2.4   Negotiability

(This is an archived extract from the book Patterns of Power: Edition 2)

In this book the term ‘negotiation’ encompasses many types of interaction between people on a peer-to-peer basis and with those in positions of authority.  These interactions can take place at every level of governance, using mechanisms which include bargaining, voting, lobbying, consultation, criticism and protest – some of which are referred to informally as exercising ‘people-power’.  These are different ways of exerting influence upon the decision-making process and they can be thought of as having an equivalent effect to participating in a face-to-face negotiation.   Individuals may negotiate in person or they may empower representatives to negotiate on their behalf; the different dimensions of governance vary in the negotiation scenarios that are most used, as will be seen in the following chapters.  Using this broad definition, negotiation is a way of conducting what Amartya Sen called “public reasoning”,[1] whereby a society resolves its differences when making “social choices”. 

There are two parts to negotiability as a characteristic of governance: access to negotiation, and the meaningfulness of the negotiations when they take place.  Access to negotiation, as defined here, is directly connected with freedom of speech – as examined in later chapters in its moral (4.4.6), legal (5.4.5) and political (6.8.3.1 and 6.8.3.2) dimensions.

Negotiation can only make governance acceptable if it is seen by the participants as being conducted fairly: it has to be ‘meaningful’.  The meaningfulness of a negotiation can be measured against three indices:

·      It can be categorised as 'inclusive' if all points of view have been represented and if it is conducted so as to achieve mutual advantage: minimising the damaging impact of the concessions made by each party.  This is analogous to principles which David Gauthier proposed as a basis for rational people to reach agreement.[2]  It depends upon people respecting each other as equals, in contrast to an adversarial trial of strength.

·      It can be considered ‘balanced’ if none of the parties is powerless and if people’s views are weighted in accordance with the numbers affected and the importance of the issue to them.  It contrasts with a coercive or purely majoritarian interaction, where the minority will always be outvoted without its case being considered.

·      The process of negotiation may be more or less 'transparent'.  At the most transparent, an individual might personally participate in a process which has a recorded outcome so that, if the individual has had to make concessions, other people's preferences had been made visible and the criteria for reaching a conclusion were also clearly visible.  At the least transparent, people might have submitted a petition and have received a reply, without having been given any visibility of either the process or the arguments which had been applied.

A negotiation is increasingly ‘meaningful’ as it scores more highly against these three measures. 

Negotiations are only necessary if there is an initial difference of opinion.  People rarely change their minds completely, so negotiations usually produce an outcome which incompletely satisfies some or all of the participants.  An outcome will be more acceptable if it is one that the person prefers, rather than one which has had to be accepted reluctantly (as, for example, where a person has voted for the losing candidate in a fair election) but a key assumption in this book is that even an unfavourable outcome is more likely to be seen as acceptable if the negotiation were seen as meaningful. 

Even if negotiations had been meaningful, some people might refuse to accept the outcome.  A refusal to negotiate is possible in any dimension of power.  Possible remedies are reviewed at the end of the book (9.6).

© PatternsofPower.org, 2014