Your place or mine? Site location and negotiation

The December 1989 summit meeting between George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev did not take place in the United States, the Soviet Union or, for that matter, in the territory of any other nation. Rather, the two leaders chose to meet alternately on two ships, the Soviet cruiser Slava and the US. S. Belknap, both in the Mediterranean off the coast of Malta. The shipboard meetings were perhaps a bit unconventional, but the choice of that setting was surely not a casual response to the question, "Your place or mine?'' Indeed, that setting-which has prompted these reflections on the relationship between negotiation and the place where it occurs-was a deliberate choice, influenced both by practical and symbolic diplomatic considerations. Site selection, in fact, is always an important decision in negotiation. Parties frequently negotiate long and hard about where they are to meet long before they sit down to discuss what they will negotiate. The reason for this concern is that disputants almost always assume-and with good reason-that the particular location in which they negotiate will have consequences for the ensuing process and, ultimately, its results. Generally, parties to a bilateral negotiation have four options in choosing a site: your place, my place, another place, and (as a result of advances in communications technology) "no place." A discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of each option follows.