The Role of Negotiation in Planning, Management, and Policy Analysis

Abstract

Over the past two decades planners, analysts, and managers have all been urged to become more involved in the actual process of negotiation that surrounds all public policymaking. The article both summarizes the literature on how negotiation is emerging as a central feature of these three professions and provides three cases, all derived from litigation, in which the role of negotiator is required of the technician or neutral advisor. The article then suggests what is at stake when negotiation is adopted as a primary professional role.