Prenegotiation public commitment in domestic and international bargaining
Abstract
We use a formal bargaining model to examine why, in many domestic and international
bargaining situations, one or both negotiators make public statements in front of
their constituents committing themselves to obtaining certain benefits in the negotiations.
We find that making public commitments provides bargaining leverage, when backing
down from such commitments carries domestic political costs. However, when the two
negotiators face fairly similar costs for violating a public commitment, a prisoner's
dilemma is created in which both sides make high public demands which cannot be satisfied,
and both negotiators would be better off if they could commit to not making public
demands. However, making a public demand is a dominant strategy for each negotiator,
and this leads to a suboptimal outcome. Escaping this prisoner's dilemma provides
a rationale for secret negotiations. Testable hypotheses are derived from the nature
of the commitments and agreements made in equilibrium.
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/2534Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1017/S0003055405051750Publication Info
Leventoǧlu, B; & Tarar, A (2005). Prenegotiation public commitment in domestic and international bargaining. American Political Science Review, 99(3). pp. 419-433. 10.1017/S0003055405051750. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/2534.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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