9.6   Overcoming a Refusal to Negotiate 

(This is an archived page, from the Patterns of Power Edition 3 book.  Current versions are at book contents).

Governance can only respond to people’s needs if everybody is prepared to negotiate.  Both the government and the governed need to have some flexibility – yet there are people who refuse to compromise.  The following sub-sections examine different kinds of refusal to negotiate:

·     Religious absolutism (9.6.1);

·     Political dissidents (9.6.2);

·     Authoritarian intransigence (9.6.3).

This categorisation does not imply that intransigence is always one-sided.  Although one side might accuse the other of refusing to negotiate, situations are often more complicated than that.