The United States government recently shut down for 69 hours after Congress failed to come to an agreement to fund the 2018 fiscal year. To end the shutdown, lawmakers signed a continuing resolution (a short-term funding vehicle) that will support the government until February 8, but with little resolution on the issues that divided Congress in January, including immigration policy and the budget, another shutdown appears to be looming.
Having a hard time making sense of how the negotiation is playing out? A few key negotiation terms can help you understand if and how the lawmakers will come to a bipartisan compromise.
BATNA: An acronym for “best alternative to a negotiated agreement,” BATNA is the alternative course of action if a negotiation fails. In this case, the BATNA is in fact the only alternative scenario. If Congress cannot come to an agreement, the government will be unfunded and cease to function. This has wide-ranging implications for United States citizens, such as hundreds of thousands of government employees will be furloughed, national parks will close, and passports and visas will not be processed.
In all negotiations, it is important to understand your BATNA as well as your counterpart’s to help craft your strategy. Your BATNA acts as a back-up plan and helps you determine how much you care about reaching an agreement.
Walkaway: The point at which you walk away from a negotiation. Your walkaway is influenced by your BATNA but is not the same thing. For example, say you want to sell your car, and the market price is $10,000. However, you’d prefer to sell to your neighbors and are willing to give a discount of $1,000. In this scenario, your walkaway is $9,000 ($10,000 market price – $1,000 discount), even though you could make $10,000 elsewhere.
In the ongoing Congress negotiation, neither party has overtly identified their walkway, or the point at which they will refuse to sign an agreement and force another shutdown. We do know that Democrats are fighting for a path to citizenship for DACA recipients, or "Dreamers," while the Republicans seek more aggressive immigration policies including the funding of a border wall between the United States and Mexico. We will have to wait and see what kind of compromise satisfies both parties.
ZOPA: An acronym for “zone of possible agreement,” ZOPA is a set of mutually acceptable agreements. The bounds of the ZOPA are each party’s walkaway. The ZOPA can sometimes be a monetary range (for example, if you’re negotiating your salary with your employer), but in this case it is far more nuanced. Several issues are at stake, including immigration reform and funding for the 2018 fiscal year. For the two parties to agree, it is likely each side will have to give and take on some key issues to settle.
Stretch Goal: Your best case scenario, and what you should be aiming for when you craft your negotiation strategy. Just as the walkway is your minimally acceptable deal, your stretch goal is the opposite: the best you can hope to achieve given the circumstances. For example, Republicans want to increase defense spending amount by twice as much as nondefense spending. Democrats, on the other hand, want defense and nondefense spending to increase by the same amount. Each of these is the stretch goal for the respective party, but in reality, they will most likely come to an agreement somewhere in between.
Offers and Counteroffers: Proposals that each party makes to the other during a negotiation. Depending on how the negotiation is going, these offers and responses can even change during the course of a negotiation. For example, Democrat Chuck Schumer initially offered $25 billion for new border security if Dreamers were protected. However, he rescinded the offer after the first shutdown, and now is saying that such a compromise is off the table.