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Beyond Impasse: Addressing Sacred Values in International Political Negotiations

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Abstract

International political negotiations that include sacred values often fall apart or, when concluded, prove unsustainable. Why? What can be done to make these settlements more sustainable? This chapter reviews the literature on sacred values and sacred rhetoric, focusing on why sacred values cannot be mixed with material trade-offs, how regular values become sacred, what we know about defusing them, and their immutability. It then applies new research to previous proposals for managing sacred values within international negotiations. Though sacred values are immutable, once acknowledged, they can be flexibly managed via tactics such as reframing, repositioning, and reprioritizing. Acknowledging and/or recognizing the other’s sacred values, however, is often a challenge. Thus, we suggest the need for SV negotiator training and propose a dual (ingroup and intergroup), process-based platform that negotiators can use to prepare parties for negotiations involving SVs. Lastly, we identify critical areas for future research.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Sacred rhetoric comprised high scores on the following properties: protected status, non-consequentialist reasoning, non-instrumentalism, non-negotiability, citation of boundaries, citation of authority, and moral outrage.

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Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Ranan Tannenbaum for excellent research assistance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Nichole Argo Ph.D.

  2. University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Jeremy Ginges Ph.D.

  3. The New School for Social Research, New York, NY, USA

    Jeremy Ginges Ph.D.

Authors
  1. Nichole Argo Ph.D.
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  2. Jeremy Ginges Ph.D.
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Correspondence to Nichole Argo Ph.D. .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. EANAM European Association for Negotiation and Mediation, Brussels, Belgium

    Mauro Galluccio

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Argo, N., Ginges, J. (2015). Beyond Impasse: Addressing Sacred Values in International Political Negotiations. In: Galluccio, M. (eds) Handbook of International Negotiation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10687-8_23

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