Patience and Negotiation in an Autocracy

Negotiation is a technical procedure in which many factors might be involved. Some of the main components in a negotiation are the benefit of each party in the deal, the profession of the negotiators, the power of each party, and the mindset of the involved people either at the negotiation table or behind the curtains.

During the current article, the mindset of the involved people in the negotiations will be discussed in the context of an autocratic country. The following-mentioned elements might not be critical in a regular fair negotiation. However, in the context of a dark environment for a negotiator, they are vital, and handling them is the only path to having a deal. It is worth mentioning the content of this article discusses private sector vs. governmental entities negotiations. The discussion has three components: personal gain for the negotiator, lack of trust, and ideology.

Personal Benefits in an Official Deal

An autocratic regime has different types of autocrats. For example, one can be named president, elected in the best-case scenario, and appointed in a like-election process in the worst case. The president will assign his trusted people to high-rank positions, and they know that the next president will remove them. Such an approach and the low level of official workers’ salaries give them a short period of a few years to gain as much as they can to be safe during their jobless time. Such a situation pushes the governmental negotiators who are high-rank managers in different organizations to seek personal benefits during the negotiations, especially with the private sector.

In many situations, the personal north of an official negotiator is different from the real north of the government. They try to move the discussion to a wrong turn which will not benefit the government and sometimes for the private sector. Unquestionably, the official power gives such negotiators more flexibility to put pressure on the other party.

Lack of Trust

There is always a mindset that the private sector wants to destroy the official negotiator and public fares and gain maximum benefit for the private businesses in any means. Such a mindset results in trust between the parties, and government representatives always discuss with zero trust. Building trust is a vital element to reach an agreement which in the above-mentioned situation takes a considerable amount of time for both parties. As the private sector needs the accords to continue or start a legal business, the emotional pressure for the private party is much higher to clause the deal.

Ideology

The combination of autocracy and ideology is a dangerous recipe for a country's healthy private sector. In some circumstances, the activity of the private sector or foreign investors in a country would be considered as a capitalistic approach which is against the lessons of many religions. The ideology of government officers can stop the negotiation, even block any proposal or future negotiations. Alignment of the private sector’s proposal with the ideology of the other party is a must.

Patience

Keeping the negotiation session alive or having future meetings to move the steps forward in an autocratic country needs a great deal of endurance. Understanding different perspectives of the official party representative are the key to success.

If you wait, you can make sweets with sour grape, An Iranian Proverb

The negotiator receives personal requests from the government side. The requests might vary from a specific amount of money, any asset, or even asking the private sector to hire their relatives. Naturally, such requests put pressure on the other party. As the request is not legal, there is a high probability of a harsh response by the private sector representative, which terminates the negotiation. However, ignoring the request, postponing the talk about the request to another time, and continuing the main discussion could be the best move in such situations.

Trust cannot be built in an hour. Long technical discussions, explaining the goals of the negotiation, and reaching common ground would be needed to create mutual trust between the parties. There might be negative feelings, sarcastic phrases by official party representatives, and reluctance to share information for a considerable amount of time. The establishment of the trust will smooth the discussion and open the guard of the parties.

Ideology is a hinder to a negotiation. Religious believes and deep political tendencies are barriers to have a shared goal. In many situations, the ideology of a party puts the other one on the list of enemies. Therefore, any agreement with the other party can be considered a betrayal of the ideology of the negotiator. The only way to succeed in the discussion is to actively listen to the negotiator and find the right place for the goals in the ideology of the other party. Resistance is a natural response of a human mind to an ideology that is not logical or acceptable; following the natural responses in the context of negotiation results in a fight between the parties with different ideologies.

Conclusion

There is a lot of stress and tension in any negotiation. However, autocracy injects another level of difficulty into a negotiation which needs to be handled by the negotiators. Most of the discussed topics can ruin the whole deal, and the only way forward in such discussions is patience. Wating for more information, understanding, and the right moment to discuss topics is the winner card of a talk.