Deal v. No-Deal in the Middle East

Professor James Sebenius recently analyzed three ominous forces in an article for Power and Policy, entitled “Deal v. No-Deal in the Middle East: Three Forces Leading to a Deadly Collision,” (June 20, 2011).

On May 15, 2011, thousands of Palestinians rushed Israel’s Syrian and Lebanese borders, as well as the fences of Gaza. Such actions have continued on several Israeli fronts. Arabic social media now buzz with expanded plans for unarmed Palestinian refugees to protest en masse in and around the Jewish state. If stones marked the first intifada and suicide bombers the second, waves of children, women, and men may well characterize a third phase of the conflict. There is much commentary about this new form of protest. Likewise, the planned September UN vote on Palestinian statehood generates considerable discussion and diplomatic maneuver. Far less well appreciated are the likely consequences of a toxic three-way combination: mass protest, the statehood vote, and a tough Israeli response on the ground. Without advance action to prevent these three forces from converging in September, the risk level will spike for Israeli, Palestinian, and American interests.

A number of constructive actions could prevent the dangerous three-way collision of a new form of protest, the statehood vote, and a tough Israeli response. If pre-September negotiations make sufficient progress, the statehood resolution could be crafted to support and strongly facilitate negotiations, not pre-empt them. While many senior “insiders”—Israeli, Palestinian, and American—clearly sense the coming collision and are scrambling for a way out, crucial constituencies on all three sides oppose meaningful initiatives that could avert it. For very different reasons, muddling through looks better to these broader publics.

Is a Nuclear Deal with Iran Possible?

Professor James K. Sebenius, Director of the Harvard Negotiation Project, and Michael Singh, former Adjunct Fellow at the Belfer Center and currently Managing Director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, have analyzed efforts to negotiate Iranian nuclear issues. They observe that two U.S. administrations and many others have sought to negotiate with Iran to credibly limit its nuclear program to peaceful purposes. Their lack of success has prompted analysts to offer tactical and process advice (e.g., be more or less confrontational; impose or avoid preconditions; start with “easy” issues to build momentum; use back channels or third parties, etc.). They argue that a more basic question must first be answered: “is there a ‘zone of possible agreement’ between Iran and its main counterparts?” They develop a framework to answer this question, and conclude that:

· On widely accepted assumptions, there does not at present appear to be a zone of possible agreement that is better for each side than its best no-deal option. As such, tactical and process-oriented approaches have failed and will likely continue to fail to achieve desirable agreement.

· If there is no zone of possible agreement, the challenge for negotiators is to create and widen such a zone to include feasible deals that are better than war and accommodating a nuclear-armed Iran.

· If such a zone is to be created and expanded to include desirable agreements, Iran’s no-deal option must be sufficiently worsened by a range of cost-imposing measures, and/or the value of a potential deal must be sufficiently enhanced by a range of inducements. Such costs and/or inducements must be credible, meaningful to the Iranian administration, and of sufficient magnitude.

· Downplaying both coercive options and upside potential, as international negotiators appear to have done, works against this two-pronged strategy.

· If and as a zone of possible agreement opens, skillful diplomatic tactics and process choices will be required to achieve a worthwhile deal.

Their argument is summarized in a March 2011 policy brief, “The Iran Talks: Opening a Zone of Possible Agreement,” and developed in considerable detail in James K. Sebenius and Michael K. Singh, “Is a Nuclear Deal with Iran Possible? An Analytical Framework for the Iran Nuclear Negotiations” Belfer Center Working Paper, Harvard Kennedy School, February 2011.

Case Study Explores Efficacy of IPNP

The mission statement of the Israeli Palestinian Negotiating Partners (IPNP) is “To increase the effectiveness of the Israeli Palestinian negotiations and dialogue process by creating a network of negotiators, developing and disseminating common negotiation tools and methodologies, and encouraging a language and constructive culture of negotiation.”

But how effective has this effort been?

James Sebenius and Shula Gilad recently recently wrote a comprehensive case study, based on interviews with IPNP members and analysis of past events, in order to examine the efficacy of the network’s events and to suggest future strategy, institutional changes and activities.

Abstract below:

“A network of influential Israelis and Palestinians, jointly trained in negotiation at Harvard since 2002, faces organizational, strategic, and funding challenges in 2010. Unlike “people-to-people” or “Track II” initiatives, the Israeli-Palestinian Negotiating Partners (IPNP) consists of relatively senior people on both sides of the conflict who have undergone advanced negotiation training together and now constitute a unique network in the region. IPNP’s academic sponsor, the Harvard Negotiation Project, is helping to assess this unique negotiation initiative and to assist the organization to conduct a basic re-assessment in the face of changes in regional politics, the conflict, and the funding environment.”

IPNP Workshops Bring Israeli, Palestinian Negotiators Together

For the past decade, HNP has supported an annual week-long workshop in Cambridge and advanced regional workshops, aimed at improving negotiation tools and skills of Israeli and Palestinian negotiation professionals and political advisers. A number of PON faculty affiliates, including Bruce Patton, Dan ShapiroRobert Mnookin, William Ury, James Sebenius and Brian Mandell, have consistently contributed to leading workshop sessions and have helped develop teaching materials. IPNP has enjoyed the consistent support of negotiation experts — such as VantagePartners’ senior partner Mark Gordon, CMPartners’ senior Partner Ken Hyatt, former CMG program director Arthur Martirosyan, and Mercy Corps’ Landrum Bolling – for implementation of its programs.

HLS Conference Examines Israeli Settlements

In October 2004, Professor Robert Mnookin and PON’s Harvard Negotiation Research Project co-hosted, along with the Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution at the University of Nevada – Las Vegas, a major academic conference on the question of the West Bank and Gaza Settlements. Titled “Past, Present, and Future of the Jewish West Bank and Gaza Settlements: The Internal Israeli Conflict” at Harvard (something still missing) Organized into six thematic panels, the conference brought together prominent academics, policymakers, and public intellectuals to address questions relating to settler relocation from a variety of academic perspectives: historical, philosophical, religious, psychological, economic, political and legal. The participants included Israelis, Palestinians, as well as scholars from North America and Europe. The proceedings from the conference were published in the April 2005 issue of Negotiation Journal.

Professor Mnookin Explores The Ethnic Conflicts Between Israelis and Palestinians and Flemings and Walloons

Professor Robert Mnookin’s research on the internal conflicts among ethnic groups and their effect on broader negotiations with external powers are examined in the January, 2007 Edition of Daedalus.

Excerpt:

“It had never occurred to me that the conflict between the Flemish and the Walloons, and Belgium’s governmental structure, would be thought relevant to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. But on two different occasions, after learning that I was temporarily residing in Belgium, Palestinian intellectuals stated that the resolution of the conflict should involve the creation of a single secular state modeled after Belgium’s–with language communities and largely autonomous regions that would give both Jews and Palestinians substantially independent control over their own destinies within the framework of a single binational, federal state.

I have since discovered some surprising similarities between these obviously very different ethnic conflicts. As it turns out, the size of Israel and the Palestinian territories combined is almost exactly the same as Belgium, both in terms of square miles and population. Both can be seen as conflicts between two peoples–with roughly equal numbers–where the issue can be framed as whether the appropriate resolution should involve two states or only one. Finally, in both disputes, if there is to be a two-state solution, a contentious and complicated issue is the fate of the capital–Brussels or Jerusalem.

Yet what makes the comparison fascinating is not these similarities but a conspicuous difference. Belgium presents a remarkable example of an ethnic conflict without a single death or any mass violence over a thirty-year period. During that time, a Belgian political elite on opposing sides of the language divide stitched a series of compromises into a complex federal system. This new federal regime may not be sufficient to hold the Belgian state together, but no one believes the conflict between the Flemings and Walloons will become violent. This stands in striking contrast to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where during the same period negotiations have repeatedly failed and thousands have died.”

PON’s co-founder Roger Fisher and the Middle East

Professor Roger Fisher, PON co-founder and first Director of the Harvard Negotiation Project, advised both the Iranian and American governments during the Iran hostage crisis. His revolutionary “one-text” approach was used by the Administration of President Jimmy Carter in the lead-up to the successful 1978 Camp David Accords, signed by President Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel, which ended three decades of hostility and war between the two countries. Fisher also published a series of open letters to both the Israeli and Arab publics in his 1972 book, Dear Israelis, Dear Arabs. In 2001 he co-founded Israeli Palestinian Negotiation Partners (IPNP).

Shula Gilad

Senior Fellow, Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School

As a senior fellow, Shula Gilad manages Program on Negotiation’s Middle East Negotiation Initiative, which helps disseminate negotiation methodology and techniques that can help solve this region’s most difficult challenges. Previously, she was a senior consultant to Mercy Corps Conflict Management Group, the coordinator of the Wexner Israel Fellowship Program at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), and the director of policy research at HKS’s Institute for Social and Economic Policy in the Middle East.

In that capacity, she directed joint Arab-Israeli research projects on topics related to the Final Status issues—such as water, refugees, Jerusalem, trade, and security—which were presented to heads of states in the Middle East and to other relevant ministries, institutions, and the media around the world. For 18 years prior to that, Gilad was a social worker in Israel and was involved in national policymaking related to out-of-home care for children at risk.

Education

B.A., University of California, Berkley

M.Ed., University of Massachusetts, Boston

Ph.D., The Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University

Research interests

Negotiation in the Middle East, conflict management, dispute resolution

 

Making room for intuition in negotiation

Adapted from “The Heat of the Moment,” first published in the Negotiation newsletter, January 2007.

Imagine that after ample preparation and weeks of negotiations with three potential vendors, you have to choose among their proposals, each of which has numerous strengths and weaknesses. What’s more, you have only five minutes left to make this tough decision.

How should you spend this precious time? Ap Dijksterhuis and other researchers at the University of Amsterdam offer this somewhat surprising advice: fight the temptation to read through the proposals one last time, and don’t run any more numbers. Their studies suggest that you actually may make a better decision by putting the proposals aside, doing an anagram puzzle, and following your intuition.

Not only were study participants more satisfied with the decisions they reached that way, but independent evaluators also rated these choices as better on average than the choices of those who consciously deliberated to the last second. These effects were apparent, however, only for complex problems with many interconnected issues, such as choosing a new home.
Deliberate thought tends to involve rule-based analysis and thus is ultimately constrained by what we can process consciously. By contrast, “[u]nconscious thought does not suffer from low capacity. Indeed, it has been shown that during unconscious thought, large amounts of information can be integrated into evaluative summary judgment.”

This doesn’t mean you should trash your decision trees and spreadsheets. On the contrary, rigorous analysis is essential to negotiation. But before you make a final decision, allow your unconscious a few moments to do its unique integrative work.

When negotiation goals backfire

Adapted from “Managers: Think Twice Before Setting Negotiation Goals,” first published in the Negotiation newsletter, May 2009.

In the years leading up to its collapse, energy-trading company Enron promised its salespeople large bonuses for meeting challenging revenue goals. This focus on revenue rather than profit contributed to widespread fraud and, ultimately, to the firm’s downfall.

To encourage the negotiators they supervise to do their best, managers routinely rely on performance benchmarks, the promise of bonuses, and other types of goals. But far from being a cure-all, negotiation goals can trigger a variety of destructive behaviors, write professors Lisa D. Ordóñez (University of Arizona), Maurice E. Schweitzer (University of Pennsylvania), Adam D. Galinsky (Northwestern University), and Max H. Bazerman (Harvard University) in an article in the Academy of Management Perspectives.

Hundreds of research experiments suggest that setting specific, challenging goals can inspire employees and improve organizational results. But these findings, achieved in controlled settings, fail to account for the pressures and temptations of the real world. Given the pitfalls of goals, managers would be wise to think long and hard before using them. Here are several questions that Ordóñez, Schweitzer, Galinsky, and Bazerman advise managers to answer before implementing goals, as well as steps you can take to address goal pitfalls:

1.    “Is the goal too specific?” Ensure that goals incorporate all the factors that will help your organization succeed.
2.    “Is the goal too challenging?” Give employees the skills and training they need to meet goals, and avoid harsh punishment if they fail to meet them.
3.    “Does the goal have the right time horizon?” Avoid setting short-term goals, which could backfire on your organization over time.
4.    “Does the goal promote risky or unethical behavior?” Clarify acceptable levels of risk, set up strong oversight, and communicate the high costs of cheating.
5.    “How will the goal affect our organization’s culture?” To promote cooperation, consider setting team negotiation goals rather than individual ones.