Around the world, negotiation is the only tool people have to make collective decisions when there must be unanimity. Like any other social activity, negotiation exhibits both universal patterns determined by the finite possibilities of its nature and local variations determined by cultural practices. Universalities predominate if one digs deep enough, and peculiarities abound in surface manifestations. This text investigates how deep is deep enough, and how shallow the surface, and attempts to find the meeting line. As more and more individuals meet around the negotiation table, providing conditions for cultural encounters, and clashes, this volume examines the actors involved, the role culture plays, and the role of organizations.

This book reinforces the foundation of a new field of studies and research in the intersection between social sciences and specifically between political science, international relations, diplomacy, psychotherapy, and social-cognitive psychology. It seeks to promote a coherent and comprehensive approach to international negotiation from a multidisciplinary viewpoint generating a longer term of studies, researches, and networking process that both respond to changes and differences in our societies and to the unprecedented demand and opportunities for international conflict prevention and resolution. There is a need to increase cooperation, coherence, and efficiency of international negotiation. It is necessary to focus our shared attention on new ways to better formulate integrated and sustainable negotiating strategies for conflict resolution. This book acquires innovative relevance in and will impact on the new context of international challenges which do not have a one-off solution that can be settled through a single target-oriented negotiation process. The book brings together leading scholars and researchers into the field from different disciplines, diplomats, politicians, senior officials, and even a Cardinal of the Holy See to give their contributions and make proposals on how best to optimize the use of negotiation and diplomacy structures, tools, and instruments. However, unlike most studies and researches on international negotiation, this book emphasizes processes, not simply outcomes or even tools but the way in which tools are and can be used to achieve better outcomes in international reality-based negotiation.