Abstract
This chapter analyses the differences between usues of focality in contexts of negotiation and game-theoretical coordination. The ability to communicate in negotiations is the most important difference between these two contexts. The author argues in detail that this does not mean that focality and salience are obsolete in the context of negotiation. He identifies three crucial problems for the application of focal point analysis to negotiations—divergent perceptions of agents, ambiguous references to terms, and volatile or low expectations about the chances to bring the negotiations to a successful conclusion—and illustrates the impact of these problems by analyzing various paradigmatic focal points, such as natural landmarks and contours of terrain (e.g. mountain ridges, rivers), simple or round numbers, axis of symmetry, geometrical or geographical centers.
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Notes
- 1.
I will mostly drop references to salience in the following and only refer to it when writing about Lewis.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
When I speak about negotiations, I do not include bargaining theory in the game-theoretical sense. Focal points in this field have been studied, see Cooper et al. (1990, 1992), Isoni et al. (2013), Roth (1985) or Taylor and Fiske (1978), but have not been integrated into the debate on bargaining solutions.
- 7.
For the often conflicting diversity of notions of justice, see, e.g., Elster (1992).
- 8.
The—politically somewhat incorrect—original game description involves a man and woman who have to decide incommunicado whether to meet at the opera house or the football stadium. She prefers the opera, he prefers the stadium, but both consider it worse to not spend the evening together; see Luce and Raiffa (1957: 90).
- 9.
See, e.g., Hargie (2006).
- 10.
- 11.
- 12.
Schelling (1960: 70).
- 13.
Schelling (1960: 53).
- 14.
See, e.g., Isoni et al. (2013).
- 15.
Schelling (1960: 73).
- 16.
- 17.
On economic as-if methodology (aka instrumentalism), see Mäki (2009).
- 18.
Although a single agent can introduce a hitherto unknown pre-focal point into a negotiation, it requires at least several agents (hence the reference to a subgroup) to initiate the process of expectation formation which finally renders the point SL-focal. The assumed features of a pre-focal point are designed to refer to a set of agents in whose field of attention a point is.
- 19.
A fully formal treatment of such differences will presumably become very complicated—in any case, more so than the present considerations, which may strike some readers as complicated enough. Consider characterizing focality by the number k (of n) players who perceive a point as being conspicuous (for standard focal points k = n). A further complexity can be added by repeating this differentiation on all levels of mutual expectation. Hence, k1 players may expect m1 players to perceive a point F* as conspicuous, k2 players may expect m2 (for m1 ≠ m2) players to perceive F*as being conspicuous, and so on, for all differing mi. The same differentiation can be repeated at a higher level: s1 players may expect t1 players to expect v1 players to regard F* as conspicuous (at this point, a question of sequential consistency arises for the players). For ti ≠ tj or vi ≠ vj, the assumption must be further ramified. Of course, this process continues on all finite levels of nested expectations. If this is not rampant enough, one can further differentiate between the players, their power and relevance, or the rounds of a game (a point might be k focal in round i, and h focal in round i + 1).
- 20.
The same is the case when an agent only wants to ensure that all parties involved recognize an issue or a solution option as being focal. Those who prefer a more general characterization may also speak of a focal-by-signaling strategy.
- 21.
- 22.
The (possible) focal role of law is not discussed here, because it requires more juridical knowledge than presently presupposed, see McAdams and Nadler (2008).
- 23.
Lewis (1969: 35).
- 24.
On the question of the rationality of focal coordination, see Chapter 1 in this book.
- 25.
On the ‘zone of possible agreement’ (or bargaining zone), see Lewicki et al. (2009, Sect. 1).
- 26.
For the ‘war of attrition’ game, see Bulow and Klemperer (1999).
- 27.
See, e.g., the provisional solution in the international acid rain negotiations discussed in Albin (2001: 66).
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Schuessler, R. (2019). Focality and Salience in Negotiations: Structuring a Conceptual Space. In: Schuessler, R., van der Rijt, JW. (eds) Focal Points in Negotiation. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27901-1_3
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