Each of the predominate approaches to negotiation and conflict resolution—interest‐based bargaining, basic human needs approaches, and narrative approaches—is grounded in a particular worldview with embedded assumptions about why and how parties experience conflict, the building blocks available to construct a solution to their conflict, and the proper design goals and methods for assembling those building blocks. When an approach to negotiation and conflict resolution is misaligned with the worldview(s) inhabited by one or more of the conflict parties, this mismatch may partially explain why a conflict resists resolution. Scholars and practitioners in our field should develop greater fluency in and capacity to work within and across disparate worldviews, so we and those we seek to assist are able to negotiate across worldviews more effectively.

Within the contemporary academic discipline of negotiation and conflict resolution various theories and practice methods grounded in them have competed for attention and adherents. These include interest‐based bargaining, also known as principled negotiation (Fisher, Ury, and Patton 1991); basic human needs theory (Burton 1990); and narrative theory (Cobb 2013). Though this list is not exhaustive, and it is possible to see these three approaches as partially overlapping, many scholars and practitioners in the field today embrace one of these approaches exclusively. While I am not aware of any relevant quantitative analyses, I expect my ordering of them above (from most to least utilized) would be confirmed if such analyses did exist, as indicated by the number of publications, courses, trainings, and interventions oriented toward each of them.

Each of these theories about the nature of conflict, and the negotiation methods that correspond to each theory, claim broad scope, applicability, and utility. We find proponents of each theory analyzing and attempting to resolve a very broad range of conflicts, from interpersonal disputes (e.g., family conflict) (Davis and Malhotra 2007; Finkel et al. 2014; Winslade 2017) to violent international conflict (Kelman 1990; Watkins and Rosegrant 2001; Cobb 2013). Most of these proponents nonetheless are acutely aware that, useful as their favored approach has been in some situations (e.g., divorce mediation or business disputes), some conflicts persistently resist our best efforts to resolve them. These are the so‐called intractable conflicts. The field's failure to provide reliable approaches for resolving these conflicts has led some scholars to suggest some conflicts are too complex for us to understand and confront through any one theoretical lens, other than complexity theory itself (Coleman 2021).

Some conflicts are extraordinarily complex, and there is much we can miss if we view any complex phenomenon through a single lens. All lenses focus our vision on some things to the exclusion or relative neglect of others. Those who favor one lens over others generally would be well‐advised to strive continuously to widen its aperture without reaching a point at which nothing remains in focus. Our theoretical lenses in the negotiation and conflict resolution field become more useful as they enable us to perceive more about the causes and conditions that catalyze, sustain, and intensify conflict and that create and constrain possibilities for its resolution.

For example, the theory and methods of interest‐based bargaining have been expanded and greatly enriched in recent decades through insights offered by researchers in the fields of psychology, behavioral economics, and neuroscience. These researchers have demonstrated numerous ways in which human perception, cognition, and behavior do not conform to the rational actor model posited by classic microeconomic theory, and their discoveries have had a profound influence on the negotiation and conflict resolution field (Arrow et al. 1995). Most proponents of interest‐based bargaining today undoubtedly subscribe to the notion of bounded rationality: the idea that our judgments and decisions are influenced by cognitive biases and errors and emotion in ways that may produce outcomes deemed suboptimal unless we counteract them somehow.

Just as it may be profitable to widen the aperture of discrete theories of negotiation to the extent we reasonably can, it can be profitable to step back from individual theories and critiques of one from the vantage point of another to try to discern what none alone adequately captures. Each of the most prominent theories of negotiation and conflict resolution arguably is grounded in a particular view of the world with embedded assumptions about the nature of reality, our ways of knowing, desirable goals, and proper means for achieving one's goals. In other words, each of our theories of negotiation emanates from a particular worldview and seeks to resolve conflicts in keeping with it. Worldviews are “overarching systems of meaning and meaning‐making that inform how humans interpret, enact, and co‐create reality” (Hedlund‐de Witt 2013: 156). To the extent a theory and its prescribed methods of negotiation and conflict resolution are misaligned with how some conflict parties make meaning and seek to resolve the conflict, this mismatch may help explain why the conflict resists our best efforts to resolve it—in other words, why it is considered intractable. Recognition of this mismatch might help us expand existing theories, generate new ones, and relate our theories and methods to one another in ways that could render some intractable conflicts more amenable to resolution.

With the notable exception of Jayne Docherty's groundbreaking study of the standoff in 1993 between the Branch Davidians and the FBI, Learning Lessons from Waco: When the Parties Bring Their Gods to the Negotiation Table (Docherty 2001), the notion of worldviews has received very little attention in the negotiation and conflict resolution field.1 Our field is not alone in this regard—the concept of worldviews has not received sustained attention in disciplines other than philosophy and theology until recently. However, a small, interdisciplinary group of scholars, including those walking in the footsteps of the late Belgian philosopher Leo Apostel,2 has done much to develop a theory of worldviews that has begun to inform (and gain confirmation from) empirical research regarding our worldviews and how they influence contentious matters like climate change policy (De Witt et al. 2016; de la Sienra, Smith, and Mitchell 2017; Rousseau and Billingham 2018).

I endeavor to explain in this article why and how the notion of worldviews matters for our field. I also attempt to demonstrate how each of the predominate approaches to negotiation and conflict resolution mentioned above is grounded in a particular worldview that conveys assumptions about how parties experience conflict, what “building blocks” (Shonk 2021)3 the parties have at their disposal as they attempt to construct a solution to their conflict, and the proper design goals and methods for assembling those building blocks. These worldviews exist alongside other worldviews, however—other worldviews that use different building blocks and advance different design goals and methods for assembling them. I ultimately argue that our field should develop greater fluency in and capacity to work within multiple worldviews simultaneously, so we and those we seek to assist are able to negotiate across worldviews more effectively.

A worldview is a way of orienting to the world and one's experience within it (Taves, Asprem, and Ihm 2018), including our experience of those who do and do not share our worldview to a significant extent. Worldviews are coherent (from one's own perspective) orientations to the world that include explanations for how it works and principles for flourishing within it. We can think of a worldview as the lens through which one perceives phenomena (including one's own thoughts and feelings) and attempts to orient oneself to them. By bringing attention to (our own and) others' worldviews, we attempt genuinely to distinguish and understand how we ourselves and others see the world, “looking out” from each person's subject position (Sheikh 2020: 113).

Worldviews help order our physical, psychological, and social experiences, rendering them meaningful. They are equally evident through what we think, say, and do. Worldviews may be secular or religious. Either way, a worldview explicitly or implicitly reflects one's answers to a set of “big questions” that most of us feel a need or impulse to resolve (Docherty 2001; Taves 2017; Taves, Asprem, and Ihm 2018): What is the nature of reality? Where does it come from? What can we know and how? Where are we going? What is good and what is bad? How should we act? However conscious and well developed, articulated or unarticulated, and whether received and/or a product of our own searching reflection, our answers to these questions have major implications for how we perceive the world, relate to others, and organize and conduct our personal, social, and political affairs. They may not always mechanistically dictate individual or group behavior, but they heavily influence our conduct and how we justify it (Sheikh 2020).

Worldview Distinguished from Culture, Identity, Ideology, and Narrative

We should distinguish the notion of worldview from the concepts of culture, identity, ideology, and narrative, which are more familiar within the field of negotiation and conflict resolution (and disciplines adjacent to it). While there is some overlap among some of these concepts, none exists as a complete subset of the others. I also see culture and identity as more expansive concepts than worldview and ideology and narrative as more limited concepts.

While it is possible (and unobjectionable) to think of a worldview as a culture when it is shared with others, the concept of culture as we generally think of it (Emminghaus, Kimmel, and Stewart 1997) is broader than the concept of worldview. It is inclusive of many elements—such as some traditions and customs, art forms, and languages and linguistic conventions—that many will see as separate or separable from their most constitutive ways of understanding the world, their values, and their commitments. For example, an Orthodox Jew from Spain might feel free to eat both some types of tapas (food from her own cultural context) and some types of sushi (food from another cultural context), while preferring the former, but she will take care to eat tapas and sushi that are kosher, whichever she chooses on a given day. Her food choice reflects her answers to the big questions identified above, regardless of whether it reflects a preference for other features of her cultural context(s). One's worldview also can differ from the worldview of others with whom one feels genuine cultural affinity, as is true for many religious and non‐religious Jews in their regard for one another. The concept of worldview is more narrowly focused on meaning‐making and normativity in relation to existential concerns: beliefs, values, and related norms that do not just define the contours of what is culturally familiar, but that define the very bounds of reality itself, how it coheres (or does not cohere), and the implications of this for one's objectives in life and how to pursue them. It also is important to note that, while core moral values are major components of our worldviews, our worldviews cannot be equated with those values alone. One's conception of reality, its origin and direction, and how we can and do know such things are not values; they are conscious or unconscious beliefs on which our core values may be founded.

Identity is an even broader concept than culture, though one's worldview and cultural influences certainly are elements of one's social and personal identity. In addition to cultural endowments and attachments, it reflects a wider array of traits and influences, including one's identification with others across contexts based upon factors such as gender and class, vocational identity, and highly personal experiences (e.g., a traumatic event or being raised by first‐generation immigrants) (Tajfel and Turner 2004). One's values naturally also are an important aspect of one's identity; some might say the most important aspect (Hitlin 2003).

The notion of ideology tends to emphasize consciously developed and articulated ideas associated with a political purpose that structures those ideas (Sypnowich 2019).4 Its political connotation tends to obscure the fact that there are many types of worldviews that arguably are not concerned with politics in the first instance. The term ideology also sometimes implies a certain misguided dogmatism, if not irrational fanaticism, rather than a sincere vision of the world, how it works, and principles for flourishing within it. Accordingly, when some speak of a given ideology (e.g., capitalist ideology or communist ideology) they may be deploying a reductionist, objectifying descriptor that purportedly “sums up” what is essential to know from one's own perspective about a person or group and its way of life, rather than making a sympathetic attempt to understand the other's perspective.

We can think of one's worldview as the meaning‐making substrate from which one's narratives about anything, including conflict, emerge and to which they remain attached, perhaps more firmly at some points than at others. Ignoring this in a narrative analysis of conflict may hinder conflict resolution efforts, as it may not be possible to “destabilize” (Cobb 2013) a party's narrative significantly when it reflects one's responses to the big questions identified above. It is unlikely parties will significantly alter their respective understandings of the nature of existence, its origin and future direction, right and wrong, and the other matters these questions address during conflict resolution efforts. Some theories of narrative in relation to conflict and its resolution do bring us closer to the concept of worldview by emphasizing the importance of “the moral system, or values that are advanced in the narrative” (Cobb 2013: 65–66) expressed by each party.5 These theories tend to be decidedly constructivist in orientation (Winslade and Monk 2008), however, and this orientation may promote excessive faith in the malleability of parties' narrative(s) in a worldview conflict and in the potential of this presumed malleability to be put in service of conflict resolution efforts. I will return to this question about the malleability of conflict narratives below.

In sum, myriad features of cultures, identities, ideologies, and narratives all can be entwined in and influence a worldview conflict. It may be impossible to untangle the concepts of worldview, culture, identity, ideology, and narrative completely, but the latter four concepts generally do too little to help us understand and work within and across the existential meaning‐making and associated normative frameworks conflict parties inhabit, which both constrain and can create opportunities for conflict resolution. Focusing on worldviews is about bringing parties' background meaning‐making processes and normative commitments and constraints into the foreground.

Worldviews and Needs

There likely is a small set of universally shared basic human needs (Tay and Diener 2011), and worldviews influence how we try to satisfy them. Although a worldview may not consciously be developed or embraced to satisfy needs of those who hold it, one's worldview mediates one's understanding of how one's needs and related interests can and should be satisfied, as illustrated by the example above about how an Orthodox Jew satisfies her biological need for nourishment. Worldviews (alongside elements of one's culture or personal or group identity) influence every aspect of our personal and social lives, including how we allocate resources and opportunities within and across groups to satisfy physiological, safety, and social needs (Akerlof and Kranton 2010) and how we regard and express ourselves, meeting self‐esteem and self‐actualization needs (Greenaway et al. 2016). Accordingly, people strive to satisfy their needs and interests, and resolve personal dilemmas and conflicts with others, in ways that comport with their worldviews, because doing otherwise would be psychologically destabilizing and/or be seen by others as a defection from the normative order through which one's needs and interests ordinarily are met, risking social sanction by others who inhabit the same normative landscape (Bicchieri 2017).

Worldviews as Dynamic and Evolving

Worldviews tend to be multi‐layered and dynamically evolving and to intersect with other worldviews to some degree. That is why Docherty prefers to speak of “worldviewing”—a verb, something we constantly are doing—rather than “worldviews” as such (Docherty 2001: 50). While we might be able to speak in very broad and general terms about archetypal worldviews (e.g., the “Christian worldview” or the “humanist worldview”), doing so ordinarily is of relatively little value in negotiation and conflict resolution efforts, because parties must develop a much more granular understanding of their respective worldviews, their symbolic dimensions, and the normative constraints and permissions associated with them to grasp how they influence specific issues in their conflict. For example, knowing that only certain priests were allowed, at specific times for specific purposes, to set foot on the holy ground in and around the Jewish Temple that once stood at the Temple Mount/Al Aqsa Mosque complex, but that it is perfectly fine for families to have picnics and play soccer on the holy grounds of an Islamic mosque, helps one understand why there have been persistent tensions about Muslims' varied uses of the site. It also suggests the possibility of a concession that might be regarded by some religious Jews as symbolically valuable and simultaneously regarded as low cost by some Muslims: prohibition of soccer within the walls of the site and construction of a recreation area somewhere just outside it. Parties also crucially must understand the variants of their own worldview operating within their own community. The negotiation behind the table (intraparty work) is especially important in the context of worldview conflict (Seul 2020).

Worldviews are tested by encounters and other experiences that cannot be contained or explained adequately by one's existing way of making meaning (de la Sienra, Smith, and Mitchell 2017). These sorts of disruptive experiences include interactions with others who have a different worldview (intergroup processes), interactions with others who substantially share our worldview (intragroup processes), and personal experiences and reflection (intrapersonal processes). Such disruptive experiences eventually may lead one to update elements of one's worldview, though many of us initially (and even for some time) respond to potentially disruptive influences by trying to fit them into, or shut them out of, our current ways of making meaning (Gurevitch 1989; Sharot 2017). When one does begin to question the adequacy of one's own worldview, one is more likely to alter or expand it just enough to accommodate previously unseen or rejected data and perspectives, rather than abandoning it altogether or revising it fundamentally. Social interactions and situations that challenge one's worldview can feel disorienting and risky, precisely because they help shape and anchor individual and group identities in ways that serve our needs. As noted above, worldviews can overlap with other worldviews to some extent, but not to an unlimited extent, or they would lose their coherence to those who embrace them.

Worldview conflict emerges when values, norms, and beliefs that are core to one worldview cannot easily be reconciled with another worldview, and when this tension has practical implications (Docherty 2001; Ramsbotham 2017). The Israeli–Palestinian conflict—one conflict context in which I have worked for many years—is a conflict with an underappreciated worldview dimension. Many of the most challenging issues bypassed in past, high‐level peace processes (e.g., permanent borders and control and use of the Al Aqsa Mosque/Temple Mount complex) have so far proven to be insurmountable precisely because parties relate to and seek to resolve them through very different secular or religious worldview lenses (Hassner 2009; Zalzberg 2019). Inattention to worldview multiplicity is evident even in the overarching goal the principal negotiators and mediators in prior peace processes have sought to achieve: a full and final resolution of all claims. Establishment of permanent borders within the entire disputed territory and permanent control and norms regarding use of the Al Aqsa Mosque/Temple Mount complex may be obvious and perfectly sensible objectives from a secular–political perspective, but their achievement could violate core beliefs and values of the prophetic religious worldviews embraced by influential stakeholder groups within each society (Zalzberg 2019; Ben‐Dor 2022). Religious Zionists and Islamic nationalists each regard all the land between the sea and the river as holy—Jerusalem and its main religious site even more so—and believe God has ordained that their group be its ultimate custodian for the benefit of humanity. These are distributional issues involving real estate from a secular–political worldview perspective, and there are various acceptable approaches for distributing rights with respect to it. From a prophetic religious perspective, however, these issues look very different. Any solution to practical issues about who can occupy which spaces, for how long, and doing what there must comport with a religion's prophetic vision and other norms. Peace ultimately means a social and political order that accords with God's plan as a given religion presents it, and adherents of that religion lack authority to contravene God's plan. As I will demonstrate below when I return to the example of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, this does not mean that an agreement or practical arrangement that works within all worldviews is unachievable.

Worldviews not only influence large‐scale international conflicts and negotiations (like the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and multilateral negotiations regarding climate change policy) and large‐scale political and social conflicts within countries (over issues like abortion and income inequality), they also can influence smaller, private negotiations that we might expect to have a more “transactional” character, but that may reveal themselves to be more about parties' ways of making meaning and core values.

I grew up in Colorado, where Native Americans lived long before European immigrants and their descendants, including my family, arrived. I often heard beautiful Native American flute music there and long considered learning to play. Nearly 40 years ago, when I was in my early twenties, I bought a flute from a Native American arts and crafts store. It cost $200. Soon after I bought the flute, I even met its maker, a Native American who also was a talented flute player.

I made little progress over the next several years, despite having taken a few lessons from a local teacher. I had no foundation in music, and little time or will to practice during that phase of my life. I eventually decided to sell the flute, so I returned to the store to see if it would repurchase the flute or agree to sell it for me on consignment. I learned that the flute's maker had become quite famous, and my used flute now was worth at least $1,000. The store would not buy it back or sell it for me, however. I was told I must deal directly with the flute maker.

The flute maker wished to take the flute back. I told him the store estimated its value at $1,000, and he readily agreed with this valuation. I offered to sell him the flute for $800, reflecting the commission I would have expected to pay the store if it had been willing to sell the flute on consignment. The flute maker declined, stating that he would give me only what I had paid for it, $200. He would not split the increase in value with me. He explained that he had a connection to the flute as its creator; he was its spiritual custodian. If I parted with the flute, it was returning home and he would then direct it to a new home where it would be played and not neglected. He said the money was irrelevant, even though he would keep the difference between $200 and the price paid by the flute's next owner.

Violating the most basic advice any proponent of interest‐based bargaining would give me about how to deal with what some of them might presume to be my negotiation partner's “difficult tactics,” I began to negotiate against myself. I offered the flute to him for $600. He declined. $500? No. $400? Still no. $300?

My negotiation partner professed to want to reclaim and direct the flute to someone who would play and care for it. I was willing to part with it, yet he would not pay what I considered to be a fair price. I saw no other way to sell the flute. The market in my area for used Native American flutes was not particularly large or active and I had few reliable options for reaching potential buyers apart from the craft store and the flute maker himself. The web (and so e‐commerce channels like eBay and Craig's List) did not yet exist. I retained the flute, and its maker and I parted ways. I will return to this story about selling a flute later. I am not pleased with the course this negotiation took, nor proud of how I approached it. For now, I offer it and the brief discussion of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict above as examples that illustrate the defining feature of worldview conflicts: they present these sorts of challenging divergences in meaning‐making orientations. Worldview conflict emerges when differently reasonable people disagree.

Interests, needs, and narratives: each of the theories of conflict and associated approaches to negotiation discussed above focuses our attention upon a particular base‐level constituent element considered key to understanding conflicts and how to resolve them. Like nuclear particles in physics, these elements are the theory's building blocks and the degree to which they are ordered or disordered in relation to one another (according to the theory's normative vision of order) indicates a state of conflict or its absence. (Waves and the compatibility of their frequencies might be an even better physics‐based metaphor with respect to narrative theory.) Viewed through the lens of interest‐based bargaining theory, poorly integrated interests generate conflict, and we must integrate parties' interests compatibly to resolve conflict. Viewed through the lens of basic human needs theory, unmet human needs generate conflict, and we must seek mutually compatible ways to satisfy unmet needs to resolve conflict. Viewed through the lens of narrative theory, unspoken and unheard, disregarded, and/or incompatible narratives generate conflict, and the parties' existing narratives must be spoken, heard, and potentially destabilized, with a new narrative emerging, to resolve conflict.

Each of these theories offers an alternate paradigm for making sense of, or making meaning about, the existence of conflict and how to resolve it. As discussed in greater depth below, we can see each of these theories as embedded in and arising out of a broader worldview. When we embrace one of these approaches as a negotiator, adviser, facilitator, or mediator, we are operating from a particular worldview of which we may or may not be particularly conscious.

Worldview theorists are converging upon a generalized approach for illuminating and mapping worldviews (worlds‐made) and how they are generated (world‐making or, as Docherty prefers, worldviewing) (Taves 2022). Worldviews form, function, and re‐form for individuals and for groups of all possible sizes (families, communities, societies, and species). Taves refers to these “levels” as the scale at which worldviews exist and operate (Taves 2022). In any complex social or political conflict that involves many stakeholders, such as the conflict over gun rights/gun control in the United States or the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, it could be useful to map the worldviews that exist within multiple subgroups in one or more societies, and even to map the worldviews of key individuals within those subgroups. If we map the worldview of a single individual within a subgroup, we will get a limited picture (of the subgroup) with high resolution (with respect to one person). If we map the worldview of the whole subgroup, we will get a more inclusive picture with lower resolution (Taves 2022).

Parties and mediators interested in using worldview analysis as an aid to conflict resolution likely will need worldview maps at multiple levels (or scales) of analysis, in part because it will be important to understand differences in perspective among and within key subgroups (e.g., religious Zionist and ultra‐Orthodox constituents) within larger subgroups (e.g., religious Jews) within a society (in this case, Israel) in order to guide intraparty/behind‐the‐table negotiation (within Israel) and understand its implications for interparty/across‐the‐table negotiation (with Palestinians and others). We also will need each of these worldview maps to illuminate how each of the key issues in the conflict are perceived through the worldview in question (Seul 2020).

If we were to examine the theoretical and methodological debates among negotiation and conflict resolution scholars and practitioners through a worldview lens, what might we see? No such thorough empirical analysis of worldviews in our field has been done, to my knowledge.6 For the time being, we must utilize worldview categories empirically derived for other purposes. These include categories resulting from analyses undertaken to illuminate differences in religious and secular orientations (Samples 2007), theories of knowledge (Rousseau 2014), and generalized worldview paradigms (De Witt et al. 2016). The latter study, conducted by Annick De Witt, Joop de Boer, Nicholas Hedlund, and Patricia Osseweijer, identified four worldview categories—Traditional, Modern, Postmodern, and Integrative—that seem quite useful for purposes of this article, in part because the study was undertaken to explore how worldview differences influence the present‐day conflict regarding climate change policy that has garnered considerable attention within the negotiation and conflict resolution field (Sjöstedt and Penetrante 2013).

The following chart is organized around the worldview categories uncovered by DeWitt and colleagues in their study of conflict over climate change policy. The first row (Description) reproduces the researchers' brief characterization of each worldview evident in their data set, which includes information gathered from about 1,100 respondents drawn roughly equally from the Netherlands and the United States. Subsequent rows represent my initial, tentative effort to associate with each of these worldviews a presumed self‐understanding, predominant metaethical theory, approach to conflict resolution, negotiation building blocks, and some relative strength(s) and weakness(es) when negotiating across worldviews. I acknowledge that my assignments of attributes to these worldviews are debatable (and, I hope, will be debated). I also acknowledge that this chart does not integrate some important theoretical, empirical, and methodological contributions within our field that undoubtedly function across worldview categories, such as the role of emotion in conflict and negotiation (Shapiro 2016) (Table 1).

Table 1

Worldviews Underlying Negotiation and Conflict Resolution Theories and Methods

TraditionalModernPost‐modernIntegrative
Description Religious/metaphysical monism. Reality as singular, transcendent. Universe as purposively constructed whole. God‐created universe ex nihilo. Transcendent God/Creator is separate from profane world; dualism. Nature as embodiment of meaningful, imposed order (e.g., God's creation). Secular materialism. Reality as singular, immanent. Mechanistic universe brought about by random selection. Material reality devoid of meaning, intentionality, consciousness; dualism, disenchantment. Nature as instrumental, devoid of intrinsic meaning and purpose. Resource for exploitation. Post‐materialism. Reality as pluralistic, perspectival, constructed. Multiple cosmogonies/cosmogony as social construct. Reality as discontinuous and fragmented, meaning as social construct; anti‐essentialism. Nature as constructed through a plurality of cultural values, meanings, and interests. Holism/integralism (unity in diversity). Reality as transcendent and immanent. Universe as evolving, creative manifestation of Source/Spirit. Outer and inner reality co‐arising, interdependent; re‐enchantment. Nature as intrinsically valuable. Frequently seen as divine force of which humanity is a part and an expression. 
Self‐under standing Devoted Rational Post‐modern; Critical Pluralistic 
Metaethical theory Deontological Utilitarian (interests) or Ethic of Care (needs) Relativism (but seeking to redress harms caused by power imbalances) Pluralistic Relativisma 
Conflict resolution approach(es) Traditional forms of dispute processing (e.g., council of elders), often resulting in adherence to traditional norms and authority Interest‐based Bargaining and Basic Human Needs Theory Narrative Approaches Negotiating Across Worldviews 
Negotiation building blocks Duties tied to sacred beliefs and values Interests (utils), for those utilizing interest‐based bargaining, or needs (including non‐physical personal and social needs), for those utilizing basic human needs theory Narratives (with attention to power positions they assume and maintain) All of these 
Strength(s) when negotiating across worldviews Negotiating when values, norms, roles, and institutions are aligned (most common within moral communities) Ability to produce value‐maximizing outcomes and fair division of joint gains, sometimes even across groups when core values do not conflict Illuminating multiple narratives and power imbalances among them; critiquing dominant narrative and elevating non‐dominant narratives Possibility of negotiating effectively across all worldviews; practical integration of worldviews, not just building blocks within a single worldview 
Weakness(es) when negotiating across worldviews Negotiating when values, norms, roles, and institutions are not aligned (as is common across moral communities) Negotiating with those inflexibly committed to core values; intolerance of perceived irrationality Negotiating with those who do not view narratives in accord with theory's favored notions of power and justice or do not seek a new, shared counternarrative Difficulty attempting to satisfy demands of multiple normative systems simultaneously 
TraditionalModernPost‐modernIntegrative
Description Religious/metaphysical monism. Reality as singular, transcendent. Universe as purposively constructed whole. God‐created universe ex nihilo. Transcendent God/Creator is separate from profane world; dualism. Nature as embodiment of meaningful, imposed order (e.g., God's creation). Secular materialism. Reality as singular, immanent. Mechanistic universe brought about by random selection. Material reality devoid of meaning, intentionality, consciousness; dualism, disenchantment. Nature as instrumental, devoid of intrinsic meaning and purpose. Resource for exploitation. Post‐materialism. Reality as pluralistic, perspectival, constructed. Multiple cosmogonies/cosmogony as social construct. Reality as discontinuous and fragmented, meaning as social construct; anti‐essentialism. Nature as constructed through a plurality of cultural values, meanings, and interests. Holism/integralism (unity in diversity). Reality as transcendent and immanent. Universe as evolving, creative manifestation of Source/Spirit. Outer and inner reality co‐arising, interdependent; re‐enchantment. Nature as intrinsically valuable. Frequently seen as divine force of which humanity is a part and an expression. 
Self‐under standing Devoted Rational Post‐modern; Critical Pluralistic 
Metaethical theory Deontological Utilitarian (interests) or Ethic of Care (needs) Relativism (but seeking to redress harms caused by power imbalances) Pluralistic Relativisma 
Conflict resolution approach(es) Traditional forms of dispute processing (e.g., council of elders), often resulting in adherence to traditional norms and authority Interest‐based Bargaining and Basic Human Needs Theory Narrative Approaches Negotiating Across Worldviews 
Negotiation building blocks Duties tied to sacred beliefs and values Interests (utils), for those utilizing interest‐based bargaining, or needs (including non‐physical personal and social needs), for those utilizing basic human needs theory Narratives (with attention to power positions they assume and maintain) All of these 
Strength(s) when negotiating across worldviews Negotiating when values, norms, roles, and institutions are aligned (most common within moral communities) Ability to produce value‐maximizing outcomes and fair division of joint gains, sometimes even across groups when core values do not conflict Illuminating multiple narratives and power imbalances among them; critiquing dominant narrative and elevating non‐dominant narratives Possibility of negotiating effectively across all worldviews; practical integration of worldviews, not just building blocks within a single worldview 
Weakness(es) when negotiating across worldviews Negotiating when values, norms, roles, and institutions are not aligned (as is common across moral communities) Negotiating with those inflexibly committed to core values; intolerance of perceived irrationality Negotiating with those who do not view narratives in accord with theory's favored notions of power and justice or do not seek a new, shared counternarrative Difficulty attempting to satisfy demands of multiple normative systems simultaneously 
a

See Wong (2006).

Our present, mainstream negotiation theories occupy the second column of this chart. These include interest‐based bargaining, like principled negotiation (Fisher, Ury, and Patton 1991), and needs‐based approaches, like interactive problem solving (Kelman 2010). While different theoretically and methodologically, both approaches arose from work in the social sciences begun in the mid‐twentieth century, reflecting a modernist (and largely positivist) worldview.7 As already noted, proponents of interest‐ and needs‐based approaches to negotiation generally see themselves as attempting to promote more harmonious relations by searching for outcomes that better integrate and more fully satisfy negotiators' interests or needs (these being concepts that are not mutually exclusive, of course).8 Narrative approaches to negotiation occupy the chart's third column. Arising in the late twentieth century, they reflect a post‐modern (and largely constructivist) worldview that turned a critical eye toward modernism, often illuminating ways in which modernist perspectives and structures tend to marginalize persons, such as women and members of minority ethnic and racial groups, who historically have been afforded less social and political status. Narrative approaches to conflict resolution often focus on power relations, seeking to liberate and elevate those who have been neglected or oppressed by the dominant narrative(s) (Cobb 2013).

Scholars of negotiation and conflict resolution generally have given too little explicit attention to the values (and associated duties) to which disputants adhere and that make the moral communities they inhabit cohere, though narrative theorists have been relatively more attentive to parties' normative orientations. Sociologist Steve Hitlin (2003) sees values as the core feature of personal identity, which necessarily is formed (and reformed) in social context. Beliefs and values are the salient feature of the traditional worldview in the first column of the chart above and the duties that flow from them are the building block of its approach to dispute processing. Traditional norms, institutions, and roles express a community's beliefs and values, helping to order social relations in alignment with them. This includes norms, institutions, and roles pertaining to the resolution of disputes that arise. In some traditional moral communities, many of which we know to be patriarchal, male elders may be disproportionately influential in formal and informal dispute resolution practices, both within families and within the broader community. Yet many contemporary traditional communities—and the concept of “contemporary traditional communities” may seem like an oxymoron to some readers—have altered, relaxed, or reframed norms that long have seemed archaic from a modern or post‐modern perspective, or they are in the process of doing so.9 These traditional moral communities see these altered norms, which result from internal, collective hermeneutical reflection and discourse, as faithful expressions of their traditional values; they (seek and) see continuity with tradition, rather than an abrupt departure from it.

Traditional moral communities are not the only moral communities that revolve around core values, of course. Modernist and post‐modernist orientations to negotiation obviously also reflect deep value commitments. Interest‐based bargaining attempts to promote efficiency (waste avoidance) and fairness in the satisfaction of interests in hope of creating optimal conditions in which people will thrive (wealth/wellbeing maximization). Basic human needs‐based approaches to negotiation express caring for individuals and social groups by addressing unmet needs. Narrative (and particularly critical narrative) approaches to negotiation attempt to promote agency, dignity, and equity for marginalized individuals and communities, mindful of and accounting for past injustice.

Worldview conflict arises when conflict parties embrace different worldviews and one or more core value(s) associated with each worldview conflict(s) in a way that has practical implications. For example, two groups may make competing claims to land occupied by members of both groups and their respective claims may be grounded in sacred values, such as human rights principles and/or a religious prophetic vision, as we see in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Each of us tries to resolve conflict consistent with our own worldview and associated core values. Doing otherwise would upset one's present mode(s) of meaning‐making and impede one's objectives as they are presently understood (which, for instance, might be preservation of an existing social order in which one's needs and interests are well satisfied or contestation of that same social order because one's needs and interests are not well satisfied). In this sense, we can think of worldview conflict as what happens when there is disagreement among differently reasonable people (people who, almost by definition, are reasonable when viewed from within their own worldview). Neighboring families, one Christian and pro‐life and the other atheist and pro‐choice, might have perfectly friendly relations for years, resolving many issues that could become contentious (e.g., placement of a fence along their boundary line) with relative ease, because they do not implicate either family's core values. If, however, the pro‐choice family's daughter and the pro‐life family's son, now both college age, begin to date and the daughter becomes pregnant by the son, the situation is likely to be quite different if she seeks an abortion.

Just as we expect pro‐life and pro‐choice persons to have difficulty finding common ground on substantive topics related to abortion, we should expect proponents of a particular approach to negotiation to encounter difficulties when the values given primacy within that approach are in tension with values embraced by one or more conflict parties with which they attempt to employ it. For example, interest‐based bargaining may work quite well when two businesspeople in North America who have comparable resources and social status and a substantially shared normative framework (including norms regarding distributive fairness/justice) are negotiating a commercial transaction. However, it is unlikely to work well as Israelis and Palestinians negotiate the most value‐laden and deeply symbolic issues in their conflict, as was attempted unsuccessfully in the 2000 Camp David process with respect to the disposition of the Al Aqsa Mosque/Temple Mount complex (Hassner 2009), a challenge that requires resolution of scores of issues that multiple stakeholder groups with disparate religious and secular worldviews reason about differently. Similarly, a narrative approach to negotiation or mediation may serve the parties well when all prove to be willing and able to embrace the perspectives on agency, power asymmetries, justice, and the demands of justice associated with the approach. However, while dominant parties who have much to lose (and gain) by genuinely submitting to a critical narrative approach to negotiation undoubtedly are most likely to refuse to do so, some truly agentic parties who some proponents of a critical narrative approach see themselves as attempting to empower also may not seek the sort of outcome such a conflict resolution practitioner would regard as fully empowering. For example, many women around the world—among them women who have lived and received elite, secular, liberal education in North America and Europe—embrace traditional and/or religious norms and practices others consider demeaning or even oppressive, insisting articulately and powerfully that they embrace these norms and practices voluntarily.10

Simply put, just as conflict parties' respective core values will pose a serious challenge in any effort to resolve a conflict that implicates them, application of any approach to negotiation will be challenging to the extent its explicit or implicit normative demands run counter to the normative constraints to which parties feel subject. These normative constraints cannot easily or casually be cast aside by parties—and they cannot be wished away by proponents of a given approach to negotiation who find them inconvenient. Social psychologist Philip Tetlock and his colleagues have demonstrated that some values declared sacred by some people are pseudo‐sacred (amenable to compromise to some extent) in some situations (Tetlock, Mellers, and Scoblic 2017), but others also have demonstrated that some people the world over are willing to pay a high price, and even to die, in defense of their most sacred (religious or secular) values (Atran and Ginges 2012; Atran, Sheikh, and Gomez 2014). Proponents of each approach to negotiation attempt to use its building blocks to design and construct a world that has the normative characteristics they believe any decent world should have, but that aspiration belies the fact that others have different understandings of how the world works and different normative visions, which they may be willing to make great sacrifices to realize.

Some worlds people envision genuinely are repugnant and must not be allowed to exist (e.g., Hitler's Europe “cleansed” of Jewish people), yet there are many legitimate values communities can embrace and diverse ways to prioritize and express these legitimate values to construct a world to inhabit. In other words, there are many legitimate (and competing) conceptions of the good life.11 The reality of value pluralism poses serious theoretical and practical challenges for advocates of any moral philosophy (or theory of negotiation) that aspires to universal acceptance and application (Gray 2000; Wong 2006). For example, some proponents of utilitarianism seem to see it as capable of integrating (or subsuming?) other normative frameworks, including competing deontological frameworks, but these utilitarian theories tend to be short on practical guidance about how this is to be achieved (Greene 2013).

One common response to this situation is to refuse to negotiate with a party who occupies a different worldview and seems unable or unwilling to engage using one's own normative approach to negotiation. (I again am assuming the would‐be negotiation partner's way of life is not fundamentally repugnant, though there may be features of it that one regards as immoral, or the other party may resort to tactics one considers to be inappropriate.) One might even consider it rational and/or just to apply increasing pressure by resorting to and continually enhancing one's best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA) in hope of bringing the other party to the negotiating table and making them more pliable once they have arrived. When we are dealing with devoted actors defending sacred values anchored in their worldviews, however, the evidence suggests that increasing the cost to them of not negotiating is likely to escalate the conflict, not hasten a negotiated outcome (Atran and Ginges 2015). Nonviolent coercive strategies, like litigation, civil resistance, and sanctions, are legitimate and useful tools in a negotiator's tool kit that often are (and often must be) employed alongside negotiation. While these nonviolent coercive strategies sometimes do help serve one's normative goals, however, they can be costly, and none is a panacea (Rosenberg 2008; Alexseev and Hale 2019; Chenoweth 2021). If collaborative strategies (e.g., negotiation) and nonviolent coercive strategies fail to produce gains for parties or to produce them fast enough, injury that begets more injuries often follows, creating a miserable world that no one should care to inhabit but which no one seems to be able to escape.

William Ury, co‐author of Getting to Yes and other best‐selling books on interest‐based bargaining, advises negotiators to “go to the balcony” to assess negotiation dynamics (including one's own conduct) and to maintain focus on one's interests and BATNA to achieve one's goals (Ury 1993). As none of our mainstream approaches to negotiation has been very effective at resolving worldview conflict, our field (and those we seek to help) may benefit if we “go to the balcony” on the balconies from which we analyze conflict and hope to contribute to its resolution. I have argued in this article that each of our mainstream approaches to negotiation is embedded in a particular worldview and its normative vision; in other words, each theory of negotiation is a particular balcony from which its proponents view conflict. I also have argued that no single approach can be expected to resolve a conflict if one or more parties experience it as requiring transgression of ontological and epistemological perspectives and normative constraints to which they genuinely feel subject. Consequently, parties to worldview conflict must discover or construct overlapping terrain or bridges that span the gaps between their worldviews, including the ways they attempt to resolve conflict. Our field needs new theories and methods to help parties do this.

Worldview theory and the analytical methods that are developing from it have much to offer. They point toward a goal that is at once quite different than and quite harmonious with the goals pursued by our present mainstream theories of negotiation: helping parties with disparate worldviews develop negotiated outcomes that work within all relevant worldviews simultaneously. Modernist approaches to negotiation have been applied widely in worldview conflicts with very limited success, in part because they assume a shared normative background when one may not exist. A conscious worldview(ing) orientation to these conflicts would bring our worldviews (traditional, modern, and postmodern) and associated, deeply held values into the foreground and could help parties better understand how their differing worldviews influence their conflict and possibilities for its resolution. It could help parties negotiate across the worldviews they inhabit.

What might an outcome that works within multiple worldviews simultaneously look like? Let us return to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and my failed efforts to sell a Native American flute:

  • Israeli–Palestinian Conflict. The 2000 Camp David process arguably was the closest the parties had ever come to resolving the Israeli–Palestinian conflict or that they have come since. The failure of that process often is attributed to the parties' inability to resolve issues that revolve around worldview differences among key stakeholder groups, like the status of Jerusalem and disposition of the Al Aqsa Mosque/Temple Mount complex (Hassner 2009). Convened and led by secular‐political officials operating from a liberal‐modernist (or secular‐political) worldview and utilizing interest‐based bargaining, the Israeli and Palestinian negotiation teams each made some effort to consult religious leaders behind‐the‐scenes, but those efforts were not particularly extensive, sustained, or inclusive (Hassner 2009). The negotiators and third parties supporting the process (e.g., the United States) sought a “full and final resolution of all claims.” This is a sensible goal from a liberal‐modernist worldview perspective, but it is highly problematic from important Islamic and Jewish prophetic religious perspectives, as noted earlier. Many members of each religion consider all the land between the river and the sea to be holy. They have a particular attachment to their religion's many holy sites dispersed throughout this territory, some of which are significant in more than one religion. They likewise genuinely believe that divine prophesy mandates that one's own people ultimately is called to control and steward the land for the benefit of all. Any political arrangement that purports to grant permanent custody of a portion of the Holy Land to one community is problematic for the other. The issue of custody and use of the land and its holy sites must be resolved in some manner that fits simultaneously within at least three worldviews (liberal‐modernist, Jewish religious‐nationalist, and Islamic religious‐nationalist), if not four (a certain Christian Evangelical worldview) or more. The notion of a long‐term hudna (armistice) exists within Islam, but the concept is less well‐developed in Judaism. While it exists within modern, Western‐oriented legal traditions, they tend to aspire toward final, binding agreements on matters of great consequence (e.g., state borders), reflecting beliefs about effective social ordering (within a stable constellation of sovereign states governed by international and domestic civil law) and the ultimate locus of authority (individual human agency expressed, consolidated, and channeled through democratic institutions). Each key secular and religious stakeholder group in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict envisions a peaceful future in which people of all orientations are welcome. Each party ultimately is committed to peace as a core value, yet other value‐laden aspects of their respective worldviews (e.g., a requirement that custody and use of the land be determined in accordance with one's own normative framework) so far have complicated efforts to resolve the conflict. These competing value commitments must be aligned within and across each moral community to resolve the conflict, and this likely will require much greater integration of religious actors into future peace and/or national dialogue processes than previously has occurred (Seul 2019). If religious Zionists and Islamic nationalist stakeholders ultimately were willing to accept a long‐term arrangement in which each party has some different form of custody than we see today over one portion of the land, secular stakeholders may have to reconsider their commitment to a final resolution of claims in favor of an arrangement that strains existing notions of statehood and may prove to be “indefinitely provisional” (e.g., long‐term but finite, and potentially subject to repeated renewal). That form of provisional custody might be understood by secular‐political stakeholders as a term‐based license for one party to occupy a part of the land, subject to conditions that honor the spiritual attachment to that part of the land some of those who do not presently occupy it continue to feel. This arrangement might be understood by religious actors as an armistice that comports with their respective religious norms. A resolution of all claims declared to be permanent looks unachievable when the conflict is considered through a worldview lens, at least if that means the irrevocable assignment of one part of the land to the other in keeping with a modern, secular, legal understanding of state sovereignty. Though a long‐term, provisional agreement might be a disappointment to some with a secular‐political worldview who have aspired for a permanent agreement, it might prove to be durable indefinitely. If it does not, permanence is something of a fiction within the secular‐political worldview anyway.12 Parties often fix the term of an agreement, and most parties signing an agreement purporting to be permanent likely understand that it eventually may be renegotiated or challenged. There even are legal norms in some jurisdictions mandating that certain agreements (e.g., those involving (typically private) interests in land) cannot be perpetual.

  • Native American Flute Negotiation. Neither I nor the maker of the flute I wished to sell could imagine any creative options to resolve our differences. A couple of years after our failed negotiation, when I was moving from the area, I capitulated, selling the flute (after its financial value had further appreciated) to its maker for the $200 I had paid for it. The flute maker ultimately “won” the negotiation in a limited sense, but I now think each of us failed to realize as much value as we could have produced—for ourselves and for others. Some years later I was able to imagine an option that would have required him to pay no money for the flute, which he only desired to direct toward a new and better custodian (without regard to the amount of money he would or would not receive for doing so); that would have produced the financial benefit to which I then felt entitled; and that would have produced significant additional value for each of us and for others. There is a public college on former Native American tribal land in a town in Colorado in which my family once lived. The college is open to all, but many of its students belong to Native American tribes in the Southwestern United States. The college has both a Native American & Indigenous Studies program and a music program. I could have donated the flute to the college in honor of the flute maker and taken a tax deduction for this charitable gift. The deduction would have been worth more than the flute maker was willing to pay me, but this outcome presumably would have been consistent with his values and his aspirations for the flute. Perhaps he even would have agreed to give a lecture or performance at the college each year. Perhaps the event—and an annual retelling of the story of our negotiation—even could have become both a fundraiser for Native American programs at the school and a small acknowledgment of how Europeans (and, later, Euro‐American white settlers) regard(ed) land and tangible items as commodities assigned to an individual owner, whereas Indigenous peoples regard(ed) them as sacred and felt a communal responsibility for their stewardship and preservation—one worldview difference among countless others to which events and consequences that each of us regard as tragedies and injustices can be attributed.

Each of the negotiated outcomes envisioned above (one focused on a single issue in a complex conflict and the other a comprehensive resolution to a simpler conflict) works within each of the parties' worldviews and each also can be seen as generally consistent with the normative underpinnings of traditional, modern, and postmodern approaches to negotiation. Negotiating across worldviews requires that parties be empowered to speak in their own voices and on their own terms, and genuinely integrative outcomes across worldviews are unlikely to be achieved unless each party truly has been heard, though outcomes may not always favor a less powerful party (as seen from that party's own worldview) as fully as some proponents of narrative approaches to negotiation desire (Cobb 2013). Negotiated outcomes ideally meet the standards for reconciliation outlined by Nadim Rouhana (Rouhana 2004), but they may not. Genuine reconciliation and restorative justice are hallmarks of conflict transformation, as distinguished from conflict resolution. The parties themselves ultimately must decide whether the gains and change offered by an agreement presently achievable are acceptable (Seul 2004) and how to continue to pursue transformation of relationships and social, political, economic, and other realities not sufficiently transformed by that agreement. Social transformation often takes generations and requires multiple negotiated agreements and other forms of coordinated and uncoordinated action, as we know. The flute example above suggests how a measure of conflict transformation sometimes may be achieved in conjunction with a negotiated agreement. The example from the Israeli–Palestinian context may not, but we certainly should hope and attempt to promote conflict transformation as a comprehensive agreement is reached, to whatever extent the parties are able to achieve it.

We often must adapt and supplement our negotiation methods to reach agreement across worldviews. Following are brief summaries of some ways in which someone accustomed to interest‐based bargaining might need to adapt each of the “Seven Elements of Negotiation” (Patton 2005) to negotiate across worldviews effectively:

  • Much more attention should be given to learning about how each party makes meaning about the world and the conflict, particularly the visions, beliefs, ways of life, and associated values (and consequent permissions and constraints) underlying the parties' respective interests.

  • Negotiators should be mindful that one's own bestalternative to a negotiated agreement, or BATNA, is unlikely to be the other party's worst alternative to negotiation. When our counterparty's sacred values are implicated, one's own BATNA tends not to generate the leverage one expects it will. If another party experiences resort to one's own BATNA as harmful, as seems likely if litigation is initiated or a war is launched, use of one's BATNA may well escalate the conflict rather than force one's counterparty to capitulate or to be more pliable at the negotiating table.

  • One must develop a relationship and communicate effectively with parties one might be inclined to try to exclude from or marginalize in the negotiation. “Changing the players” in a worldview conflict seldom is possible, nor would it be likely to produce a durable agreement even if it were possible. To the contrary, we must build broad coalitions behind‐the‐table and much broader and deeper coalitions across‐the‐table (Lax and Sebenius 2012), including engagement with subgroups some consider to be “extreme” or “hawkish” (Seul 2020). A party whose sacred values are implicated in a conflict will continue to assert itself in other ways if not provided a meaningful opportunity to engage in negotiation and attempt to resolve the conflict in a way that comports with its worldview. Though more ardently conservative or progressive views within worldview communities tend to change more slowly, they are not impervious to change (Coleman 2021).13

  • Parties eventually must generate outcome options that work within all worldviews simultaneously. When parties presently cannot generate workable options across the table on a given issue, this very likely is a sign that more work must be done behind the table on one or more side(s) of it before options that work across the table can be generated.

  • There may be no single, shared standard of legitimacy all parties can embrace. Parties must be permitted to justify agreed, practical outcomes on their own terms (i.e., as is appropriate and meaningful within their respective worldviews).14

  • The stakes often must be lowered both with respect to the process and with respect to the substance to gain parties' commitment. For example, when it is taboo for one or more parties to negotiate or even to engage in dialogue with others on a given topic, the initial phase of a process could focus on research (conflict mapping, etc.), without any expectation (let alone commitment) that negotiation or dialogue will follow. The example above of time‐bounding elements of an eventual resolution of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict illustrates one way the stakes can be lowered on the substance of a negotiation.

Many of the methods employed in narrative approaches to negotiation and mediation (Monk and Winslade 2012; Cobb 2013) are well suited to negotiation across worldviews. The most significant differences in approach may reflect relatively more modest, present expectations about possibilities for the parties' achievement of a new, more jointly embraced narrative (Cobb 2013). This implies a corresponding reduction in emphasis on efforts to destabilize existing narratives substantially (Cobb 2013), as opposed to merely shifting (or updating) them sufficiently to produce what is known in interest‐based bargaining theory as a zone of possible agreement. Much as one might prefer otherwise, sometimes we must accept certain features of another's worldview—such as God's will as revealed in scripture or human rights principles articulated in legal documents and regarded as self‐evident by their proponents—as relatively immovable, brute facts that constrain the other's agency. This does not mean, however, that there is no conflict and there can be no negotiation, nor that the other's narrative must be substantially destabilized to resolve the conflict, as Cobb suggests (Cobb 2013). It means parties must negotiate largely within existing constraints to which they feel subject, seeking an agreement that works within all worldviews simultaneously through relatively more modest reinterpretations of or adjustments to those constraints. When that is not yet possible, the eventual achievement of an interparty (across‐the‐table) agreement is likely to depend upon effective intraparty (behind‐the‐table) negotiation in which members of one or more stakeholder group(s) arrive(s) at a new way to serve a value or norm that previously limited options for reaching an interparty agreement. One or both parties must alter their narrative regarding the conflict to some extent, but they are likely to understand the new narrative as one in which their agency with respect to constraining norms remains very limited. As political scientist Ron Hassner puts it, speaking of the potential for resolution of worldview conflicts involving conservative religious stakeholders, “[t]he key to religious innovation is to convince believers that no innovation has taken place. Religious actors rely on established language, rituals, law, and symbols to justify their actions, even when these actions diverge from existing precedents” (Hassner 2009: 96). The same could be said about many progressive, secular legal, political, or social innovations, as when the United States Supreme Court in the Warren Era recognized civil rights it deemed implied (not expressed) in the Constitution.

For our purposes, the key points regarding narratives in worldview conflict are that they often prove not to be particularly malleable, and we cannot always expect the narrative(s) about a conflict that has been resolved to upend and substantially displace the preexisting dominant narrative (Cobb 2013). To the contrary, it may be important to some parties to frame a resolution in precisely the opposite way; not as the exercise of newly granted or claimed agency, but as an alternate, permissible way to operate within preexisting constraints while continuing to externalize responsibility (Cobb 2013). In other words, the parties' narratives about the conflict and its resolution are likely to remain securely tethered to their respective worldviews, which remain unchanged by the negotiation. A negotiated resolution of a worldview conflict is more likely to recontextualize conflict narratives (Cobb 2013)—and perhaps only modestly—than to destabilize them substantially. Many parties—perhaps including most who inhabit a traditional worldview—are more likely to embrace agreements they can see as (more positive, less conflictual) continuations of their prior narratives, allowing them to serve multiple core values, such as commitment to a (religious or secular) prophetic vision and respect for all human life (including the lives of one's former adversaries), when previously they felt compelled to defend one value at the expense of the other (Sharot 2017). Some or all parties to a negotiated, practical agreement across worldviews may continue to tell very different stories about the outcome. In my view, this does not make negotiating across worldviews a more instrumental and less idealistic approach to negotiation than other approaches. Rather, it highlights the extent to which the normative orientation of negotiating across worldviews is pluralistic.

Many of our most challenging conflicts have a worldview dimension that two of our three predominate approaches to negotiation largely have missed or neglected. Interest‐based bargaining and basic human needs approaches largely assume parties inhabit a substantially shared normative framework when, in fact, they may not. The third approach, narrative theory, is more attentive to parties' disparate meaning‐making efforts and normative orientations but often seeks to destabilize their existing ways of making meaning to construct a new, substantially shared understanding that may not be achievable presently, if ever. As I have attempted to demonstrate in this article, approaching conflict and negotiation through the lens of worldview theory has the potential to help parties reach negotiated outcomes that work within each of their different worldviews simultaneously.

1

Goldberg's study of conflict resolution practitioner worldviews (2009) and my own article on mediating across worldviews (2020) are among those few publications in the field that have explicitly employed a worldview perspective.

2

See Center Leo Apostel for Transdisciplinary Research: https://clea.research.vub.be.

3

See, for example, Katie Shonk's October 14, 2021, Harvard Law School Program on Negotiation Daily Blog post “What is negotiation? Learn the building blocks of indispensable negotiation business skills.”

4

Juan Ugarriza (2009) has reviewed the embrace and rejection of the concept of ideology in conflict theory, ultimately arguing for re‐embrace of a transformed definition of the term that is a step closer to the notion of worldview as I use it: “[I]deology could be defined as a set of beliefs based on ideals (i.e. equality, power, justice), which is turned into a project aimed at achieving social perfection by managing social relations. Ideologies are considered here as overarching cultural systems that nevertheless may be influenced or shaped by power and economic relations” (citations omitted) (Ugarriza 2009: 84).

5

Peter Coleman and his collaborators, whose work is grounded in complexity theory, also recognize the powerful role moral values often play as “attractors” in intractable conflict, but do not see moral value differences as a singular causal factor in intractable conflict (Kugler and Coleman 2020; Coleman 2021).

6

Goldberg (2009) took a step in this direction with her study of conflict resolution practitioner worldviews using narrative and metaphor analysis.

7

These worldviews are presented as pure types. I believe it is possible—indeed, quite common—for people to construct worldviews that reconcile elements of two or more of these types. Some scientists are theists, for example. That is why we might find a conflict resolution practitioner who is both religious and embraces basic human needs theory. I link interest‐based bargaining and basic human needs theories to the modern worldview described by De Witt et al. (2016) because these approaches are products of secular‐humanistic work in the social sciences.

8

Some interests may arise from and respond to needs (e.g., an interest in access to a source of clean drinking water), while others may not (e.g., an interest in drinking water from a glass, rather than a paper cup). That which minimally satisfies a need is not tradeable, while many things in which one regards oneself as having an interest are tradeable.

9

See Clifton‐Soderstrom (2017) for an example of reconsideration of the prohibition on marriage equality (referred to by some as gay marriage) within a conservative Christian evangelical denomination.

10

Narrative conflict theorists tend to emphasize the role of substantially enhanced agency as a hallmark of justice (Winslade and Monk 2008; Cobb 2013), seeking particularly to empower weaker parties. Their methods focus on ways in which conflict narratives seem to limit stakeholder agency, and they attempt to destabilize these constraining narratives and take other steps to promote agency in service of conflict resolution efforts (Cobb 2013). This orientation might predispose some practitioners of narrative approaches to conflict resolution to fail to see a party's preference for adherence to a traditional norm that appears to constrain one's opportunities as indicative of a lack of agency, rather than as an exercise of agency. Conflict resolution practitioners (regardless of orientation) must be careful not to assess the degree of a party's agency through the lens of their own normative framework.

11

Moral philosopher David Wong has specified five requirements for any adequate morality, to which I subscribe (Wong 2006).

12

Permanence sometimes seems to be a key explicit or implicit element of the concept of “resolution” of a conflict when viewed from a secular‐political worldview perspective. At least in the case of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, secular‐political actors in the present environment who wish to contribute to a resolution of the conflict must reconsider whether a resolution must have an element of declared permanence. See Ben‐Dor (2022) for a discussion of why any agreement resolving the Israeli–Palestinian conflict may require some degree of contingency.

13

See, for example, Clifton‐Soderstrom (2017).

14

See Wong (2006) on the question of whether this is moral relativism and how a variant of moral relativism he favors (pluralistic relativism) may be a virtue.

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