Focal Points and Turning Points in Negotiation: A Comparative Analysis Open Access

The concept of a focal point was introduced by Thomas Schelling (1960, 1980). A focal point refers to “each person's expectation of what the other expects him to expect to be expected to do” (1960: 57) in the absence of clear information or prior agreement. So, in one experiment he asked individuals to choose a place to meet someone in New York City if they were unable to communicate with that person. The majority of respondents chose Grand Central Station because that was the place they expected the other person to choose—and to expect them to choose.

Schelling's experiments with alternative maps further illustrate the concept: “a map with many houses and a single crossroads sends people to the crossroads, while one with many crossroads and a single house sends most of them to the house” (1980: 58). People most often chose the most prominent or conspicuous and unique features. These choices reduce ambiguity, coordinate expectations, and help resolve both actors’ uncertainties. In a negotiation context, negotiators feel uncertainty as they work to reach an agreement that will satisfy their interests. In this article, we explore the ways in which focal points, once discovered, are used by negotiators to reduce their uncertainty about reaching agreements.

In the context of bargaining, a focal point can help the negotiator reconcile the dilemma of how to realize his or her own preferences without jeopardizing an agreement. It may not represent the best joint outcome but rather the most obvious or apparent way out of the dilemma. As Schelling put it: “If not here, where?” (1980: 70). Examples of focal points in negotiation include precedents (see Crump 2016 in this issue), the status quo ante (previously existing state of affairs), well‐known formulas such as the 50 percent solution (see Zartman 2009), and the use of geometric configurations in territorial conflicts. Recognizing that these features can provide a way out of their dilemma, bargainers understand the value of converging on them as solutions.

A related negotiation concept is the zone of possible agreement (ZOPA). The ZOPA is the overlap between each party's range of acceptable outcomes. Both ZOPAs and focal points provide help in addressing a nebulous series of concerns by crafting concrete options to address them. A difference between these concepts is captured by the words “zone” and “point.” The former alludes to a range of possible agreements (also known as a “bargaining range”); the latter is a particular agreement that may be located within that range.

But a focal point could also be a specific proposal that calls attention to a ZOPA, and thus helps move the bargaining forward. It could be a mid‐point in the range, or it could function as a salient point that defines a set of acceptable agreements or provides an attractive option for agreement within the ZOPA, as illustrated by the German Foundation Agreement case discussed below.

Focal points are especially useful when both (all) parties are desperate for an agreement. For example, Alan Benton and Daniel Druckman (1973) found that the differences in competitiveness between team representatives and non‐representatives were attenuated when a salient split‐the‐difference (equal concessions) outcome—a focal point solution—was possible. Another early study showed that quicker agreements were obtained when a salient or fair outcome was provided as an option in the experiment (Joseph and Willis 1963). This salient outcome served to minimize the maximum concessions that either bargainer had to make. This is the preferred outcome when the exercise instructions specifically discourage deadlock (Hermann and Kogan 1968) and when loss of face is at stake (Hornstein 1965). When negotiators converge on an equal‐split outcome, pressures to compete are reduced. They also have lower resistance points (e.g., the lowest price a seller will accept), are willing to move further from their initial positions, and perceive that their teammates had lower expectations of them (Benton and Druckman 1973). The realization that these options provide an opportunity to converge may be explicitly or tacitly communicated by the parties.

Interestingly, the participants in the Benton and Druckman study who rejected the equal‐split solution in favor of an asymmetrical outcome that favored themselves were less satisfied with their outcome than the participants who settled on the equal split. They viewed themselves less positively and as behaving more selfishly than did the “losers.” This suggests that they may have felt “guilty” for taking “more than their fair share.” These findings suggest that focal points are powerful solutions to the bargaining dilemma of striving to win versus getting an agreement. They provide a way out of this dilemma that, if rejected, can lead to a kind of negotiator's remorse. With regard to mediation, a study by Donald Conlon, Peter Carnevale, and William Ross (1994) found that mediators were more effective in moving parties toward integrative outcomes when they communicated an understanding of equal‐split, compromise solutions. Clearly, focal points are important tools for both negotiators and mediators.

The experimental findings support Schelling's conception and pave the way for further investigations of focal points and their role in negotiation. One direction the research could take would be to examine the functions served by focal points in various international negotiations, particularly in matched cases that facilitate comparative analyses.

The earlier experimental research lacks an analytical framework that could guide this sort of investigation, but it does provide a starting point for developing such a framework. It suggests some antecedent conditions for the emergence of focal points and possible consequences emanating from discovering them. One condition is parties’ mutual desperation for an agreement when the alternatives are unattractive. Another occurs when parties recognize cues in the bargaining environment that suggest possible solutions and consider whether (and by how much) a possible focal point will help them minimize the maximum concession that they must make. Parties’ mutual satisfaction with arriving at a focal point makes agreements more stable in the short term, while improved relationships over time and a willingness to renegotiate as needed are longer‐term consequences.

Understanding the relationship between antecedents, parties’ acceptance of focal points, and the longer‐term consequences of the agreement is one possible framework for analyzing focal points and their impacts. This is similar to a three‐part framework that has been used to analyze the related concept of negotiation turning points (e.g., Druckman 2001, 2004).

We believe that delineating the ways in which focal points and turning points are similar and different can be instructive. Both concepts concern negotiation impasses, and their occurrence can lead to resolution. Both are often triggered by parties’ need to reach or make progress toward agreement. And both promote coordination.

These phenomena also have some important differences. A focal point is a shared expectation that can help parties generate agreement, while a turning point describes the point in time at which the trajectory of a negotiation changes — it is an element in a chronology of events. The word “point” thus is used differently in each term. In negotiation scholarship, the term “turning point” is used as a shorthand designation for this three‐part process. To understand the function of focal points in precipitating turning points, we must first understand the structure of turning points — focal points can precipitate negotiation departures or they can actually be a type of departure. Of course, they can also occur independently of each other and have no relationship within any given negotiation, as illustrated by the overlapping circles in Figure One.

The relationship between these concepts is complex. Focal points are conspicuous expectations that facilitate convergence. Turning points are identifiable events that move the negotiation process in a different direction, that is, departures. Turning points may occur before or after parties realize they share a focal point.

Research has identified both focal points and turning points as negotiation features that facilitate agreement. They may occur in conjunction with each other—for example, the realization of a focal point may precipitate a departure (shift in the negotiation trajectory) or a focal point may develop as a consequence of a departure. These processes may also occur independently of each other, for example when negotiators identify a focal point that leads to a solution in a negotiation without departures or when a negotiation features departures without the sharing of focal points.

Table One summarizes the possible combinations for the presence of turning points and focal points in a negotiation (i.e., both are present, one is present but not the other, neither is present).

The relationship between focal points and turning points is illustrated by the 1987 talks between the Soviet Union and the United States on intermediate nuclear forces (INF). Soviet Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev's July 1987 acceptance of President Ronald Reagan's “double zero proposal” served as a focal point for the talks. It was a prominent and unique proposal that included the elimination of both short‐ and long‐range intermediate nuclear forces in Europe and intermediate range missiles in Asia. It resolved the key sticking point, which was verification of force reductions.

Following Gorbachev's acceptance of the proposal, the talks took a turn: the delegations divided into working groups (a procedural precipitant) that achieved an agreement in principle (a departure), which opened the doors for a treaty signed by both parties in December 1987 (short‐term consequence). The agreement also set the stage for the Soviet Union to take unilateral force reductions (long‐term consequence). This case exemplifies how a focal point (double zero) can help catalyze a turning point (agreement in principle) that had both short‐ and long‐term consequences. It also suggests that there may be value in examining focal points in negotiation within the turning points framework.

When parties arrive at focal points before the negotiation reaches a turning point, as in the INF example, the presence of focal points improves the prospects for making progress toward an agreement. But parties may arrive at focal points after the negotiation has already reached a turning point. In these cases, the departure from stalemate sets the stage for the discovery or development of a focal point.

These sequences illustrate ways in which these two concepts are related, which is represented visually by the overlap in Figure One. One interesting question is: how much time lapses between the occurrence of the turning point departure and the arrival at a focal point (and vice versa)? Also, how does the temporal distance between the occurrence of turning points and focal points affect their causal relationship (e.g., whether one catalyzes the other)?

Additional questions include:

• When (under what conditions) does the presence of focal points precipitate departures?

• When (under what conditions) do departures promote focal points?

• When do focal points occur without turning points and vice versa?

• Are agreements that feature focal points more or less durable than those that do not?

• Are agreements that feature focal points and that emerge from or follow turning points more durable than those that do not follow turning points?

• Are relationships between the negotiating parties likely to be stronger when agreements that include focal points follow turning points?

These questions shape the case analyses that follow, which we regard as initial exploratory efforts to produce research findings on the relationship between focal points and turning points. We focus here on cases that fall into the categories represented by cells A and C in the matrix shown in Table One. We ask specifically: do better, more durable agreements occur when negotiators reach focal points in agreements that feature turning points? We compare cases in which turning points precede or follow the discovery of focal points (cell A) and negotiations in which focal points occur but turning points do not (cell C).

As we noted above, the temporal relationship between the occurrence of a focal point and a turning point could also have an impact. The closer these two phenomena occur in time, the stronger would seem to be the argument that one has some kind of sequential impact on the other. In addition to examining these processes in close proximity, we attempt to understand their relationship in the context of each case.

In Schelling's analysis, focal points are relevant both when parties cannot communicate with each other, which he refers to as tacit bargaining, and when parties do communicate with each other, referred to as explicit bargaining. A need for coordination occurs in both cases. When the parties cannot communicate, they coordinate by converging on a “particular spot that commands attention as the ‘obvious’ place to meet” (Schelling 1980: 58–59). When they can communicate, they coordinate by “converg(ing) ultimately on something as crudely simple as equal shares, shares proportionate to some common magnitude … or the shares agreed on in some previous but logically irrelevant negotiation” (Schelling 1980: 67). In this article, we deal with the role of focal points in explicit bargaining.

We analyzed four negotiations that cannot be reduced to pure coordination games because the interests of the parties did not coincide. The cell A cases are a) negotiations between the German government and international organizations over compensation for victims of the Nazis that took place in July 2000 and b) the negotiations in South Africa that created a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) following the end of the apartheid regime. The cell C cases are a) the Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement (APRA) that ended the civil war in Burundi in 2000 and b) the Nouméa Accord between France and New Caledonia that was signed in 1998. We explore the implications of these comparative analyses regarding the value of focal points in producing effective and durable agreements. We also consider the limitations of this analysis and what a future research agenda should entail.

Two cases involving issues of truth and justice in the aftermath of mass atrocities illustrated the type of negotiations found in cell A in Table One. In the first case, a focal point seems to have precipitated a turning point, while the second case illustrates how turning points can also help catalyze focal points. Thus, turning points can be seen both to precede and to follow focal points.

We decided to examine reparation/compensation cases for three reasons. First, these can be particularly contentious issues, and have been called the “most difficult hurdles in the negotiation process” (Colvin 2006: 178) and they can often take longer to resolve (Maharaj 2008). Second, the reparations dilemma can be critical for creating durable agreements failure — to resolve it can prevent the transformation of adversarial relationships (Féron and Rosoux 2014). Third, this particular issue is relevant to current conflicts, including in places as diverse as Tunisia, Colombia, Cote d'Ivoire, and Egypt.

In 2000, the United States and Germany concluded negotiations establishing reparations for the victims of Nazi atrocities during World War Two that resulted in the establishment of a foundation under German law. The explicit purpose of the negotiation process was to facilitate compensation for individuals who had been victims of the Nazi slave and forced labor programs by establishing a voluntary fund financed by German industries and the German government. This negotiation illustrates how compensations are often negotiated.

After World War Two, the victorious Allies sought to avoid the perceived mistakes of the Treaty of Versailles (1919), which followed the end of World War One and had imposed heavy reparations on Germany. In 1953, the London Debt Agreement — which was signed by the United States, the Federal Republic of Germany, and seventeen other nations — suspended all legal claims arising out of the Holocaust until the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany (also known as the “Two plus Four Treaty”) was signed in 1990 between the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), and the four nations that occupied Germany at the end of the war (the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and France). Courts in the United States and Europe interpreted this treaty as lifting the moratorium on Holocaust‐related claims against German defendants.

In the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990, two key elements precipitated agreement. The first was the threat of litigation. In 1998, Swiss banks agreed to settle a $1.25 billion class action lawsuit brought by those whose assets had been stolen by Nazis and then held in Swiss banks. In exchange for the settlement amount paid by the Swiss banks, the plaintiffs and class members agreed to release the banks, the Swiss government, and other Swiss entities from all claims relating to World War Two.

Art galleries and museums around the world also faced claims that valuable items in their collections had been plundered from Jews. Then, survivors of German slave labor camps sued German companies for restitution. To manage the flood of claims, German companies sought alternative resolutions and initiated negotiations with the United States. Compensation for survivors of slave labor facilities became an issue.

The second event that prompted the creation of the Foundation Agreement was the German elections that took place in autumn 1998. A new center‐left coalition comprising Social Democrats and the Green Party immediately declared that this would be one of its programmatic goals. American government officials, trial lawyers representing victims, executives of German firms, leaders of the American Jewish community, and foreign representatives from several nations began negotiations in 1999.

The negotiation process reflected the conflicting German and American goals (these were the only signatories to the eventual agreement). The Germans wanted to put an end to Holocaust‐related litigation (“legal peace”), while American representatives were eager to facilitate compensation for all surviving Holocaust victims.

In February 1999, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder announced a plan to establish a $1.7 billion foundation to compensate victims. The rejection of this amount by the American lawyers as too small led to an initial impasse. But this initial offer helped define a ZOPA. In December 1999, the parties settled on a total of 10 billion Deutsche marks (DM), with half the total coming from the German government and half from seventy German companies.

These round numbers (ten and five) functioned as focal points that simplified the whole debate and led to the turning point, which was the actual establishment of the fund. The parties agreed on a compromise: Germany would establish the fund in exchange for a statement by the U.S. Secretary of State urging dismissal of every case filed in an American court by a claimant who was eligible for a payment from the foundation.

This agreement was followed by another four months of rancorous negotiations over how to distribute the money. In this round, a new focal point emerged: victims were divided into two different classes based on their wartime victimization, to receive either 15,000 or 5,000 DM each. Since then, there has been no further litigation on this matter.

This description of the process is summarized by the path shown in Figure Two.

Our major interest in this case arises from the presence of the two focal points that we have identified — one that arose before the turning point and one after. Both consisted of large round numbers for total amounts and component amounts (government contribution, corporate contribution, individual awards to two classes) that were accepted by both parties. The focal points took the form of a practical solution that skirted questions of moral culpability. The question was not whether these payments constituted “blood money,” but rather how much should be paid to the survivors. Although parties repeated that this negotiation had nothing to do with money, but with memory and acknowledgement (Adler and Zumbansen 2002), the process suggests that money was the parties’ primary concern.

Although the agreement had critics among the victims’ representatives, it has proven to be durable. We contend that the ways in which the focal points and turning point facilitated each other — specifically with a focal point precipitating a turning point which, in turn, seems to have precipitated another focal point — contributed to its durability.

Like the German Agreement example, the South African case featured some surprising developments, both domestically and internationally, that promoted an extended negotiation process.

Following the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989 and 1990, international pressures on the apartheid government of South Africa to reform its brutal racist policies increased. Campaigns for the boycott of South African goods, often led by trade unions and religious organizations, were already well underway in the United Kingdom, the United States, and throughout Western Europe, and were leading to an increasing number of sanctions against the apartheid regime.

Within the country, more and more South Africans resisted the government both peacefully and violently throughout the 1980s, provoking the government to declare a succession of states of emergency intended to crush the revolts. The economic impacts left even white South Africans dissatisfied with the government (see Lloyd 2005), and the often violent rivalries between the nation's black organizations intensified throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s.

In these tense circumstances, the two major political players, the outlawed anti‐apartheid African National Congress (ANC) and the governing National Party (NP), perceived themselves to be in a mutually hurting stalemate. Neither could find a way out without the support of the other party. Accordingly, a long negotiation process began with secret talks, consisting of “talks about talks” during the period of 1986–1990, which then led to multilateral negotiations between the apartheid government and eighteen other organizations (political organizations, trade unions, and churches) to determine the rules for a transitional government and key constitutional principles.

In December 1989, a coalition of anti‐apartheid groups called the Mass Democratic Movement met to disseminate the ANC's Harare Declaration, which abandoned the ANC's previous Marxist rhetoric and called for a negotiated political settlement. This event precipitated a turning point: on February 2, 1990, South African President F. W. de Klerk announced the release of all political prisoners and the unbanning of anti‐apartheid organizations. Nine days later he released Nelson Mandela, the ANC leader and international face of the anti‐apartheid movement who had been in prison since 1962 (de Klerk 1994).

This prompted formal negotiations (1990–1993), which were interrupted by violent events. The most notable was a massacre of more than forty township residents, including women and children, that the ANC alleged had been carried out by the rival Inkatha Freedom Party with the help of South African police. The negotiations also reached an impasse over a fundamental conflict of interest: those in power were unwilling to surrender it without guarantees that they would not be prosecuted after stepping down, but the representatives of the democratic movements firmly rejected a blanket amnesty. This conflict made it difficult to delineate a ZOPA.

Nonetheless, parties agreed to establish a TRC based on the philosophy of ubuntu (Boraine Levy, and Scheffer 1994). Ubuntu, a Bantu word that translates roughly to “human kindness,” has evolved as the philosophy that a universal bond of sharing connects all humanity. By providing a culturally acceptable underlying philosophy for restorative justice, this concept constituted a focal point. All parties emphasized that the goal was to serve everyone, victims and offenders. The process did not seek to punish offenders, but to reintegrate them into the community, to uncover the truth and acknowledge the injustice, and to repair damaged communal bonds. The traditional notion of ubuntu provided a ZOPA that made devising a compromise solution somewhere between full justice and blanket amnesty possible. To obtain amnesty, an offender had to apply to the commission, participate in its hearings, and meet its requirements, including full disclosure. The process is illustrated in Figure Three.

Ubuntu is not a focal point in the way a simple round number is. This idea, however, constituted what we could call a focal principle that promoted resolution. It has several characteristics typical of focal points.

A first element is simplicity. Nelson Mandela and anti‐apartheid activist Desmond Tutu both stated that the equation that traded individual amnesty in exchange for truth simplified the transition to a new state (Graybill 2002).

A second element is contextual fairness. In conflict, focal points appeal because they represent our own understanding of what we think our counterparts will think is fair. In the South African case, all parties expected that a process based on ubuntu would reach an equilibrium. As Tutu explained, such an institution was “the only alternative to Nuremberg on the one hand and amnesia on the other” (quoted by Eddings 1997: 13).

This approach also spared the new government from having to “translate suffering into numbers” (Colvin 2006: 192) and thus avoid having to pay possibly unaffordable claims for compensation. The choice made by the South African government illustrates the tension between strictly individual compensation, as in the German Agreement case, and collective efforts to repair the social order. From this perspective, the work of the TRC was presented as a “stepping stone from a ‘radically unjust’ to a ‘nearly just’ society” (Verwoerd 1999: 482).

In addition, like many focal points, this agreement also “split the difference”— although admittedly, not in an arithmetical way — between those who called for full justice (retribution) and those who were in favor of a blanket amnesty that pardoned everybody.

The turning point in this negotiation was also critical. De Klerk's decision to release Mandela and other political prisoners and to allow protests and public meetings made the negotiations possible. These were major departures, as well as negotiation precipitants.

In the short term, the negotiated transition ended apartheid and established a democratic regime with democratic elections. It also created the TRC (1996–1998). The emphases on ubuntu and restorative justice were vital contributions to the birth of a new nation. Participants in the Truth and Reconciliation hearings rarely regretted the establishment of the Commission (Cobban 2007).

Popular support for the process began to diminish, however. In 2003, the TRC issued its final report and recommended that reparations be paid to apartheid victims, urging businesses to contribute along with the government. The South African government made a modest one‐time payment to 21,000 individuals who were formally registered as victims by the commission, but it refused to release the amount of remaining money reserved for reparations. To this day, thousands of people still wait for reparations.

Criticisms of “the government's apparent reluctance to deliver reparations” has multiplied (Colvin 2006: 177) and numerous voices have denounced the contrast between the immediate delivery of amnesty to perpetrators and the failure to compensate victims. To them, the equilibrium of the original agreement has been lost.

The restorative justice promise, which was the focal principle of the original agreement, has not been fulfilled. To understand how both the focal point and turning point worked in this agreement we need to understand how the agreement failed. The South African population initially supported the negotiated transition. Restorative justice sought to heal the entire community (Van Ness 1993). The ultimate purpose of this initiative was not to punish offenders, but to find and record the truth and reintegrate everyone into the community and repair damaged communal bonds (Tutu 2000). But, in the long term, the failure to financially compensate victims frustrated their expectations and intensified the anger of those who wanted justice and compensation in addition to acknowledgement.

What was the impact of the focal point and the turning point on the durability of this agreement? The crucial turning point was de Klerk's decision to release the prisoners and legalize banned anti‐apartheid organizations, which precipitated the negotiation process. The focal principle helped participants reach consensus but raised unsustainable expectations. While barriers to political equality for blacks in South Africa have been removed, economic inequality persists, which, polls indicate, is the main cause underlying ongoing conflict. Continuing disparities in wealth, housing, education, and health mean that the political settlement “resolved the immediate causes but not the roots of the conflict” (Lloyd 2005: 234). The agreement stands on a weak foundation.

This agreement rested on several particular peacebuilding premises: that honesty is an important step on the road to reconciliation and that truth and reconciliation processes can promote healing. But many South Africans believe this process was inadequate. Although some victims have reported experiencing “catharsis,” for many anger and frustration persist. The South African experience has raised questions about whether truth commissions can “secure the claimed benefits, even for individuals” (Allen 1999: 316).

The two cases that follow represent the type of negotiations illustrated by cell C in Table One. The Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement (APRA) that ended the civil war in Burundi (2000) and the Nouméa Accord between France and New Caledonia (1998) exemplify negotiations in which parties arrived at a focal points without, in our analysis, experiencing an obvious turning point. Both negotiations sought to resolve conflicts over past crimes and resolve issues of truth and justice. Our analysis of these cases suggests that the failure to reach a turning point can jeopardize chances for a relationship transformation between former adversaries.

Outbreaks of explosions of both inter‐ethnic violence and, more recently intra‐ethnic violence have, plagued Burundi since its independence in 1962. Scholars have charged that the failure to identify and punish perpetrators of human rights violations has been a root cause of the violence (Vandeginste 2009).

Between 1993 and 2006, a civil war between Burundi's ethnic Hutu rebels and the Tutsi‐dominated army ravaged the country and killed more than 300,000 people, mostly civilians. Various attempts to negotiate an end to the conflict failed, and Pierre Buyoya led a coup d’état in 1996.

In June 1998, nineteen parties began negotiating an end to the conflict in the Tanzanian city of Arusha, but the talks excluded the most powerful rebel group, the Forces for the Defense of Democracy (FDD). Julius Nyerere, the former president of Tanzania, facilitated these talks until his death in October 1999, after which Nelson Mandela replaced him. The talks resulted in the APRA for Burundi, which was signed on August 28, 2000 by the sitting government, the national assembly, an alliance of predominantly Tutsi parties, and an alliance of predominantly Hutu parties. Two active rebel groups did not sign the agreement, however, and have continued their armed struggle.

This case illustrates the role that international pressure can play in peace negotiations. Neighboring countries placed intense pressure on Burundi by imposing sanctions and embargoes, which compelled the government to negotiate. The talks sought to find a compromise between protecting the security of the Tutsi minority and ensuring representation for the Hutu majority. Delegates to the negotiation formed five committees to examine various aspects of the conflict. Parties agreed relatively quickly on proposals to address such issues as power sharing, security guarantees, and economic and social reconstruction (including reintegration of refugees), but they reached an impasse with respect to issues of truth and justice.

Eventually, the parties agreed to a proposal modeled on South Africa's TRC. In this case, the focal point took the form of a precedent (see Crump 2016 in this issue on precedents). Unsurprisingly, Mandela the mediator had been strongly influenced by the South African model. And, to the European Union and the major Western donors who had pledged financial support for peacebuilding efforts, the TRC model was seen as an ideal compromise to address the peace versus justice dilemma.

What seemed like an obvious precedent to these outsiders did not resonate as strongly among Burundians. Many political and military stakeholders used the idea of transitional justice instrumentally, “paying lip service” to the importance of truth and accountability, while actively resisting efforts to expose their past actions (Vandenginste, forthcoming). No truth and reconciliation framework has, in fact, ever been established in Burundi, and all the measures announced to comply with transitional justice were postponed because most Tutsi‐ and Hutu‐dominated parties in Burundi had been both victims and perpetrators of human rights abuses since the 1960s. To receive vindication as victims, they would have risked exposure as perpetrators.

This case is particularly interesting because of the discrepancy between a focal point shared largely among the international parties, which was a truth and reconciliation process with an emphasis on the truth dimension, and the focus of the actual compromise, which was a truth and reconciliation process with an emphasis on reconciliation, conceived of as a “mutual forgiveness.”

Based on our analysis, a truth and reconciliation process was not a focal point that led to a turning point because it was never fully implemented even though it was part of the final agreement. The Burundi negotiation illustrates a case in which a focal point had no interaction with a turning point as illustrated in Figure Four.

More than fifteen years after the signing of the APRA, its effectiveness is unclear. It was a “fundamental step on the road to peace” (Vandenginste, forthcoming) but the two rebel groups never signed the agreement and the root causes of violence remain largely unaddressed (Human Rights Watch 2011).

In the short term, the presumed “fifty‐fifty solution,” that is, that a truth and reconciliation process represented a compromise between achieving full justice and blanket amnesty, has not been achieved. Because a TRC was never fully established, no perpetrators have ever been held accountable. Although the National Assembly named eleven representatives to the Commission in December 2014, opposition politicians boycotted the vote, believing the commission would protect the ruling party. Over the last year, the situation in Burundi has grown more tense, after President Pierre Nkurunziza's decision to run again for a third term as president sparked weeks of protests.

This case suggests that focal points may be less effective for precipitating durable agreements for negotiations in which international pressure is a significant feature. It also suggests that the absence of a decisive turning point (before or after parties arrive at a focal point) decreases the chance of a sustainable agreement. The parallels between the South African and the Burundian cases are instructive. In neither case did the protagonists succeed in dealing with the root causes of the conflict. The South African negotiated transition, which was characterized by decisive precipitants and a crucial turning point, was able to make greater progress in terms of transitional justice than was the APRA, which was largely shaped by international pressure.

New Caledonia, a territory comprising dozens of islands in the South Pacific, had come under French control in 1853. By the late 1970s, militants from the territory's Kanak ethnic group were increasingly calling for independence. During the 1980s, violent tensions arose between pro‐independence militants representing various indigenous ethnic groups and French settlers and other migrants who supported a continued French presence in the territory. Then, in April 1988, Kanak militants took twenty‐seven hostages and killed several police officers on the island of Ouvea. The hostage rescue launched by French paramilitary forces left nineteen Kanak militants killed. This bloody event precipitated an intensive negotiation process to prevent a civil war between the two rival factions.

In June 1988, French Prime Minister Michel Rocard signed the Matignon Accords with the leader of the Kanak independence movement and with the leader of one of the two anti‐independence parties. The agreement recognized the rights of both indigenous and immigrant residents to live as citizens of New Caledonia, referred to in the agreement as “double legitimacy.” The accords had three main features. First, they encourage Kanaks' political participation. Second, they featured provisions designed to improve the Kanaks' economic and social conditions. Finally, they called for a referendum on self‐determination to be held in 1998.

Worried that a lack of consensus among the population could precipitate new confrontations, leaders from the rival groups met with Prime Minister Lionel Jospin on the eve of the scheduled referendum to sign the Nouméa Accord. This accord called for the gradual transfer of sovereignty from France to New Caledonia, with a final vote on independence to take place in 2018. The accords were approved by referendum in November 1998.

Rather than finally settling the conflict between pro‐independence supporters and those who claimed autonomy within France, the Nouméa Accord postponed the possibility of independence in return for development aid. In setting the groundwork for a twenty‐year transition, the parties, in effect, indicated that the conflict was not ripe for resolution.

The representatives from the pro‐French party said that it was “too soon” to launch a referendum on independence and called for an additional extension of time, while the Kanak party feared that the independence vote would have lost at the polls. The representatives of the French government perceived the referendum to be a threat to the general stability achieved by the Matignon Accords (Berman 2001). The objective of the Nouméa Accords was to give parties a chance to work together to ultimately address all parties’ needs.

The next question was how long the extension should last. How many years would it take to ensure a gradual “transition to a common destiny” (Chappell 2013: 5)? According to Jospin, “a deadline of ten years” was simply not enough (Jospin 1998). The chosen transition period of fifteen to twenty years constitutes a focal point; the parties believed that a process of emancipation could reasonably be expected to take close to a generation. This fifteen‐to‐twenty‐year interval was a compromise between immediate and eternally postponed changes, between “now” and “never.” It would allow both sides to gradually adapt from a post‐colonial to a pre‐sovereign society.

The preamble to the Nouméa Accord reflects this evolution in a striking way. It contains the first formal acknowledgement by France of the “shadows of the colonial period” in the territory. Unanimously perceived as “a decisive symbolic gesture” (Mokkadem 2013: 132), the preamble refers to the “violent repression,” the “great sufferings,” the “process of dispossession,” and the “identity trauma” of the Kanak clans (Preamble 2008). In acknowledging the “long lasting” impact of colonization (Preamble 2008), the documents allude to the intergenerational dimension of the colonial legacy.

Reaching this focal point, however, did not precipitate a turning point in the negotiation process. Although, the anti‐independence militants signed the preamble, they largely perceived this as the price they had to pay in order to postpone the referendum. Also, the preamble presented a relatively balanced picture of colonialization, referring to the “ideals”, “knowledge”, “hopes”, “sufferings” and “aspirations” of their French settler ancestors as well as to the suffering of the indigenous Kanaks (Preamble 2008).

This compromise affirmed that each side had a right to maintain its cultural identity. In doing so, it preserved the peace, but did not provoke a genuine transformation of relationships between the parties. The resistance to that process helps to explain the absence of a turning point.

In fixing a benchmark of twenty years, the parties chose stability over risk, in particular the risk of exploring the traumas of colonial rule. French representatives did acknowledge the “traumatic effect” of French rule on the Kanak community (Preamble 2008: 93), but they refused to open the door for reparations, either for crimes committed during the earlier colonization or during the conflicts of the 1980s. A general amnesty in 1988 prevented any disclosure in this regard. If we consider this case in light of the classic dilemma of “peace versus justice” (Zartman and Kremenyuk 1976), the Nouméa Accord clearly emphasized peace.

In the long term, many questions remain unanswered. Interestingly, some participants cited the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, as an appropriate precedent for New Caledonia. The pro‐independence leader Rock Wamytan argued that “in politics, we cannot look in each other's eyes and build the future” without knowing the truth about the past (Chappell 2013: 4). Most protagonists, however, refused to focus on this issue, fearing that it would lead to further polarization.

At this stage, New Caledonian citizens seem to have generally accepted self‐government, although they differ over how much separation from France they want. The most recent elections, held in May 2014, confirmed that pro‐ and anti‐independence factions are still strongly antagonistic.

In these circumstances, will the agreement prove durable? It is unclear whether the French government will keep its promise to hold an independence referendum (see Jospin and Rocard 2008) or whether it will choose to postpone it in favor of additional consultation. If the referendum is held and leads to independence, this would qualify as a significant departure — it would suggest that the focal point generated a turning point. At this point, such a scenario appears less likely.

France's role is emblematic. Rather than playing the role of former colonizer, France chose to act as an impartial mediator between the pro‐ and anti‐independence factions. As the current French President, François Hollande, explained “the Nouméa Accord, after the Matignon Accords, transformed the State into an arbiter, and also a partner. Arbiter because it has to take care of the implementation of the commitments; partner since it cannot simply be a spectator, it has to go with the parties, it has to be active and it has to show solidarity as well” (Hollande 2014). An analysis of each party's concessions reveals how efficiently France mediated. By compensating each of the parties’ concessions, France acted as a manipulative mediator and strongly influenced the direction of negotiations (Touval and Zartman 1985).

France's decisive role as well as the lack of a turning point help to explain why the parties could only agree to postpone the sovereignty decision. Counter‐factual theorizing suggests that the participation of a leader seen as legitimate in the eyes of the anti‐independence groups could have catalyzed a turning point by actively supporting emancipation. Such a historical shift would have been surprising and risky, but it would have diminished many of the uncertainties that New Caledonians currently face.

The process is summarized by the path shown in Figure Five.

The cases we have analyzed in this article illustrate the relationship between negotiation processes and agreements; in particular, they show how focal points and turning points can catalyze each other in ways that make agreements more durable.

In each of these cases, external forces exerted some influence. In the case of the German Foundation Agreement, the threat of new litigation decisively precipitated the negotiation process. Judicial rulings (in Switzerland, Austria, and the United States) compelled the German negotiators to the bargaining table, where they and their counterparts arrived at a focal point that took the form of a salient round number (10 billion Deutsche marks).

The South African case demonstrates the key role of leadership in developing a focal principle that makes sense to all parties. Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu are South African national heroes whose approval lent legitimacy to the truth and reconciliation negotiations. The Burundian case illustrates the scope and limits of external pressure regarding focal points. Mandela's involvement as well as the considerable influence of Western donors help explain why the South African precedent became a focal point. In Nouméa, France actively brokered the agreement.

Figure Six compares the progression of the four cases. It shows considerable variety in the kinds of precipitating factors, focal points, turning points, and consequences that occurred. Focal points were instrumental in reaching settlements. The negotiation in Burundi illustrates the problems that occur when a turning point does not follow the focal point. The case of the Nouméa Accords, on the other hand, illustrates how a focal point can be useful in delaying resolution of the key issue: we await the referendum to determine whether a turning point in the relationship between New Caledonia and France will occur. While these cases show how focal points and turning points can move a negotiation process toward agreement, the presence of neither one militates against long‐term resolution of the root causes of the conflict.

Regarding the impact of focal points on the durability of these agreements, we make the three following observations. First, we suggest that more durable agreements occur when focal points occur in conjunction with turning points. The development of focal points without turning points seems to be insufficient to seal an agreement. But even when turning points occur, a settlement may be insufficient to achieve lasting agreement when root causes are left unaddressed (Druckman 2002). Although turning points are often instrumental in getting an agreement, they do not assure lasting peace.

Second, our case studies suggest that the more precise and specific the focal points, the more sustainable the agreement may be, particularly when accompanied by turning points. The clarity of round numbers in terms of monetary payments in the German case reduced ambiguity, while the vagueness of ubuntu apparently did not give enough South Africans a sense of what they had to gain from the process.¹ The role of specificity in successful focal points deserves further research.

Finally, these cases suggest that, in the context of violent social conflict and war, focal points are less likely to produce durable agreements if they are too narrow in scope and do not address victims’ need for justice. Each case involved efforts to postpone justice, which generated fresh conflict. (For more on the importance of justice considerations for the durability of agreements see Albin and Druckman 2012) But proposals that inadequately address current problems, such as the corruption and poverty in Burundi, seem less likely to produce long‐term peace.

These case analyses also suggest how focal points and turning points work together. Generating focal points alone may be insufficient for reaching durable agreement unless those focal points also precipitate — or are precipitated by — a turning point. An earlier turning point may orient negotiators toward arriving at a focal point. The focal point then helps them coordinate their expectations, moving the process from conceptual discussions to more concrete bargaining exchanges.

When a turning point follows the development of a focal point, it may generate the additional energy needed for settlement. And the turning point departure may signal to negotiators that the process has progressed to a new phase. Further investigation could explore how negotiators perceive and react to both turning points and focal points.

Focal points and turning points offer new “lenses” through which we can examine negotiation cases. These “enhanced case studies” (Druckman 2005) are useful for generating hypotheses, which can lay the groundwork for further research. (See Crump and Druckman 2012 for a similar approach to turning points research.) One possible direction would be to move from interpretation to confirmation by precisely defining the time lag between the arrival at a focal point and the particular event that signals a turning point in order to explore causality.

This article features a small sample of cases. Analyzing additional cases would no doubt enrich our understanding. Adding cases to cells B (turning point, no focal point) and D (neither a focal point nor a turning point) in Table One would be useful, as would building a more robust data set by examining a more varied range of cases (i.e., a greater variety of conflicts and time periods). That data set could also include information about the types of agreements reached and their durability.