Diplomacy Art of Negotiation

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

What is Negotiation and how does it work in international diplomacy? This course examines negotiation in international diplomacy through a variety of analytical approaches – behavior, strategy, process, integration, and structure – in order to provide the students with the tools to examine and evaluate negotiation case studies. In addition, practical negotiation skills will be taught and the opportunity to apply them on a number of negotiation simulations and games will be provided. The course is structured in 3 parts. The first part introduces the notion of negotiation as a decision-making mode and familiarizes the student with different approaches towards negotiation. To arrive at a holistic understanding of negotiation, students will not only be exposed with these approaches, but they are asked to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of the various analytical frameworks throughout the course, first in the form of group discussions and a reading synthesis. In part 2, then, students will be provided with the practical skills of how to go about negotiations. Ample opportunity for their application will be provided through bargaining and negotiation exercises that focus on a variety of aspects of negotiations, such as, the nature of moves, concessions, intra-team bargaining, importance of prep-work, information management. Additionally, this part of the course will put the spotlight on the evaluation of negotiation case studies. In the setting of Jigsaw group work, students will analyze the cases in their focus groups through the lenses of the different approaches presented in part 1 of the course, and then share and evaluate their analyses in jigsaw discussion groups. The final part of the course consists of an international negotiation simulation exercise.