Attitudes and Negotiation Profiles Enlargement Smolinski October 2010

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2010 DOI: 10.1163/157180610X529645

International Negotiation 15 (2010) 485–509 brill.nl/iner

Innovative Research

Capturing Attitudes and Behavior in International Negotiations: Lessons from the European Union

Enlargement Negotiations

Remigiusz Smolinski*IESEG School of Management, 3, rue de la Digue, 59000 Lille, France

(E-mail: [email protected])

Received 12 March 2009; accepted 23 May 2009

AbstractAn alternative method of capturing negotiating attitudes and behavior in international negotiation employs the concept of negotiating profiles and a way of measuring and mapping it. We apply this method in a survey of politicians and diplomats who participated in the EU enlargement negotiations. From the survey results, we selected and analyzed negotiating profiles of Malta, the Czech Republic, Poland, Estonia and Slovenia. The results of our analysis allow us to draw cautious conclusions concern-ing the most and the least favorable attitudes and behaviors in international negotiations on the highest levels.

KeywordsEuropean Union enlargement; EU accession negotiation; perception; negotiating style; cross-cultural negotiation

It is commonly believed that negotiators’ cultures are expressed in the patterns of their negotiating behavior and attitudes. Therefore, to capture cross-cultural dif-ferences in negotiating behavior, researchers usually use the concept of negotiat-ing style (Salacuse 1999: 222). To identify negotiating styles, certain aspects of behavior are selected and measured by surveying the target groups. Despite its practicality, the concept of negotiating style has many caveats. It ignores, for instance, differences in negotiators’ personalities even within analyzed cultures; it disregards a variety of situational factors which sometimes significantly influ-ence negotiating behavior; it is also heavily affected by respondents’ subjectivity.

*) Remigiusz Smolinski is Assistant Professor at IESEG School of Management. He was a visiting scholar at Harvard University’s Program on Negotiation and Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplo-macy. In his research he focusses on the theory and practice of negotiation, particularly in international settings, as well as on the theory and applications of decision making routines in management science.

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To address these issues, this article offers an alternative method of capturing negotiating attitudes and behavior, namely by introducing the concept of nego-tiating profiles. We apply this concept in our research on European Union enlargement negotiations and, based on the results of our survey, we try to iden-tify the most favorable attitudes and behaviors in international negotiations.

We will begin this article by describing our research methodology, particularly focusing on explaining and motivating the notion of negotiating profiles as well as describing the structure of our online survey. Subsequently, we will present and analyze selected results of our research project concentrating on ten selected traits and highlighting the profiles of the countries that managed to achieve the highest number of transitional agreements.

Attitudes and Behavior in International Negotiation: Negotiating Traits and Team Profiles

The word culture comes from the Latin cultura stemming from colere with its root meaning to cultivate, to inhabit or to honor. There are numerous defini-tions of culture in the literature. Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1963), for instance, have collected more than 200 of them. Despite the fact that some researchers consider the concept of culture not well defined,1 most of the definitions share the following three features:

– Culture is a group-level phenomenon – Although each group essentially consists of individuals and despite the fact that culture is manifested through individuals, culture itself is a phenomenon that can only be observed once it is shared by the vast majority of the individuals belonging to a certain group.

– Culture is acquired by individuals from the group they belong to, either through socialization or acculturation – This implies that culture not only has to be shared by the individuals belonging to a certain group, but also that it has to be preserved in time and transmitted from one generation to another.2

– Culture is a set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features typical for a society or a social group – These features can possess intangible or tangible characteristics. The first group, for instance, includes values, norms, beliefs, etc. The second group includes their expressions such as institutions, patterns of behavior and artifacts.3

1) Zartman (1993), for example, claims that culture is tautological, vague and epiphenomenal. Weiss (1994) points out that culture is neither consistently nor well defined. Similar critique was also expressed by Moran and Stripp (1991) and Usunier (2003).2) It does not necessarily mean that culture is static and remains invariant over time. On the contrary, Faure and Sjöstedt (1993: 5) argue that in a short-term perspective culture should be seen as a structure influencing human behavior, whereas in the long-term it is a dynamic social phenomenon.3) UNESCO (2002), Hoult (1969: 93), Cohen (2004: 11), and Lewicki, Saunders, Minton, and Barry (2006: 413).

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For the purpose of this article, culture is defined as the socially transmitted norms, beliefs, and values influencing the behavior of individuals in a given community. This definition is based on the work of Salacuse (1991: 45) and Faure and Sjöst-edt (1993: 3). It possesses all three features listed above and creates a firm founda-tion for our further research. Although our study will focus mostly on national cultures, there are also many other kinds of cultures (e.g. corporate, family and professional cultures) which can influence negotiating behavior.4 It is important to note that some of them exist within countries whereas others extend across the borders.

Much has been written about the meaning of culture in international and cross-cultural negotiation, both from a theoretical as well as from practical per-spective.5 There is a noticeable consensus and substantial evidence in the litera-ture that negotiators from different cultures tend to behave differently. Brett (2001) developed a simple conceptual model illustrating the influence culture may have on negotiators. According to this model, cultural values have a notice-able influence on negotiation interests and priorities, while cultural norms affect negotiation strategies and patterns of interactions. The fundamental method-ological conclusion that can be drawn from this model is quite discouraging for empirical studies. If culture affects such basic elements of negotiation as inter-ests, priorities or strategy selection, and also given that the influence of culture is mostly subconscious, all differences in any observable aspects of cross-cultural negotiation can always be attributed to cultural differences between the negotia-tors. Each individual is immerged in many cultures which influence his negoti-ating behavior. At the same time, there are many other variables beside culture that also have similar effects. These include individual variables such as negotia-tors’ personalities, as well as structural or process variables. As pointed out by Elgström (1994), it is very difficult to assess correctly the relative influence of each variable, and it is inappropriate to treat culture as the unique explanatory variable of the negotiation process and outcomes. Therefore, empirical studies using culture as the only independent variable explaining the differences in any aspects of negotiation are of limited use and, in some cases, can even be tauto-logical, allowing the researchers to demonstrate what they established at the out-set of their premise.6

4) Faure and Sjöstedt (1993: 5). A detailed discussion on the role of professional cultures in international negotiation can be found in Sjöstedt (2003).5) A complete list of reference would exceed the limitations of this document. The most important posi-tions which should not be omitted include: Binnendijk (1987), Brett (2001), Cohen (2004), Faure and Rubin (1993), Fisher, Schneider, Borgwardt and Ganson (1997), Foster (1992), Gelfand and Dyer (2000), Habeeb (1988), Hendon and Hendon (1990), Mautner-Markhof (1989), Reynolds, Siminitiras and Vlachou (2003), Salacuse (1998; 1999), and Weiss (1994).6) This is precisely the case in studies attempting to separate structural and cultural effects in international negotiations. It is quite easy to find support for a given structural or cultural hypothesis by appropriately selecting the object of the study. A more detailed discussion on this topic can be found in Faure and Rubin (1993: 222–24).


Moreover, as pointed out by Avruch (2000) and Sebenius (2002), not every member of a culturally homogeneous group equally shares all characteristics of this culture. Rubin and Sander (1991) emphasized that the variety of behavioral differences within cultures can be as wide as in cross-cultural comparisons. All these and other difficulties have led Zartman and Berman (1982: 224) to label the linkage between culture and negotiation a “most troublesome question” especially in international negotiation research. Although cultural factors undoubtedly play an important role, it is essential not to overestimate their influence on international negotiation.7 This suggestion becomes especially vital in the context of the research result obtained by Dialdin, Kopelman, Adair, Brett, Okumura and Lytle (1999), who claimed that there is a general tendency to ignore the importance of situational factors in favor of cultural explanations, which they called cultural attribution error.

Usually, the expression of the negotiators’ cultures is their negotiating style. The definition of the negotiating style, however, also poses some difficulties in the context of our research. Generally, negotiating style is defined as the way persons from different cultures behave in negotiations (Salacuse 1999: 222). This definition implies the following:

– There is a strong link between a person’s culture and his negotiating style.– A negotiating style of a certain person can only be evaluated through an

analysis of that person’s behavior in several negotiation settings.

Despite its many advantages, the concept of negotiating style is of limited use for the researchers willing to focus on a particular negotiation setting (e.g. the negotiations of the fifth EU enlargement round with one clear underlying objec-tive and a relatively stable set of participants).8 Moreover, this concept might be quite confusing in the case of skilled negotiators who are able to adapt their negotiating behavior to the situations they face and use it as an element of their comprehensive negotiation strategy.9 Additionally, in some cases it might be much more interesting or even appropriate to examine how negotiators from dif-ferent cultural backgrounds behave in particular negotiation situations, rather than make general claims about national and/or personal negotiating styles.

7) This topic is discussed in more detail in Rubin and Sander (1991), Sebenius (2002), Weiss (2003).8) In some candidate countries, the negotiating teams were partially or completely replaced during the enlargement negotiations. Most of these changes were caused by the parliamentary elections occurring during that time and the following personnel changes in the governments.9) Although some researchers (e.g. Brett 2001) claim that nearly all aspects of negotiators’ behavior are influenced by cultural factors, we believe that it is often a result of deliberate training. This is particularly evident in negotiations conducted by professional negotiators and diplomats.


Table 1. Research framework for determining negotiating profiles

Trait Range of Responses

Attitude Win/lose ↔ Win/winPursuing Own Interests Tough ↔ Lenient

Power Dominant ↔ BendingClimate Hostile ↔ Friendly

Team Organization Authoritative ↔ ConsensualCommunication Indirect ↔ Direct

Concern with Protocol Informal ↔ FormalFlexibility Repetitive ↔ Exploring

Emotionalism High ↔ LowTime Sensitivity High ↔ Low

Sources: Developed by the author based on Foster (1992), Hendon and Hendon (1990), Moran and Stripp (1991), Salacuse (1998), and Mastenbroek (2002).

Therefore, bearing all this in mind, we would like to suggest a somewhat different approach, namely to introduce the notion of negotiating profiles defined as the set of traits characterizing negotiators’ behavior. This general definition allows us to overcome the difficulties we had with negotiating styles, to focus our attention on a particular negotiation setting, and to include additional non-cultural factors in the analysis. Negotiating profiles can be identified for individuals as well as for teams. It is also possible to evaluate them in the context of one negotiation as well as holistically based on the available data from various negotiations conducted by a particular person or a team in the past. Most importantly, the analysis of nego-tiating profiles does not necessarily have to cover all traits describing the negotia-tors’ behavior. On the contrary, it allows selecting and concentrating on the traits which are relevant with respect to the goals of a specific research project. Because our study of EU enlargement negotiations referred to the differences and simi-larities among the negotiators representing ten candidate countries, for further analysis we selected the traits that could potentially capture these differences. All of them have been used by various scholars in their research either on identifying the influence of culture on negotiation or on measuring negotiating styles. In par-ticular, we are referring to the work of Foster (1992), Hendon and Hendon (1990), Moran and Stripp (1991), Salacuse (1998) and Mastenbroek (2002). The final selection of the traits we decided to consider in the analysis of the negotiating pro-files is presented in Table 1.

Based on the traits listed above, we asked the respondents to evaluate both their own negotiating profile as well as the profile of the party or parties they negotiated with. By doing so we intended to obtain the data allowing us to com-pare their perceptions of the negotiating behavior of all involved parties.


Perception is generally defined as the process of screening, selecting, and inter-preting stimuli so that they gain meaning to the individual (Steers 1984: 98). Although the beginnings of perception research date back to the 1950s,10 it was only in the late 1990s that this topic drew the attention and interest of the nego-tiation theorists and practitioners who concentrated mostly on perceptual dis-tortions.11 Fig. 1 illustrates a general model of the perceptual process in bilateral negotiation. According to this model, the behavior of one negotiator serves as a stimulus for the other negotiator who then screens it, selects its key elements and tries to interpret them. In international negotiation, the complexity of this process is significantly greater than in other cases. Culturally influenced behavior of Negotiator A is perceived through the cultural lens of Negotiator B, who then acts based on his interpretation of that behavior, which then is perceived by Negotiator A and the whole process repeats. As a consequence, the cultural dif-ferences can lead to the misinterpretation of the actual negotiators’ behavior and their underlying motivation such as interests and objectives. This misinterpretation in turn may result in inappropriately adjusted reactions and, given the interactive and repetitive character of this process, the final solution to the negotiated problem may in fact be based on incorrect inferences and therefore prove suboptimal.

The point we will try to demonstrate later in this article is that the perception of even fundamental traits of negotiating profiles in the EU enlargement negotia-tions very often differed largely depending on the perceivers. Accepting this statement raises a speculative question whether the outcomes of this process could not have been improved had the parties been able to better understand each other’s culture and negotiating behavior. Although it is difficult to give a well-justified answer and clear normative advice for the negotiators of further enlargements, we will attempt to address this issue based on some of the results quoted later in this article.

Concluding, we would like to emphasize that we are not intending to ascribe all potential differences in the negotiating profiles solely to differences in the national cultures of the negotiation participants. Although most probably cul-tural factors played an important role in this process, they were certainly not the only ones.12 It is not our aspiration to determine the exact influence of each potential independent variable that might have influenced the outcome. Such task would be very difficult – if not impossible – to complete. The primary goal of our research project was to apply our method of capturing negotiating profiles in the context of the fifth EU enlargement negotiations. By doing so, we gained valuable insights into the behavioral aspects of these negotiations. In particular,

10) The most influential pioneers in this field were Gibson (1950), Bruner and Tagiuri (1954), and Broad-bent (1958).11) One of the precursors in this field was Thompson (1995).12) Next to the cultural factors, what certainly influenced the process and the outcome of the enlargement negotiations was a combination of the personalities of negotiators and situational and strategic factors.


we focus on the perception of negotiating profiles and the differences between self-evaluations and the evaluations done by the partners. Finally, based on our results, we analyze the profiles of the selected candidate countries.

Capturing Negotiating Profiles: Online Survey

Due to the relatively large number, geographic dispersion and inaccessibility of our target group members, we decided to use an online survey questionnaire as the primary method of data collection. The ability to deal with the above men-tioned characteristics of our target group completely compensated for the major drawbacks of this method: the lack of interactivity and personal contact. In the context of our research, the lack of personal contact with the respondents is not necessarily disadvantageous. It is possible that the evaluations obtained through an online survey in the absence of the researcher are less biased than those gath-ered through personal or telephone interviews.

Although officially each of the EU15 countries was an independent party to the accession negotiations, they regularly spoke with one voice acting as a collective negotiator.13 Therefore, to reduce the complexity of our research we decided to adapt a similar approach and represent all old EU members as one entity and labeled it the EU15. By pursuing this approach we noticeably decreased the number of studied countries. By doing so, however, we also gained valuable information concerning their collective negotiating profile and did not lose

13) Government Plenipotentiary for Poland’s Accession Negotiations to the European Union (2000: 29).

Fig. 1. Perceptual process in bilateral negotiation.Source: Author.


the possibility of relating it to the outcomes of the enlargement negotiations. Throughout our research the candidate countries were treated separately.

Prior to the start of our project, we formulated the following hypotheses and research questions:

– Differences in the national negotiating profiles – Each of the participants entered the enlargement negotiations with the same strategic objective, but with different ‘cultural luggage’ and with different interests and strategy. Although some researchers argue that the diplomats share a common pro-fessional culture often referred to as international diplomatic culture,14 we supposed that it is repeatedly dominated by the cultures of the nations they represent. We believed that this was also the case in the EU enlargement negotiations. We suspected that the differences in the negotiators’ national cultures combined with the differences in their personalities and variety of situational factors were important reasons for distinct differences in some traits of the negotiating profiles among the analyzed countries. Moreover, we believe that despite what some researchers claim,15 the EU’s negotiating profile was not perceived uniformly by the candidate countries.

– Differences in the perception of the negotiating profiles – One of the fun-damental difficulties in negotiation lies in the fact that frequently statements and actions are interpreted by the negotiation partners differently than they were intended. We believed that this was also the case in the enlargement negotiations. The comparison between the self-evaluations of the negotiating profiles and the evaluations submitted by the negotiation partner is a rather novel aspect in our research. Even in the wider context of research on nego-tiating styles, the scholars very rarely decide to measure and compare each party’s perceptions of analyzed styles. Usually the research is focused on a selected party representing a particular culture (e.g. Salacuse 1998; 1999).

– Profiles of the teams that negotiated the highest number of transitional agreements – The statistical analysis of a simple relationship between the candidate countries’ economic sizes measured by their GDP and the num-ber of negotiated transitional agreements reveal a moderate and positive correlation. This analysis also showed that Malta was a distinct outlier, the smallest country with the second highest number of transitional agreements after Poland and the biggest among the EU10 countries. Can we find a potential source of this anomaly by analyzing the Maltese negotiating profile? Is the Polish negotiating profile similar to the Maltese one? If so, in terms of which traits?

14) Glenn, Witmeyer, and Stevenson (1977: 59), as well as Zartman and Berman (1982: 224–29). An interesting discussion on this topic can be found in Cohen (2004: 20–23).15) Sjöstedt (1994) as well as Kolb and Faure (1994) quoted by Faure (2002: 393, 397) and also Lang (199: 38).


To verify our hypotheses and to answer research questions, we decided to gather primary data by conducting an online survey. In general, our survey structure consisted of the following five steps:

1. Identification of the party represented by the respondent in the enlarge-ment negotiations – The representatives of the candidate countries were asked to specify the country they represented, whereas all agents negotiat-ing on behalf of the EU were treated as a collective negotiator even though some of them might have simultaneously represented the interests of their countries’ governments.

2. Selection of the negotiation partner(s) – This question was asked to the EU representatives as some of them negotiated with multiple candidate coun-tries. The negotiation partner of each candidate country was always the EU.

3. Evaluation of partners’ negotiating profiles – The EU representatives were asked to evaluate all countries selected in step 2. The representatives of the candidate countries always evaluated the EU.

4. Self-evaluation – Evaluation of own negotiating profiles.5. Thank you page – We offered our respondents a possibility to leave their

contact details in case they would like to receive the report concluding our study. The final page displayed our contact details and included an invita-tion to get in touch with us with any questions, comments or concerns.

Having developed the structure of our survey, we translated our research frame-work (presented in Table 1) into the survey questions. Following the approach of Salacuse (1998), we decided to list all the traits of the negotiating profiles without defining them and ask the respondents to conduct their evaluations. The biggest advantage of this approach is the minimization of potential influ-ence of our interpretations on the answers given by the respondents. The disad-vantage is the risk of having the trait names misinterpreted, which could then result in inappropriate evaluations and inadequate research results. We assumed, however, that all participants of the enlargement negotiations had an excellent command of English, which created the basis for correct understanding of all notions used in our survey. The respondents were asked to evaluate each trait of the negotiating profile on a five-point scale with clearly described extreme ends (as in Table 1), also called semantic differential.

During the remaining stages of our research project, we attempted to contact as many participants of the enlargement negotiations as possible and convince them to fill out the questionnaire. The list of our potential respondents included the following:

– On behalf of the European Union – The politicians and diplomats representing the governments of the EU15 countries in the enlargement negotiations,


especially prime ministers and ministers of foreign affairs, as well as the officials coordinating the negotiations on behalf of the European Commission.

– On behalf of the candidate countries – The members of the negotiation teams, the government officials involved in the enlargement negotiations, especially prime ministers and ministers of foreign affairs.

We managed to identify current whereabouts of 310 politicians who took part in the enlargement negotiations. Initially, we distributed the link to our website in an official letter of request sent out per post. However, as expected the response rates were unsatisfactorily low. Therefore, we followed up with an e-mail including the same link and reminding about our request. Our survey was available online at: www.negotiations.de.

Results

Surprisingly, the final number of responses to our survey was rather high. To increase the precision and relevance of the result – instead of counting the number of unique visitors on the survey website – we decided to count the number of sub-mitted negotiating profile evaluations. As mentioned earlier, some of the negotia-tors representing the EU negotiated with all candidate countries (the Council of the European Union) whereas some of them dealt with smaller subsets of the can-didate countries (the European Commission). Due to the fact that in our survey the EU negotiators could evaluate any country or a group of countries they nego-tiated with, the exact number of survey participants can only be estimated. This means that if, for example, a member of the Council submitted an evaluation of five countries, we would see five additional evaluations in our database, but would not be able to track that all of them came from the same person. Based on the most restrictive assumption that the smallest number of the EU representatives who took part in our survey equals the highest number of evaluations submitted for one country, the response rate would be about 57%. Most likely this number was even higher, as altogether we have collected 296 evaluations and contacted 310 persons. This sets the upper bound for the response rate at 95%. EU negotia-tors submitted 52% of the evaluations, and the remaining 48% came from the respondents representing the candidate countries. Fig. 2 illustrates the percentages of the respondents from each candidate country in the total number of respon-dents from the candidate countries. This data can be compared with Fig. 3, which demonstrates the geographical distribution of the evaluations submitted by the EU negotiators. In particular, it shows the percentages of each candidate country’s evaluations in the total number of evaluations. With minor exceptions (Poland), the EU evaluations seem to be relatively evenly distributed whereas there is a slight underrepresentation of some countries (Cyprus, Malta, Lithuania) in the data from the candidate countries.


Fig. 2. Geographical distribution of the evaluations submitted by the negotiators representing the acceding countries.

Source: Author

Fig. 3. Geographical distribution of the evaluations submitted by the EU negotiators.

Source: Author


In the following sections, we will proceed with the evaluation of our survey. We will first conduct a comparative analysis of trait evaluations, which will then be followed by the investigation of selected negotiating profiles.

Analysis of Selected Negotiating Profiles

In our further analysis, we will concentrate on the negotiating profiles of those candidate countries which we found the most intriguing. These profiles illustrate the negotiating behavior and attitudes of the representatives of Malta, Poland, the Czech Republic, Estonia and Slovenia.

Malta

Maltese negotiators represented the smallest of all candidate countries, and the support for the EU enlargement process when the negotiations commenced was the third lowest (after Estonia and Latvia). They realized very well that they were dealing with a situation in which their negotiation power was relatively low (the lowest self-evaluations among the candidate countries). This was also the impres-sion conveyed by the negotiators representing the EU (the second lowest evalua-tion after Cyprus). Despite these clearly unfavorable facts, Malta was granted the second highest number of transitional agreements after Poland. We will now have a look at the negotiating profile of the Maltese negotiators visualized in Fig. 4 and try to find out its most interesting characteristics. Based on the results of our survey we would like to point out the following three characteristics:

1. Predominant win-win attitude – The highest self-evaluation and the third highest evaluation submitted by the respondents who had represented the interests of the EU.

2. High flexibility – Both in terms of the self-evaluations and the evaluations submitted by the EU counterparts, Malta scores highest.

3. Toughness in pursuing own interests – Both in terms of the self-evaluations and the evaluations submitted by the EU counterparts, Malta scores highest.

We believe that these results are excellent examples of the behavioral patterns that are generally very helpful in the value creation and value distribution phases of integrative negotiation.16 In particular, win-win attitude and high flexibility are necessary in the value creation phase of the negotiation, whereas toughness in pur-suing own interests becomes especially important in the value-claiming phase. The Maltese negotiators seem to have performed exceptionally well in both of them.

Van Boven and Thompson (2003) have studied how negotiators’ mental mod-els affect their performance. Among other points, this paper demonstrates that:

16) As mentioned earlier, we follow here the approach of Lax and Sebenius (1986), according to which there are two stages in integrative negotiations – value creation and value claiming.


– Negotiators who reach optimal outcomes have mental models that are more accurate about the other party’s underlying interest compared to negotia-tors who fail to reach optimal outcomes.

– The analysis of the negotiators who reach optimal outcomes reveal that they have mental models that are more similar to one another than negotiators who fail to reach optimal outcomes.

In short, negotiators who craft optimal outcomes are thinking along the same lines or know exactly along what lines their counterparts think, and are able to address it.

Although there are some differences between the concepts of mental model and negotiating profile, it is interesting to observe that our study yields similar results.17 The analysis of the Maltese and the EU15’s negotiating profiles demon-strate the following:

– Relatively high similarity between the Maltese self-evaluation and the evalu-ations submitted by the EU respondents – Fig. 4 illustrates the Maltese negotiating profile as it was seen by the Maltese negotiators themselves (the shaded area) compared to its perception by their EU counterparts (bold black line). The similarity between the evaluations of both parties is dem-onstrated by the distances between the angles of the shaded area and the bold black line. Comparing among all candidate countries, in the case of Malta, the sum of these distances is the lowest. The only elements of the negotiating profile where these two are somewhat more distant from each other are power and climate. The EU respondents thought that Maltese negotiating power was lower and the climate was even friendlier than the values in the Maltese self-evaluation.

– Similarity between the Maltese and the EU15’s negotiating profiles – Fig. 5 illustrates the negotiating profile of the negotiators representing the EU15 countries as it was seen by the EU negotiators themselves (the shaded area) compared to its perception by their Maltese counterparts (bold black line). The similarity between the negotiating profiles of both groups is manifested by the similarity in the shapes of the shaded areas in Figs. 5 and 6.

– Some similarity between the EU15’s self-evaluation and the evaluations submit-ted by the Maltese respondents – The similarity between the evaluations of both parties is demonstrated by the distances between the angles of the shaded area and the bold black line in Fig. 5. The shape of both figures is quite similar, and the distances are the fourth lowest among the candidate countries.18

17) The main difference between these concepts is that mental models refer to the causal relationships within the negotiation situation that guide negotiators’ behavior, whereas negotiating profiles capture the attitudes and behavior demonstrated in a particular setting or settings. 18) It must be mentioned, however, that the aggregated self-evaluations of the negotiators representing the EU15 include the self-evaluations of all EU15 negotiators who filled out our questionnaire, not only those who negotiated with Malta. Our underlying assumption was that the EU15’s negotiating profile would be uniform in all bilateral negotiations with the candidate countries.


Fig. 4. Negotiating profile of Malta.Source: Author.

Fig. 5. Negotiating profile of the EU15 with its evaluation submitted by the Maltese respondents.

Source: Author.


Table 2. Support for the EU Enlargement in the Candidate Countries

Country Average support during the accession

negotiations

Average support after signing the Accession

Treaty

Difference between two

periods1999–2002 2003–2005

Czech Republic 46% 44% –2%Estonia 31% 33% 2%Cyprus 49% 58% 9%Hungary 59% 55% –4%Poland 51% 52% 1%Slovenia 45% 49% 4%

2001–2002 2003–2005

Malta 41% 52% 11%Latvia 33% 39% 5%Lithuania 44% 57% 14%Slovakia 59% 54% –5%

Source: Author based on Eurobarometer.

Concluding this section, we would like to discuss briefly the negotiating strategy pursued by Malta in the EU enlargement negotiations. As mentioned at the beginning of this section, the support for the EU accession in Malta measured shortly after the opening of negotiations was the third lowest after Estonia and Latvia. However, as the negotiation progressed, the support rose, and right before the official accession, was the second highest after Lithuania. This may be an indication that the Maltese negotiating strategy combined with its outcomes well reflected the interest of the Maltese people. Table 2 presents the develop-ment of support for the EU enlargement in the candidate countries.

Generally, we think that the countries whose negotiating strategy reflected the interest of their constituencies observed an increase in support for EU enlarge-ment after the final accession conditions were set in the Treaty. Malta is among the countries that achieved the highest number of transitional agreements and at the same time noted the highest increase in support for EU enlargement.

The Czech Republic and Poland

The survey data suggests that two candidate countries stand out from the rest of the group in terms of some characteristics of their negotiating profile that we believe indicate the attitude and behavior of hard bargainers. These countries are


the Czech Republic and Poland. Selected aspects of their negotiating profiles will be explored in more detail below.

Let us first have a look at the negotiating profile of the Czech negotiators visualized in Fig. 6. Based on the results of our survey, we would like to point out three of them:

1. Highest win-lose attitude – The respondents who represented the interests of the EU in the enlargement negotiations considered the win-lose attitude of the Czech negotiators the highest of all candidate countries.

2. Toughness in pursuing own interests – Both in terms of the self-evaluations and the evaluations submitted by the EU counterparts, the Czech Republic scores third highest.

3. Highly dominant in terms of power – the EU respondents evaluated the Czech negotiators as the most dominant.

Additionally, a very interesting phenomenon can be observed in the differences between both parties’ evaluations of each other’s negotiating profiles. The dis-tances between the angles of the shaded area and the angles of the figure formed by the bold black line illustrating the Czech negotiating profile in Fig. 6 are the third longest in comparison to the negotiating profiles of other candidate coun-tries. This indicates that there are high differences between the interpretations of the negotiating attitudes and behavior demonstrated by the Czech negotiators. However, when we consider the negotiating profile of the EU15 presented in Fig. 7, the distances between the evaluations submitted by the respondents rep-resenting each party are the shortest. This means that the negotiating profile of the EU15 was interpreted by the Czech negotiators very similarly to the inten-tions of their counterparts, but the EU negotiators did not reciprocate with the same understanding of the Czech negotiating profile.

Let us compare these findings with a brief analysis of Polish negotiating pro-file visualized in Fig. 8. Based on the results of our survey we would like to point out two characteristics:

1. Relatively high win-lose attitude – The EU respondents considered the win-lose attitude of the Polish negotiators the second highest among all candidate countries.

2. Very low flexibility – Both in terms of the self-evaluations and the evalua-tions submitted by the EU counterparts, Poland is evaluated as the most repetitive candidate country.


Fig. 6. Negotiating profile of Czech Republic.Source: Author.

Fig. 7. Negotiating profile of the EU15 including the evaluation submitted by the Czech respondents.

Source: Author.


These characteristics are also generally typical for hard (positional) bargainers who are commonly considered less effective than principled negotiators.19 Despite this fact, Poland ended up with the highest number of transitional agreements. There is, however, a fundamental difference in the survey results concerning Poland and the Czech Republic that can at least partially explain this phenomenon. Although the negotiating profiles of the Polish negotiators and their EU counter-parts differ substantially, in both cases they were well understood by each party. As we can observe in Figs. 8 and 9, the distances between the areas illustrating the perceptions of Polish and EU 15 negotiating profiles are very short. In fact, in both cases they are the second shortest distances when compared with all other evalua-tions of the EU enlargement negotiation participants. This seems to be another example supporting the results of Van Boven and Thompson (2003) stating that negotiators who have mental models that are more accurate about the other party’s underlying interest reach better outcomes than the ones who do not. This would mean that despite the differences between the negotiating profiles of the negotiating partners, mutual understanding will allow them to close better deals.

Estonia and Slovenia

We conclude our analysis of the candidate countries’ negotiating profiles with Estonia and Slovenia, whose profiles are illustrated in Figs. 10 and 12 respectively. In both cases, we can observe large differences between the candidate countries’ self-evaluations illustrated by the shaded areas and their perceptions reflected by the evaluations submitted by the EU respondents depicted by the bold black lines. In the case of Slovenia (Fig. 12), the distance between both areas is the longest, and in the case of Estonia (Fig. 10), the second longest among all candi-date countries. In both Figures, the aggregated evaluations submitted by the EU respondents are generally much more generous than the aggregated self-evalua-tions of the negotiators representing each country. Additionally, this observation can be combined with the fact that Estonia and Slovenia ended up with the low-est number of transitional agreements. We believe that there may be at least four explanations for these phenomena:

1. Estonia and Slovenia did not need many transitional agreements and did not insist on them in the accession negotiation.

2. Estonia and Slovenia needed transitional agreements but did not insist as hard as the other countries.

19) The distinction between hard (positional) bargainers and principled negotiators was introduced by Roger Fisher and William Ury in Getting to Yes, first published in 1981. Principled negotiation is the name given to the interest-based approach guided by four fundamental principles: 1) separate the people from the problem, 2) focus on interests, not positions, 3) invent options for mutual gain, and 4) insist on objective criteria. Hard (positional) bargainers focus on articulating and defending their positions rather than on exploring mutual interests and searching for value creating solutions.


Fig. 8. Negotiating profile of Poland.Source: Author.

Fig. 9. Negotiating profile of the EU15 with its evaluation submitted by the Polish respondents.

Source: Author.


Fig. 10. Negotiating profile of Estonia.Source: Author.

Fig. 11. Negotiating profile of the EU15 with its evaluation submitted by the Estonian respondents.

Source: Author.


3. Estonia and Slovenia needed transitional agreements and insisted on them, but their negotiating attitude and behavior was to a large extent positively misinterpreted by their counterparts.

4. Estonia and Slovenia needed transitional agreements and insisted on them, but their demands were denied by the EU negotiators.

If we compare these results with each country’s evaluations of the EU15’s negoti-ating profile depicted in Figs. 11 and 13, we may arrive at the conclusion that the explanations may be different in each case. The evaluations of the Estonian nego-tiators are relatively close to the self-evaluations of their EU counterparts. The sum of distances between the angles of both polygons in Fig. 11 is the third low-est of all candidate countries. The sum of the distances in Fig. 13 illustrating the same values from the evaluations of the Slovenian negotiators is the second high-est. Moreover, these values lie mostly within the shaded area illustrating the self-evaluation of the EU negotiators, which implies that the Slovenian respondents perceived them as tougher, more dominant, formal, repetitive, etc. than they per-ceived themselves. Based on this, we can presume that Estonia probably did not need many transitional agreements and did not insist on them in the accession negotiation, whereas Slovenia, who most likely needed transitional agreements, insisted on them, but its efforts were positively misinterpreted and some of the demands were denied.

In concluding this section, let us discuss the outlines of the Estonian negotia-tion strategy that can be deduced from the survey data. At the beginning of the accession negotiation, Estonia was the candidate country with the lowest sup-port for the EU enlargement. However, contrary to Malta, Estonia decided not to insist on many transitional agreements. This strategy cannot be considered successful in terms of gaining public support for the enlargement, which throughout the whole negotiation process and until the official accession date did not grow substantially and remained the lowest of all candidate countries. A speculative question that can be raised here is whether this situation could not have been improved had Estonia implemented a strategy similar to the Maltese one. We tend to believe that the answer is positive and that additional transi-tional agreements would have sent an important signal to the Estonian people that the EU acknowledges their interests, cares about their concerns, and is will-ing to compromise to ensure a smooth accession process.

Concluding Remarks

The goal of this article was to present and discuss the key findings from our study of negotiating behavior and attitudes conducted among the politicians and diplomats representing the parties in the EU accession negotiations. Our main


Fig. 12. Negotiating profile of Slovenia.Source: Author.

Fig. 13. Negotiating profile of the EU15 with its evaluation submitted by the Slovenian respondents.

Source: Author.


contributions can be divided into two groups. First, this research presents an alternative method of capturing negotiating attitudes and behavior, namely by introducing the concept of negotiating profiles together with a way of measuring and mapping them. This method might be especially useful in research on inter-national and/or cross-cultural negotiation where it could be used for identifying the profiles of negotiation participants, measuring and comparing the differences between them, as well as for comparing parties’ perceptions of their profiles.

Second, this study applied this method to the case of the fifth round of Euro-pean Union enlargement negotiations. The results show clearly the differences (and similarities) in negotiating behavior and attitudes among negotiation par-ticipants. They also identify the dimensions of negotiating profiles in which the differences between self-evaluations and the evaluation of the negotiating part-ner were most significant. Based on these results, we observed that the profile characteristics of the countries that managed to achieve the best outcomes in the enlargement negotiations seem to support the findings of Van Boven and Thompson (2003). This means that either the profiles of negotiating parties are similar to each other or at least one party has a perception of the other party’s negotiating profile that is similar to that party’s self-evaluation.

Our study of the negotiating profiles of the EU enlargement negotiation par-ticipants certainly has many caveats.20 These caveats are connected with:

– The form of our study- online survey with all its disadvantages– The subjectivity in the selection of traits– The size and the uneven geographical distribution of the respondent

groups21

– The static character of the result despite dynamic negotiations

We believe that the method introduced and applied in this paper may still need some refinements preceded by its tests it in various laboratory experiments and/or field studies. More research is also needed to check the relevance of our mod-el’s dimensions and their measurements. Once perfected, however, this method may become a valuable tool in research on international and cross-cultural negotiations.

20) A more detailed discussion can be found in Smolinski (2008).21) Because the biggest part of survey respondents negotiating on behalf of the EU15 countries decided to evaluate the Polish negotiating profile (23%), it is possible that their aggregated self-evaluations were to a large extent influenced by the behavior and attitudes they demonstrated in negotiations with Poland.


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Attitudes and Negotiation Profiles Enlargement Smolinski October 2010

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