Forum : You've got to give a little - Vincent Kiernan learns how to hammer out an agreement

26 October 1996

NEGOTIATION is one of those things that everyone thinks they can do. A couple
interested in buying a house negotiates the price with the owners. A child
wheedles its way into being allowed to stay up past its bedtime. Politicians
compromise on a policy acceptable to all. But how does one learn to negotiate an
international environmental treaty, where the issues are complex but emotive,
and the political and environmental stakes are high? Lawrence Susskind of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology has what he thinks is a highly effective
technique for teaching negotiation skills: game-playing.

Susskind’s Chlorine Game doesn’t require a board or a Nintendo
computer display. It is a role-playing game, in which each participant is
assigned a role in a simulated international conference to negotiate a treaty
restricting use of organochlorines, a huge category of substances that includes
disinfectants, plastics, pharmaceuticals and herbicides. These are used in the
manufacture of, among other things, semiconductors, pigments and foam

In the Chlorine Game, some players take on the role of delegates
from countries participating in the negotiation. Others play representatives of
nongovernmental organisations, such as Greenpeace, which often have an influence
on the direction of international treaty negotiations.

Without giving the game away—after all, you might have the chance to
play it some day—it works by setting up a dialogue among the players. Each
participant is given briefing materials and negotiating instructions from their
government or organisation. Then they try to hammer out an agreement. With the
assistance of a facilitator, the players examine various possible approaches to
international regulation of organochlorines, each of which raises issues of cost
and international governance.


Being a game, the specific results can be different each time. Susskind heads
the MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program, a joint project between the two
universities which is exploring the notion that public policy decisions can be
more fair and effective if they are reached through mediated negotiation. He
says that the value of the Chlorine Game is not in the specific
environmental proposals it produces but in the way it teaches the realities of

Students of international relations—like their counterparts in
business, law, or political science—may be taught the theory of
negotiating but they are not often given a chance to develop concrete skills,
Susskind says. He draws a parallel: a law school student may have mastered the
technical skills needed to write a contract but be unprepared for the
rough-and-tumble of negotiating the terms of the contract with another lawyer.
“The game connects technique and context, and most other teaching techniques do
not,” Susskind says. Players can assess each other’s performance in the game,
providing a behind-the-scenes insight into why various approaches worked or
didn’t, Susskind says. Such feedback is rare in real negotiations.

Susskind hopes that the game could also serve as a catalyst to change the way
that international environmental treaties are negotiated. There is often little
real dialogue among the parties at an international negotiating session,
Susskind says.

“Most of these are very formal affairs where people simply repeat what their
governments have already approved, rather than doing any real brainstorming.” He
says that when real diplomats have played the Chlorine Game, they have
noted that its more informal approach is better suited to examining alternatives
with an eye toward developing a solution that is acceptable to all nations. He
thinks that increased flexibility in negotiators’ positions, coupled with the
action of a facilitator to help bring parties together, could produce better
environmental agreements more quickly than the current style of negotiating. He
hopes the game will help convince diplomats that this approach to negotiation
would work.

The game has won praise from David Marks, a chemical engineering professor at
MIT and head of a chlorine programme there. “I’m stunned by how well it works,”
he says. It was played successfully at a chlorine conference in June, he says,
with players drawn from students, industry, nongovernmental organisations and
government. The game has a “strong science base” and presents a balanced view of
the benefits and risks of the use of organochlorines, says Marks. Although the
chemical industry often believes it is being demonised in environmental issues,
the simulation doesn’t start from the premise that industry is automatically
wrong, says Marks.

Marks agrees that the game could be used to lay the groundwork for
international negotiations. He thinks it would be useful for organisations with
an interest in any negotiation, such as trade groups and nongovernmental
organisations. These groups often want their negotiators to take a hardline
stance. “People think that in order to negotiate, they have to take extreme
positions and stick to them as much as they can,” he says. Nongovernmental
groups often instruct their negotiators: “We must have this. Don’t you dare give
in on this issue.” But negotiating an environmental treaty, Marks says, depends
on concessions that produce a mutually acceptable proposal and on provisions
that ensure it will function well over time.

If members of a nongovernmental group played the Chlorine Game, they
might be willing to take less extreme positions and to allow their negotiators
some room to manoeuvre, Marks says. “It could be a way for a negotiator to
prepare his side for what the possibilities are.” After all, Marks points out, a
negotiation is really about getting everyone to say yes.