Negotiating Styles of the Minor Parties in Multilateral Peace Negotiations: Greece and Turkey at the Lausanne Peace Conference, 1922-1923

The objective of this study has been to analyze the process of and the outcome for minor parties in multi-lateral peace negotiations. The emphasis has been on understanding how these processes and outcomes develop in conditions of coalition-based power symmetry and asymmetry. The minor party's negotiation behavior has also been analyzed in a unitary power symmetry negotiating situation. The assumption throughout has been that the power symmetry and asymmetry would have an effect on the negotiating styles and the outcomes of the minor parties. It has also been hypothesized that being a member of a coalition would have a different impact on the negotiation behavior and the outcome of the minor parties than in situations where they negotiate alone.

The results showed that the effect of power symmetry and asymmetry was clearly significant in perception analysis. In addition, analysis of simulation "disagree" scores, the speed of the resolution, outcome satisfaction, future relations showed significant differences between Conditions. The most important common denominator among these results was: Participants in single party versus single party Conditions rated in a more cooperative way than in any other Condition. The results showed that power asymmetry has a negative effect in achieving cooperative outcomes. Power symmetry produces best results when both sides of the symmetry is composed by single parties. Complex symmetry negotiation situations where the number of parties increases and when the two parts of the symmetry are composed of an asymmetric coalition (one minor, one powerful party) again does not promote cooperative results. Differences between conditions in number of issues resolved, concessions made, simulation "hard" scores, real world "disagree" scores, target and resistance point analysis were not significant. There were both similarities and differences when real world and simulation data were compared.