Analyzing Negotiations Before They Start: The TESPA Framework for Pre-Negotiation Field Control

This bilingual working paper presents the TESPA framework for analyzing negotiations before they formally begin. It introduces the concept of pre-negotiation field control: the capacity of an actor or coalition to shape the resources, channels, platforms, narratives, participants, mandate, leverage, and enforcement mechanisms that define the starting reality of future negotiations.

The paper argues that negotiations become visible at the table, but they become possible in the field. It uses the Ukraine–Russia pre-negotiation track as a methodological demonstration case and extracts transferable mechanisms, including verification over trust, framework re-binding, mandate contamination, defence-industrial subjectivization, sovereign-buffer maneuver, and critical-node control.

This Zenodo version contains two parts: an English working paper and an authentic Ukrainian conceptual companion version. The Ukrainian version is not a mechanical translation, but a conceptually aligned version intended to preserve the Ukrainian analytical origin of TESPA while making the framework accessible to an international audience.

Українською: цей двомовний робочий документ представляє рамку TESPA для аналізу переговорів до їхнього формального початку. Центральним поняттям є контроль передпереговорного поля: здатність актора або коаліції формувати ресурси, канали, майданчики, наративи, учасників, мандат, важелі та механізми виконання, які визначають стартову реальність майбутніх переговорів.