This issue of Negotiation Journal puts remarkable negotiators and theorists in the spotlight. Behind the bright lights, it explores the theme of relationships and extreme conflict as a context for negotiations. The practice of mediation is also woven throughout.
Leon Hartwell writes in honor of United Nations diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello. His piece, entitled “The Diplomat and the Drunken Guard,” begins with a remarkable story of courage and skill. As Hartwell explains, “the story of how he [Vieira de Mello] bargained with an inebriated, gun‐waving Serbian guard as the Kosovo War came to its close is instructive.” The forward progress of a U.N. convoy of twenty‐three trucks with two‐hundred and fifty tons of needed supplies was at risk. Rather than exercising force, Vieira de Mello achieved safe passage by uncovering the interests of a belligerent armed guard—even though he did not speak Serbian.
Vieira de Mello, who was killed in Iraq in 2003, has been celebrated for advancing the interests of refugees, negotiating with mass murderers, and earning the trust of warring factions around the globe. This case provides unique insight into the skills of this remarkable negotiator and will surely make it onto the syllabi of courses in negotiation and diplomacy.
The authors of this issue's two book review essays seek to fully engage both the ideas found in important negotiation books and also place them in a broader context. In this issue, Alain Lempereur examines Jeswald W. Salacuse's book Negotiating Life: Secrets of Everyday Diplomacy and Deal‐Making. The book celebrates the centrality of negotiations to what Salacuse terms the everyday work of diplomacy. In tackling the book, Lempereur considers what he terms the tendency toward “negocentrism” in scholarship on negotiations—putting the reader at the center of the negotiations universe. He appreciates how Salacuse moves beyond this approach to value the negotiator in the context of relationships—in which meaning derives from the interactions of people. The essay locates the roots of these ideas across three hundred years of scholarship on negotiations.
In the second review essay, Negotation Journal's Editor Emeritus Michael Wheeler weaves together a review of two books– the recent Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It by Chris Voss (with Tahl Raz) and the 1964 book Strangers on a Bridge: The Case of Colonel Abel and Francis Gary Powers by James B. Donovan, which inspired the movie Bridge of Spies. The first book, by a former FBI hostage negotiator and developer of FBI negotiation protocols, challenges some ideas that border on conventional negotiation wisdom and, in some cases, argues against some of the classic negotiating principles advocated in such books at Getting to Yes. Wheeler views the contrast as overstated, finding complementarities between Never Split the Difference and key aspects of “principled negotiations.” Wheeler then traces parallels with the iconic cold war negotiations described by James Donovan in his book. In 1962 Donovan negotiated the exchange of a Soviet spy imprisoned in the United States for the release of Francis Gary Powers whose spy plane had been shot down over the Soviet Union two years earlier. This life and death negotiation depended on an appreciation of interests.
In their article, “When Clients Throw Punches and Chairs,” Susan S. Raines and Yeju Choi advance practice by reporting on results from a survey of mediators about their experiences with violence in mediation. The authors fill a gap in the literature and speak directly to practitioners who are often in the middle of domestic, community, and other conflicts characterized by strong emotions and the threat of violence. Established protocols, screening processes, and de‐escalating strategies can mitigate the risk, and these authors document these tools and methods. They also identify an underlying ethical dilemma: mediators worry that taking action to prevent violence could violate confidentiality rules, for example. The study found that approximately one‐third of the respondents had witnessed violence in the context of at least one of their mediation cases, which suggests the need for more comprehensive data collection, training, and policy attention.
Also at the frontiers of new knowledge is the contribution by Noam Ebner and John Zeleznikow focusing on the online dispute resolution field. The article, “No Sheriff in Town,” examines a context in which technology is running ahead of the institutions responsible for shaping the “rules of the game.” The authors document a growing number of settings in which online dispute resolution procedures are becoming institutionalized in policy and practice. Although ADR as a field is largely self‐regulated, there are well‐established protocols, standards, and guidelines for face‐to‐face interactions—many of which operate in the context of courts, which enhances its legitimacy. In contrast, many of the online practices have emerged in a different cultural context, that of information technology and e‐commerce. The authors challenge us to consider what sorts of protocols, standards, and guidelines could be feasible and, more importantly, point out the risks that an absence of governance creates.
