narratives (in a political sense) are those that are simple and easily grasped by the layperson. Narratives don’t have to be true or do justice to the facts—they simply have to be rhetorically persuasive and attractive to a particular political constituency and/or mobilized social network. As Paul Collier (2014) points out, narratives influence “how actors understand causal relationships by which the consequences of particular actions are determined: narratives may trump the direct observation of experience as means of learning about the world.” As Bruce Wydick (2015) of the World Bank further explains,

Why so often is narrative used in place of good data in impact claims? There are at least two reasons. The first is well-known: a lack of understanding of causal effects, or in some cases, an unwillingness to submit a program to rigorous evaluation. The second is more interesting: a good narrative soundly beats even the best data … In the battle for hearts and minds of human beings, narrative will consistently outperform data in its ability to influence human thinking and motivate human action.

Wydick, 2015

This is because people are psychologically predisposed to tune out reams of data, what Slovic refers to as “psychic numbing.”

But narratives are not simply epiphenomenal, heuristic devices to deal with complexity. They unite members of a group and help forge and sustain a unique sense of identity within a social grouping or network. The most powerful narratives define the key values, norms, and social identity of the group (as well as those who are considered members of the out-group) as in key narratives about “imagined communities” like nations (Anderson, 2016). Identity narratives have both causal and thematic coherence (Bruner, 1998). In an individual or personal context, they contribute to ego identity and psychological well-being. In a group context, they give meaning and existence to the identity of the group or social network (De Fina, 2006; Fleetwood, 2016; Hammack, 2008). In other words, the most powerful narratives are perceived to have existential validity and help delineate the group’s core values, behavioral norms, needs, and deeds. Narratives sometimes have a single author, but they may also have different authors who contribute to the story and adapt it through the retelling of the story over a period of time to different audiences and constituencies. The most powerful narratives help form (and reinforce) a sense of group identity and, accordingly, become foundational elements of the emotional belief system of the group or community in question.

As psychologists point out, identity narratives generally tend to fall into three generic categories (Adler et al., 2015; Fisher, 1984; Lapsley, 2010; McAdams and McLean, 2013). They may be stories of redemption or hope that explain how an individual (or, by extension, a group) can transition from a negative to a more positive state of affairs, involving recovery, growth, sustainability, prosperity, security, and learning. There are also narratives about contamination that explain the proverbial “fall from grace” as a result of group victimization, exploitation, marginalization, abuse, betrayal, failed hopes, and/or disillusionment (McAdams et al., 2001; McAdams and Bowman, 2001). Most religions, for example, are based on powerful narratives that contain elements of both redemption and contamination. In Christianity, for example, there are many stories in the Bible about individuals who have sought (and achieved) redemption after having sinned or strayed from the teachings of God. Similarly, the Bible also cautions against falling under the spell of ungodly cultures which can lead into temptation. In the Old Testament, for example, the Israelites were warned about falling prey to the ungodly practices of those around them (Leviticus 18:1–5 and Deuteronomy 18:9–14). There are also narratives about individual or collective agency, that is, stories about how to achieve the pathway to success and secure greater individual or group fulfillment, self-actualization, and/or resiliency as a result of adopting a particular course of action through the exercise of agency or personal will (Adler, 2012; Dissanayake, 1996; Ogunyemi, 2014; Smith, 2017; Suganami, 1999).

It may also be useful to draw a distinction between deep versus shallow narratives. Deep narratives have existential validity or import and tap into a deep-rooted need that individuals have for a sense of identity and belonging to a social group. As such, the most powerful narratives shape and give voice to the shared values and behavioral norms that define the core beliefs of the group or social network (Bearman and Stovel, 2000). They are stories that elicit profound emotions of fear, dread, isolation, seclusion, or their opposite—hope, joy, belonging, and community. They are narratives that bind the group or social network and reinforce both a sense of community and pathways to collective action (Benford and Snow, 2000).

Shallow narratives, like deep narratives, are also stories about cause and effect, but they lack existential depth or import and are not a strong source of group identification or a basis for concerted, collective action. They may have cognitive value as simplifiers of a complex reality, but they are deficient in emotional appeal or resonance and rarely serve as a powerful driving force for collective action in the way that deep narratives do. When narratives point to different courses of action and are in conflict, deep narratives will always trump shallow narratives. When there is more than one set of dee...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Contributors
• Part I Theories, concepts, approaches
• Part II Narratives of foreign policies and economic negotiations
• Part III Narratives of peace and conflict negotiations
• Part IV Conclusion
• Index