Chapter 6 is a history of emancipation in New York that stresses the combined importance of economic and legal pressures on slavery in areas of Dutch control. The gradual legal freedoms slaves gained after the Revolution served as a foot in the door towards eventual emancipation. When slaves were routinely given the ability to choose new masters, to seek work on their own, and to make money on their own (with some repayment to the slave owners), they made a crucial first step into a world of freedom. Voluntary slave manumission and self-purchase emancipations were the result of a process of negotiating the terms of slavery’s demise one person at a time. This dispersed, on-the-ground struggle was shaped by statutory law, as others have recognized, but, arguably, it was the common law that demonstrated and determined New Yorkers’ changing attitudes about slaveholding. Courtroom decisions about interpreting the states’ laws on slavery guaranteed that the freedoms won through slaves’ negotiations with their enslavers would be protected by the courts.

Chapter 3 examines the political negotiations and debates that took place within Romania’s transitional governments concerning the process of drafting and adopting the restitution legislation. It shows that while a few Romanian politicians supported a full and rapid restitution, others were reluctant to do so and even displayed antisemitic prejudice. Most of the politicians agreed to adopt restitution laws because they saw them as requirements of the allegedly philosemitic Allies and, thus, useful for improving Romania’s standing at the peace conference. Some ministers supported specific categories of beneficiaries and devised various strategies aiming to help them keep the Jewish assets.

The escalation of US military involvement in Vietnam in 1965 sparked a surge in international diplomacy to broker peace, or at least open direct peace talks, between Washington and Hanoi. This chapter recounts some of the myriad (failed) attempts to make progress by third parties – from countries to groups of countries (e.g., the Non-Aligned Movement and the British Commonwealth) to multilateral institutions (e.g., the United Nations) to nonstate actors (organizations, individuals) – in the three or so years before direct US–DRV discussions finally began in Paris in May 1968. Perhaps the most intriguing of these initiatives involved the communist world (i.e., the Soviet bloc, since Mao Zedongs China strongly opposed peace talks), which had embassies in and fraternal interparty contacts with Hanoi that most noncommunist countries lacked. As the communist representative on the three-member International Control Commission, Poland had especially intimate involvement with several peace bids. The chapter examines this history and whether (or not) genuine diplomatic opportunities may have existed to end the Vietnam War, or at least start serious peace talks, earlier, potentially saving many lives. It also probes the concurrent interrelationship between this diplomacy and broader international factors such as the Cold War and Sino-Soviet split.

The UK’s desire to prove its international relevance after Brexit, together with the COVID pandemic, produced a unique opportunity: a two-year Presidency of the UN climate talks for the country that has long been the most active in climate change diplomacy. A chance to test a new approach – after thirty years of slow progress, better late than never.

The first twenty years of international negotiation on climate change took an approach that was guaranteed to fail: attempting to solve an immensely complex issue through a single, legally binding agreement. The history of diplomacy in trade and security shows that success requires a different approach: breaking a problem up into manageable parts, and growing agreement gradually, strengthening it as parties’ interests increasingly converge.

The Paris Agreement on climate change has been widely hailed as a diplomatic triumph, but it commits its signatories only to a process, not to anything of substance. It represents a gamble: that if enough governments say they will act, they will believe each other and have the confidence to move forward – and that businesses and investors will believe them too. Six years later, the gamble appears to be succeeding, but despite this, progress is nowhere near fast enough. Global emissions of greenhouse gases are still going up.

This chapter shows how a hierarchical organization and a dominant faction were crucial prerequisites for the strategy of instrumentalism. The union’s hierarchical structure enabled it to mobilize teachers in elections and a dominant faction enabled negotiations with political parties from across the ideological spectrum. The last section analyzes the political backlash against instrumentalism in 2013, which resulted in leadership turnover and policy changes that weakened the union overall. Despite this backlash, however, the union’s internal organization remained largely intact and union leaders continue to be ideologically flexible, in line with the main argument in this book.

Mass gatherings and special events are commonplace in the U.S. and require the coordinated efforts of a multitude of people, including EMS, to make for a successful event. As the medical director of the EMS, it is important to understand not only the medical problems that could occur at these events but also a basic knowledge of the business behind their planning. Constant interaction with event promoters and sponsors can help the director get a feel of the safety concerns and how funding of the event will occur. These interactions can help directors determine the size, recurrence, and risks of the event providing them with the necessary information of how much manpower will be needed and the costs of the services to be provided and will give them the power to have successful negotiations with a well thought out event plan.

Creating options is an exciting and fun part of making decisions. It’s what changes “I have to do this” (reluctantly solving a problem) to “I get to do this” (enthusiastically creating an opportunity). People often excuse their decisions by saying, “I didn’t have a choice – it’s just something I had to do.” But that’s rarely true. Decision options are almost always available.

If one young person is about to make a decision, helping them construct options is relatively straightforward. Once they are clear about which values might be affected, they can generate different options likely to satisfy these qualities.

The introduction explores why there is so much scholarly interest in global environmental negotiations and how the conceptualization and study of these has changed over time. It unpacks how to study global environmental negotiations and related sites as agreement-making defined as the multiple actors, sites, and processes through which environmental agreements are made, and the new sets and arrangements of actors, sites, and processes that are created by any specific agreement, which have the potential to reinforce or reorient the global political order. This approach is offered as a way to organize, spatialize, situate, and connect diverse forms of scholarship into, around, and related to negotiation sites and their products. The introduction provides an overview of the book chapters, which provide the methodological building blocks for conducting this research. As such, the book is relevant for many other nonenvironmental issue areas where collective action is at the core, such as global health, nuclear nonproliferation, security, and trade.

Agreement-making has always been, and continues to be, shaped by gradual change and unforeseen situations on site, to which both participants and researchers must adapt. This chapter provides guidance on how to cope with the unexpected, discusses specific situations that may occur on site, and shows how to make use of digital and hybrid sites in methodological and conceptual terms. First, it presents a set of typical unforeseen situations that may arise at any point during the research process, especially during fieldwork, and identifies strategies for adapting to these kinds of unanticipated events. Second, it illustrates how the methodology of an entire research project can be modified by using the example of how the ERC research project MARIPOLDATA responded to the indefinite postponement of BBNJ IGCs in 2020. Third, it points to the advantages and disadvantages of digital ethnography, and, fourth, discusses the future role of digital and hybrid meetings for the study of global environmental agreement-making.

The UK’s desire to prove its international relevance after Brexit, together with the COVID pandemic, produced a unique opportunity: a two-year Presidency of the UN climate talks for the country that has long been the most active in climate change diplomacy. A chance to test a new approach – after thirty years of slow progress, better late than never.

The first twenty years of international negotiation on climate change took an approach that was guaranteed to fail: attempting to solve an immensely complex issue through a single, legally binding agreement. The history of diplomacy in trade and security shows that success requires a different approach: breaking a problem up into manageable parts, and growing agreement gradually, strengthening it as parties’ interests increasingly converge.

The Paris Agreement on climate change has been widely hailed as a diplomatic triumph, but it commits its signatories only to a process, not to anything of substance. It represents a gamble: that if enough governments say they will act, they will believe each other and have the confidence to move forward – and that businesses and investors will believe them too. Six years later, the gamble appears to be succeeding, but despite this, progress is nowhere near fast enough. Global emissions of greenhouse gases are still going up.

Chapter 4 looks at the restitution of liberalism as a potential model for political change during the Arab Spring and then its inability to shape outcomes in Egypt and Syria due to structural, organizational, and international reasons. The chapter refutes the narrative that the Arab Spring was the result of a leaderless movement of an alienated youth and loose associations of activists. It asserts that this overall analysis ignores the years of liberal activism against the extant patterns of domination and authority in the region, and the fact that protestors rallied behind a set of ideas that were consistently different from the ones rallied behind in the 1950s–1960s.What is missed in most studies is the deep and consistent transformation and reformulation of the object of discontent. Millions confronted their States despite the threat of violence, and in so doing they showed that liberal notions were vibrantly hiding in plain sight.

This chapter turns to a critical juncture where the details of the convergence of the underlying normative responses were debated and shaped, namely the negotiations of the first reparations mandates in international criminal justice. The chapter delves into the arenas where these norms were negotiated: the ICC Rome Statute negotiations, and the ECCC’s Internal Rules-making. By examining the main debates during the negotiations of these foundational laws, the chapter identifies the negotiation practices that were chosen to mediate between competing objectives and visions of international justice. Inquiring into the compromises that emerged from these negotiations sheds light on the long-lasting effects of these compromises on the subsequent operation of the reparations regimes at both courts.

The book closes with an account of the sudden death of one of the Legae brothers and his fiancée, their funeral, and the conflicts that subsequently arose within and between each of their families. Using the trajectory of this tragic event to reflect on and bring together the major themes explored across the book, the final section draws conclusions about the role of conflict and crisis in kinship and self-making, and their implications for understanding the effects of HIV and AIDS and the interventions made in response.