Certificate Course in Negotiation

Certificate Course in Negotiation

Course Sequence

This course in negotiation is the second in a series produced by the Education and Training Center of the United States Institute of Peace. It follows our course in conflict analysis and precedes our course inmediation. Although our courses may be taken in any sequence, we've designed them so that ideas and concepts covered in one course are built upon in the courses that follow. We strongly recommend that the conflict analysis course be taken before this one, and this course in negotiation before the course in mediation.

Conflict Analysis

In the conflict analysis course, we presented the Curve of Conflict,4 which shows how the use of force in violent conflict tends to rise and fall over time, how to recognize different phases of conflict, and how to characterize conflict management and peacebuilding efforts used in different phases.

Negotiation is a principal tool used in conflict management and resolution. Negotiation can be used to prevent violence before it has taken hold (upward slope of the curve), to stop violence once it has begun (top of the curve), and to prevent its recurrence and create conditions for a lasting peace in the aftermath of violence (downward slope of the curve). In this course, we will discuss how the context for negotiation can vary depending on a conflict's phase.

In the conflict analysis course, we also introduced a framework to help dissect a conflict into fundamental component parts, including its Actors, Issues, Root Causes, Scope, Resources, Relationships, and History of Peacemaking Efforts.5 In this course, we'll show how each of these can affect and be affected by efforts at negotiation.