Consultation and negotiation: understanding, dialogue, building together
In regional, environmental, or development projects, decisions can no longer be imposed unilaterally. Stakeholders—whether citizens, institutions, businesses, or associations—expect to be listened to, consulted, and involved. Two approaches are therefore essential: consultation and negotiation. Often confused, they are in fact complementary and part of different dynamics.
Consultation: opening dialogue and sharing information
Consultation is above all a process of open dialogue. It allows us to:
- Involve stakeholders early on in a project.
- Share information transparently, so that everyone has the same basis for reflection.
- Gather the expectations, concerns, and proposals of the various stakeholders.
- Identify areas of agreement and disagreement, not to resolve them immediately, but to highlight them.
Consultation does not necessarily lead to agreement. Its role is to create a climate of trust and prepare the ground for shared decisions.
Example: in an urban development project, consultation can take the form of citizen workshops, public meetings, or participatory platforms. The aim is to listen to residents about their daily habits and needs, but also their fears about change.
Negotiation: turning dialogue into concrete commitments
Negotiation comes into play at a later stage, when different positions need to be reconciled. It involves:
- Clearly stating your objectives and constraints.
- Recognizing the interests of the other parties and seeking to understand them.
- Identifying room for maneuver and acceptable compromises.
- Formalizing concrete agreements that commit the stakeholders.
Negotiation is therefore a more structured and decision-oriented process. It aims to reach a compromise that, while not perfect for everyone, is acceptable to all.
Example: in negotiations on a waste management plan, local authorities may seek an agreement with local associations and private companies to establish a clear division of responsibilities (collection, sorting, financing) in order to make the system viable and equitable.
Two complementary approaches
Consultation and negotiation are not opposed to each other: they are interlinked.
- Consultation lays the foundations: shared understanding, transparency, mutual listening.
- Negotiation transforms this material into decisions and commitments.
It could be said that consultation is the space for exploratory dialogue, while negotiation is the space for decision-making compromise..
Why are they essential today?
In a world where projects involve multiple stakeholders and where the legitimacy of decisions increasingly depends on participation, these two approaches have become indispensable.
They make it possible to:
- Avoid deadlocks caused by a lack of listening.
- Strengthen the legitimacy of decisions through the support of the stakeholders concerned.
- Ensure better ownership of solutions over time.
Conclusion
Consultation and negotiation are two key tools for modern, shared governance.
Consultation opens up possibilities and gives everyone a voice. Negotiation transforms this wealth of ideas into concrete and balanced decisions.
Together, they guarantee projects that are more solid, more legitimate, and better accepted by those who will have to live with them on a daily basis.
How can fuzzy logic help in these processes?
Each stakeholder in the consultation and/or negotiation process comes to the table with their own vision of the territory concerned. This vision is the result of:
- a series of “objective” parameters perceived through a “subjective” prism specific to each stakeholder
- an equally subjective assessment of these parameters for each area of the territory
Exchanges and discussions will focus on these divergent “final” visions.
Preliminary work with each participant can make it possible to:
- move from a threshold value for the parameters to fuzzy attributes that make it possible to quantify the differences in perception between the participants,
- determine the type of aggregation for each parameter and detect when the parameters do not have the same importance and the type of aggregation (average, optimistic, pessimistic) used by each stakeholder.
Armed with this information, the discussion can then focus on the real points of divergence, rather than on the final result.
Consultation, an example developed
The purpose of consultation is not to make immediate decisions, but to establish an exchange of views, clarify reasoning, and highlight differences in perception.
In our case, fuzzy logic provides a powerful tool: it allows us to measure the degree to which an area belongs to a given category (e.g., “favorable,” “unfavorable,” “at risk”), rather than forcing each actor to categorize areas as ‘good’ or “bad.”
Thus, if one actor adopts an optimistic aggregation, they will highlight all areas with even a slight positive potential, while another, more pessimistic actor will emphasize uncertainties and risks. Thanks to fuzzy representation:
- We do not compare “black and white” maps, but areas where nuances are visible.
- We can quantify the differences in perception between actors: for example, in the same area, one considers that there is a 0.8 “favorable” rating, while the other only gives it a 0.3 rating.
- The discussion can then focus not on the final result (“favorable” vs. “unfavorable”), but on the reason for these differences: is it related to the importance given to a particular parameter? To the type of aggregation chosen? To a different interpretation of the basic data?
The objective of the consultation then becomes clearer: to gradually bring each stakeholder closer to a common vision, which will be neither strictly optimistic nor strictly pessimistic, but rather a middle ground recognized as an initial compromise.
If we return to the example case in the article From Boolean analysis to fuzzy logic in a GIS: a concrete example, and assume that two stakeholders have completely divergent visions, one optimistic and the other pessimistic:
The goal we can set ourselves is to use discussion to bring each stakeholder closer to a middle ground.
Negotiation, a developed example
Negotiation is a more committed stage: it is no longer just a matter of sharing and comparing visions, but of making decisions that involve mutual concessions.
Here again, fuzzy logic allows us to objectify areas of conflict. Thanks to degrees of membership, we can identify:
- areas that are highly favorable for one stakeholder and highly unfavorable for another → these are the real points of tension,
- areas where assessments are similar → these are the implicit points of consensus, which do not require lengthy discussion,
- intermediate areas → which can become the ideal ground for compromise.
Let’s take the example of two actors: one optimistic, the other pessimistic.
- The optimist wants to obtain as many areas as possible with a membership close to 1 (“very favorable”).
- The pessimist, on the other hand, wants to keep the areas where he perceives a high risk (“very unfavorable”).
A simple SQL query can be used to detect the most contentious areas: those classified as very favorable (green) by the optimist, and very unfavorable (red) by the pessimist:
SELECT o.geom,
o.intopt2_agg,
p.intpes2_agg
FROM plugin.intopt2_agg o
JOIN plugin.intpes2_agg p
ON ST_Equals(o.geom, p.geom)
WHERE o.intopt2_agg > 0.875
AND p.intpes2_agg < 0.125;
These areas then become the raw material for negotiation:
- Should we really preserve them or exploit them?
- Can we imagine an alternative scenario that reduces the perceived risks while satisfying some of the expectations?
- What compensation can be offered?
By revealing these areas of tension with precision, fuzzy logic prevents negotiations from getting bogged down in general debates. It refocuses the discussion on the real points of disagreement and helps to formulate more rational and better-accepted compromises.
