It's No Surprise: Empathy and Humor Can Help-Or Hurt-at the Mediation Bargaining Table

‘IF THE STATE DID NOT EXIST, WE WOULD HAVE TO INVENT IT. Comment.’ Few of the responses to this examination question qualified its suggestion that the state might be amenable to instantaneous contrivance or conscious design. The oversight on the part of my undergraduate charges pointed to the still potent legacy of a generation of Canadian political artificers whose projects of inventing the Canadian state had abetted the rise of a species of ‘constitutional politics’ given to the ever more elaborate concoction of comprehensive solutions to Canada's vexing constitutional shortcomings. These projects tended to politicize historically embedded elements in the constitutional order, serviceable if imperfect, which had been conventionally regarded as resistant beyond redemption to improved reformulation. This new-style politics was at centre stage in the long and eventful prime ministerial years of the Liberal Party's Pierre Trudeau, the great Cartesian inventor par excellence of the contemporary Canadian state. It would remain a central feature of the nine-year incumbency of Trudeau's Conservative Party successor, Brian Mulroney. Trudeau's vision of a reinvented Canada had proceeded from his background preparation for public life as an academic constitutional lawyer. Mulroney, aiming to finesse what the more cerebral Trudeau could not, would bring to bear on the affairs of the Canadian state the skills of a labour lawyer with the know-how to get Canada's perennially fractious provinces and interest groups to the political bargaining table, there to resolve once and for all any constitutional differences still outstanding.

Download Full-text

Economic Sanctions and North Korea

The American Economist ◽

10.1177/0569434518808016 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 64 (1) ◽

pp. 131-141 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Bob Carbaugh ◽

Koushik Ghosh

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

North Korea ◽

Economic Sanctions ◽

The United States ◽

Economics Students ◽

International Diplomacy ◽

Undergraduate Economics ◽

Bargaining Table ◽

Jel Classifications

The United States has enacted economic sanctions against North Korea since the early 1950s when North Korea attacked South Korea. Can North Korea be pressured into giving up its nuclear weapons? This article discusses the role of economic sanctions as a tool of international diplomacy with North Korea. Using concepts and tools taught in undergraduate economics classes, the article discusses the operation of sanctions and then it applies this analysis to the case of North Korea. The article examines the success that sanctions have achieved in bringing Kim Jong Un to the bargaining table and the difficulties that sanctions encounter in promoting a lasting resolution of the conflict between North Korea and the United States. The article is written for a broad audience of economics students. JEL Classifications: F0, F1

Download Full-text

Who should represent nurses at the bargaining table?

AORN Journal ◽

10.1016/s0001-2092(07)60653-x ◽

1974 ◽

Vol 19 (4) ◽

pp. 785-786

Author(s):

Elinor S Schrader

Keyword(s):

Bargaining Table

Download Full-text

Forming coalitions to negotiate North–South climate agreements

Environment and Development Economics ◽

10.1017/s1355770x12000411 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 18 (1) ◽

pp. 69-92 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Alejandro Caparrós ◽

Jean-Christophe Péreau

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Bargaining Power ◽

Final Outcome ◽

Grand Coalition ◽

Fixed Costs ◽

Efficiency Gains ◽

Climate Agreements ◽

The Impact ◽

Bargaining Table ◽

At Home

AbstractThis paper analyzes North-South negotiations over climate change abatement. We consider that northern countries have an incentive to negotiate over a transfer to the southern countries in exchange for their abatement efforts rather than reducing their emissions at home. We study the incentives for northern and southern countries to form negotiation-coalitions at each side of the bargaining table and the impact of these negotiation-coalitions on the final outcome. We show that the incentives can be separated into direct efficiency gains, as fixed costs savings, and indirect bargaining power gains. Depending on the relative values of these gains, we determine the equilibrium of the game. We also show that bargaining power gains encourage southern countries to negotiate separately while they encourage northern countries to unite, and that this hinders the formation of the grand coalition.

Download Full-text