Negotiating effectively : Justice in international environmental negotiations

Are negotiators who rely on justice principles in the process of bargain- ing and drafting agreements more—or rather less—effective than others? This article examines whether adherence to principles of procedural and distributive justice in negotiations contributes to more effective results, with a focus on international envi- ronmental negotiations. Effectiveness is defined in terms of the extent of agreement (among parties and on issues), time to reach agreement, and comprehensiveness of the agreement. A set of hypotheses is evaluated on a selection of bilateral and mul- tilateral cases of environmental negotiations, using statistical methods. The analyses reveal that adherence to principles of procedural justice contributes to more effective results in multilateral environmental negotiations. These principles are found to hin- der effectiveness in the bilateral cases. On the other hand, adherence to principles of distributive justice is only moderately related to effectiveness in both the bilateral and multilateral cases. Justice and international negotiation