Power Imbalance Theme Analysis

One significant difficulty in the negotiation theory presented in Getting to Yes is that it only works smoothly if all parties have roughly equal power. For example, activists negotiating with the government, small businesses negotiating with giant international conglomerates, and employees negotiating with management often have to cope with overwhelming inequalities in power. In such situations, the more powerful party in the negotiation has little to gain by playing fair, and so underdogs have to work extra hard to keep them honest. However, the authors argue that real power in a negotiation really depends on each side’s ability to set the rules of the negotiation itself, and so principled negotiation about the actual negotiation process is an underdog’s best tool for evening out power imbalances.

Although negotiation theory presumes equality, real negotiations almost always involve power imbalances, which are based on parties’ ability to control the rules of the game itself. People often assume that the party with more power in general will always have more power in a specific negotiation, but this is not true. For instance, during the Iran hostage crisis, a small group of Iranian college students had power over the U.S. government precisely because they had hostages. The U.S. government had far more to lose than the students, who could afford to walk away, which gave them the upper hand in structuring the negotiation process and making demands. This shows that power in a negotiation is not only about money, status, and political connections (although all of those factors certainly come into play). Rather, it is really about what each party can do to shape the very process of negotiation, and this depends on how much each party stands to gain or lose by resolving the dispute in question. Based on this insight, the authors argue that the best way to understand each party’s position in a negotiation is to identify their BATNA, or Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement. In other words, what will they do if they have to walk away? By specifically identifying a BATNA, people can figure out the opportunity cost of choosing to negotiate. The stronger their BATNA, the less they have to lose by walking away, so whichever side has a better BATNA tends to have more power in the negotiation.

Because power depends on the structure of the negotiation process, dishonest negotiators try to manipulate this process, while underdogs’ best resource is principled negotiation about it. One classic way to negotiate about the process is to threaten to walk away—or, in other words, to opt for one’s BATNA. While negotiators often overuse this tactic, in extreme cases, it can force wishy-washy opponents to start taking negotiations seriously. But BATNAs are never fixed: underdogs can always change their BATNA, or even manipulate the other side’s. For instance, a prospective homebuyer can improve their BATNA by looking at other properties, and a nation can get another to follow a nuclear treaty by building up international pressure. The homebuyer and the government start out at a disadvantage because (in both cases) the other side has nothing to lose by walking away from the negotiation. But, by giving themselves better alternatives, the homebuyer and government increase their negotiating power and give the other side a strong motivation to actually come to an agreement.

The authors also point out that underdog negotiators often have to work extra hard to keep the other side negotiating on principles. This is because powerful negotiators have a lot to gain by insisting on positional bargaining, particularly when they recognize that they are in the wrong. For example, when tenant Frank Turnbull asks his landlord Mrs. Jones why she has charged him more than the legal maximum monthly rent on his apartment, Jones accuses him of trying to extort her. She knows that she has more power in a positional bargaining situation, because she already has Turnbull’s money, but Turnbull has more power in a principled negotiation because his position is backed up by the principles. So Mrs. Jones uses a personal attack as a provocation, hoping to divert the conversation from objective principles. But Turnbull responds with a strategy the authors call negotiation jujitsu: he deflects her personal attacks and insists on debating the principles. Even though his BATNA is weak—he would just take the loss and move somewhere else—Turnbull makes up for his powerlessness by refusing to take Mrs. Jones’s bait and insisting on negotiating on the even playing field of principles. Eventually, he convinces her to pay him back what he is due.

In their last chapter, the authors look at deceptive, bad faith negotiation strategies that negotiators use to take advantage of power imbalances. These range from the blatant, like lying about the issues or making false promises, to the subtle, like insisting on meeting in a freezing cold room or seating the other side in the direct sunlight. These power-grab tactics work by creating new, one-sided pressures in the negotiation process. But responding to these tactics is just as easy: principled negotiators point out what is happening and insist on changing it before proceeding with the negotiation. In other words, fixing the power imbalance simply requires explicitly addressing the process of negotiation and re-centering it on principles.

Of course, there is nothing preventing readers from turning the authors’ advice about negotiating the rules of the game into a manual for how to deceive or manipulate fellow negotiators. But the authors emphasize that dishonest and deceptive communication strategies only work if the other side is willing to be fooled. Principled negotiators, like expert poker players, know how to keep one another honest. When everyone has perfect information about negotiation strategy—meaning that they know how to use principled negotiation techniques—then the negotiation will tend toward equality. So while dishonesty might be an effective strategy for the powerful, an underdog can always keep them in check through principled negotiation.