Decisions in international politics are typically made through interstate bargaining. This is a basic reality in an anarchic system in which states are the primary legal authorities and often find themselves at odds over whether to cooperate on an issue, what form cooperation should take, and how to distribute the benefits cooperation produces. Yet as long and fraught as negotiations can be—just a mention of the Doha Round illustrates this point—they are rarely a single monolithic undertaking. Instead, negotiations on issues as diverse as climate change and arms control evolve over time, as states’ interests and negotiation strategies evolve, in the process opening (and closing) windows of opportunity for agreements.
In State Strategies in International Bargaining, Heather Elko McKibben seeks to explain variation in states’ bargaining strategies over the course of interstate negotiations. She argues that the changing structure of the bargaining game shapes states’ strategies, even as material power and interests remain constant. She observes that bargaining strategies vary along two dimensions: first with regard to whether a state seeks to play by the existing rules of the negotiation or change them, and second with regard to whether a state seeks to extract concessions from or offer concessions to its bargaining partners (pp. 3-4). According to McKibben, states select strategies along these two dimensions, based on whether the existing rules and other attributes of the bargaining structure enable them to achieve their interests in the final agreement. When the bargaining structure does not suit states’ interests, McKibben argues, states will attempt to change it, although their success will depend on their relative power resources.
The book begins with four theory chapters in which McKibben overviews her argument, explicates a typology of her rule-compliant/-changing framework, and details the conditions under which states play by the rules and the conditions under which they change them. She seeks to make her argument accessible to non-experts by drawing on a home renovation example to illustrate concepts and strategies. Although I might have preferred more examples from the realm of international politics, McKibben makes each part of her argument extremely clear. Four case study chapters then demonstrate each part of her typology in action, covering a wide range of empirical territory: EU negotiations over services and finance, GATT/WTO negotiations, climate change at the UN, and the Kosovo status process. She codes documents and original interview data to create variables measuring her theoretical concepts, and effectively integrates statistical analyses into her qualitative cases. As a non-expert in these topics, the final product reads as a clean typology that maps neatly onto the cases, showing the reader that bargaining rules both shape the dynamics of negotiations and are also at times shaped by the players themselves.
McKibben’s argument makes sense. States play by the rules when they get what they want from them, and they seek to change the rules when they do not. In some ways, however, the argument is a little too neat. Although I have no complaints about McKibben’s overarching point, I would have liked her to deepen the discussion by thinking more broadly about bargaining rules, their sources, and what might make some rules stickier than others.
Bargaining rules, and states’ views of their utility and malleability, are at the core of McKibben’s argument. She defines bargaining rules as the “contextual rules” that structure a bargaining game, operationalized as the set of issues on the bargaining agenda and the no-agreement alternative (p. 4). This is a narrow operationalization of rules, even in McKibben’s chosen cases, whose negotiations take place in the context of international institutions. These institutions set basic rules to structure negotiations—indeed, that is one of their main benefits according to the rationalist arguments on which McKibben builds. As a result, however, such rules may be costly and difficult to change, even for states with significant power resources.
Consider a broader range of bargaining rules: Are decisions made by consensus or majority vote? Are demands made sequentially or simultaneously? Can negotiations be extended or moved to another venue? Are rules codified, customary, or ad hoc? These “contextual rules” may also empower and constrain states’ bargaining and shape their choice of strategies. In the EU’s September 2015 migrant relocation deal, for example, the choice of majority voting over consensus allowed supporters to force through the contentious plan. Similarly, the 1996 decision of medium powers and NGOs to remove anti-personnel landmine ban negotiations from the CCW allowed them to get a stronger treaty that powerful opposing states could not block. Examples like these suggest the importance of a much wider range of bargaining rules. Consequently, an explicit discussion of why McKibben chose a narrower operationalization would have been welcome.
Beyond these questions about institutional rules, the literature on social norms might offer insights into the sources and roles of bargaining rules. Social norms are also “contextual rules” about appropriate action for actors in a given social situation. As such, they deserve a place in McKibben’s theoretical discussion at least. Comprehensive sanctions may be viewed as acceptable strategies in nonproliferation cases, for example, but excessive for standard trade negotiations, whether or not states have the market power to pull them off. Even within a rationalist ontology, norms can serve as focal points or as regulatory tools, shape perceptions of information, and be instrumentally deployed by states to achieve their goals. Norms might therefore shape why states follow rules, how they approach their decision to change the rules, and how their attempts to change the rules are received. These social considerations in turn may make some rules more difficult to change than others and influence a state’s cost-benefit calculus in deciding to do so. Yet, save for a brief mention in a footnote (p. 25), norms are notably absent from her book.
For the most part, in McKibben’s narrative, changes in states’ interests and their decisions to pursue rule-change are exogenous to the analysis. I was also left wondering why some states are more adept at recognizing and executing their interest in rule-change. Although McKibben explicitly only seeks to explain variation in bargaining strategies, she implicitly links those strategies to bargaining outcomes. In the climate change chapter, for example, the EU changed the rules but to little effect (p. 204). In contrast, the United States changed the rules and produced cooperation (p. 209). Yet her argument assumes actors recognize and act upon their interests both rationally and, if they have the power resources to do so, effectively. What then accounts for this variation in the outcomes of rule change? Neither miscalculations nor diplomatic skill are included in her framework or discussed in her case studies, but may be plausible explanations.
Thinking more about these issues might make McKibben’s argument and cases more complicated, but it would offer a more in-depth discussion and perhaps leave the reader more satisfied by the end of this otherwise very clearly written and well-researched book. Moreover, McKibben’s multi-method approach to issues of contemporary importance, like climate change, suggest that her research will have relevance not only for scholars broadly interested in interstate bargaining, but also for experts on the areas covered by her empirical chapters.
