Negotiation and Bargaining

Negotiation and Bargaining

Negotiation among states and other actors remains one of the most central recurring processes of international relations. This chapter takes stock of the most important theoretical ideas that have been proposed for understanding it. The central conclusion will be that scholars are making interesting headway in several directions, yet many questions have yet to be answered satisfactorily. Researchers divide into vigorous networks that still operate largely independently of one another, like communities on different islands.1 Those who prefer the same theories and methods have tended to cluster together. Each tradition has established significant knowledge while not taking the others’ ideas into account very much. Fascinating opportunities for new research, within schools and blending them, are calling for attention.

One tradition, described as negotiation analysis, blends ideas about the individual-level process from several disciplines; much of it originates outside political science. Within political science, game theorists have generated different ideas relevant for this process. International relations (IR) constructivists also have begun to apply their ideas to it. After considering these three schools of thought, we will zoom out from the micro-process to consider insights about the contexts surrounding the international negotiator.

This essay uses negotiation as the primary and more encompassing term. Negotiation is a sequence of actions in which two or more parties address demands, arguments, and proposals to each other for the ostensible purpose of reaching an agreement (Iklé, 1964: 711; Odell, 2000: 10–11). Some negotiations and some agreements are tacit rather than explicit. Scholars lack consensus about the meaning of bargaining, and each section introduces the meaning used by that tradition.

Additional caveats might be helpful. Often commentators ask who won and who lost a particular negotiation, thinking with a sport or military analogy. But negotiation is not limited to manipulative behavior designed to defeat an opponent. The war analogy distracts us from the possibility that the talks will make both better off than they were before.

Neither is negotiation limited to accommodation and win-win agreement.2 This definition does not say that parties always bargain in good faith, that every outcome makes all parties better off, or that coercion is absent from negotiation by definition. Any time two [Page 380]parties face unequal alternatives to agreement, the one with the better alternative has an advantage, and normally they press this advantage. In some cases, the other party accepts an agreement that leaves him worse off than before, a win-lose agreement, because under the circumstances, refusing would make the situation even worse. Coercion and influence are matters of degree and both are present to some degree in virtually every encounter of cooperation and conflict. Many negotiations involve both efforts to create joint gain and efforts to claim value from other parties, and the distribution of these efforts in a particular case is a matter for investigation.

Later propositions refer to the individual negotiator. This simplification is not meant to imply that she is always free from influence from the organization, culture, state, and coalition she represents. I assume that the ultimate unit of analysis is the individual agent, but not all studies must focus at that level. Of course, a comprehensive understanding must include structures in which agents operate. The forms and degrees of constraint and the processes of aggregation are also matters for investigation.

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