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Internal Environmental Alteration

The external environment is not the only one that may require alteration if a desired negotiating formula is to be obtained. The domestic political process may present important obstacles that may prevent the negotiator from advancing the preferred formula. The negotiator may lack the decisional latitude necessary for successful resolution

UNDERSTANDING NEGOTIATION: THE ACADEMIC CONTRIBUTION 13

of this task. Furthermore, as Robert Putnam has argued, this lack of decisional latitude may not, in fact, be apparent to negotiators until they have reached the ratification stage of the negotiating process or its equivalent when formal ratification is not required.¹² This problem dogged U.S. negotiations of a new Panama Canal Treaty in 1977-1978.

Students of international relations often complain that their colleagues have failed sufficiently to relate foreign policy to domestic policy or, in other words, to distinguish within the overall decisional process the part that relates particularly to foreign policy decisions. Here, the concept of decisional latitude may help to bridge this analytical gap. This concept has been employed in one form or another throughout this essay. For example, it has been advocated as a central criterion for comparing different types of negotiations. Negotiators dealing with matters central to foreign policy will be able to draw on major power instruments to alter an external environment, and, in this sense, they may have great decisional latitude. On the other hand, the negotiators, because they are working in an area of central interest, frequently need to take account of the thinking of a wide range of politically influential figures who are concerned with the subject of the negotiations.

An analysis of capability for altering the domestic environment, therefore, calls for an assessment of the ability of political leaders who wish to make such alteration to do so.¹³ This will require an assessment of the relevance of several factors: public opinion, the position of interest groups, bureaucratic interests, and others. In other words, the domestic political environment will have to be analyzed much in the same manner as the external environment. If it is found, for example, that a particular interest group has the ability to prevent the advocacy of a favored formula for resolution, one should ask whether the position of the interest group in question can be altered and, if so, at what cost. The next section will highlight those topics of particular importance in this regard.