Positive Sum: Improving North-South Negotiations

by I. William Zartman (Editor)

Overview

The claims of the developing countries for more equal participation in existing international economic arrangements have been eclipsed temporarily by global economic recession and the pressures on developing countries to adjust their economies to radically changed circumstances. But negotiations between the industrial countries of the North and the developing countries of the South will remain an important feature of international politics in the years ahead. Careful analysis of the negotiating experience of the 1970s—when the pressures of the South for reform of the international economic system reached their peak in a wide variety of international forums—can help improve the negotiating process itself as well as policy formulation.

Positive Sum focuses on the relationship of the process of the negotiations of the recent past to their final outcomes. This emphasis differentiates it from the many works on North-South relations that assess results only.

The volume presents eight case studies of specific North-South negotiations, prepared as part of a project of the Overseas Development Council in Washington, D.C. The book's emphasis is on pragmatic paths-conflict management, conciliation, cooperation—to mutually satisfactory solutions in asymmetrical situations. In its policy recommendations, the study seeks to move the parties away from sharp divisions between the rich and strong on one side and the poor and relatively weak on the other. Its objective is to identify tactics and procedures that are more likely to deliver "positive sum" (mutually beneficial) rather than "zero-sum" (winner takes all) results. The book offers useful guidelines for negotiators and analysts of future multilateral negotiations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780887386503
Publisher:	Transaction Publishers
Publication date:	01/30/1987
Pages:	314
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

I. William Zartman is professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced Studies. His books include International Relations and The New Africa and Ripe for Resolution: Conflict and Intervention in Africa.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Explaining North-South Negotiations, 2. Commodity Bargaining: The Political Economy of Regime Creation, 3. The United Nations Committee of the Whole: Initiative and Impasse in North-South Negotiations, 4. The Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea: North-South Bargaining on Ocean Issues, 5. The Wheat Negotiations: Loss or Gain in North-South Relations? 6. The Multifiber Arrangement: The Third Reincarnation, 7. The World Administrative Radio Conference 1979 Negotiations: Toward More Equitable Sharing of the Global Radio Resources, 8. Negotiating the Lomé Conventions: A Little Is Preferable to Nothing, 9. Debt Negotiations and the North-South Dialogue, 1974-1980, 10. Conclusions: Importance of North-South Negotiations