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Negotiation, Persuasion and Argument
CHRIS PROVIS
School of International Business University of South Australia North Terrace Adelaide 5000, Australia E-mail: chris.provis@unisa.edu.au

ABSTRACT: Argument is often taken to deal with conflicting opinion or belief, while negotiation deals with conflicting goals or interests. It is widely accepted that argument ought to comply with someprinciples or norms. On the other hand, negotiation and bargaining involve concession exchange and tactical use of power, which may be contrasted with attempts to convince others through argument. However, there are cases where it is difficult to draw a clear distinction between bargaining and argument: notably cases where negotiators persuade others through ‘framing’ and cases where the aims ofnegotiation have to do with public assertion and acceptance. Those cases suggest that the distinction between negotiation and argument is not absolute, and this raises the question whether rules about what is acceptable in argument and rules about what is acceptable in negotiation can all be viewed as instances of more general common norms about human interaction. KEY WORDS: argument, assertion,bargaining, concession exchange, framing, negotiation, persuasion, rationality

NEGOTIATION, BARGAINING AND ARGUMENT

We tend to think of ‘argument’ as a process that deals with beliefs and opinions (e.g. van Eemeren and Grootendorst, 1996, p. 10). There has been long-standing discussion about the extent to which argument can yield conclusions about what to do, accepting that the standard oruncontroversial use of argument is to reach conclusions about matters of fact (see e.g. Toulmin, 1950; Habermas, 1983). But whatever the scope of argument may be, significant effort has gone into identifying principles or norms that can be used to evaluate arguments (e.g. van Eemeren and Grootendorst, 1996, pp. 10–13). Such principles or norms can be used to call into question either actions by individualsthat constitute part of the process of argument, or outcomes of the process, the conclusions that it leads to. On the other hand, ‘negotiation’ is a process that certainly leads to decisions about what to do, but much less attention has been given to whether there are principles or norms that that apply to the process. While ‘negotiation’ may sometimes be distinguished from ‘bargaining’, it is notuncommon for those terms to be used interchangeably (e.g. Lewicki et al., 1994, p. 1), and bargaining certainly tends to involve threats, deception and other sorts of tactics that would normally be excluded by principles of
Argumentation 18: 95–112, 2004.  2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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CHRIS PROVIS

argumentation (see e.g. Schelling, 1980; Walton andMcKersie, 1991, chap. 3). Elster considers the possibility that rational discussion might be considered a form of bargaining, but notes that the different principles and norms that seem to apply give reason to maintain a distinction. He says:
Bargaining must be distinguished from attempts to reach agreement by rational discussion. One way of characterizing the latter is as bargaining in whichstrategic misrepresentation and other forms of jockeying for position are not allowed. Although this may capture part of the idea of rational discussion, it gives too much weight to the bargaining power of the parties. In rational discussion, the only thing supposed to count is the ‘power of the better argument’, including arguments that are radically dissociated from the bargaining power of theparties. . . . Bargaining, by contrast, takes account of all actual features of the parties (1989, pp. 50–51).

The association of ‘argument’ with ‘rational discussion’ is a well-established one: for example, ‘we shall mean by “argument” that element in our expressions which carries the power to convince people in rational discussion’ (Naess, 1966, p. 97). In any case, it seems clear that those...