Multi-Party Negotiation When Agents Have Subjective Estimates of Bargaining Powers

This paper presents a method for generating Pareto-optimal solutions in multi-party negotiations. In this iterative method, decision makers (DMs) formulate proposals that yield a minimum payoff to their opponents. Each proposal belongs to the efficient frontier, DMs try to adjust to a common one. In this setting, each DM is supposed to have a given bargaining power. More precisely each DM is supposed to have a subjective estimate of the power of the different parties. We study the convergence of the method, and provide examples where there is no possible agreement resulting from it.

National and Provincial Influences on Public Sector Pay: Northern Ireland after 1945

This article examines the national and regional pressures in Northern Ireland in the post-war period for parity in public sector pay with the rest of the UK. Northern Ireland had a devolved legislature and government within the UK from 192 1 and was constitutionality in all essentially federal relationship with the rest of the UK. However, the Stormont Government chose to use legislative devolution to minimize policy differences with the rest of the UK. The article highlights the national industrial relations environment as the backdrop for provincial developments in pay setting. It establishes the important role Played by the Social Services Agreement negotiated with the Labour Government at Westminster in triggering the principle of parity in public sector pay in the early post-war years. The principle of pay parity subsequently became a benchmark for regional trade union coercive comparisons in collective bargaining across the devolved public sector. The article highlights the Policy relevance of these developments both to the UK Treasury and to devolved Governments in the UK, as they address the issue of regional public sector pay.

Horowitz’s Theory of Ethnic Party Competition and the Case of the SDLP, 1970-79

Donald Horowitz's theory of ethnic conflict suggests that a political party operating in a deeply divided society can be effected by a centrifugal pull even when it is not subject to formal electoral competition. This idea can be applied to Northern Ireland's SDLP in the 1970s, when the party faced no credible electoral rival within its primary political constituency. Doing so helps to explain why the SDLP failed in its original objective of mobilizing a cross-community constituency, and instead became what Horowitz terms an “ethnically based party,” representing the interests of only one side of the political divide in Northern Ireland.