Visit Talks Agreements

Visits. Talks. Agreements

Today I would like to speak about negotiations in international relations.

Negotiation is a dialogue between two or more people or parties, intended to reach an understanding, resolve point of difference, or gain advantage in outcome of dialogue, to produce an agreement upon courses of action, to bargain for individual or collective advantage, to craft outcomes to satisfy various interests of two person/ parties involved in negotiation process. Negotiation occurs in different spheres: business, non-profit organizations, government branches, legal proceedings, among nations and in personal situations.

Depending on the level of negotiations several types of negotiations can be distinguished. Political negotiations are so called summit negotiations, e.g. are conducted directly involving participation of Heads of States and Governments, Foreign Ministers who are entitled to make decisions freely themselves according to the national interests. Diplomatic negotiations are conducted on the level of representatives, special experts who are bounded with strict instructions and are not entitled to make decisions themselves. Also depending on the number of participants negotiations can be defined as bilateral (2 parties) and multilateral (more than 2 participants). Negotiations can be direct or indirect (with the help of mediators), as well as one-time and renewable.

The structure of negotiations includes 2 stages: preparatory (goals, tasks, positions, participants) and negotiation itself (statement of positions, argumentation of positions, concord of positions and working-out of agreements).

When we speak about visits, talks and agreements we mean three component parts of international relations as relations among states within the international system, including the roles of states, intergovernmental organizations, non-governmental organizations and multinational corporations.

A visit is an act of going to see a...