Learning from Global Democratic Challenges and Innovations Mini-Conference I: Can Democracy Work? Theory/Practice of Deliberative Negotiation: Congress & EU

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Part of Mini-Conference

• Learning from Global Democratic Challenges and Innovations Mini-Conference I

Session Description

In the wake of a recent kindling of interest among theorists on the topic of negotiations in Congress (e.g., Compromise: NOMOS LIX, NYU Press 2018 and Melissa Schwartzberg and Jack Knight, Democratic Deals, Harvard U. Press 2024), it has become clear that most political theorists and political scientists still think of the options in negotiation as “finding common ground,” “compromise,” and pure “bargaining.” They rarely consider in depth a major component of deliberative negotiation: “integrative negotiation,” which negotiation specialists consider a “mainstay” of negotiation theory and practice (Sebenius 2015). Integrative negotiation “creates value” and “expands the pie” through the two central techniques of moving from the announced positions to the underlying interests and identifying and trading off issues that are relatively low cost to one party and high gain to the other party. That process often requires creativity. This roundtable has two aims: 1) to bring the important concept of integrative negotiation into political theory and the empirical study of Congress and other legislative bodies and 2) to bring a deeper sense of realism into the understanding of Congressional and EU negotiators’ motivations. In line with the new recommendations in methodology of combining normative theory, practitioner expertise, and empirical political science (Ackerly et al., 2021), the roundtable brings together Mark Warren and Jane Mansbridge, the two lead co-authors of the theoretical article, “Deliberative Negotiation” (2013, 2016); Bettina Poirier and Chris Bertram, two former long-term staff members in Congress (Poirier, a Democrat, former Staff Director and Chief Counsel for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and Bertram, a Republican, former Staff Director for the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure) who have co-founded American University’s Program on Legislative Negotiation, teaching seminars for both students and high-level Congressional staff on the fundamentals of effective negotiation; Frances Lee, author of Insecure Majorities (2016) and other books on Congress, and editor (with Eric Schickler) of The Oxford Handbook of the American Congress (2011); James Curry, author of Legislating in the Dark (2015) and other works on Congress; Christina Schneider, author of works on negotiation in the European Union Council of Ministers; and Bruce Patton, co-founder of the Harvard Negotiation Project and the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School and co-author of the seminal Getting to YES: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In (3rd ed. 2011, more than 15 million copies sold in 36 languages). The panelists will examine the process of deliberative negotiation and the character of integrative solutions both in theory and specific cases. They will also discuss motivations for members of Congress and the EU Council of Ministers in reaching these deals, refusing to consider motivations non-researchable and adopting, in contrast to the mere self-interest of what has frequently been termed “realism,” a more thorough realism that encompasses the full spectrum of actual human motivations.

Sub Unit

• Theme Panel

Cosponsor

• Division 2: Foundations of Political Theory

Chair

• Jane Mansbridge Harvard Kennedy School

Presenters

• Jane Mansbridge Harvard Kennedy School

• Mark E. Warren University of British Columbia

• Frances E. Lee Princeton University

• James M. Curry University of Utah

• Bettina Poirier American University

• Christopher P Bertram Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies

• Bruce M Patton Harvard Law School

• Christina J. Schneider University of California, San Diego