Beyond Machiavelli: Tools for Coping with Conflict

In this revolutionary book, the mastermind behind Getting to Yes and Director of the Harvard Negotiation Project spells out basic techniques for dealing with conflict and applies them to one international problem after another, from the Middle East to Central Europe to Japan.

Conflict is a growth industry, as a glance at the daily paper or the nightly news tells us. Trade wars, global warming, ethnic strife, refugee crises—as the world draws closer together on a thousand fronts, trouble erupts, clashes occur, and new problems arise. What's wrong, and what can be done about it? This cogent book offers a clear approach for dealing with conflicting interests of any kind.

Roger Fisher, the world-renowned master of negotiation, with two of his leading colleagues—Elizabeth Kopelman and Andrea Kupfer Schneider—provides a step-by-step process for dealing with the persistent and complex disputes that mark our changing, often dangerous world. Instead of simply asking why things work—or don't—the authors ask: how can we affect the way things work? They break conflicts into manageable components and advance a process for problemsolving. Arguing that we need to move beyond oneshot "solutions" toward a constructive way of dealing with differences, they lay out tools for conflict analysis and practical applications for those tools in the international arena.

The authors also show that tactics which successfully influence an adversary are equally applicable to the task of persuading an employer, a community official, or a business associate. Originally drafted as a handbook for the diplomats and senior officials advised by Fisher and his colleagues, this succinct, lucid, and effective book is the primer about the new paradigm in conflict management.

Cindy Fazzi - Dispute Resolution Journal

Anybody who reads the newspaper headlines and understands that conflicts--whether in the Middle East, the former Yugoslavia or right in his or her neighborhood--cause tremendous human suffering can appreciate this book...[It] is an important tool for civic and government leaders, students, academics and researchers, dispute resolution practitioners, journalists, diplomats, and anybody who cares to give conflict resolution a serious thought.

Roger Fisher is Samuel Williston Professor of Law, Emeritus, Harvard Law School and founder of the Harvard Negotiation Project. He is also a founder of Conflict Management, Inc., and the Conflict Management Group, two consulting organizations devoted to strategic advice and negotiation training.

Elizabeth Borgwardt is Associate Professor of History at Washington University in St. Louis.

Andrea Kupfer Schneider is on the faculty of Marquette University Law School. She practices law with the Washington, D.C., firm of Arent, Fox, Kintner & Plotkin. A graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, she has taught at the Academy of European Law in Florence.