A thorough reexamination of the processes of international negotiation is long overdue, and this book, by one of the leading scholars of the global governance of information technology, does much to clarify the terms of debate. The outcomes of diplomatic interactions, J. P. Singh argues, cannot be explained purely in terms of the relative power of the actors or in terms of symmetrical or asymmetrical power distributions. Instead, we should think of negotiations as being shaped by what he calls “configurations” of power. For, as he observes, diplomacy is “after all, about combining issues, actors, and coalitions in different ways” (p. 10). When power is diffused, in particular, negotiation outcomes are often the product of the strategies and tactics employed by actors, rather than the concentrated power they can wield. In contemporary diplomacy, in other words, playing the game well can be as important as the strength of one's team.

Singh devotes a lengthy chapter to the development of this theory and applies it, over four central chapters, to eight discrete cases of international negotiations covering services and intellectual property, the cultural industries and telecommunications, the telecommunications pricing regime, and the governance of the Internet. For each case, the background and the conduct of the negotiations is outlined. To demonstrate his theory, he is concerned not only with describing outcomes. He is attentive to what he calls the “negotiation context” and “process,” highlighting the strategies and especially the particular tactics employed by the actors involved. Concentrating on strategies alone, as most writers—from Thomas C. Schelling to John S. Odell—have done, is not sufficient to grasp either why this or that outcome emerged or indeed how a negotiation proceeded. For Singh, tactical adroitness can also affect the conduct and results of negotiations, whether it involves “framing,” “agenda setting,” “venue shopping,” or a range of other means (pp. 49–63).

The book builds upon an impressive body of research into the norms, rules, regimes, and treaties that order the information economy, much of it gleaned from interviews with the negotiators themselves. The cases are described in detail, though sometimes at the risk of obscuring the forest for the trees, for the main strands of the theoretical argument do not always carry through the book as well as they might. The uses of particular tactics in certain negotiations, for example, are sometimes just mentioned rather than analyzed in a way that might draw out their precise influence over the outcomes. In the “electronic commerce” case, for example, European Union and U.S. tactics are described on only two pages (pp. 241, 249) of a chapter of almost 50, the remainder being devoted more to what happened than why. This reader, at least, wished for more discussion of the selection of tactics by the various parties, as well as a stronger linkage between the conceptual model built at the outset and the cases. Fewer cases, indeed, might have been preferable, allowing Singh to demonstrate his ambitious theoretical argument in the fine-grained way that is needed to show its full potential. One case alone could have done the work required, allowing space for analyzing the dynamics and the progress of a negotiation, as well as the “transformations in identities and interests” (p. 279) that, he suggests, are the product of shifting intersubjective understandings among the actors involved.

There is no doubt, however, that Singh's theory should command serious attention. It aims to blend the insights of both structural theories of strategic interaction and constructivist arguments about the generation of identities. The relative power or capabilities of actors prior to a negotiation is not, he argues, the sole determinant of its outcome, nor are the preferences of those actors given and fixed. What happens during a negotiation matters, too: Power relations can be reconfigured and interests modified as external circumstances change or actors adopt new tactics. For Singh, even the “identities” of actors can be transformed, as what he calls “meta-power” shifts intersubjective understandings of roles and positions. New or newly acknowledged information can thus change the preferences of actors. To take his own example, bringing developing states in from the margins of trade negotiations prompted an eventual modification in their stance in the Uruguay Round discussions on services. At first obstructive, with time these states became constructive negotiating partners as they began to recognize the new regard in which they were held by the developed world (pp. 287–88). The possibility that the processes of diplomacy can produce such “new epistemic understandings” underpins the author's enthusiasm, in his conclusion, for “negotiations-as-global-governance”—the nurturing of the diplomatic process with a view to building the kind of legitimacy, accountability, and even democracy on which stable governance might rest.

There is an old-fashioned ring to Singh's claim that diplomacy might serve as the best means of “resolving international conflicts” (p. 280) and even as an ideal form of global governance (p. 291). The notion that the very processes of diplomacy could act as a “civilizing” force on states and other actors—to use the terms of an older discourse of global governance—is common to much writing on the topic in the first half of the last century (e.g., see Sir Ernest Satow, A Guide to Diplomatic Method, 1917). The contemporary version of this argument relies less on ideas of civilization and more on what might be called the “stickiness” of those “networks” that draw in and hold actors into processes of negotiation. The old and new enthusiasts for diplomacy remain vulnerable, however, to the charge that there continues to be very little to prevent powerful actors from eschewing communication in favor of outright coercion, and that civilizing processes and networks do little to prevent such behavior. Singh is acutely aware of this problem: He rightly notes that negotiation works best where power is diffused—but how it might be addressed in a system of ever more concentrated power remains unclear.