In late 2018, then-president Donald Trump refused to sign an appropriations bill to fund the U.S. federal government for the 2019 fiscal year that lacked funding for a wall on the Mexican border. The standoff with congressional Democrats that followed triggered a 35-day shutdown from December 22, 2018, to January 25, 2019. The devastating shutdown—to date, the longest in U.S. history—left hundreds of thousands of federal employees unpaid, suspended vital services, and damaged the U.S. economy.
During the shutdown, experts at the Program on Negotiation (PON) offered advice on how the parties might move beyond impasse in negotiation. Ultimately, Trump backed down and allowed the appropriations bill to pass without wall funding or any other significant concessions from Democrats. Yet today, the strategies suggested below for resolving these government negotiations could help you and your organization move beyond impasse in negotiation.
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Appeal to a bigger tribe
In his book Negotiating the Nonnegotiable: How to Resolve Your Most Emotionally Charged Conflicts, Daniel Shapiro, founder and director of the Harvard International Negotiation Program, describes the “tribes effect”—the innate tendency of groups to pit their identity against that of other groups. The resulting us-versus-them mindset leads us to devalue others’ viewpoints simply because they’re not our own.
“U.S. politics has become tribal,” Shapiro told PON during the 2018-2019 shutdown. “There’s the Democratic tribe, the Republican tribe, and the Trump tribe.” Shapiro identified three characteristics of conflict between tribes: “First, it’s adversarial. Second, it’s self-righteous: Each side believes it’s right and that legitimacy is on its side. Third, it’s insular: We close our ears and argue our side.” The impasse in Washington checked all these boxes. “Each side takes a stance and refuses to back down,” Shapiro said. “Threats, demands, and possible deception contribute to an unsurprising escalatory cycle.”
Unfortunately, loyalty to the tribe often leads to impasse in negotiation. To break free from their tribal mindset, parties need recognize that they all belong to a bigger tribe—in this case, the United States. “They need to emphasize that they’re all in this together,” said Shapiro. “None of them should want to harm the citizens of the United States.”
Help them save face
When negotiators have dug in on an issue and reached impasse in negotiation, they typically fear that compromising would signal weakness in the eyes of supporters, according to Simmons School of Management professor emerita Deborah Kolb. Respecting a counterpart’s dignity, which includes conveying that you won’t embarrass or undermine them, lays the groundwork for mutual trust.
The public nature of the budget talks and impasse in Washington made it especially difficult for Trump and the Democrats to identify face-saving solutions. As a result, they played to their respective bases rather than build bridges. During an Oval Office sparring match on December 11, 2018, for example, then–House speaker Nancy Pelosi and then–Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer scored political points by persuading Trump to take ownership of any shutdown that might occur—but in the process, reduced everyone’s motivation to reach agreement.
An important step in allowing a counterpart a “graceful retreat” from hard bargaining is to take talks private, said Kolb. Only in privacy will parties feel comfortable brainstorming tradeoffs and concessions.
Kolb also recommended switching out key players to try to break an impasse. In late 2012, when the White House and Congress faced a perilous “fiscal cliff” deadline for reaching a deal on the federal deficit, a breakthrough came only when then–vice president Joe Biden replaced Senate majority leader Harry Reid as the lead Democratic negotiator in talks with Mitch McConnell, then the Senate minority leader. Biden and McConnell had hashed out the last big federal-tax compromise in 2010 together and were able to do so again. Parties might also bring in a neutral third party, such as a mediator, to promote listening and put a stop to the blame game, says Kolb.
To break an impasse in negotiation, try value-creating moves
Once a small group of key players is at the table, how can they find common ground? One effective negotiation strategy might be to add an issue that “both sides want but neither has been able to get” to the mix of issues, Harvard Business School professor James Sebenius recommended in an article for the Hill during the shutdown.
At the time, Democratic and Republican leaders, including Trump, all enthusiastically supported giving the federal government the right to negotiate prescription drug prices for Medicare beneficiaries with pharmaceutical companies, as did voters, Sebenius noted. Adding such a popular proposal to a budget deal might have made Trump more amenable to altering wall funding to include other border security measures supported by Democrats, such as enhanced technology. The two sides might then have been able to do a deal on wall funding and a path to citizenship for the Dreamers (younger residents brought to the United States as children).
What if Trump refused such a deal? Having shown “willingness to compromise in return for popular policies,” wrote Sebenius, could have positioned themselves as the party of yes.
What other strategies have you found to be useful for moving beyond impasse in negotiation?
Claim your FREE copy: Negotiation Skills
Build powerful negotiation skills and become a better dealmaker and leader. Download our FREE special report, Negotiation Skills: Negotiation Strategies and Negotiation Techniques to Help You Become a Better Negotiator, from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.
