Abstract
Despite their name, prenegotiations are the first stage of negotiations. Otherwise known as ‘preliminaries’ or ‘talks about talks’, they are usually informal and well out of the public gaze, especially in bilateral—as opposed to multilateral—diplomacy. This chapter deals in sequence with the three main questions requiring agreement at this stage: first, whether substantive, around-the-table negotiations are worthwhile; second, which items should be on the agenda and which taken first; and third, what procedures should be employed in negotiating them. Under the last heading, the chapter deals with how secrecy is to be handled; what format the negotiations should take (e.g., direct or indirect); their venue; the level, size, and composition of delegations; and when the main talks should start.
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Further Reading
Alexander, Michael, Managing the Cold War: A view from the front line, ed. and introduced by Keith Hamilton (RUSI: London, 2005). See pp. 29–34: prenegotiations in multilateral diplomacy.
Cohen, R., Negotiating across Cultures, 2nd edn (US Institute of Peace Press: Washington, DC, 1997). See especially pp. 67–82.
Cradock, P., Experiences of China (John Murray: London, 1994). Former senior British diplomat and China expert; see chs. 16–18.
Hampson, Fen Osler, with Michael Hart, Multilateral Negotiations: Lessons from arms control, trade and the environment (Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, MD, 1995).
Kazuo, Ogura, ‘How the “inscrutables” negotiate with the “inscrutables”: Chinese negotiating tactics vis-à-vis the Japanese, China Quarterly, no. 79, September, 1979. On agendas, see pp. 535–7, 541–2.
Powell, Jonathan, ‘5 reasons the UK failed in Brexit talks’, Politico, 20 December 2020 [www].
Quandt, W. B., Camp David: Peacemaking and politics (Brookings Institution: Washington, DC, 1986). Chs 3–7.
Rozen, Laura, ‘Three days in March: New details on how US, Iran opened direct talks’, Al-Monitor, 8 January 2014 [www].
Salem, Elie A., Violence and Diplomacy in Lebanon: The Troubled Years, 1982–1988 (Tauris: London, 1995). Salem was Lebanon’s foreign minister from 1982 until 1984, and then adviser to its president until 1988. His account of the prenegotiations on Israel’s military withdrawal from his country is highly illuminating; see especially ch.2.
Saunders, H., ‘We need a larger theory of negotiation: The importance of prenegotiating phases’, Negotiation Journal, vol. 1, 1985. A Middle East expert who served the US National Security Council and State Department, Saunders is one of the few people to have written on this subject.
Stein, Janice G. (ed.), Getting to the Table: The Process of International Pre-negotiation (Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, MD, 1989).
Young, Kenneth T., Negotiating with the Chinese Communists: The United States experience, 1953–1967 (McGraw-Hill: New York, 1968). See ch. 15.
Zartman, I. W. and M. Berman, The Practical Negotiator (Yale University Press: New Haven, CT, 1982). See ch. 3.
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Berridge, G.R. (2022). Prenegotiations. In: Diplomacy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85931-2_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85931-2_2
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