"In a single volume, a team of distinguished international scholars draws on a wide range of social science theory to explain the dynamics of bargaining and diplomacy when many parties and many issues are involved. Each contributor explores a different approach to reaching successful agreements among diverse governments, multinational corporations, and other international actors. To show how these approaches work in actual practice, the authors provide detailed analyses of two multilateral negotiations - the Uruguay round of negotiations under the General Agreement for Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the negotiations leading to the Single European Act consolidating the European Community." "The increased length and frequency of such events as the GATT talks, the Rio Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), and the Law of the Sea Conferences (UNCLOS) highlight the enormous challenges of complex negotiations among many competing interests. This work, sponsored by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, offers the first comprehensive understanding of the intricate and complex process of multilateral negotiation." "The book provides the tools for analyzing and managing the complexities of multilateral negotiations including how the roots of conflict, the distribution of power, and specific patterns of resistance and cooperation affect all stages of negotiation; how game theory, multi-attribute utility models, and other practical tools can be used to chart interests and identify strategic trade-offs before negotiations; how negotiation is organization in action, applying the rules and culture of organizations to change through a cybernetic process; how insights into the way small groups function can help advance negotiations; why different modes of leadership are needed to diagnose multinational problems, clarify options, and develop feasible solutions; how and why coalitions are formed - and how they can prompt meaningful bargaining and help forge positive, lasting agreements."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Including chapters from some of the leading experts in the field this Handbook provides a full overview of the nature and challenges of modern diplomacy and includes a tour d'horizon of the key ways in which the theory and practice of modern diplomacy are evolving in the 21st Century.

Political scientist Fen Osler Hampson, with the assistance of trade specialist Michael Hart, studies the component parts of the multilateral negotiation process to identify those factors making for success or failure. The authors argue that multilateral negotiation is, in essence, a coalition-building enterprise involving states, nonstate actors, and international organizations. Among the questions they raise are: How do issues get to the table in multilateral negotiations? Who sits at the table and who composes the tiers of relevant stakeholders? What are the procedures for managing complexity? What are the obstacles - strategic and psychological - to reaching agreement? Ranging from the 1963 Test Ban Treaty to the Climate Change Convention (1992) and the completion of the Uruguay Round of GATT (1993), individual case studies include discussions on security, environmental, and economic issues. Of particular interest is the attention given to nongovernmental actors - such as scientists and environmental groups like Greenpeace International - in prenegotiation and negotiation phases.

This book offers a comprehensive practitioner's guide to negotiating at the United Nations. Although much of the content can be applied broadly, the guide focuses on navigating multilateral negotiations at the UN. The book is a tool to help new UN negotiators, explaining basic negotiation concepts and offering insight into the complexities of the UN system. It also offers a playbook for cooperation for negotiators at any level, exploring the dynamics of relationships and alliances, the art of chairing a negotiation, and the importance of balancing the power asymmetries present in any multilateral discussion. The book proposes improvements to the UN negotiation process and looks at the impact of information technologies on negotiation dynamics; it also shares stories from women UN delegates, illustrating what it means to be a female negotiator at the UN. This book is an exploration of the power of the individual in any negotiation, and of the responsibility all negotiators have in wielding that power to speak for a better world. This book will be of much interest to students of diplomacy, global governance, foreign policy, and International Relations, as well as practitioners and policymakers.

The issues that increasingly dominate the 21st century cannot be solved by any single country acting alone, no matter how powerful. To manage the global economy, prevent runaway environmental destruction, reign in nuclear proliferation, or confront other global challenges, we must cooperate. But at the same time, our tools for global policymaking - chiefly state-to-state negotiations over treaties and international institutions - have broken down. The result is gridlock, which manifests across areas via a number of common mechanisms. The rise of new powers representing a more diverse array of interests makes agreement more difficult. The problems themselves have also grown harder as global policy issues penetrate ever more deeply into core domestic concerns. Existing institutions, created for a different world, also lock-in pathological decision-making procedures and render the field ever more complex. All of these processes - in part a function of previous, successful efforts at cooperation - have led global cooperation to fail us even as we need it most. Ranging over the main areas of global concern, from security to the global economy and the environment, this book examines these mechanisms of gridlock and pathways beyond them. It is written in a highly accessible way, making it relevant not only to students of politics and international relations but also to a wider general readership.

One of the first analyses of the impact of US-China rivalry on the governance of global trade.