{"id":14800,"date":"2015-01-29T11:07:27","date_gmt":"2015-01-29T16:07:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=14800"},"modified":"2015-01-29T11:07:27","modified_gmt":"2015-01-29T16:07:27","slug":"greece-germany-getting-yes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=14800","title":{"rendered":"Greece and Germany and getting to yes"},"content":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0situation involving Greece and the European Union is a complex game, with numerous players and potentially many phases. Just as an example,\u00a0voters in Spain are players who will have a chance to choose the\u00a0new government in December; they may opt to support Podemos, the relatively left-wing Spanish party, if they think that the Greeks did well by choosing Syriza last week.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless,\u00a0we can dramatically simplify the\u00a0game to have\u00a0two key players: Greek\u00a0Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Tsipras can accept some level of debt relief, from zero to 100%, or walk out of the Euro. Merkel can support some level of debt relief, or let Greece walk.<\/p>\n

There are principles on both sides. My sympathies lie\u00a0much closer to Syriza, on the grounds that: austerity is generally bad economics; Greek residents count for as much (morally) as\u00a0Northern Europeans; and the Greek meltdown, although abetted by poor national governance<\/a>, was mainly a consequence of neoliberal economic policies driven by Germany and other Northern economies in their interests. However,\u00a0a German Christian Democrat or a British Tory could make a sincere case against leniency, based on moral hazard, the virtues of fiscal responsibility, Greeks’ responsibility for Greek debt, and other such arguments.<\/p>\n

My suggestion of the day is based on\u00a0Getting to YES: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In,<\/em>\u00a0the\u00a01981 best-seller by\u00a0Roger Fisher and William L. Ury. It is a popular and breezy book but based on some serious analysis. Fisher and Ury present two forms of positional\u00a0bargainin<\/em>g in this table:<\/p>\n

\"FisherandUry\"<\/p>\n

In this case, Mr. Tsipras could opt to be hard or soft in his approach to the European Central Bank and other key European players. Fisher and Ury would predict that either<\/em> approach will\u00a0yield a bad outcome for Greece and for Europe as a whole, because people have systematic weaknesses that make positional bargaining go badly, whether the players opt to be nice or tough. By the way, that\u00a0prediction holds even if Mr. Tsipras is completely correct on all matters of principle: this is a game, not a seminar.<\/p>\n

Instead, Fisher and Ury propose “negotiation on the merits,” which has four key features:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. “Separate the people from the problem.” Create settings in which negotiators\u00a0who have not publicly defined one another as adversaries\u00a0are asked to address the problem and propose solutions.<\/li>\n
  2. Interests: Drop the debate about principles (ban words like “neoliberalism” and “fiscal responsibility”) and just try to maximize the outcomes for the various parties.<\/li>\n
  3. Multiply options: Don’t be satisfied with the choices that seem to confront the players right now, e.g., Greece either leaves or stays in the Eurozone. Instead, deliberately brainstorm a whole range of options. Could a massive new EU investment in some public good, such as climate mitigation, be designed especially to benefit Greece? Could a new loan package be offered simultaneously to Portugal, Spain, and Greece? (etc.)<\/li>\n
  4. Criteria: bring\u00a0in a neutral party\u00a0to establish concretely measurable\u00a0objectives. \u00a0Don’t ask how much each player\u00a0must (or should) give up, but rather\u00a0whether the agreement maximizes these objectives.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    There is much more in the book, but this offers a flavor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The\u00a0situation involving Greece and the European Union is a complex game, with numerous players and potentially many phases. Just as an example,\u00a0voters in Spain are players who will have a chance to choose the\u00a0new government in December; they may opt to support Podemos, the relatively left-wing Spanish party, if they think that the Greeks did […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-democratic-reform-overseas","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14800"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14823,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14800\/revisions\/14823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}