Prenegotiation: Phases and Functions

Abstract

After all these years, we still have trouble living with concepts. Unlike tangible realities, such as a dog, concepts have no clear beginnings and ends, no unambiguous middles, and not even a usefulness that is beyond debate. A dog which does not exist to the left of its nose or the right of its tail, is clearly distinguishable from a car or even a cat, and would require a name if it did not have one offers none of these problems. We may try to dodge the boundary problem and focus on the essential or functional nature of the concept, but that will only satisfy philosophers, who have less trouble with concepts than most of us anyhow, and not practitioners. A phase is a particularly troublesome form of concept because a time dimension is added to its other elusive qualities and because other relational questions are raised. Is a phase part of subsequent phases, for example, and is the sequence of phases a one-way street or can there be backtracking and even leapfrogging? None of these questions ever arises about the good old dog! Prenegotiation is such a troublesome phase concept. There is no doubt that there is something before negotiation, but it is less clear whether it is a prelude to or a part of negotiation, whether there is a difference in nature between these two, how sharp the boundaries are and how reversible the flows, or what the relation is to other contextual events such as crises and

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