NIFK17002U Conflict Analysis and Negotiation Design

Most MSc candidates working with the environment, land use, urban planning or e.g. natural resource management will professionally be part of public policy decision making - where scientific knowledge will be negotiated against values, concerns and conflicting interests in the public. To competently manouver in such complex landscapes and conflictual decision spaces one must handle relevant theory and tools to analyse the situation and identify the critical features that must be addressed. The analysis forms the basis for meaningful design of multiparty negotiations, mediation initiatives and other possible actions or interventions.

This course presents and discusses relevant theories across disciplines and integrates them into a comprehensive, analytical framework (the Unifying Negotiaton Framework). The students will use the framework on a real-life environmental conflict case of their own choice. The student will identify the critical features of the situation and design a balanced negotiation process proposal tailored to address the specific challenges of the chosen conflict situation.

The course content is distributed at two distinctly different levels: A) the personal level, and B) the process level:

A) The emphasis on the personal level comes from the recognition that the environment, land use/urban planning and natural resource management professions involve an inevitable component of conflict-laden decisionmaking. Often they act in conflicted situations be it as part of political decision making, public or private management or in relation to an involved, often antagonistic general public - which requires certain personal skills and self awareness. The course presents current theory and an analytical framework on how to constructively manage complex and conflict laden public policy and planning situations - as seen from a public planning or private organization or stakeholder perspective. The course address the following specific themes: Discourse, Culture, Institutions, Power, Capacity, Incentives, Cognition and a number of Social Psychological Factors - all of importance for process design and personal development of facilitation skills. Further, the role of learning, expert knowledge as well as local/indigenous knowledge is imphasized. The course provides theory, analytical tools and personal skills for the students. The students project work starts with an initial context assessment by use of the analytical framework. Guided by their assessment the students get a personal experience with selected theories and tools in order to analyse and develop appropriate strategies and design culturally sensitive processes for the specific situation at hand. To supplement this hands-on experience from project work a series of lectures presents an overview over the course theory, analytical frameworks and tools. Student seminars, group-exercises, discussions or role plays in combination with individual work provide a basis for students personal development and reflection on own skills, capabilities and potentials with regard to conflict analysis and management.

B) The second level that this course operates on addresses culturally appropriate process design. The participants in this course will come from many different countries with many different political systems. It is not possible to teach them a universal approach to conflict management that will be equally successful in all of the countries in which they may be employed. The second major focus of the course is therefore to develop in the students the awareness of political culture and the ways in which that context must inform their efforts to design processes that can integrate complex scientific issues and sensitive social values is a way that leads to innovative outcomes in natural resource decision making. The course uses concrete cases from natural resource management in Euro-American as well as developing countries contexts. Through exercises and project work the students can try various tools and approaches to conflict assessment, context analysis and development of context specific management strategies. Part of the analysis also concerns social psychological factors as well as cognitive aspects of the situation and the peculiar groups/individuals involved. A series of broad principles will be a focal point of the course, but the students’ core learning task will be to apply those principles in a flexible and integrative fashion to a case of their choosing.

The course design and objectives have been constructed to response to the unique challenges and learning opportunity that a broadly international student population creates. The specific content will to some degree be adapted to the expressed learning needs and particular interests of the actual group of students and the political and institutional cultures they represent.