MINDAVIEWS

MARGINALIA: Mediating negotiation, negotiating mediation

Mansoor L. Limba on September 20, 2016

MAKATI CITY (MindaNews /20 September) Following Id al-Qurban last week, some 30
Moros from various sectors revolutionary fronts, legal profession, civil society
organizations (CSOs), local government units (LGUs), and the academe gathered not to
form a political party or anything of that sort, but to attend a four-day training on negotiation
and mediation at Waterfront Insular Hotel, Davao City.

In partnership with the Clingendael (Netherlands Institute of International Relations) and

UNDP Philippines, the Bangsamoro Study Group (BSG) and the Consortium of Bangsamoro
Civil Society (CBCS) organized the Training-Workshop on Negotiation and Mediation as
Instruments for Conflict Settlement with the aim of providing the participants with the
necessary skills sets that could hopefully help them identify, discuss, and achieve common
grounds on various issues confronting the Moro society and negotiate better.

As his opening salvo, one of the two training facilitators introduced the Onion Model of
Negotiation and Mediation, which identifies three essential elements that a negotiator or
mediator should know. They are positions (outer later), interests (middle layer) and wants
(core). As Wilbur Perlot of Clingendael, a world renowned think-tank involved in the training
of diplomats and negotiators the world over, was explaining each element of the Onion
Model, I cannot help but look at it through IR theoretical lenses both positivist and post-
positivist.

As I was suspecting from the beginning, the model is indeed based upon liberalism and its
basic assumptions on cooperation and drive for gains, as can be deduced from the facilitators
answer to a lawyer participant who asked about the place of motives in the model
motives being equated with wants which constitutes the core in the model.

Contrary to the positivist liberalism which identifies wants as the element on which the
interests and positions depend, social constructivism a midway post-positivist tradition
introduces an inner core element that is, identity. It propounds that ones positions and
interests are not dictated by his wants but rather by something which is continually shaping
his wants. That is his ever-changing identity. Accordingly, not only ones positions and
interests that can be negotiated, but also his wants, provided that his identity also changes
accordingly.

As Alexander Wendt would blurt, Positions and interests are what negotiators make of
them!

Interestingly enough, the lecture sessions were interspersed with mind-bending exercises that
simulate actual negotiation and/or mediation, while the refreshment breaks were peppered by
spontaneous narration by MNLF and MILF negotiators of critical episodes of actual
experiences negotiating with the Philippine government in the past.

The exchange of pleasantries and laughter among the participants, and at times, with the two
facilitators as well as members of the secretariat, would remarkably defy the wide age
disparity among the participants from mid-20s to over 70 years old.

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As part of the debriefing on bargaining on the merits, the other facilitator and mediation
expert in both theory and practice, Mark Anstey of South Africa, told us the tale of two
donkeys who finally found a win-win agreement on how to deal with two separate fodders.
Instead of simultaneously consuming their respective fodders which is impossible to do given
their being tied together, donkey A and donkey B agreed to consume together fodder A first
and then fodder B. Within the framework of liberalism, it is as simple as that the two parties
agree together to come up with a win-win situation for them both.

But it is not so with structural realism which, like liberalism, is also a positivist tradition, but
at the other end of the spectrum. Structural realism does not only settle with an apparent
agreement but also questions the intention of each party and even entertains the possibility of
deception on the part of one or both parties. Accordingly, after the two donkeys agree to
consume together the two fodders, it is not unlikely that after consuming together the fodder
A, donkey B is deceiving its counterpart as it intends to kill it so that it could consume fodder
B by itself alone.

After undergoing the last exercise which was a simulation of tedious multilateral negotiation
involving a concerned citizens group acting as the mediator, a central government, a regional
police, a group of old protesters with specific constituencies, and a group of young protesters
with particular constituencies, one realization I had is that mediating is doing a sort of
negotiation while negotiating is undeniably inseparable with mediating works.

In short, mediating is negotiating, and vice versa.

[MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. Mansoor L. Limba, PhD in International

Relations, is a writer, educator, blogger, chess trainer, and translator (from Persian into
English and Filipino) with tens of written and translation works to his credit on such subjects
as international politics, history, political philosophy, intra-faith and interfaith relations,
cultural heritage, Islamic finance, jurisprudence (fiqh), theology (ilm al-kalam), Quranic
sciences and exegesis (tafsir), hadith, ethics, and mysticism. He can be reached at
mlimba@diplomats.com, or http://www.mlimba.com and http://www.muslimandmoney.com.]