Winners and Losers of Decision-Making

Abstract

Asked to provide a characterisation of decision-making in the Council, a senior British diplomat alleged that it ‘is in essence an exercise in mutual confidence, in the recognition that ‘win one, lose one’ is a sounder settlement than sweeping the board against a thoroughly trounced opponent’ (Jackson 1981, p.6). Other practitioners support this claim, maintaining that it is ‘generally positive-sum, rarely about distributive bargaining and almost always about integrative bargaining, where accommodation and rapprochement is the rule’ (Spence 2004, p. 257).

Politics is therefore something like choosing a wife, rather than shopping in a five-and-ten cent store.

E.E. Schattschneider, ‘The Semisovereign People’