How would you characterize what went on last week in the negotiations?

Ellen Taylor: Probably the mediators in the room would agree that if a mediation-type process was brought to the negotiations, they might be able to work in a different manner than they're currently working.

Daniel Yamshon: For mediation to work, however, it does require the parties to be motivated to come to an agreement. There are times when people have a greater interest in maintaining the conflict or maintaining the dispute. In the political arena that can be for various reasons - posturing for the folks back home to make a political point.

We've seen people going through divorces constantly going to court because that's the only way they know how to maintain that particular relationship. ... Sometimes the dispute has to get to the point where it's ripe for resolution.

The parties came into this negotiation with bottom lines which they cannot cross. And they're not in any risk of losing their seats for failure to act because of gerrymandered districts. How do you approach a mediation under those kinds of circumstances?

Taylor: Communication has to be increased between ... all the parties concerned. And they have to start communicating with each other not in June, not when they're up against the wall and the budget has to be passed.

They have to start communicating in January.

Sharif Ebrahim: In the negotiations I'm involved in, they take place often over a period of years. And there are structured monthly or weekly meetings.

(In the budget process) it strikes me that there's not a whole lot of time for face-to-face substantive discussions.

The issue of coming in with fixed positions happens in most negotiations.

If there's that time built into the process, the parties can figure out a way to help each other save face.

When the downed spy plane in China negotiations took place (in 2001), that seemed to be all about how you issue an apology in Chinese but not one in English.

There is infinite creativity that can be applied to figuring out how you resolve issues in ways that allow parties to preserve their positions.

Yamshon: A lot of times you notice with very complex negotiations - whether they're the United Auto Workers with one of the major manufacturers or international arms control talks or NATO talks - you see the leaders signing the final agreements, but that's not really where negotiations take place. They took place long before (for example) with the foreign ministries in the State Department hammering out agendas: What are we going to talk about? When are we going to talk about it? What information are we going to produce, when can it be produced?

There are very small procedural agreements, which allows them to do two things. It monitors the good faith of the other negotiators: Are they showing up to the meetings, are they producing the information? The other thing it does is it allows the parties to build a history of being able to successfully negotiate, even though they're not actually talking about anything substantive at all. You get people to understand, "Well, I can at least trust them to show up on time. By gosh, they did produce the documents they said they would."

Alma Robinson: There's also a really important element that's been missing in our state conversations, and that is, what is the future that we all want?

What do we all share, what are our goals? ... What are the things that we can agree on regardless of party or position? Then that puts a whole framework on the things you have to do from year to year.

Taylor: It all comes back to the notion of communication. ... The Democrats have the majority vote, they pass the legislation that they want, and then suddenly in June they need the Republicans. The Republicans have had their backs to the wall through the whole year, and now it's their chance to be in the limelight, so they're going to maintain their strong position.

You're all talking about timelines ... but one of the Democratic leaders was elected in March. One of the Republican leaders was elected in April. Both the leaders in the Assembly are leaving in 2010. So the long-term time frame doesn't exist for them.

Stephen J. Camber: You can institutionalize the process rather than doing crisis management all the time.

Taylor: There are ways to train the legislators, to train their staffs, so that process becomes imbedded in how they work together.

What if their caucuses or their outside influence groups have imposed on them extremely narrow corridors of action? What do you do under those circumstances?

Yamshon: You may find that there are many more than just five major stakeholders, and you do have to work with them.

Here we are dealing with a process in which there's a past history between the parties in which they don't trust one another. What would be your advice in a situation where there have been past grievances among the parties?

Bonnie Kneitel: You should look to the future. ... Take it from this point and move forward, and start with tiny little agreements. When you do mediation and negotiation, you're not looking at the big picture right away. You're just building, brick by brick.

If you were going to start over for next year, what would you recommend?

Camber: I certainly would recommend ... training - finding individuals who would have the suitable skill set, somebody who had some experience with budgeting issues, creating a pool of persons that is sufficiently respected that politicians can pay heed. Then the question is, how can you initiate a process and when are such people inserted into the negotiations?

Robinson: Another kind of option is to invite the leaders themselves to have negotiations training. If they could be inspired to try to avoid this situation next year, ... I think that would be really helpful.

Ebrahim: One thing they could do is ... jointly discuss the dynamic behind the impasse we've reached each year and talk about it in structural terms, or in terms that aren't related to one party or another. Just jointly frame the problem, and make some level of commitment to communicating constantly over the course of the year.

Is it important always to have an agreement that everybody feels good about, or is that not realistic?

Yamshon: Sometimes cutting your losses has to be chalked up as a gain, (saying) things could have been much worse. It's not uncommon to understand that we have a partial agreement. ... That's part of the concept of conflict management.

Ebrahim: If the budget discussion takes place in a time period that's incredibly compressed ... that's going to be difficult. If you have $7 billion swings in revenue each year ... that's going to be difficult. (They need to) start those discussions earlier and perhaps negotiate how they will handle unexpected changes in revenues in advance.

Where does this rank on the complexity scale?

Yamshon: There's no doubt it's very complex. It's not as complex as negotiating NAFTA.