The Role of Diplomatic Negotiation in Facilitating International Conflict Resolution

Dr. ARSHED AHMED SIMO
The Role of Diplomatic Negotiation in Facilitating International
Conflict Resolution

1. Introduction
Disputes between states, as well as disputes within states involving authorities, governmental organs,´-or-groups of persons within a state, may be settled by peaceful means such as negotiation, mediation,´-or-other methods. International conflict resolution, either by pacific means´-or-compulsion, usually requires a series of steps introduced by the disputants in anticipation of,´-or-with the hope for, subsequent action to be taken by others. A first step is usually a -dir-ect approach, whereby government representatives are responsible for the conduct of the necessary negotiations. Such negotiations may be conducted consecutively,´-or-simultaneously with paralleled methods. Uncertain means of negotiations, where disputants are expected to explain positions, thoughts, and emotions, may be undertaken in order to clarify the problems and the terms under dispute. Very often, however, negotiation procedures are well defined, and formalized proposals are exchanged. A differentiating feature is whether the offer of inducements is accompanied by a statement of the terms of a proposed agreement. Where states themselves act as disputants, and place their states to settle the dispute, self propose systems of negotiation with no third party involvement are preferred.
A great number of disputes are conducted through either binding´-or-non-binding arbitration. The procedure of neutral intervention may be sharp´-or-blunt, but prevention of interaction is usually excluded. Non-permanent members of the Security Council may be raised up to the desired level of policy regarding extending some modalities of the great game. Plenary proceedings may be slow, but readily available-;- other actions through the Council President, advance consultations, and oral statements would be prompt, and unobtrusive. Another mode of decision-making goes on primarily among men of affairs, a small group of representatives from the states who meet in secrecy to weight the pros and cons leading to recommendations to those states which is publicly placed before plenary meetings. It is by means of informal negotiations, dabbling in the public relations business, usually at headquarters if not on-site.
Greater emphasis has been placed on the role of actors other than just states and international organisations, at least for certain types of negotiations. Some recent facilitated negotiations on issues such as the conflict have had this character. In an effort to better understand the conditions for the successful use of non-binding international dispute settler, some of the salient characteristics of relevant negotiation situations are examined, and a number of case histories are presented.
2. Historical Context of Diplomatic Negotiation
Historically, diplomatic negotiations have been used by societies to settle disputes and bring resolution to conflicts without warfare. Statesmen have traditionally fought disputes with surrounding nations to either promote peace´-or-pursue war. While neither war nor peace was pursued as a policy in the past, the public was used extensively to inform the monarchs, at their command, of what they thought of treaties and agreements and diplomatists of political choice. The results of treaties and conventions were published in full in history books after they had been concluded. As politics and diplomacy have been taken out of the hands of monarchs and enabled to advance before the public eye and informed the world of what statesmen are doing, abusing diplomacy has been impossible (D. Murphy, 2022). In special cases contexts were so complex,´-or-interests to be safeguarded so important, discussions were held outside public view. But even then the basis of negotiations had been considered before official conversation began and maintained rigorously. Furthermore, in deciding which statement to make diplomatically it was commonly discussed how best to phrase it, so as to convey the requisite information without ambiguity. However, it developed that negotiations were not to any great extent prohibited. Since then flashing prominence has absorbed diplomats and treaty-makers, and a different order of back-room negotiators, less so in public eye, has taken their place.
In recent international affairs it has become self-evident the publicity once regarded as indispensable gets in the way of realistic solution to disagreements-;- garment studio has become altogether unsuitable for the purpose. As countries living in states of enmity toward each other negotiated before the public eye, they must be impressed with the grandiosity of public discussion more´-or-less ridiculous. The greater the magnitude of the publicity, the more arrogant those whom it is possible to impress,´-or-the more humble, the more irritatingly sensitive those less impressed (Egunjobi & O. W. Odiaka, 2015). But before the arbiters whom disclosures can be successfully made, disclosure language is so locked up as to flow forth only on due occasion. The outburst of secret affairs is but a fury and fading mist. Grievances being out of sight, popular awe and servitude reinforce policy long entertained. That treaties would ere long be embroiled become continually more likely-;- the grip of anguish broadened. It was doubted if the committees of governments were not tending to become inefficient. Hence consensus group secrecy became indispensable, for as suspicion mounted, it was improbable either party would regard plain oral statements as final.
3. Theoretical Frameworks
At the onset of negotiations, disputants are presented with four choices. First, both players could initiate talks. Second, one party could initiate negotiations while the other holds out. Third, one side could refuse to negotiate until the other begs for talks. Fourth, both sides would pre-conditions talks on the other making first and far-reaching concessions. The effects of these choices on subsequent negotiation events are analyzed in a two-player complete bargaining game. Bargaining theory can explain such suffi-;-cient conditions if correctly modeled. However, such complex bargaining models remain dependant on the negotiators beliefs about the situation in their -dir-ect negotiation constraints. A more general belief-free framework might provide needed insights. Instead of assuming a common full rationality explanation to all negotiation processes, informal communication choices exist throughout these processes and can be expected to affect ex-ante bargaining power. These considerations concerning the role of informal communication and beliefs about its effects are theoretically tested in an experimental two-stage bargaining game that incorporates a non-binding sequence of informal communication choices. Decision-tree solutions are computed for all agreement possibilities of the proposed model. Bargaining theory is used to apply the decision-tree solutions into a two-stage game-theoretic framing. Game forms contrast how the effects of negotiators beliefs about informal communication is manipulated (a) -dir-ectly along the lines suggested by bargaining theory´-or-(b) alternatively, broadly by not enforcing any game-form restrictions on play. This approach illuminates how initial negotiation choices of a bargaining processor are gendered steps in a learning-induced bargaining adjustment where negotiators beliefs are incoherent (Gehrmann, 2019). Based on the results from this game-theoretic framing it is concluded that the consideration of negotiators private costs is not necessary to explain profi-;-t losses to unilateral small talk but instead private costs arguably even (or rather) constrain negotiators utility-maximizing bargaining behavior. Thereafter, game forms contrast how negotiators beliefs about communication opportunities are influenced by their gender and how the informal communication game moves should affect the subsequent bargaining game. The benefi-;-ts of a gendered framed test against the two-standard test that includes only a test of the formal negotiation move restrictions are discussed. Finally, potential avenues for future research in framing effects and considerations of gender in negotiation behavior are discussed.
3.1. Realism in International Relations
Though not without its critics, realism neatly brings together assumptions and propositions that have proven remarkably durable with regard to state behavior in the international political system. Realism in International Relations sets out a number of propositions. First, states are the most important actors in international politics and the system is anarchic. Second, states are rational, unitary actors that seek to maximize their security and/or power relative to other states. In an anarchic environment of uncertainty, states have-limit-ed information concerning both intentions and capabilities of different actors. The focus of scholarship concerned with international relations hence more often than not focuses on this main actor (the state), on its rational behavior, and on the structural conditions under which this behavior occurs´-or-varies (W. Legro & Moravcsik, 1999). Furthermore, realism also posits that 1) the relative distribution of material capabilities (or power) of multiple states is the main determinant of great power behavior-;- and 2) a number of possible systemic outcomes follow from this distributive theory of state behavior, the most important being: balance of power-;- bandwagoning-;- and competition leading to arms races, crises,´-or-war.
In examining coercive diplomacy, most discussions infer a realist world in which the state is the central unit of analysis and the focus is on how different systems with differing numbers of great powers affect how states behave (Michelino, 2022). The purpose of these discussions is to investigate the conditions under which this strategy (or the implicit threat to use force) is more´-or-less likely to succeed and to examine the implications of these conditions for the politics of great power security. Coercive diplomacy is proving to be a crucial tool in the delicate balance of international power, enabling states to influence their peers without crossing the threshold into military confrontation. Yet to be effective, coercive diplomacy requires careful thought and planning. To begin with, states firstly need to know what they want to achieve with the threat and what strategy is likely to prove most effective in shaping developments in their -dir-ection. In examining all these strategies, the discussion of selection criteria is at the same time the examination of how different strategies employ leverage.
3.2. Liberalism and Constructivism
Liberalism provides a strong theoretical framework for understanding why diplomatic negotiations serve so well as a method for resolving international disputes. Some of the liberal literature takes a more general approach and is less tied to the operational realities of the foreign policy decision-making process. Constructivism sheds some light on the interests and identities of negotiation parties, particularly in asymmetric power relationships. While it is sometimes difficult to see how the information about identity and interests assists the diplomat in the actively changing world diplomacy, this literature has at least the virtue of drawing attention to non-material factors in diplomacy which constrain the operation of material factors. Constructivism is also sometimes too broad and abstract. For example, literature about the socialization processes by which states might be persuaded to embrace and comply with the dictates of echelon regimes is intellectually compelling. However, it does not greatly enhance understanding of any particular negotiation´-or-treaty-process (Estrada, 2010). Different sides can have conflicting interpretations of key treaty obligations, but an understanding of those substantives offers the only realistic basis for narrowing such differences and for an effective mediation.
The outcome of a negotiation is a treaty. After its signing, the treaty needs to be ratified´-or-accepted according to domestic legal requirements. Many treaties create regimes governing bilateral´-or-multilateral relations on international trade and investment. In these cases, the success of the negotiation is negated if a treaty cannot be ratified´-or-if a treaty, once ratified, is not complied with. With respect to a particular negotiation, a diplomat may have a very yardstone focus on analysis of the effects of the negotiation on interests, on sensitivities about those interests, and on the structural and strategic manipulation of the negotiation process. It has not sought to articulate a different side about how the diplomatic negotiation affects and alters the underlying interests and identities of the sides.
4. Key Principles of Effective Negotiation
The process of negotiation is greatly improved by principled negotiation. The first element of principled negotiation deals with the people element in negotiation. People are dealt with separately from the problem. A negotiation is not a trial´-or-a debate, rather, it is a process of persuasion. The negotiator needs to know what it feels like to be a beetle. As the beetle, the other side is a foul-smelling creature and an insect. They may be difficult to see, obviously, and even disgusting. This person feels more important than the list. Real negotiating doesn’t take place inside a conference room. It takes place between lawyers, in the offices of the lawyers. Negotiators are likely to talk past one another. If face-to-face, the negotiators will meet in conference rooms housing expensive furniture. They will start on opponents’ territory. Someone will cajole them into “getting it over with”´-or-threaten such eventualities. A deck of arguments already prepared will present their case. (Nguyen, 2017). The second point of principled negotiation is interests instead of positions. Interests define the problem. While a party’s position is something he has decided upon, his interests are what cause him to make that decision. How can one identify the interests of the other party? Why did the other side take that position? The easiest way to determine these interests is to say to the other side, “Why are you taking that position?” By doing so, negotiators should be able to learn to hear curiosity instead of accusation and defensiveness. They should focus on cues: upon other sides’ quotes, they cannot elaborate and bluster, speak thanking others’ flattery but answering with technicalities, defense lawyer-like and all business. They should listen for the interests behind the position rather than the position itself. One indication is the word “but” (an opposite). Another is the word “very” (an exclamation). The essence of reframing is putting words in other parties’ mouths. Reframing is keeping the interest, consistent tone that is more objective´-or-neutral (Lavadoux & Grasset, 2013).
4.1. Communication Strategies
Negotiation is a highly complex process requiring pre-negotiation preparation and knowledge of the issues to be negotiated. This process involves two kinds of communication: deliberate and incidental. The former is planned, controlled, and -dir-ected towards a goal, while the latter is casual, uncontrolled, and happens in every-day life (Barkai, 1996). In complex negotiations, delegates must deliberate on the actual proposal sheet prior to conducting any negotiation. This process involves intra-group negotiation before the opening of negotiations and pre-negotiation inter-delegation communication (or mini-negotiations) for all possible, probable, and acceptable compromises. By so doing, delegations ensure that everyone is on the same page, and there is no diverging conduct. In informal discussions, they can weigh various proposals, arrive at a position, and decide frontiers.
Incidental communication at various stages of the process can be useful for building rapport, gathering intelligence, producing active facilitation´-or-interference. Informal, incidental, and non-verbal forms of communication, however, tend to be less consultative and deliberate. In incidental communication, delegates are inclined to use such things as gestures, facial expressions, body language, laughter, eye contact, and voice intonation. Such cues often play a much larger role in determining how one feels when a person speaks than the content of the communication. Some comments appear negative, but are delivered with a friendly intonation´-or-a smile that undoubtedly change their messages.
The growing distrust of the Justice and Peace with the paramilitaries in Colombia is related to this premise. The mechanisms of memory retrieval, return of property, restitution, justice and peace, have a material causal quantifiable and a moral dimension that can be measurable. In these cases, the mediation of the dialogue by way of the arguments is relatively effective as a matter of great social importance.
4.2. Building Trust and Rapport
One important aspect of the negotiation process is to build rapport and trust. Rapport—the perceived degree of connection between negotiators—is sometimes as important as the substance of the negotiation. Negotiations that produce successful outcomes are often characterized by mutual respect, rapport, and trust between negotiating partners (Jap et al., 2011). By contrast, negotiations that do not produce a successful outcome are typically characterized by a sense of competing interests, lack of respect´-or-trust, and failure to understand the partner’s point of view. Negotiations conducted under conditions of high rapport facilitate a collegial style of negotiation that emphasizes respect and rapport and facilitates greater levels of discussion about interests. Rapport fosters greater understanding of the partner’s point of view and resulting offers that more closely align with the partner’s interests. At the same time, rapport building in negotiation must be carefully managed as it also has a dark side with negotiators who are under greater pressure to negotiate unethically´-or-argue more forcibly. In negotiations, parties are generally advised to build rapport in the form of establishing a collegial and respectful tone in negotiating.
It stands to reason that building rapport is vital in obtaining the best negotiation outcome, particularly with regard to complex disputes involving high stakes, duration,´-or-number of parties. In high-stake negotiations, strong counterparts require extensive information transfers. Should the negotiators mistrust each other, they may gift-wrap their positions and use vague language that neither party seems to understand. As a result, a poor negotiation outcome may be expected for their inexperience and wasted effort. A misunderstanding of other counterparts’ substantive beliefs may even lead to an unwanted domestic backlash of an outdated proposal. Once the negotiators settle on a proposal, reciprocal risks must be undertaken. In the absence of trust, negotiators may run the risk of getting burned by paying the offering concessions upfront. In addition, an unintended backfire may arise from the most innocuous form of communication. Given that negotiations often occur with uncertainty and risk, trust-building measures may help counterparts acknowledge their differences and facilitate confidence in negotiating communication.
5. Case Studies in Diplomatic Negotiation
Active diplomatic negotiations can facilitate international conflict resolution. This includes, among others, sustained efforts by diplomats´-or-diplomat-like individuals to reconcile differences between certain states. Conflicting cases of above implications that occurred under the auspices of the ICCAT Framework imply that the same unmanifestation of unsatisfactory outcomes from negotiations occurred within certain bounds of the timing space. Consequentially, this implies that pro-active negotiators need to employ negotiation strategies to tactically schedule their diplomat-like processes. Thus, in addition to showing that active negotiations facilitate international conflict resolution, this dissertation makes more general contributions. Diplomatic negotiations must be sustained efforts that strive toward reconciling differences among parties regarding issues in dispute. To categorize negotiators based on this notion, examiners need to assess effects on re/solving an unresolved dispute properly. This dissertation has illustrated that during the first period of the 1980s, the conflict in question was peacefully resolved through sustained and tactical efforts by American diplomats to re-structure the negotiations, without which negotiation efforts would not have appeared useful.
The case studies suggest that negotiators can tactically schedule their diplomat-like processes to the fortunes of the respective parties. In fact, analyses of both successful and unsuccessful negotiations have shown that successful negotiators proactively opt to disclose putative information masking screens of them at the earliest turn possible. In turn, careful shaping of the negotiation timing space can create inherent temporal gaps that widen the disagreement cycle. Pre-emptive efforts to present negotiation proposals to a party that interprets a slight advantage to itself within a parochial domain that has previously conveyed a concession, conjectured to include the same differentially favorable outcome of waiting with a concession by itself, fall into this category. Comparative studies of these negotiations can further enhance understanding of more fine-grained strategies and the targeted negotiation timing space (Markowitz, 2006).
5.1. The Camp David Accords
Policymakers found themselves adding an inexplicable affinity for Israel to the Cold War conflict and the power of oil. The Middle East saw four wars in a quarter century, one of which caused an oil embargo. There was no clear side to choose, no clear enemy, and no clear benefit in choosing Israel over the oil producing Arab states. An end to the conflict seemed unbearably distant during the presidential campaign of 1976. Former National Security Advisor and then Secretary of State spent political capital disentangling the Egyptian and Israeli forces surrounding the Suez Canal. And yet Israel signed a peace treaty with Egypt pledging to do just that less than four years after the Sinai II Agreement. The Camp David Accords and Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty mark the beginning of a new phase of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The agreements represented the first -dir-ect negotiations between an Arab state and Israel. Major obstacles confronted all parties in making trade-offs to reach an agreement during the Camp David talks. The decision to hold the talks was opposed by significant elements in Washington, Egypt, and Israel. The reluctance of all parties to engage in negotiations prolonged the conflict before Camp David. On what basis did a decision by the United States to host negotiated peace talks between Egypt and Israel spur Sadat, Begin, and Carter to invest considerable resources in what became the five thousand hours of talks at Camp David? A full twenty years had elapsed since the last substantive negotiations and nothing had come close to solving the Israeli-Arab conflict until Camp David. While most analysts attribute the failure of peace policy in the Arab-Israeli conflict to the shortcomings of specific leaders, in reality they neglected the particularities of the conflict. The conflict dynamics did not permit substantive negotiations. Once they did, the players proved capable. Israel’s capacity to diverge from past behavior was not simply a -function- of Sadat’s diplomatic and military attacks on its territory. More important was the cumulative drift of circumstances and changes in perceptions and norms which contributed to weakening terrorism, increasing international costs of hostility toward peace-constructing parties, and thereby creating an extension of neutrality conditions toward both sides’ behavior.
5.2. The Dayton Agreement
The tripartite agreement of free post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina made in November 1995 was a complicated arrangement that thoroughly bears the hallmark of the race and cultural fissions of the former Yugoslavia. On the one hand, the core of the accords is a broad group of principles, maximum principles of a global scope, that indicate the quantified, geographical, and quantitative dimension of a new peace that the parties claim to create. On the other hand, another group of minutiae rules and regulations, techniques in nature, amends aviation, radio communicates, fiscal black market detection, natural resources, there principally, deal with incomes as low as a currently-populated washing machine – that in essence close the door to those aspirations ambitiously expressed in preliminary axioms. The genuine policies underlying these accords remain notoriously obscure´-or-at least ambiguous. Yet each wording and phrase of the minutiae was the immediate object of intensive bargaining advances and retreat back and forth between the delegates of the parties just before the resort to modulating forms, yet not necessarily vocally articulated reasons for nomination several years ago. Why and how the dual forms were chosen and hammered into the Institutional Politics form of Civitas was the most critical issue in shaping the recent Bosnian political framework.
The last portion of the agreement defines institutions and the competences delegated to them, including bicameral parliamentary assembly, governmental council, negotiators council, presidency, and vice-presidency council, etc. Its vital portion is a fine-tuned constitution and represented a magnum opus of political engineering. In it spectacularly the phonetic principles of kept-out ethnically-based parties were mellifluously articulated into the signature to the peace accord, yet each of the essential institutional particulars was re-named, recalibrated, squeezed, creeped, and delicately bended to and to smooth out cacophonic ethnic and faction lines into a constituted civitas surprisingly distinct from and yet by-preserving the ambience of a singularly fossilized form of plurals. Detailed minutiae and ground rules of quotidian-politics, however, were not settled, sketchily returned via a limbo to three lawyers and initiators of another notion of political reconstruction, the Institutional Politics Covariance, which could be ridiculously dragged into the parallel Bosnian politics and could substitute in the similar deceptive faction s disguises.
5.3. The Iran Nuclear Deal
The debate over the escalated military tensions between Iran and the West, especially the United States (US) and Israel, has amplified again as Iranian authorities announced that they would enrich uranium to a purity level of 60 percent, a move deemed ‘provocative’ by the US and its allies. In reaction, angered by the Iranian nuclear threats, the US heightened its military deployment in the Gulf, which analysts warn may lead to clashes on the ground between the two sides. Unfortunately, the chances of diffusing the situation, through some common denuclearization talks, seem to be very low as Iran is persistent on its domestic goal of enriching uranium to the 90 percent purity level. The transformation of Iran from a regime under collimated ambition to one with warrior ambitions, even iron fists, may in turn lead to even more -dir-e consequences for regional and global security. Justifiably, the fear looks more than warranted since the world is aware of the possibility of a nuclear-armed Iran.
The former US President Donald Trump’s absence from the new round of the Iran Nuclear Deal talks and the election of the new ultra-conservative president of Iran have shifted the thinking to the Asymmetric Window of Opportunity in persuading unilateral disarmament successfully. With all the talks at the bilateral and/or multilateral levels belonging to the vehicle of linear negotiation strategy to equilibrium, however, the troubled world where nuclear states sometimes still poke their heads in nuclear build-ups needs new instrument(s) of negotiations belonging to non-linear strategies like odd/even´-or-like Asymmetric Window of Opportunity (AWO) in persuasion and/or preventative diplomacy. Not much thinking has been done in this regard with concrete suggestions even though the analysis of the narrow path´-or-the-limit-ed window has become a hot topic as a plethora of think tanks are searching for both strategic and tactical know-how on how to go out and how to make a new normal for the chic diplomatic mechanism such as the Six-Party Talks, the P5+1, and so on.
A very clear exposition of the path of negotiations for security talks has been framed as for those who constantly fail, modest success is better than a big zero. Patterns of victory and loss in those talks lie primarily in the nature of above-zero-sum games, but zero-sum stalemates persist at the lowest extreme (Sterio, 2016). The features of non-linear negotiations also seem conducive to consistent scientific takeoff since the history of the arms negotiations has shown that a domestic agreement generally takes place well in advance of a bilateral´-or-multilateral agreement, and the two groups rarely occur simultaneously, and success on one often predicts failure on the other.
6. Challenges in Diplomatic Negotiation
Diplomatic negotiation is increasingly regarded as a pivotal process to international conflict resolution. Traditional peace-making understood the negotiating mandate rather restrictively as confined to opportunities for -dir-ectly negotiated settlements among the conflicting states concerned, and accordingly focused analytical attention on the role of state leaders and foreign ministers. However, since the end of the Cold War, in accordance with the expectations in this respect, a considerable number of international disputes, often referred to as international conflicts´-or-crises, were regarded as legitimately subject to resolving through diplomatic negotiation. A wide range of engagements through diplomatic negotiation´-or-negotiation-related processes has taken place between the disputing parties under negotiation, many of which are regarded as successful with regard to dramatically transforming these issues from conflicts of interests into an alternative contentious process based on ‘legitimate’ means for communication and dialogue. Noting with unease the intensely escalating violence in ethnical, religious and ideological conflicts which have become of increasing prominence, calls for a resort to preventive diplomacy in all its components of diplomacy at the pre-crisis stage have become frequent (D. Murphy, 2022).
Diplomatic negotiation is construed implicitly as informal, non-institutionalized, relatively less-structured, and not -dir-ectly proceeding under the aegis of any international´-or-regional organization. Despite the very real possibility of the disputing states themselves regarding these types of engagements as legitimate forms of negotiation, in stark contrast to formal peace talks´-or-negotiations at peace conferences, the fact that these engagements are of a very different nature from traditional diplomacy negotiations conducted with diplomats attending formal peace talks, have been understood and analysed under a different rubric. Other formal negotiation processes on boundary issues, water resources, historical´-or-territorial grievances, and maritime disputes in which confidential by nature negotiations were engaged in over several years prior to an agreement are seldom examined as diplomatic negotiations. Yet all these processes of conflict transformation through which both sides sought to turn their disputes from security issues into a less sensitive sociopolitical one,´-or-settle them in their own way-;- and engagement processes through which one side attempted to effect regime change in the other state would be deemed diplomatic negotiations even by the leaders concerned.
6.1. Cultural Differences
Culture may be defined as the collective mental programming that makes a group of people think the same way, creating a common identity. Such approaches, used at a social-science level of analysis in intercultural comparisons, explain how culturally different people’s minds are formed to process experience and behave in different ways. Culture is manifested as a variety of things. One of the current cultural differences is how people perceive negotiating procedures and rules. Some beliefs may be shared by many but apply mainly to a certain environment and can thus be termed “contextual culture.” Governments of competing nations sometimes cooperate in complex negotiations. Some governments participate in multi-lateral negotiations in global international forums, while others cope with bilateral target countries. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs), international organizations, and trans-national corporations are increasingly engaged in mediating negotiating processes.
International negotiations often take place in a third party country. This is necessary for providing a more comfortable environment for countries at odds against each other, and for avoiding domestic criticism. The communication and negotiation/mediation behaviors of participating cultural groups are affected, however, by the cultural context of the third party country, resulting in an unpredictable negotiation outcome. In the absence of cultural awareness and preparation, beforehand, negotiations can easily escalate into confrontation. Cultural differences affect the course of negotiation processes in various ways and it is important to note the influence of culture at a heuristic level. The course of negotiations is generally affected by time preference, perceived formality of interactions, cooperative/comparative behavior, trust, and perceptions of power. Cross-culturally, trust is pursued differently.
Mediators are often advised to be sensitive to the cultural differences of the disputants. The perception of these differences at a social-science level can indicate why they matter. Cultural differences in a situation usually disadvantage the less culturally aware party and afford negotiation leverage to the other. Current research indicates that usually, disputes transpiring between culturally similar parties are much easier to resolve in mediation than disputes between culturally dissimilar parties (Van Meurs & Spencer-Oatey, 2007). The cultural complexity of negotiations lies in their interactional nature. This research, within the framework of intercultural communication, provides insight into how negotiations evolve differently across cultures. It gives insights into the ongoing interaction between both negotiators and shows that culturally consistent behavior does not always achieve its intended effect, because it can be perceived differently at the receiving side.
6.2. Power Imbalances
In a conflict resolution setting characterized by severe power imbalances, the more powerful party often perceives that it has little incentive to negotiate´-or-compromise a non-military solution while the less powerful party often perceives that it should negotiate´-or-request more outside assistance. In this situation, the less powerful party may wish to disrupt the stalemate by attempting to change the beliefs´-or-perceptions of the more powerful party regarding its prospects for defeating the less powerful party´-or-a change in military´-or-diplomatic tactics´-or-strategy. The more powerful party, on the other hand, has the luxury of waiting to see whether military victory is possible´-or-whether the diplomatic approach should be tried. Human beings have only a-limit-ed ability to conduct creative thought about the future. For example, may be (and regularly are) grievously mistaken in their beliefs about how the future world is going to unfold (Beardsley, 2013). But it is more likely that all parties share some realistic beliefs regarding the current status quo, possible actions and their consequences, states of nature, and so on. Thus, a diplomatic initiative on the part of the less powerful party might attempt to persuade the more powerful party of the likelihood´-or-dangers of unanticipated states of nature when engaging in a military option. Parties with more power also often face widespread mistrust. Consideration might be given to ways that their credibility can be managed through the use of mediators´-or-third parties. Statements should be made in tightly circumscribed venues with less powerful party observers and the media present. Guarantee mechanisms are another way to demonstrate good faith.
6.3. Domestic Political Constraints
Diplomatic efforts to resolve international disputes and a better understanding of the obstacles to successful third-party negotiations are equally important. A third state’s domestic political climate strongly affects its foreign policy decisions. Leaders are less willing to invest time and energy into crafting a negotiated settlement if too many political obstacles exist. Domestic political differences may also prevent a third state from ever viewing mediation efforts as a feasible option (P Todhunter, 2017). Domestic political factors have been shown to affect the supply of mediation in the narrower context of individual cases. However, the impact of domestic political differences on participation has not been systematically compared across cases. Thus, preliminary questions about the conditions under which a state chooses to attempt to mediate an international dispute are addressed, as well as how those conditions vary across cases and states. It is believed that diplomatic negotiations are pursued more often when leaders face less domestic political opposition. This is a helpful first step in considering the domestic political conditions that affect a state’s interest in mediation.
States are not consistent in their diplomatic efforts. Some states pursue a great deal of diplomacy, whereas others attempt to mediate rarely´-or-not at all. The reasons for such differences have been the subject of substantial scholarly interest. Both academic research and popular discourse suggest that a state’s diplomatic diplomacy is shaped, at least in part, by the anticipated benefits of mediating. These benefits include the desire to alleviate humanitarian concerns, hopes of reaping the rewards of a successful mediation, and prospects for increased influence in the region. Yet during any given dispute, leaders weigh the anticipated benefits of a potential mediation effort against a range of countervailing concerns and constraints that also affect the attractiveness of this option. Political and economic costs, time constraints, strategic communications from other leaders, and the availability of alternative dispute settlement mechanisms all factor into a state’s decision to diplomatically engage.
An understanding of what conditions make mediation more attractive can shed light on why, for example, leaders were relatively circumspect in their diplomatic endeavors during the Kosovo conflict. The set of conditions evaluated here is framed in terms of the domestic political landscape. States are more likely to pursue meaningful mediatory diplomacy when domestic conditions are perceived as favorable, i.e. when leaders face relatively weak and compliant domestic political opposition.
7. Role of Third Parties in Negotiation
Negotiation is one of the main forms of international conflict resolution. In the field of political science and international relations the focus of research on negotiation is on the factors, mechanisms and conditions that shape negotiation processes and outcomes. Third parties´-or-mediators play a role in diplomacy and negotiations between government counterparts and in the broader conduct of international negotiation. This topic focuses on the role and tasks of diplomatic negotiators – the representatives of national governments – when engage themselves in convening, facilitating and participating in negotiations between parties with conflicting interests (Gehrmann, 2019). This is primarily a study of ‘intergovernmental negotiation’. It refers to negotiation between national governments, which is also a form of ‘multilateral diplomacy’. International organizations facilitate´-or-sponsor intergovernmental negotiations and play an important role in the conduct of those negotiations. Furthermore, it implies that parties´-or-governments negotiate with other parties´-or-governments and that therefore some cognizance is presupposed about the shape and workings, dynamics and political saliency of government and intergovernmental negotiations.
Traditionally negotiations were characterized by and in some way-limit-ed to bilateral negotiations´-or-negotiations with only two parties at the table. In the last decades a proliferation in the number of negotiating parties involved in negotiations – often referred to as ‘multilateral talks’ – has taken place. Such multilateral negotiations are often more technically complex and entail more political intricacies than their bilateral counterparts do. The challenge for negotiating parties is to organize and steer such negotiations in time and possibility towards a successful and politically worthy outcome. At the same time they need to balance their voting alliances with other negotiating parties and yet act collectively towards the outside world – a most difficult task for any negotiation.
7.1. Mediation Techniques
International mediation is distinct from other kinds of negotiations, conciliation,´-or-adjudication. There is no need for formal terms of reference, nor for preliminary exchanges on procedural methods. This flexibility is part of what enables international mediation to -function- effectively. The appointment of a mediator may be initiated by one party and accepted by the other party afterwards. A formal and solemn acceptance of the mediation proposal may not be required. Whereas in the case of other means of dispute settlement, the parties not readily agreeing to the procedure could seriously jeopardize the settlement of the dispute. In international mediation and conciliation processes, a wealth of questions lie essentially beyond the purview of procedural law and the art of the negotiator. Judging the effect by which one set of words is replaced with a different one will usually not produce satisfactory explanations of the reasons for different results (Sucharitkul, 2001). No matter how routine the negotiation process appears to be, how clear the roles, goals, and techniques appear to one particular mode´-or-actor, it can nevertheless happen that the event falls through the cracks due to innumerable circumstances. Fortunately, mediators and actors are usually capable of design by virtue of their wisdom. And thus, a negotiation proceeds and is conducted, in its multi- and ruptured dimensionality. However, mismanagement of intervention, unearthly conceptualization of actors and events, and/or neglect of embeddedness of the negotiation process in a macro-political context can result in catastrophic outcomes (Horner et al., 2013). International courts and legal specialists grapple with how to make international law more congenial to countries with other political, cultural, and legal goals. In chambers of commerce, private advocates are worrying about how commercial courts in different parts of the world may render enforceable arbitral awards. Ambassadors and fleets of consultants study how to cope with broken treaties and other failures of negotiation and decision that arise in international relations. Rational choice theorists query the political calculation that informs agreement and action´-or-the vagaries of behavior (feelings and motivations) behind them. The success of dispute settlement by means other than an agreement is a contrasting one in that a general examination considers no such failures and considers no points concerning a lack of consensus on a parameter (most particularly and regrettably on a goal) as of any sense of importance.
7.2. Facilitation by International Organizations
The UN, after having facilitated a number of disputes between Iraq and Kuwait, after 1993 began to focus on the pragmatic side of its effort to bring the two sides together in the frontier dispute. Alongside Iraq, it devoted more energy to focus on creative mediation approaches undertaken by neighbouring countries. There are also the examples of mediation efforts undertaken by former Indonesian President Habibie in turbulent time in East Timor and by the US and its allies in fighting terrorism in Afghanistan and elsewhere as well as by the EU to resolve conflict in the former Yugoslav republics. There are still a lot of topical disputes on the brink of break out of armed conflict and wars all over the regions of the world needing urgent mediation effort. The interest in the role undertaken by other actors for mediation has therefore increased.
A rather large body of literature focuses on various aspects of mediation in its standard, narrower meaning. Mediation is commonly understood as a means whereby a third party assists the disputing parties in resolving the dispute. Typologies on the types and forms of mediational methods have thoroughly elaborated on. Nevertheless, basic questions like why mediation is undertaken´-or-how mediation influences on parties behaviour and situation have received less attention and explanations have been fragmented.
The UN, after having facilitated a number of disputes between States in which technology was indispensable to the problem at hand, developed a capability for ‘dispute resolution’ as opposed to dispute settlement (D. Murphy, 2022). ‘Facilitation’ came to mean accommodating differences in preferences´-or-styles with a view to enhancing mutual understanding. In the course of the 1970s, after the partition of the two sides, the UNSC took over the Inner City dispute from the Austrian Ambassador, and a series of bilateral meetings mediated by UN diplomats took place. Besides so-called official one-to-one meetings, small group meetings of the two sides’ representatives were held to focus on procedural matters in the early years. These small group meetings were out of the limelight and took place away from the UN House. The aim of these meetings was to provide guidance to negotiators on both sides and to create impression of continuity´-or-momentum to their respective capital (Horner et al., 2013).
8. Impact of Technology on Negotiation Processes
Of the study of negotiation in the last three decades, more than one-quarter of the papers has addressed the use of negotiation support systems—that is, computer-aided tools in negotiation. Negotiation support systems such as a spreadsheet, database, and decision support systems are useful for efficiently helping negotiators evaluate alternative proposals, deals, and outcomes (T Ow et al., 2014). These systems facilitate negotiations, are also an important embodied component of the technology now available to negotiators, and are widely adopted in a variety of negotiation contexts. As negotiation process tools, these systems allow negotiators to access, organize, and evaluate negotiation-relevant information-;- share and present information among negotiation parties-;- simulate, analyze, model, and forecast negotiation dynamics and outcomes-;- and communicate via chat, audio, and video. Advanced negotiation process tools can, thereby, assist negotiators in reducing the cognitive complexity of negotiation and facilitate interest-based negotiation. Increasingly complex international negotiations typically involve multiple negotiators, teams, issues, and viewpoints, and portability across the full range of negotiation technologies is likely to become more important in future negotiation research.
Negotiation bottlenecks arise not only from the cognitive complexity of large problems but also from the ubiquity of noninterventionism in international negotiation. The international community has negotiated on various issues worldwide, among which some have culminated in binding agreements reached through cooperation and collaborative problem-solving approaches. On the contrary, numerous issues remained a stalemate´-or-became protracted conflicts for decades, as noninterventionism acts as a central impediment to the negotiating process. (Arana-Catania et al., 2022) Proponents of noninterventionism would argue that such policy is a natural stance to respect the sovereignty of nations and encourage a sense of responsibility in domestic affairs. Nevertheless, others, with a more consequentialist view, often cite the Afghan civil war, Syrian conflict, and recent Russian aggression in Ukraine and elsewhere, presenting the consequences of unchecked violence.
8.1. Digital Diplomacy
For centuries, diplomats have communicated in-dir-ectly and through intermediaries to elaborate diplomatic records and relevant information. Such in-dir-ect communication can be facilitated and accelerated through social media—only if the fundamentals of the latter are conceived as new intermediaries. The emergence of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. has created a contextual open space where everybody interacts with more´-or-less the same rules of the game. In such a global digital space more universally relevant rules have been established—exemplified in the design of hashtags, viral hashtag campaigns, online memes, and features like retweets, reactions, and so forth. States´-or-their officials (governments, civil servants, diplomats) may some of these rules for their own needs but with resource constraints more´-or-less have to follow them. One outcome is that states and their officials (principal actors) have become as visible, transparent, and accessible as never before and subjected to public scrutiny, international perception, comment, and critique. Another outcome is that massive amounts of public opinion have become visible, accessible, and analyzable. In the ethereal public space of social media there is a wealth of observable reactions by the audience—whether supportive, ambivalent,´-or-hostile´-or-a mixture thereof—to states’ actions, and vice versa, which can be analyzed in real time using various theories and techniques of digital humanities, social, and computational sciences (Hui Xian Ng & M. Carley, 2024). The above two shifts raise new analytic questions about international relations. On the one hand, states and their officials have become increasingly aware of the importance and role of their presence and feedback on social media, particularly Twitter, in framing their reputations and influencing perceptions and understandings nationally and internationally. A tacit competition exists among states, counterparts (governments and officials), politically and morally relevant attribution groups (such as states with post-colonial ties), and otherwise non-relevant recency groups (e.g., socially salient states and celebrities) over visibility, accessibility, and as a result, attention. The political discourse patterns formed by the co-emergence of the three introduced types of actors including their own strategies form the contextually operational fabric of relevant social, political, and economic relevance from which a state´-or-its officials can´-or-choose to adopt/dismiss (Verrekia, 2017). In the context above, the role of social media has become a relevant and thus increasingly analyzed question in the study of international relations.
8.2. Social Media and Public Diplomacy
Public diplomacy includes a political communication action aimed at establishing and improving the country s image abroad through bilateral´-or-multilateral relationship opportunities. In this frame, public diplomacy creates an opportunity and facilitates to broaden friendship relations between states. States have legitimized public diplomacy by establishing foreign affairs and order institutions over the years (Güleç, 2018). Instrumentalization of social networks in foreign relations has this opportunity of using public diplomacy for states. With some exceptions, this effect dominates in Europe and North America. The constitutional framework of social networks restricts their influence. Social networks could easily transform governments into administrative issues with the participation of thousands of people. -function- and effect of public diplomacy become visible in conflict prevention activities. Promotion of peace and prevention of armed conflict are international issues beyond the border of states. Now, delicate official diplomatic practices also receive the attention of states and foreign affairs in conflict resolution. Pragmatic approaches, rapid attitude, and interest in international conflicts disappeared. Frustration and incapability over conflict had a negative effect on global peace. Practice and recognition of peace-promoting initiatives developed in multi-sided formats and civil society configurations had an increasing influence on the public diplomacy practices of states in foreign affairs. Public diplomacy research is a new field not covered extensively in literature and contains a lot of questions in future research. What s more, evolving digital technologies and an increasing influence of the new social media make participation of more actors possible.
9. Evaluation of Negotiation Outcomes
Negotiated settlement of disputes involves two states resolving their issues without a third party like the United Nations. This may involve simple communications´-or-dialogue between the states to clarify the nature of their interests. More formalized negotiations may entail exchanging proposals, exchanging emissaries, compromising, and ultimately concluding a formal treaty´-or-an informal, unwritten “political understanding”. Agreement can also be postponed until more favorable circumstances. Mediation´-or-conciliation may be seen as a more elaborate form of negotiation, albeit one where a separate third party becomes involved to assist the states in addressing their disagreements. Even in litigation, the United Nations, regional organizations,´-or-some states may play a third-party facilitating´-or-intermediary role, participating in post-judgment discussions´-or-meetings to identify ways to better implement´-or-comply with the court’s decision. In fact, dispute settlers may encourage a negotiated settlement, acknowledging it as a more enduring method for pacific settlement (D. Murphy, 2022).
It is interesting to note that most major multilateral treaties since the end of the Cold War have included provisions inviting´-or-requiring parties to pursue negotiations´-or-consultations as a first step in any dispute. These include a number of treaties on the law of the sea, investment, environment, trade, and human rights. Negotiation provisions have also been included at a later stage in some treaties, prompting states to seek diplomatic´-or-political solutions to their disputes prior to referral to the courts. Among more specialized treaties, the 1972 Convention on the Establishment of a Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources provides that parties shall first attempt to reach agreements bilaterally´-or-through the routes available for negotiation of that treaty before resorting to the dispute settlement procedures set out therein. The recent Iran Nuclear Agreement among states provides that parties would ‘diligently pursue negotiations culminating in an agreement on the Iranian nuclear issue’ with respect to similar dispute settlement procedures.
Finally, negotiators’ evaluations of immediate negotiations only partially agree with assessments about general success of negotiations. Most countries’ evaluations regarding these two domains are more clustered and show less variability than countries’ evaluations about the negotiation substance. An indication for the existence of self-serving bias in the outcome evaluation is that the positive effect of higher involvement seems to be stronger for general assessments than for specific assessments (Dannenberg et al., 2017).
9.1. Success Metrics
The success of diplomatic negotiations for peaceful conflict resolution is typically assessed using a dichotomous success/failure classification. While there is a general understanding of when a specific negotiation has reached a successful conclusion, the question of what constitutes success behavior´-or-action for a negotiator has received less attention. It is common practice to evaluate states’ general negotiating behavior as a success´-or-failure. The approach taken in this paper is to vary the concept of success along two dimensions of analysis: the negotiator’s overall behavior, on the one hand, and the negotiator’s actions during the course of the negotiation, on the other hand.
The evaluation of a negotiator’s behavior takes place in the aftermath of the negotiation process, implying that the negotiator’s negotiations are assessed on the basis of the overall outcome of a negotiation. Scholarship, which draws on game theory, has classified this assessment into either a cooperative´-or-an uncooperative category. So-called cooperative negotiators employ procedures designed to achieve win-win´-or-mutually beneficial´-or-joint-gain outcomes. In contrast, uncooperative negotiators engage in bargaining procedures designed to achieve win-lose´-or-zero-sum outcomes. The most common classifications of this type have focused on two competing “faces” of negotiation process characterization: the integrative-competitive and the cooperative-distributive categorization.
The second general aspect of the evaluation of negotiation success concerns a negotiator’s actions during the negotiation process. This aspect of negotiation success focuses on the specific tactics employed by the negotiator during the negotiation interactions. Similar to the analysis of the negotiator’s overall behavior, the negotiator is successful if it uses its tactics in a deliberative manner, after careful consideration of the negotiation dynamics and the opponent, and if it reacts to others’ tactics in an appropriate manner. Conversely, the negotiator is not successful if it fails to exhaust its tactical arsenal and proceeds too revengefully in reacting and fails to react to missed opportunities and wrongdoings of the opponent.
9.2. Long-term Impact on Peace
At the end of World War I, then-US Secretary of State Robert Lansing spoke in favor of the integration of all forms of international negotiation, the idea pursued by Committees of the League of Nations (D. Murphy, 2022). The Detroit Security Conference of the United Nations suggested "a general measure of disarmament to be initiated at Geneva´-or-elsewhere-;- and also other political and social causes of war, in a general´-or-particular manner." Considering the "differences in the situations, histories, and temperaments of various people" and the "difficulties of adaptation of all nations to any one system," Edward G. Robinson suggested that no one method would be applicable to every nation. Accordingly, the system should be flexible so as to allow for the reciprocation of overtures of peace through "various forms of agreement, whether of non-attack´-or-arbitration´-or-conciliation" among those nations apt and ready to engage in any cooperative arrangement at any stage.
Japan expressed certain skepticism over a scheme for the "immediate establishment of a permanent International Court of Justice" and asked whether the temporary creation of an arbitral court´-or-some similar court would not be more effective. Sir Julian Paunceforte, UK adviser on foreign affairs, assured that such a court would be utilized under any international agreement with Japan. Responding to a US representative s claim that "too elaborate provisions may prevent altitude" of agreements, M. Clemenceau expressed his preference for "a detailed provision, giving free play to human intelligence." In the last analyzed case, President Wilson appealed to the nations to form any, even a temporary´-or-partial, organization of lands in pursuit of peace. Wilson added, "The League must have the authority to see that its decisions are carried out" so that nations would not "agree to lay down their arms for a fixed period."
These efforts, however, were snubbed at the Versailles Conference. So far as public diplomacy is attempted without the cooperation of the clandestine service, it bears the burden of some disadvantages. For instance, in matters of logistics, propagating large issues adjoining the Paris Peace Conference among parliamentarians and parliaments and persuading interested ones to act upon the proposal conceivably require a great deal of teamwork on investigations, documents, transport, and correspondence. While many particulars of the diplomatic firefight after the Armistice have been captured in the memories of persons such as Henry L. Stimson and H. A. Bullit, those details give at best a rough draft based on best guesses on any part of the audience sidestepped by immediate diplomacy.
10. Future Trends in Diplomatic Negotiation
As the international context and discourse evolve, so, too, do diplomatic negotiation practices, which lead to a number of future trends that should be observed in the years to come and beyond. One can reasonably expect policy, business, and academic institutions to experiment further with “integrated decision making” models for informal negotiations as their effectiveness and popularity grow. These models, particularly online, can be expected to be utilized to enhance productivity and understanding of interests, criteria, options, and both group and individual parts of negotiations. As the interest in redesigning the negotiation process to benefit from multi-level/multi-agent negotiations grows, further research on how to achieve such deep understandings will occur. In the future, there will likely be less reliance on the OECD-DAC-style assessment frameworks, which have difficulty classifying negotiation processes in anything but the conventional and centered light.
To remedy unmet needs not resolved entirely´-or-explicitly by alternatives with similar resource demands, people would reason and reframe social problems in terms of discounted resource availability and objectives reformulated as preventing resource depletion by fairer distributions. This would lead on the one side to bargaining in terms of value “debates” reduced to the proportional distribution of the output of the potential agreements. Bargaining might become substantially less lengthy because motivations would be less complex and negotiators would possess a substitute language. Many negotiators currently do not adhere to something as basic as cooperativeness as they use martial languages and often espouse dominative´-or-coercive bargaining. It is conceivable that this will only worsen and multiply in the international domain and in high-level negotiations. While outside examples may be affordance, comparative effectiveness, and alternative satisfaction, inside views may refer to reference resources, objectives agenda, and content. If negotiations are managed mainly in this way, with both sides giving harsh, short considered views, opportunities for cooperation may be short-circuited and fewer upfront´-or-informal chances for reaching joint conclusions may occur (I. Strong, 2017).
10.1. Emerging Global Issues
Unfortunately, the international community has not managed to address a number of recent proposals for negotiations relating to wars, conflicts, sanctions, and weapons. The UN Security Council has not proved capable of dealing with, let alone preventing´-or-resolving, what might be dubbed the ‘big’ conflicts of the 21st century. These include wars and disputes relating to Ukraine, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, North Korea and its nuclear weapons, Taiwan, Israeli-Palestinian affairs, and Ethiopia, as well as conflict over the South China Sea. Sanctions by individual states and blocs have been imposed in connection with many of these disputes, and proposed negotiations to resolve them have been consistently rejected. The role of nations and major powers in negotiating arrangements on international conflicts has traditionally been a matter of state-to-state negotiations and -dir-ect coercive diplomacy by powerful states and alliances. However, in certain types of negotiations, actors other than just states and international organisations have increasingly been taken into account. In addition, although many international disputes have arisen in the post-Cold War era, and both short- and long-term disputes have arisen as well, the negotiated settlement of international disputes, on which the provision in the UN Charter under dispute resolution procedures is based, is surprisingly absent in the records of international relations. At present, while the use of armed force and military intervention by states in other states have become less commonplace, negotiated settlements of disputes have also become less common. In regard to this issue, alternative understandings of dispute resolution might be put forward. One commonly understood category of third-party involvement in international disputes in international relations treaties and treaties is mediation. Mediation is commonly understood as a means whereby a third party assists the disputing parties in resolving the dispute, usually by proposing solutions for the parties’ consideration. The 1992 Agenda for Peace drawn up by the UN Secretary-General noted that, in addition to adjudication, arbitration, compromise, and the good offices of a third party, on the part of the disputing parties, procedures like mediation and negotiation could be undertaken by an individual designated by the UN (D. Murphy, 2022). Various prominent incidents of mediation occurred in the post-Cold War period.
10.2. The Role of Non-State Actors
Contemporary diplomacy is no longer the sole competence of states. Increasingly, diplomacy means more than foreign relations between states. As the world of the 21st century requires states to deal with more issues with more actors in a more complex atmosphere, diplomacy has become much more multi-faceted. In today’s global environment, many people have easy access to all kinds of information and the ability to influence their governments’ positions. States need to undertake a wider set of issues such as presenting abroad a state’s national image (soft power), and emphasizing trade, finance, migration, human rights, and environmental concerns. This necessitates the pursuit of more collaborative diplomatic relations with various non-state actors (influential individuals, local governments, NGOs, regional and international organizations, multinational corporations, etc.).
The information revolution has changed the diplomacy field-;- there has been an increase in global actors who are not states. Globalization and modern technology have contributed to the globalizing market, politics and culture. Non-state actors once confined to civil society, media networks and businesses, are now emerging as significant actors on the world stage tackling issues of global concern. Information is easily gathered and shared globally, and individuals enjoy greater opportunities to participate in politics and activism. In this situation, public diplomacy has gained prominence in the diplomatic practices of states. For the success of diplomacy, there should be dialogue and successful communication between countries and cultures (Güleç, 2018).
Public diplomacy is about building relationships that involve understanding the other countries’ and cultures’ needs, communicating points of view, correcting misperceptions and taking them into consideration, and winning the hearts and minds of people in other states. The requirements of public diplomacy have multiplied with the new circumstances of the international arena. Governments must try harder to influence foreign public opinion, while at the same time foreign governments and global actors are much less liable to states’ -dir-ectives and agreements due to the expanding public sphere. In this context, the role and importance of public diplomacy for conflict prevention in the international arena are highlighted. Diplomacy is based on dialogue, and dialogue is a crucial element for resolving conflict. When governments cannot engage in dialogue, from time to time it may become indispensable to involve parties from the non-government sector. A framework for public diplomacy is offered, and how to implement the discussed ideas to implement programs to strengthen mutual trust in areas with conflict potential are articulated (Aras, 2017).
11. Conclusion
As the world continues to grapple with the enduring significance of diplomacy in international relations, a distinct gap exists in the absence of full-length work on the subject. It is a major topic of concern among policymakers and scholars, particularly in the wake of recent events in countries such as Iraq, Syria, North Korea, and Afghanistan that have reignited prominent global issues. It is against this backthat this volume was initiated to explore the various dimensions of diplomacy, with an emphasis on its role in negotiating and conducting international affairs. This contribution provides a definition of diplomacy as a distinct component in, and as a means to advance, foreign policy. Since it is already regarded as a formal term for the official conduct of relations among states, the focus here is upon its often-overlooked components, including negotiation, mediation, various actors and forms, and its impact on international relations. Given that diplomacy is a rather fluid concept that has shifted throughout history, several attempts to devise a complete definition of diplomacy have generally proven elusive. This contribution argues that diplomacy encompasses two major components, substantive and procedural. The former refers to the conduct of relations with states and other international actors, while the latter emphasizes the context and manner of such conduct, particularly as it pertains to the negotiation of international agreements (D. Murphy, 2022). Diplomatic negotiation has evolved into a complex and highly stylized set of practices, rules, and forms that aims to constructively settle disputes and grievances between parties. It consists of adhering to certain types of conduct regarding representational privilege, permissible means of persuasion, and the framing of issues and objectives of ensuing settlement. Collateral practices, including mediation and conciliation, have been developed to supplement the negotiation process, which has bureaucratized and specialized into a permanent profession. Each of these practices is governed by distinctive rules and customs, though they overlap in many respects as well.
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