6.8.4.3 Balanced Negotiation
To conduct a balanced negotiation, all the different points of view must be weighed – including minorities and the ‘silent majority’.
Several factors can contribute to achieving a balanced negotiation:
● The negotiations must be conducted at the appropriate level of subsidiarity (6.6.2).
● The impact of a decision can be weighted in relation to the number of people involved and the importance of the issue to them. It is possible to apply a weighted decision matrix, such as the one described by airfocus.com. The weightings themselves are subjective, but the process adds clarity to the decisions reached.
● Consultation, with everyone affected by a decision, can be used to counterbalance the pressures put on politicians by people with specific interests (6.5.3). A balanced negotiation is not possible unless everyone has been consulted in some way.
● Individual politicians who have received donations can be barred from sitting on decision-making committees related to the donor’s activities. This would avoid a conflict of interests and reduce the impact of money on politics.
● Independent assessments can be made of the future consequences of a decision, to deflect leaders from choosing short-term populism.
The main requirement is to ensure that some attempt has been made to apply a weighting to the different interests.
This page is intended to form part of Edition 4 of the Patterns of Power series of books. An archived copy of it is held at https://www.patternsofpower.org/edition04/6843.htm.