Political Bargaining Power

Negotiation and mediation are not just tools for diplomats or conflict resolution experts. At their core, they are the practices through which people—often with differing needs, fears, and aspirations—attempt to live together without domination. They are the language of political life in its most honest form: not the imposition of one will over another, but the patient effort to craft a future from disagreement.

To negotiate is to recognize that no single person or group holds the full truth. It is to acknowledge that others have claims, that those claims may not vanish through force or denial, and that something better might emerge through dialogue. Mediation builds on this. It introduces a third space, a process or a person that helps facilitate understanding—not by erasing differences, but by holding space for them in a way that still moves toward resolution.

But these practices only work under one essential condition: a relative equality of political bargaining power. Without this, negotiation becomes theatre. Mediation becomes manipulation. The weaker party is pressured to accept terms not because they are just or wise, but because they have no choice. This is not peace—it is submission repackaged.

Bargaining power does not only come from money or military force. It includes voice, visibility, recognition, and the ability to walk away. In societies where some groups are routinely denied these things—due to history, structure, or prejudice—talks may occur, but they are not truly negotiations. They are performances in which the outcome was already decided by unequal starting points.
For a society to be just, this must be addressed.

A good society is not built on the illusion of harmony, but on the ability to confront real tensions with fairness. This requires that communities, especially those historically marginalized, are equipped with the power to bargain meaningfully. This includes access to knowledge, platforms to speak, time to organize, and security from retaliation.

Only when power is rebalanced can negotiation fulfill its deeper purpose: not just to end conflict, but to generate a shared future that no one group could have imagined alone.

What makes this process even more fragile is that power rarely confesses itself. It hides behind politeness, behind procedures, behind appeals to neutrality. Mediation, then, must also be skeptical. It must question the silence in the room, the invisible hierarchies that shape who gets to speak and who gets to decide what “reasonable” looks like. It must ask: Who benefits from the current arrangement? Who pays the cost of peace?

To mediate well is not to be above the fray, but to lean into the complexity with care. It is to listen deeply, to amplify the voices that have been muted, and to build outcomes that reflect not the will of the strongest, but the dignity of all.

The idea of the common good emerges from this kind of work—not as a blueprint from above, but as a rough, negotiated space from below. It is not perfect or final. It is a process. A promise that justice is never complete, but always in motion—reshaped by each new act of dialogue and each new generation’s participation.

In societies marked by deep division or recent wounds, this task becomes even more vital. There, negotiation and mediation are not only about compromise. They are about rehumanizing those who have been made enemies, rebalancing systems that have been made unfair, and reconstructing trust where it has been betrayed.

Equality in bargaining power is not a luxury—it is the ground on which hope is built. Without it, even the best-designed agreements will fall apart. With it, even the most painful histories can begin to heal.

Let us then treat negotiation not as a tactic, but as a philosophy of shared life. Let us approach mediation not as neutrality, but as responsibility. And let us remember that in the long journey toward a good society, the question is not who wins—but whether we have created a way of living together that no longer requires winners and losers at all.