Mathematics, diplomacy and the art of negotiation

The contours of Michael Ambühl’s life have been shaped by two institutions: ETH Zurich and the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA). His 14 years at ETH have encompassed a Bachelor’s degree, a doctorate in applied mathematics and, more recently, his position as Professor of Negotiation and Conflict Management. His diplomatic career in the Swiss Foreign Service extended over an impressive 31 years, including 9 years as State Secretary, the highest-ranking position in the Swiss Federal Administration.

Born in Bern, Ambühl’s path through life was guided by a unique blend of diplomacy and engineering. Even now, as a professor emeritus from the end of January, he views the world from the perspective of a mathematically minded problem-solver – the perfect skill set for a negotiator who has represented Switzerland’s interests in numerous sensitive affairs of state, and equally useful for a professor who, in 2013, set out to translate his wealth of practical experience into theory. 

Secret weapon

The list of negotiations in which Ambühl has participated reads like a chronology of Swiss foreign policy. As well as his work on the Swiss–EU Bilateral Agreements I and II, he facilitated the talks on Iran’s nuclear programme, acted as a mediator in the negotiations between Armenia and Turkey, and helped resolve the tax dispute between the US and Switzerland, to name just a few of his achievements.

It would be hard to find anyone in Switzerland with more negotiating experience than Ambühl in the realm of international diplomacy. The Swiss media has heaped praise on his contributions, calling him a “secret weapon”, “trump card”, “joker in the pack” and the “Usain Bolt of foreign policy”, among other colourful epithets.

Ambühl himself plays down these accolades, describing them as “nonsense”. He argues that there are no hard and fast rules for successful negotiations, though it is certainly possible to derive a suitable method from a combination of experience and theory. He also insists that bringing complex negotiations to a successful conclusion always involves an element of luck.

Negotiation engineering

Ambühl pulls out a pad of paper and sketches a decision tree. He writes the word Brexit in the box at the top. “When you’re dealing with a complex issue such as the UK’s decision to leave the EU, the only way to reveal potential solutions is by breaking it down into its key components.” Ambühl believes in tackling things systematically and says that a negotiation must be properly engineered in order to succeed.

“Imposing a clear structure on the issue you’re negotiating is half the battle.” In the Brexit example, this approach quickly yields the question of how to regulate immigration in a way that meets the interests of both sides. To unpick the vagaries of many negotiating positions, Ambühl favours the use of mathematical formulas such as the following: excessive immigration = mean of all EU/EFTA countries + twice the standard deviation multiplied by various country-specific coefficients.

This helps break down an emotional issue into objective figures, using the rationality of numbers to counter the sometimes heightened emotions of national and international politics.

Yet Ambühl is also very much aware of this method’s limitations. “If the parties involved have significant political differences or conflicting values, then even the most elegant formulas won’t get you very far.” What’s more, an attempt to apply formal methods is often defeated by the inability of the negotiating parties to agree on what the most important issues are. Yet when the parties to a negotiation do choose to follow this formal method, it can lead to some surprising solutions. That’s precisely what happened with the Land Transport Agreement between Switzerland and the EU, which Ambühl cites as an example of a highly successful negotiation.

Empathy and verbal finesse

Ultimately, however, negotiations can’t be boiled down to mere arithmetic – they also require a fair amount of empathy: “Good negotiators empathise with their counterpart and are able to put themselves in their shoes.” It is this intuitive awareness that enables them to sense when the other party has reached their pain threshold.

Equally important is the ability to reframe differences in a conciliatory light. “The trick is to say no without slamming the door. That requires verbal finesse and the ability to inject some humour when the situation calls for it,” Ambühl says. As with so many other professions, experience boosts a negotiator’s self-confidence and composure and gives them a better sense of whether a deal can be struck.

Nonetheless, a successfully completed negotiation rarely produces a sense of triumph. Ambühl refers to this as the negotiator’s paradox: “However happy you are to have closed the deal, you immediately find yourself wondering whether you gave too much ground.” Ultimately, he says, you can never know exactly what your negotiating partner would have been willing to concede. This is the veil of uncertainty that hangs over every negotiation.

From practice to theory

When Ambühl was appointed as an ETH professor in 2013, he initially focused on teaching. His Introduction to Negotiation Engineering course soon attracted interest from other academic departments. A total of 650 students attended his lectures in the 2021 Spring Semester, making it one of the most popular courses at ETH Zurich.

Ambühl is also a key player in the dialogue between government and the scientific community. In 2015, he organised an orientation seminar for new Swiss parliamentarians – the first event of its kind – which featured contributions from ETH researchers and professors from other Swiss universities.

Since 2016, he has also been Director of the ETH Swiss School of Public Governance (SSPG), which was founded that same year. Aimed at executives working in public administration, the SSPG offers continuing education programmes designed to foster good governance practices. As a former State Secretary with an extensive professional network, Ambühl has also brought a series of top-class speakers to ETH, including former Swiss Federal Councillors Micheline Calmy-Rey and Pascal Couchepin and the current Federal Chancellor Walter Thurnherr.

Dialogue between government and the scientific community

In 2021, Ambühl played a central role in setting up the Lab for Science in Diplomacy (SiDLab) in Geneva, which is run jointly by ETH Zurich and the University of Geneva. “SiDLab aims to inject scientific insights and methods into the diplomatic resolution of international conflicts,” he says.

Ambühl is particularly pleased with the role that he and his colleague, Daniela Scherer, played in resolving a external page conflict concerning the expansion of hydropower in Switzerland. Federal Councillor Simonetta Sommaruga called on the ETH professor’s services as a mediator. His skilful attempts to facilitate an agreement helped open the door to a compromise – and he stuck firmly to his engineering approach throughout the process: “It was only when we managed to agree on objective criteria for evaluating the projects that we succeeded in moving the talks forward.”

All life is problem solving

As a layman with an interest in philosophy, Ambühl is guided by Karl Popper’s famous dictum that all life is problem solving. Engineering is in his blood, so rather than just describing problems, he is also determined to help solve them.

His colleagues at the Chair of Negotiation see Ambühl as a committed team player: “He’s a real motivator! He gets everyone involved and is genuinely interested in our opinions on current issues,” says physicist Daniela Scherer, who completed her doctorate under Ambühl and now works with him on joint research projects. She sees him as the quintessential public servant striving to foster political democracy, concerned not with politics but with the res publica, the common good of the republic.

Influencing the European policy debate

Ambühl is not afraid to take a stance on specific political issues. When it comes to discussions on the relationship between Switzerland and the EU, for example, he explains that his main concern is to enrich the debate from a scientific standpoint. “My aim is not to be in the political limelight, but rather to give policymakers a sound scientific basis for their decision-making,” he says; he is known for keeping his media appearances to an absolute minimum.

Amble returns to his pad of paper and draws a table with 15 fields. He jots down the words “Breakdown of negotiations without any ancillary measures” in the bottom left corner, and “Interim agreement with the EU” in the top right. “We prepared a report for the FDFA in which we compared five alternative courses of action and analysed how closely they aligned with Switzerland’s interests. Breaking off the negotiations without a Plan B wasn’t a good option for us.” 

With hindsight, we know the Federal Council failed to follow this recommendation. Yet even if the negotiations hadn’t broken down, it would have been difficult to reach an outcome that was acceptable to both sides. Ambühl argues that there simply wasn’t enough leeway in the negotiations: “With so many institutional issues at front and centre, Switzerland would have been mostly just giving concessions. If the EU had offered Switzerland new agreements on electricity, health and research, it would have been easier to get a balance between give and take.”

Despite the prevailing perplexity about how relations between Switzerland and the EU should proceed from here, Ambühl remains optimistic: “I’m confident that we will eventually see a Bilateral III agreement.” Last August, Scherer and Ambühl outlined how this might be achieved in a three-stage plan.

Three generations at ETH

Michael Ambühl will remain at ETH as a professor emeritus even after his retirement. He will continue to participate in various continuing education programmes as a guest lecturer and also plans to provide whatever support he can to the ongoing development of the Lab for Science in Diplomacy.

Even after he leaves, there will still be an Ambühl at ETH: “My son conducts research into traffic planning. He is actually the third generation of my family to complete his doctorate at ETH after my father and me,” the ETH professor says. “We Ambühls are certainly fans of ETH!”