9.6 Overcoming a Refusal to Negotiate
There are ways of overcoming refusal to negotiate by using existing moral, legal, and political power against intransigence.
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 diversity of human nature should be something to celebrate, but it leads to practical problems when people try to impose their views on others. The inevitability of disagreement was highlighted at the beginning of this book (2.2).
John Gray advocated the intervention of a strong State to protect people’s freedom, explaining why there is not a post-liberal solution to cultural conflict:
“The identity politics of the right aiming to restore a homogeneous culture and the left’s project of conferring rights on minority groups are equally destructive.”
“…The way forward is to constrain communities rather than to entrench them. Everyone should be subject to a rule of law enforced equally on all. Nobody should be denied freedom to exit their community or subjected to coercion by other communities. The tyranny of minorities in stifling free expression should be firmly resisted. Individual liberty must be reasserted against the invasive claims of collective identity.”
“…If what Hobbes called “commodious living” cannot be reinvented by a strong state, our future will be a war of all against all, fought out not between individuals but identity groups – a life that might not be solitary or necessarily short, but will be nasty, brutish and certainly poor.
It is necessary to impose order when persuasion fails to work. The following sections explore ways of overcoming refusal to negotiate in three different areas of contestation:
● Religious absolutism has often led to violent conflict when people try to impose their views on others (9.6.1). Leaders should be able to convince their followers of the immorality of doing this, as it conflicts with the Golden Rule that is the highest commandment in every religion. And there will never be unanimity. Sometimes, though, peace must be imposed by using the law or, as in the case of Gaza, external pressure.
● Political dissidents can try to impose their views on a society (9.6.2). Their violence must be contained, using the law, but ultimately they must be persuaded that political negotiation is the best way of obtaining the results they seek. Trusted facilitators can be very helpful.
● Authoritarian intransigence has led to numerous violent uprisings and collapses of law and order (9.6.3). People become frustrated when a government refuses to negotiate on what they see as reasonable demands. Violent clampdowns by the government have repeatedly been shown to be counterproductive, so negotiation is the only way of resolving differences. Arbitration can help in some circumstances, and some individuals may be able to get support on the basis of human rights law.
Intransigence is not always one-sided in these scenarios. Although one side might accuse the other of refusing to negotiate, situations are often more complicated than that. The common factor is that those involved need to treat each other with respect.
This page is intended to form part of Edition 4 of the Patterns of Power series of books. An archived copy of it is held at https://www.patternsofpower.org/edition04/96c.htm.