Over the past twenty years, the field of conflict negotiation has been somewhat transformed by a set of ideas known as “principled negotiation” or “interested-based negotiation”. Though no single idea was revolutionary at the time, the intellectual framework propounded by Roger Fisher and others affiliated with the Harvard Project on Negotiation (see Getting to Yes and its successors) popularized a new language for thinking about how best to reach an optimal outcome in an environment where a range of stakeholders have diverse and, at times, conflicting beliefs and objectives.
Perhaps the single most important distinction emphasized in the group’s work is between “positions” and “interests”. A position is essentially the stand someone takes in an argument or negotiation which they thinks gives them the best likelihood of getting them what they want. An interest is their actual, underlying desire or motivation.
Somewhat surprisingly, people’s stated positions very often look quite different from their actual interests. Imagine, for example, a negotiation over the price for a trinket at an open market. The seller asks for $20 (her position). The buyer asks for $5 (his position). Neither actually expects to get this price, but both state these positions in an effort to reach a target price of somewhere above $10 and less than $15. This latter range comes closer to reflecting the stakeholders’ interests with the buyer wanting to spend less than $15 and the seller wanting to earn more than $10. Realistically, interests can be traced back even further to the buyer’s goal of having a souvenir to remember a great trip and the seller wanting to earn enough money to feed her family.
By focusing on interests earlier in negotiations, parties’ often find that a lot of time can be saved and, most importantly, that the likelihood of finding an outcome that works for everyone is dramatically increased. The reason is pretty simple, position-based negotiation tends to create large perceived conflict where much less conflict actually exists. Consider the popular example of two cooks fighting over the last orange in the kitchen. After a long argument over who should get the orange, they finally compromise and cut the orange in half. One uses the flesh of the orange for a salad and throws the peel away. The other uses the peel of the orange for a cake and throws the flesh away. If both parties had better articulated their interests in the orange, no argument would have been necessary.
Today, it strikes me that the same failure is coming to increasingly pervade American politics. Take, for example, healthcare. I would not pretend to be an expert on healthcare policy. Indeed, I think it is one of my weaker policy areas. However, it does not take an expert to recognize the failings of the position-based arguments that pervade the healthcare debate. Amongst the comments that I heard from usually reasonable friends when commenting on the merits of the healthcare bill, here are just a few:
- “Insurance companies do everything they can to screw their customers.”
- “They’re going to have ‘death panels’!”
- “American healthcare is already the best in the world.”
- “I can’t imagine living in a country that did not guarantee healthcare.”
- “The government should stay out of my life.”
- “Obama is a socialist.”
Virtually all of these responses inevitably lead to an end of rational dialogue. I mean, if someone replies to the question, “How would you recommend striking a balance between assuring citizens of basic healthcare and managing the resulting costs?” by saying, “Obama is a socialist.” Where do you go next?
The same unconstructive extremes are playing out time and again in America’s current politics on issues ranging from immigration to finance reform to gay marriage. The lattermost is one of my “favorites”. By simplifying a bit from broader convictions about morality on one side and civil liberties on the other, the vast majority of the opposition fundamentally does not want the state to interfere with their traditional religious practices and moral codes (e.g. they want separation of church and state), and a substantial majority of the proponents are seeking a distinction between religious marriage, which most all agree should be granted as a religious institution chooses without government interference, and civil marriage, which proponents argue should be available to all citizens without regard to any particular religious code (e.g. they want separation of church and state).
The list could go on, but the message remains the same. We cannot reach the best solutions by debating positions that are layers upon layers removed from the principles in which we actually believe. Yes, I understand that painting the world in extremes can sometimes benefit the politician running for office or, even more often, the debater who lacks the knowledge or conviction to articulate more fundamental principles. However, if even the most thoughtful members of our society are leaning upon patently undiscerning heuristics to inform their views, how can we hope for better behavior in the political sphere?
We need to be citizens and leaders who have the courage and the thoughtfulness to move a step further back in our logic to the salient principles driving our political convictions. We must ask ourselves, “What are the a priori principles that inform my position on this issue?”
If you are like me, my guess is that the first time you try this, especially on healthcare, you’ll find yourself in some sticky philosophical situations. For example, let’s play this question out: “Do you believe that basic healthcare is a fundamental right and should be guaranteed by the state?” On the one hand, we might be tempted to say “yes.” One the other hand, we may get nervous about the slippery slope of publicly-borne healthcare costs. From there, we might lean on the long-established American value of self-sufficiency to justify backing away from a governmental guarantee. After thinking even further, we might realize that we’re already a long way down that slippery slope by guaranteeing emergency room care. From there, we might decide that the state should guarantee some standard of care but debate where “basic” healthcare ends and luxury begins. Then, we might start wondering if we could save government money by spending on “luxury” preventative care instead of waiting until illness sends someone to the emergency room..clearly, things can get messy quickly.
However, all of the questions above are ultimately answerable. Each of us could, conceivably, take a meaningful personal stand on these questions. What’s more, most all of the tradition of contract law is built around articulating these stands effectively and providing accessible definitions when a word or phrase is insufficiently clear. Don’t get me wrong, these are still incredibly difficult questions to answer as an individual, much less as a group. However, at least arriving at a majority-supported answer to these questions can begin to provide a foundation for intelligent societal action. In contrast, answering questions on Obama’s citizenship, the absolutism of insurance companies’ misanthropy, or even the utter superiority of American healthcare, leaves us little closer to the better system that we all agree we want to see.
The next time I find myself discussing policy with friends, I hope we can engage on principles instead of positions. Once we’re able to do this right, then maybe, just maybe, we can hope that our political leaders will begin to do the same.
