A Comparative Methodology for Analyzing Negotiations

Most of the lessons learned for policy makers from past international negotiations have been derived from descriptive assessments of particular cases taken one at a time. The objective of this study is to develop a truly comparative and systematic approach to negotiation analysis that will provide the capability to draw lessons from a larger and more representative data base of negotiation cases. Structured interviews were conducted with 23 Austrian diplomats to gather information about particular international negotiation cases that they personally participated in. These interviews were coded into a taxonomy of important negotiation elements to develop a data base that describes each negotiation case as a profile of 35 key factors. These data were then analyzed systematically to derive a better understanding of the process of international negotiation and how that process leads to successful outcomes or deadlock. One of the most important findings is the effectiveness of bilateral negotiations. They are more likely than multilateral negotiations to be characterized by successful treaties, low delegation turnover, friendly political relations, and deadlines that are met. Bilateral negotiations may be a more cost-effective alternative to participation in multilateral forums: fewer transaction costs and better outcomes

Determination of Compromising Behavior in Negotiation: A Meta-Analysis

Effects of eight variables on yielding behavior and time to resolution were evaluated by a meta-analysis of published bargaining experiments reported over a twenty-five year period. The strongest effect sizes were obtained for the variables of prenegotiation experience, negotiator's orientation, initial position distance, and time pressure. Weak effect sizes were shown for large versus small issues, representation, and visibility of the bargaining process. These results challenge the assertion made by Blake and Mouton (1989) that group representation is the most important determinant of competitive behavior in bargaining. Analyses of differences in procedures used in the strongest and weakest effect-size studies in each category suggest a number of conditions under which bargainers are likely to be intransigent. Comparison of the meta-analysis results with those obtained from a simulation where similar variables were combined in scenarios revealed stronger effect sizes for the combined variables both across and within stages of the simulation. Further analyses would elucidate effects of other independent and dependent variables as these are explored in future experimentation

The Situational Levers of Negotiating Flexibility

This is an experimental study of some aspects of a negotiation situation that may influence a bargainer's decisions about his or her positions and tactics. The experiment is an attempt to explore hypothesized relationships between these types of variables in the setting of a simulated international conference on environmental regulation. It is regarded as a next step in a progression of analytical work on these relationships. In order to place the experiment in that analytical context, a general discussion of the meaning of negotiating flexibility and of situational levers precedes a description of methods and results. A final section develops implications of the findings for further work on this topic

Simulating the Lausanne Peace negotiations, 1922-1923: Power asymmetries in Bargaining

The negotiation leading to the historic Lausanne Peace Treaty provides a setting for exploring the impacts of different power configurations on bargaining behavior. Symmetric and asymmetric coalition structures existed on two key issues in the talks, passage through the straits and the question of civil rights for minorities. A content analysis of the transcripts showed some differences in bargaining behavior between the two power structures. These structures were simulated and compared to a third condition, bilateral negotiations between parties of equal power Opposing negotiators in the symmetric parties condition were more satisfied with the outcome, achieved faster resolutions, disagreed less, and made fewer competitive statements during the discussions than negotiators from these countries in the coalition conditions. Both similarities and differences were found in the comparison between the processes and outcomes in the actual and simulated negotiations. The results have implications for designing structures that improve negotiations and illustrate some advantages of experimental simulation. © 1996 Sage Publications, Inc

Engaging stakeholders in research to address water-energy-food (WEF) nexus challenges

The water–energy–food (WEF) nexus has become a popular, and potentially powerful, frame through which to analyse interactions and interdependencies between these three systems. Though the case for transdisciplinary research in this space has been made, the extent of stakeholder engagement in research remains limited with stakeholders most commonly incorporated in research as end-users. Yet, stakeholders interact with nexus issues in a variety of ways, consequently there is much that collaboration might offer to develop nexus research and enhance its application. This paper outlines four aspects of nexus research and considers the value and potential challenges for transdisciplinary research in each. We focus on assessing and visualising nexus systems; understanding governance and capacity building; the importance of scale; and the implications of future change. The paper then proceeds to describe a novel mixed-method study that deeply integrates stakeholder knowledge with insights from multiple disciplines. We argue that mixed-method research designs—in this case orientated around a number of cases studies—are best suited to understanding and addressing real-world nexus challenges, with their inevitable complex, non-linear system characteristics. Moreover, integrating multiple forms of knowledge in the manner described in this paper enables research to assess the potential for, and processes of, scaling-up innovations in the nexus space, to contribute insights to policy and decision making

How Polarized Have We Become? A Multimodal Classification of Trump Followers and Clinton Followers

Polarization in American politics has been extensively documented and analyzed for decades, and the phenomenon became all the more apparent during the 2016 presidential election, where Trump and Clinton depicted two radically different pictures of America. Inspired by this gaping polarization and the extensive utilization of Twitter during the 2016 presidential campaign, in this paper we take the first step in measuring polarization in social media and we attempt to predict individuals' Twitter following behavior through analyzing ones' everyday tweets, profile images and posted pictures. As such, we treat polarization as a classification problem and study to what extent Trump followers and Clinton followers on Twitter can be distinguished, which in turn serves as a metric of polarization in general. We apply LSTM to processing tweet features and we extract visual features using the VGG neural network. Integrating these two sets of features boosts the overall performance. We are able to achieve an accuracy of 69%, suggesting that the high degree of polarization recorded in the literature has started to manifest itself in social media as well.Comment: 16 pages, SocInfo 2017, 9th International Conference on Social Informatic

An analysis of integrative outcomes in the Dayton peace negotiations

The nature of the negotiated outcomes of the eight issues of the Dayton Peace Agreement was studied in terms of their integrative and distributive aspects. in cases where integrative elements were Sound, further analysis was conducted by concentrating on Pruitt's five types of integrative solutions: expanding the pie, cost cutting, non-specific compensation, logrolling, and bridging. The results showed that real world international negotiations can arrive at integrative agreements even when they involve redistribution of resources tin this case the redistribution of former Yugoslavia). Another conclusion was that an agreement can consist of several distributive outcomes and several integrative outcomes produced by different kinds of mechanisms. Similarly, in single issues more than one mechanism can be used simultaneously. Some distributive bargaining was needed in order to determine how much compensation was required. Finally, each integrative formula had some distributive aspects as well

Estimating Small Area Income Deprivation: An Iterative Proportional Fitting Approach

Small area estimation and in particular the estimation of small area income deprivation has potential value in the development of new or alternative components of multiple deprivation indices. These new approaches enable the development of income distribution threshold based as opposed to benefit count based measures of income deprivation and so enable the alignment of regional and national measures such as the Households Below Average Income with small area measures. This paper briefly reviews a number of approaches to small area estimation before describing in some detail an iterative proportional fitting based spatial microsimulation approach. This approach is then applied to the estimation of small area HBAI rates at the small area level in Wales in 2003-5. The paper discusses the results of this approach, contrasts them with contemporary ‘official’ income deprivation measures for the same areas and describes a range of ways to assess the robustness of the results

Peak residential electricity demand and social practices: deriving flexibility and greenhouse gas intensities from time use and locational data

Peak residential electricity demand takes place when people conduct simultaneous activities at specific times of the day. Social practices generate patterns of demand and can help understand why, where, with whom and when energy services are used at peak time. The aim of this work is to make use of recent UK time use and locational data to better understand: (i) how a set of component indices on synchronisation, variation, sharing and mobility indicate flexibility to shift demand; and (ii) the links between people’s activities and peaks in greenhouse gases’ intensities. The analysis is based on a recent UK time use dataset, providing 1 minute interval data from GPS devices and 10 minute data from diaries and questionnaires for 175 data days comprising 153 respondents. Findings show how greenhouse gases’ intensities and flexibility to shift activities vary throughout the day. Morning peaks are characterised by high levels of synchronisation, shared activities and occupancy, with low variation of activities. Evening peaks feature low synchronisation, and high spatial mobility variation of activities. From a network operator perspective, the results indicate that periods with lower flexibility may be prone to more significant local network loads due to the synchronization of electricity-demanding activities