Description
Despite undergoing repeated negotiation, long-running international conflicts seldom achieve permanent resolution. Within such conflicts, diplomatic interactions revolve around strategically significant resources which constitute ‘value’ in negotiation. As negotiations progress, the trajectory of value undergoes a significant transformation. This transformation is shaped by Lax and Sebenius’ ‘negotiator’s dilemma’ which is a synthesis between value creation and value claiming.
This study advances the value creation-value claiming framework and introduces ‘value minimisation’ as an embedded mechanism across successive negotiations. Value minimisation refers to the strategic suppression of opposing party’s potential to claim, assert and expand value through negotiation. Enduring conflicts undergoing iterative negotiations thus provide a framework for examining value minimisation. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict presents a well-structured empirical context through interim agreements within the period of the Oslo Accords (1993) to the Taba Summit (2001) to study the progression of value minimisation. By deferring negotiation of strategically significant issues such as Jerusalem, refugee rights and final status, these interim agreements cumulatively manifest value minimisation. The study conceptualises value minimisation as an embedded mechanism within negotiations, demonstrating how co-operation aimed processes can facilitate and sustain contestation. In doing so, it contributes to broader debates on the co-existence of co-operation and contestation within global politics.