The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
The summary
After the Cold War, the world politics would be multi-polar and multi-civilizational while nation states remain the most pivotal actors in world affairs. Although there are other alternative paradigms for the future of world politics, such as “one harmonious world”, “two worlds”, “184 states, more or less” and “sheer chaos”, the civilizational approach can solve the others’ deficiencies and incompatibility. Seeing the world affairs from the fault lines of civilizations can maintain the simplicity of the paradigm because there are only 7 or 8 major civilizations. Moreover, this approach can predict the emerging conflicts.
There are 7 or 8 civilizations: Sinic used for the common culture of China and the Chinese communities, Japanese, Hindu, Islamic, Orthodox, West, Latin American and perhaps African civilizations. Civilizations, since ancient times, have encountered, competed against one another, and interacted with one another. After the Cold War, the West is overwhelmingly dominant. Nonetheless, the gradual change will occur. The power of western civilization is going to decline relatively to the other civilizations, especially to Asian civilizations, i.e. China. The decline of West would be slow, not linear and simultaneous with the indigenization of the other cultures. Soft power is power only when it is backed up by the hard power. The process of indigenization is manifest in the revival of religion, especially in Asian and Islamic countries. Because the political identity and the authority are disrupted by the social-economic modernization, people come to the religion to seek for a sense of identity and a sense of community.
Cultural identity has become the central factor of a country’s association and antagonism after the 1990s. The states are concerned about their own cultural identity meanwhile people are also seeking identity and security. There are five reasons for the conflicts among different cultures and the cooperation among same civilizations. First, people have multiple identities. People differentiate themselves according to their cultures, which infers to the fact that the conflicts between the cultures are getting more serious. Second, the social-economic modernization contributes to the importance of cultural identity. Third, the affiliation to one group makes the differentiation between this group and others necessary, which is all relational. Fourth, although the conflicts between civilizations originated still from the traditional sources of conflicts: the territory, resources and relative power, the conflicts between the civilizations involve also cultural issues. Five, it’s natural to hate for people need enemies. Hence, the conflicts are everywhere.
Inter-civilization relations tend to have conflicts. The dangerous clashes in the future would stem from the interaction between Western arrogance, Islamic intolerance and Sinic assertiveness. Both Asian and Islamic civilizations are emphasizing their superiority to the Western culture. They manifest most their cultural differences among the other civilizations. Asian assertiveness comes from the economic growth, which enhances the government. Asian values or Asian affirmation includes four elements. First, Asian superior economic performance would eventually enable Asian countries to surpass the West in world affairs. Second, the economic success comes from Asian cultures, not from the Western cultures. Third, East Asians have many things in common in their civilizations despite the acknowledgement of the differences. Four, Asian values are the model for non-Western countries. The population growth in Muslim world has in turn provided the recruits for fundamentalism and for insurgency. The Muslim countries want to modernize but not Westernize. Although the Islamic insurgency shares many commonalities with the Protestant Reformation, the Islamic insurgency touches almost every Muslim society, which is much bigger in scope. The insurgency came from the economic growth during the oil crises and is propelled by the demographic growth after the control of petroleum waned. Governments use the Islamic Resurgence as a tool but are also conditioned by the Resurgence.
There are three issues that the West differs from the non-Westerners increasingly. First, the West wants to maintain military superiority with aid of non-proliferation measures. Second, the West promotes the human rights and tries to impose the political values and other moral standards such as human rights and democracy on other countries. Third, the West tries to maintain its cultural integrity by restricting the number pf non-Western immigrants or refugees. The ability of the West to pursue these goals depends on the conflicts that will reshape the global politics. The conflicts would come by two forms: fault line conflicts at micro level and core state conflicts at macro level. The Muslim-non Muslim clash would be prevalent in fault line conflicts.
The Gulf War was the first post-Cold War resource war between civilizations. Fault line wars have several characteristics. Fault line wars are lengthy and bloody. They are communal conflicts betweens different cultural states or groups. Fault line conflicts are about the struggle of territory or control over people. They are protracted wars. The Muslims are the central actors in fault line conflicts because of historical hatred, rapid demographic growth and recent democratization.
The West needs to renew itself in order to counter the relative decline vis-à-vis the other civilizations. Western universalism is dangerous because this idea would confront the assertiveness of other cultures. The West should maintain its military and technological superior capacities and recognize that the interventions done by the West are the most perilous source of conflicts in a post-Cold War world. In the future, to avoid the civilizational conflicts, no civilization should intervene in the affairs of others. The United Nations would also need to go under institutional reforms to embody the relative decline and rise.
The critic
Huntington wrote this book, The Clash of Civilizations, to counter the arguments proposed by Francis Fukuyama in The End of History . I think it’s interesting to see what is coming next after the Cold War because there are so many uncertainties. On one hand, he succeeded in arguing that the history does not end at democracy’s victory over communism or other regimes. On the other hand, I think there is a misinterpretation of other cultures in Huntington’s argument. I don’t think that the differences among the major civilizations are actually the future sources for conflicts. Huntington, in my eye, has had a skeptic perception towards the other civilizations. Why can the other civilizations not be the peace breaker? Why can these emerging economies and civilizations not just enjoy the confidence of their success? The non-West can enjoy the success and stand up to voice their point of view without wanting to invade the world. The label of “anti-American” does not mean an eventual war between the West and non-West.
In page 127, Huntington talked about the convergence of similar cultures. He said, ‘In East Asia, home to people of six different civilizations, arms buildups gain momentum and territorial dispute come to the fore.’ He mentioned that Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore are increasingly oriented toward China. Moreover, Koreas are moving towards the unification. I don’t agree this part. He simplifies the world into seven or eight civilizations in order to portray the world in another way. I think this is also a way to observe the relations among and within states, but the over-simplification is dangerous. Even within the same civilization, conflicts are not extinct. Even between the broader Chinese culture, Taiwan, Singapore and China have often frictions and possibility of use of force. Sharing the same culture does not lead to a common goal.
I like the idea of the return to religion. La Revanche de Dieu, as Huntington mentioned, comes from the French scholar, Gilles Kepel. Kepel first published this book in 1991. He thinks that after 1975 the movement back to the religion has gained enormous force because of the collapse of political ideologies, crumbling of the economic prosperity and laxity of “social glue ”. The return is not toward a general religion but to a strict and pure religion, which emphasizes the text, such as Koran and Bible. Any kind of religious movement, joined by the young, educated and modern “army”, can right now seize the power from the top and mobilize the crowd from the bottom. All these movements also provoke new conflicts on the old controversy: the denominational cleavages.
At the same time, I came to understand the reasons why the West is tightening their policies regarding the immigrants. The demographic growth differs from the West and the non-West. The Muslims, the Africans, the Latino Americans and the Asians (Indians for example) will outnumber the Western population in a few years. The United Kingdom will be a Muslim country in a few years. Such a fact or trend is shocking for the West. The West is tightening the control of immigrants because the Western countries are afraid that they would lose control over the resources and the wealth.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
A Multiparty Conflict and Negotiations
The background of the conflicts
Roommate problems have been a nightmare for most college students. Good roommates would become a person’s best friends for life, but the discord between roommates could cause a lot for students who aim at studies.
International Student House (ISH) is a private dormitory founded by Quaker Foundation, accommodating up to 100 people. Paulina, Li-Ting and Jackie share a triple room in ISH. Three girls sleep in a big room; there is a bathroom and a walking closet in the room.
Three girls are from different continents: Li-Ting is Taiwanese, Paulina is from Finland and Jackie comes from South Africa. They are getting along well because they can talk about many things and enhance the global understanding. However, some problems have emerged.
First of all, Li-Ting found out that three people’s schedules are very different and sometimes their schedules clash. Paulina and Jackie need to go to work early in the morning while Li-Ting is still in bed. Paulina and Jackie would talk although Li-Ting is still sleeping. Paulina would slam the drawers and talk on the cell phone, which disturbs Li-Ting’s sleep. Li-Ting, on the other hand, usually stays up late for studying while the other two need to go to bed early. The lamp at Li-Ting’s desk would cause Paulina and Jackie to get a good sleep. The noises cause three parties’ bad quality of sleep and make the quality of life worse. Second, three people are supposed to share the responsibility of cleaning up the bathroom since it’s a private bathroom and the maid would not come into the room to clean it up frequently. Paulina does not try to help the cleaning and she has never emptied the common trash cans. Li-Ting feels that she is the only one who cleans up the bathroom and uses the vacuum cleaner to maintain the tidiness. Third, Jackie moved in after Li-Ting and Paulina so she has a bad spot in the walking closet. She thinks that the others have the advantage over her although they are paying the same rent. Fourth, Jackie does not clean the bathtub after taking a bath or shaving, which generates a lot of negative feelings in Li-Ting’s and Paulina’s mind. These troubles are making their life more and more difficult and the atmosphere of this room is getting gloom.
Are these issues possible to be dealt with among them? How are they going to solve these problems? Is it necessary for any party to change to another room eventually?
Know yourself and understand the others first
The multiparty conflicts are more complicated for several reasons. There are more people involves, which infers to more issues. At the same time, the involvement of each party is not the same in every issue. It means that the interests are more difficult to identify. Their nationalities also make the conversation more difficult because every party is subject to his or her own culture. How to engage the conversation becomes a tough issue to deal with prior to the real negotiations.
Before engaging the conflicts, it’s pivotal to understand the cultural differences among the parties. It would be especially important in a multilateral negotiation to avoid some taboos. Paulina is from Finland; a European culture applies to her. She is more individualistic than Li-Ting is. Jackie is also from the Western community in South Africa so she also shares some common habits as Paulina. Paulina and Jackie should know that Li-Ting hesitates to reveal her true feelings because of many reasons and that one of the reasons is that people from East Asia don’t like to stir up a disharmony. Li-Ting needs to understand that she won’t improve the situation by saying nothing to her roommates.
It would be very beneficial for all parties if the participants do some assessment about themselves before going into the negotiation room, such as Thomas and Kilmann conflict assessment or life-trap test. Thomas and Kilmann assessment can help the tester to understand his conflict engagement mode. Li-Ting knows that she has an accommodating and somehow withdrawing personality while facing the conflicts. This is due to her education and the way that her family deals with emotions. Therefore, she normally puts up with all the things that bother her if it is not really disagreeable to bear. However, the roommate problems are actually affecting her sleep and this would in turn have a negative effect on her studies. A good negotiator should know his or her natural impulses very well but the negotiator will use these modes of engagement as a strategy. Being accommodating at some occasions can make the negotiator be assertive in other issues or facilitate the person to make a trade-off. Hence, Li-Ting should be problem-solving but not withdrawing if she wants to reach a common solution with her roommates.
What’s an objective criterion?
In formal multiparty negotiations, the first thing to negotiate even prior the negotiations is to talk about the process and the decision making. All parties should agree on a framework of how the negotiation will proceed. If one party feels the process is at his or her disadvantage, he or she may be reluctant to participate in the talk. Hence, objective criteria during the negotiations are extremely pivotal.
In a multiparty negotiation, a facilitator is sometimes needed. The facilitator does not have a direct interest in the conflict, and the facilitator does not have rights to change the agreement. In this case, Li-Ting, Paulina and Jackie can ask a friend to join the conversation. The friend would be neutral. This friend should not decide for three parties but only try to make the conversation flow.
One more principle is that only one party speaks at a time. The negotiations should proceed in a rational basis. When a party is speaking, the others listen attentively and actively. Only after one finished his argument can others start to talk.
Application of the difficult conversation tactics
According to Difficult Conversations, there is an underlying structure within every conversation. Whatever the people converse falls into three simultaneous conversations: the “what happened” conversation, the feelings conversation and the identity conversation. A successful negotiator should be very circumspect and try to deal with these three conversations at the same time.
First of all, the negotiating parties are recommended to deal with their respective feelings. In the interest based negotiations the negotiator should know his or her emotions and tried to understand it, the negotiator should prevent himself from being controlled by the emotions. The ARIA process, in my eye, would be a very good start because this process realizes conflicts produce strong feelings. The ARIA process, in contrast to the interest-based negotiations, emphasizes the importance of emotional exchange and at the same time the ARIA method still analyzes the conflicts objectively and rationally. ARIA process consists of 4 steps: antagonism, resonance, invention of more options and actions. Hence, Li-Ting and her roommates should tell one another their own feelings and what they think of one another. Li-Ting should reveal her emotions to her two roommates and justify her emotions with some evidence to prevent the expression of emotion from becoming a personal attack. After every party says what they feel, Li-Ting and her roommates should try to be in one another’s shoes and try to see why the other parties feel a certain way for her. This process can help the negotiators to cope with the feelings conversation.
Secondly, all parties should avoid three mistakes in the “what happened” conversation: arguing about right or wrong, assuming the others know each other’s intention and blaming the other parties.
l All parties should stop argue what is true. They should talk about what’s important.
2 The negotiator should stop assuming he or she knows the intentions of others. Don’t start to think that somebody is malevolent while one is not sure.
3 A good negotiator should not blame others and let his emotions override the conversation. It is suggested that the parties use the contribution system.
For any kind of negotiation, multiparty or not, the negotiator always need to prepare himself to the conversation. For a multiparty negotiation, it’s essential to draw a map of entangling interests. Knowing each dialogist’s interests can enable the negotiator to link the issues and do some trade-offs during the negotiations.
In order to figure out what’s important to Li-Ting and her roommates, it is appropriate to use the 9 element analysis to identify the issues lying under this complicated surface. According to three parties’ analysis, there are some common grounds and interests. Li-Ting, Jackie and Paulina, the three main parties in these conflicts, all want a good living environment. Based on this desire, the three parties would have a deeper motivation to sit down and talk it through. For the kind of conversation, the difficult parts lie in how to start the conversation and how to prevent the conversation from accusation and blame.
According to Difficult Conversations, the three parties should sit down and talk, but talk is not enough. People sometimes converse but do not communicate. Moreover, people tend to unconsciously avoid the sensitive parts, which are actually something that they hold on to. Meanwhile, they also need to realize that every person perceive the reality from different angles, which is also called “cone-in-the-box”. Li-Ting should listen to the others and accumulate the information that she has got from the conversation in order to have a holistic view of the truth. Paulina does not mean to slam the drawers in the morning. She is the only child in her family; therefore, she has never lived with somebody in the same room. Li-Ting lived in a quadruple room while she was an undergraduate so she is used to living in an environment where people enjoy less privacy. Jackie needs to be informed that her hygienic habits are disturbing the other two parties. After this, they can talk about their own contribution into the current discord. Instead of blaming one another, to think in terms of contribution involves self-consciousness and a shared responsibility. For example, Jackie admits that she does not pay attention to the dirt and hair in the bathtub after the bath. This does not require an apology but this would make the other parties feel better and facilitate the conversation. If no side is ready to say what they contribute the conflicts, it’s possible to ask an observer to point it out.
Thirdly, every negotiator should pay attention to identity conversations, which might actually be the most difficult problems in some occasion. There are mainly three identity issues that a person need to deal with in a difficult conversation. The first issue is about being competent or not. The second issue is about whether the dialogist is a good person. If the person thinks that making another party uncomfortable makes him a bad person, this person would often back in at the end. The third issue is about whether a person feels love-worthy. For example, Jackie is a PHD student and researcher in cancer studies but her research is not going well recently. She might feel incompetent and doubt herself if Li-Ting raises the question about the ability of taking care of everyone’s own space and cleaning it up. This would trigger a huge rebound from Jackie, which is unconscious but has a significant impact on the conversation.
Invent more options!
After all the parties in the multiparty negotiation explore the true story of what happened, they can have an image of every party’ interests and know where the common ground is. All parties would need to work toward a problem solving solution. The final agreement would be more difficult to reach in a multiparty negotiation; however, it’s not impossible. A feasible and satisfactory solution should be an option that all parties can accept and don’t feel harmed and forced. Thus, the question is not about forcing the other negotiators to agree with one party’s proposal. The participants would need to seek for more viable options outside of the original ones. If the negotiators think their respective proposal is the best answer, it would be very difficult for them to break the ideology jail and the negotiators might ignore a potentially better solution which will satisfy all participants. For instance, Paulina won’t accept Li-Ting’s proposal about the noise if Li-Ting just wants to impose her will on Paulina. Moreover, Jackie won’t accept to clean the bathtub if Paulina does not do something about the trash bins. The roommates would soon realize that they need to find an altogether solution to cover all the issues.
When issues are complicated, the complexity would slow down the negotiations and probably make the final agreement unsatisfactory because the negotiators would sometimes neglect some underlying issues and forget to deal with them in the final agreement. Hence, the negotiator would think the final agreement does not encompass what he or she desires to deal with and then renounce the agreement. That’s one of the reasons why a successful negotiation might not be implemented at the end.
Circle Chart: 4 basic steps for inventing options
Therefore, during the process of finding a viable solution, the Circle Chart Analysis[5] is a very useful tool. The circle chart includes four steps: the problem, diagnoses, the general prescriptions and specific action ideas. These four steps infer to the logical steps to solve a problem, but people often make intuitive thinking and jump to the conclusion too fast. The chart enables negotiators to see the situation with lucidity and averts them from ignoring certain topics that they need to handle. It’s recommended that negotiators use this analysis repeatedly during the negotiations because the ongoing situation changes as the negotiations go on.
Actions!
The implementation of the outcome document is frequently a problem in international relations. The congress might not rectify the treaty or the agreement. A good negotiator would make sure that his counterparts communicate the progress back to the governments and the congress and that his counterparts are working on the domestic support. Therefore, the final document won’t be a surprise for the congress and thus the agreement is backed up by the congress.
Another problem of implementation is that there are free riders. Some parties would escape from their duty to perform the agreement because they can still benefit from the deeds of others, which is the idea of “externality”. Hence, an enforcement mechanism is in need.
Even in this case, the roommates agree upon a feasible solution. However, Paulina is actually not used to cleaning up the bathroom because her mother is the one who does the house chores in her family in Finland. She also thinks that she does not need to perform the tasks because she pays the rent here and the maid should come and clean the room. Because of these thoughts, the implementation of the solution would be hard. Jackie also finds that she still feels disturbed at night when Li-Ting finishes her work in the library and comes back to the room at two o’clock in the morning. Hence, the commitment that every party has made is falling apart.
In this case, they need to ask Paulina to perform her duty. If Paulina does not
want to do it, Li-Ting and Jackie can use the last resort: asking for help from the dormitory manager. The manager can either persuade Paulina to clean up the room or switch her to another room where there is no private bathroom.
For Jackie and Li-Ting, they can renegotiate on the arrangement of time. Jackie needs to ask whether Li-Ting is willing to try to go to bed earlier. If nothing can be done, Li-Ting might choose another alternative instead of accommodating the others’ habits and schedules. A person’s lifestyle is not easy to be altered. Li-Ting has been used to working during the night since little because she is more efficient at the moment of the day. It’s really difficult for her to change from a night howl to a day person. Then, she can give up the negotiations and exert her BATNA. She can tell the manager that they cannot solve the problems although the roommates try. The manager can arrange a single room or another double room for her if there is some rooms available. Li-Ting would need to report this to her mother and ask for financial help, which would be another negotiation.
Conclusion
Negotiations can be vital or trivial, and negotiations for new negotiations ensue from original ones, which would be a continual process. After such an analysis of the roommates’ conflicts, the roommates should by now understand that they all want a good living environment and that they all need to work for it. The communications among the roommates need to be enhanced although it is tough to start the conversations.
Three significant tasks during the difficult conversations are that all parties need to deal with the true story, their feelings and their identities. Talking and understanding provide a solid basis for potential solutions. The roommates need to do some brainstorming to come up with creative solutions. The dialogists would choose a solution that everyone accepts and implement it. If the situation does not improve, they may restart the process of negotiations again to seek for a better means to satisfy all their needs.
Roommate problems have been a nightmare for most college students. Good roommates would become a person’s best friends for life, but the discord between roommates could cause a lot for students who aim at studies.
International Student House (ISH) is a private dormitory founded by Quaker Foundation, accommodating up to 100 people. Paulina, Li-Ting and Jackie share a triple room in ISH. Three girls sleep in a big room; there is a bathroom and a walking closet in the room.
Three girls are from different continents: Li-Ting is Taiwanese, Paulina is from Finland and Jackie comes from South Africa. They are getting along well because they can talk about many things and enhance the global understanding. However, some problems have emerged.
First of all, Li-Ting found out that three people’s schedules are very different and sometimes their schedules clash. Paulina and Jackie need to go to work early in the morning while Li-Ting is still in bed. Paulina and Jackie would talk although Li-Ting is still sleeping. Paulina would slam the drawers and talk on the cell phone, which disturbs Li-Ting’s sleep. Li-Ting, on the other hand, usually stays up late for studying while the other two need to go to bed early. The lamp at Li-Ting’s desk would cause Paulina and Jackie to get a good sleep. The noises cause three parties’ bad quality of sleep and make the quality of life worse. Second, three people are supposed to share the responsibility of cleaning up the bathroom since it’s a private bathroom and the maid would not come into the room to clean it up frequently. Paulina does not try to help the cleaning and she has never emptied the common trash cans. Li-Ting feels that she is the only one who cleans up the bathroom and uses the vacuum cleaner to maintain the tidiness. Third, Jackie moved in after Li-Ting and Paulina so she has a bad spot in the walking closet. She thinks that the others have the advantage over her although they are paying the same rent. Fourth, Jackie does not clean the bathtub after taking a bath or shaving, which generates a lot of negative feelings in Li-Ting’s and Paulina’s mind. These troubles are making their life more and more difficult and the atmosphere of this room is getting gloom.
Are these issues possible to be dealt with among them? How are they going to solve these problems? Is it necessary for any party to change to another room eventually?
Know yourself and understand the others first
The multiparty conflicts are more complicated for several reasons. There are more people involves, which infers to more issues. At the same time, the involvement of each party is not the same in every issue. It means that the interests are more difficult to identify. Their nationalities also make the conversation more difficult because every party is subject to his or her own culture. How to engage the conversation becomes a tough issue to deal with prior to the real negotiations.
Before engaging the conflicts, it’s pivotal to understand the cultural differences among the parties. It would be especially important in a multilateral negotiation to avoid some taboos. Paulina is from Finland; a European culture applies to her. She is more individualistic than Li-Ting is. Jackie is also from the Western community in South Africa so she also shares some common habits as Paulina. Paulina and Jackie should know that Li-Ting hesitates to reveal her true feelings because of many reasons and that one of the reasons is that people from East Asia don’t like to stir up a disharmony. Li-Ting needs to understand that she won’t improve the situation by saying nothing to her roommates.
It would be very beneficial for all parties if the participants do some assessment about themselves before going into the negotiation room, such as Thomas and Kilmann conflict assessment or life-trap test. Thomas and Kilmann assessment can help the tester to understand his conflict engagement mode. Li-Ting knows that she has an accommodating and somehow withdrawing personality while facing the conflicts. This is due to her education and the way that her family deals with emotions. Therefore, she normally puts up with all the things that bother her if it is not really disagreeable to bear. However, the roommate problems are actually affecting her sleep and this would in turn have a negative effect on her studies. A good negotiator should know his or her natural impulses very well but the negotiator will use these modes of engagement as a strategy. Being accommodating at some occasions can make the negotiator be assertive in other issues or facilitate the person to make a trade-off. Hence, Li-Ting should be problem-solving but not withdrawing if she wants to reach a common solution with her roommates.
What’s an objective criterion?
In formal multiparty negotiations, the first thing to negotiate even prior the negotiations is to talk about the process and the decision making. All parties should agree on a framework of how the negotiation will proceed. If one party feels the process is at his or her disadvantage, he or she may be reluctant to participate in the talk. Hence, objective criteria during the negotiations are extremely pivotal.
In a multiparty negotiation, a facilitator is sometimes needed. The facilitator does not have a direct interest in the conflict, and the facilitator does not have rights to change the agreement. In this case, Li-Ting, Paulina and Jackie can ask a friend to join the conversation. The friend would be neutral. This friend should not decide for three parties but only try to make the conversation flow.
One more principle is that only one party speaks at a time. The negotiations should proceed in a rational basis. When a party is speaking, the others listen attentively and actively. Only after one finished his argument can others start to talk.
Application of the difficult conversation tactics
According to Difficult Conversations, there is an underlying structure within every conversation. Whatever the people converse falls into three simultaneous conversations: the “what happened” conversation, the feelings conversation and the identity conversation. A successful negotiator should be very circumspect and try to deal with these three conversations at the same time.
First of all, the negotiating parties are recommended to deal with their respective feelings. In the interest based negotiations the negotiator should know his or her emotions and tried to understand it, the negotiator should prevent himself from being controlled by the emotions. The ARIA process, in my eye, would be a very good start because this process realizes conflicts produce strong feelings. The ARIA process, in contrast to the interest-based negotiations, emphasizes the importance of emotional exchange and at the same time the ARIA method still analyzes the conflicts objectively and rationally. ARIA process consists of 4 steps: antagonism, resonance, invention of more options and actions. Hence, Li-Ting and her roommates should tell one another their own feelings and what they think of one another. Li-Ting should reveal her emotions to her two roommates and justify her emotions with some evidence to prevent the expression of emotion from becoming a personal attack. After every party says what they feel, Li-Ting and her roommates should try to be in one another’s shoes and try to see why the other parties feel a certain way for her. This process can help the negotiators to cope with the feelings conversation.
Secondly, all parties should avoid three mistakes in the “what happened” conversation: arguing about right or wrong, assuming the others know each other’s intention and blaming the other parties.
l All parties should stop argue what is true. They should talk about what’s important.
2 The negotiator should stop assuming he or she knows the intentions of others. Don’t start to think that somebody is malevolent while one is not sure.
3 A good negotiator should not blame others and let his emotions override the conversation. It is suggested that the parties use the contribution system.
For any kind of negotiation, multiparty or not, the negotiator always need to prepare himself to the conversation. For a multiparty negotiation, it’s essential to draw a map of entangling interests. Knowing each dialogist’s interests can enable the negotiator to link the issues and do some trade-offs during the negotiations.
In order to figure out what’s important to Li-Ting and her roommates, it is appropriate to use the 9 element analysis to identify the issues lying under this complicated surface. According to three parties’ analysis, there are some common grounds and interests. Li-Ting, Jackie and Paulina, the three main parties in these conflicts, all want a good living environment. Based on this desire, the three parties would have a deeper motivation to sit down and talk it through. For the kind of conversation, the difficult parts lie in how to start the conversation and how to prevent the conversation from accusation and blame.
According to Difficult Conversations, the three parties should sit down and talk, but talk is not enough. People sometimes converse but do not communicate. Moreover, people tend to unconsciously avoid the sensitive parts, which are actually something that they hold on to. Meanwhile, they also need to realize that every person perceive the reality from different angles, which is also called “cone-in-the-box”. Li-Ting should listen to the others and accumulate the information that she has got from the conversation in order to have a holistic view of the truth. Paulina does not mean to slam the drawers in the morning. She is the only child in her family; therefore, she has never lived with somebody in the same room. Li-Ting lived in a quadruple room while she was an undergraduate so she is used to living in an environment where people enjoy less privacy. Jackie needs to be informed that her hygienic habits are disturbing the other two parties. After this, they can talk about their own contribution into the current discord. Instead of blaming one another, to think in terms of contribution involves self-consciousness and a shared responsibility. For example, Jackie admits that she does not pay attention to the dirt and hair in the bathtub after the bath. This does not require an apology but this would make the other parties feel better and facilitate the conversation. If no side is ready to say what they contribute the conflicts, it’s possible to ask an observer to point it out.
Thirdly, every negotiator should pay attention to identity conversations, which might actually be the most difficult problems in some occasion. There are mainly three identity issues that a person need to deal with in a difficult conversation. The first issue is about being competent or not. The second issue is about whether the dialogist is a good person. If the person thinks that making another party uncomfortable makes him a bad person, this person would often back in at the end. The third issue is about whether a person feels love-worthy. For example, Jackie is a PHD student and researcher in cancer studies but her research is not going well recently. She might feel incompetent and doubt herself if Li-Ting raises the question about the ability of taking care of everyone’s own space and cleaning it up. This would trigger a huge rebound from Jackie, which is unconscious but has a significant impact on the conversation.
Invent more options!
After all the parties in the multiparty negotiation explore the true story of what happened, they can have an image of every party’ interests and know where the common ground is. All parties would need to work toward a problem solving solution. The final agreement would be more difficult to reach in a multiparty negotiation; however, it’s not impossible. A feasible and satisfactory solution should be an option that all parties can accept and don’t feel harmed and forced. Thus, the question is not about forcing the other negotiators to agree with one party’s proposal. The participants would need to seek for more viable options outside of the original ones. If the negotiators think their respective proposal is the best answer, it would be very difficult for them to break the ideology jail and the negotiators might ignore a potentially better solution which will satisfy all participants. For instance, Paulina won’t accept Li-Ting’s proposal about the noise if Li-Ting just wants to impose her will on Paulina. Moreover, Jackie won’t accept to clean the bathtub if Paulina does not do something about the trash bins. The roommates would soon realize that they need to find an altogether solution to cover all the issues.
When issues are complicated, the complexity would slow down the negotiations and probably make the final agreement unsatisfactory because the negotiators would sometimes neglect some underlying issues and forget to deal with them in the final agreement. Hence, the negotiator would think the final agreement does not encompass what he or she desires to deal with and then renounce the agreement. That’s one of the reasons why a successful negotiation might not be implemented at the end.
Circle Chart: 4 basic steps for inventing options
Therefore, during the process of finding a viable solution, the Circle Chart Analysis[5] is a very useful tool. The circle chart includes four steps: the problem, diagnoses, the general prescriptions and specific action ideas. These four steps infer to the logical steps to solve a problem, but people often make intuitive thinking and jump to the conclusion too fast. The chart enables negotiators to see the situation with lucidity and averts them from ignoring certain topics that they need to handle. It’s recommended that negotiators use this analysis repeatedly during the negotiations because the ongoing situation changes as the negotiations go on.
Actions!
The implementation of the outcome document is frequently a problem in international relations. The congress might not rectify the treaty or the agreement. A good negotiator would make sure that his counterparts communicate the progress back to the governments and the congress and that his counterparts are working on the domestic support. Therefore, the final document won’t be a surprise for the congress and thus the agreement is backed up by the congress.
Another problem of implementation is that there are free riders. Some parties would escape from their duty to perform the agreement because they can still benefit from the deeds of others, which is the idea of “externality”. Hence, an enforcement mechanism is in need.
Even in this case, the roommates agree upon a feasible solution. However, Paulina is actually not used to cleaning up the bathroom because her mother is the one who does the house chores in her family in Finland. She also thinks that she does not need to perform the tasks because she pays the rent here and the maid should come and clean the room. Because of these thoughts, the implementation of the solution would be hard. Jackie also finds that she still feels disturbed at night when Li-Ting finishes her work in the library and comes back to the room at two o’clock in the morning. Hence, the commitment that every party has made is falling apart.
In this case, they need to ask Paulina to perform her duty. If Paulina does not
want to do it, Li-Ting and Jackie can use the last resort: asking for help from the dormitory manager. The manager can either persuade Paulina to clean up the room or switch her to another room where there is no private bathroom.
For Jackie and Li-Ting, they can renegotiate on the arrangement of time. Jackie needs to ask whether Li-Ting is willing to try to go to bed earlier. If nothing can be done, Li-Ting might choose another alternative instead of accommodating the others’ habits and schedules. A person’s lifestyle is not easy to be altered. Li-Ting has been used to working during the night since little because she is more efficient at the moment of the day. It’s really difficult for her to change from a night howl to a day person. Then, she can give up the negotiations and exert her BATNA. She can tell the manager that they cannot solve the problems although the roommates try. The manager can arrange a single room or another double room for her if there is some rooms available. Li-Ting would need to report this to her mother and ask for financial help, which would be another negotiation.
Conclusion
Negotiations can be vital or trivial, and negotiations for new negotiations ensue from original ones, which would be a continual process. After such an analysis of the roommates’ conflicts, the roommates should by now understand that they all want a good living environment and that they all need to work for it. The communications among the roommates need to be enhanced although it is tough to start the conversations.
Three significant tasks during the difficult conversations are that all parties need to deal with the true story, their feelings and their identities. Talking and understanding provide a solid basis for potential solutions. The roommates need to do some brainstorming to come up with creative solutions. The dialogists would choose a solution that everyone accepts and implement it. If the situation does not improve, they may restart the process of negotiations again to seek for a better means to satisfy all their needs.
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