Treaty Negociations

Résumé 0

Behind the bitter diplomatic haggling till the last hour dubbed “negotiation by exhaustion” emphasized by the media (see Summit diplomacy) there is a more discrete side. This deliberative dimension is rooted in the logic of arguing, aiming at building a consensus, and is facilitated by the penetration of the “empowered spaces” by ideas and actors from the “public spaces” (see Global deliberative democracy), also including recurrent interactions within networks of government negotiators (Orsini and Compagnon 2013). This “network diplomacy” is common in the field of the environment but also in trade issues and other areas of “low politics.” It differs notably from the traditional “club diplomacy” where a handful of professional diplomats secretly make decisions over war and peace. Through social learning such networks sometimes overcome prevailing deadlocks. Many case studies emphasize the importance of procedural flexibility, personal understanding between negotiators meeting regularly over the years, and ad hoc mechanisms to resolve differences in final bargaining phases, including innovative techniques to promote consensus (Davenport et al. 2012). For example, the chair of the final negotiating session of the Biosecurity Protocol in Montreal in 2000 used colored teddy bears bought in the subway, to draw the order of speech for representatives of negotiating blocks. It eased the tension and allowed the last row of discussion to proceed smoothly.