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This project addresses the relationship between institutional design and cooperation in international bargaining. In particular, it addresses the question of how the institutional structure within which states bargain impacts states' decisions to adopt cooperative, rather than non-cooperative, bargaining strategies. The project draws on the issue linkage literature to analyze one central feature of institutional bargaining structure, "offsetting distributional patterns." When states place importance on different issues included in a bargain and their relative valuation of these issues becomes more disparate, distributional patterns are said to be more "offsetting." In such circumstances, states are more likely to adopt cooperative, rather than zero-sum, bargaining strategies. This relationship exists even if, on each issue, states have antithetical interests. The linkage of issues with more offsetting distributional patterns serves to transform the zero-sum game on each issue into a positive-sum game of linked issues. To build this theoretical argument, the project draws on an abstract, formalized logic analyzing two players bargaining over two issues. It demonstrates that the more offsetting are the distributional patterns of the linked issues, the more likely players are to truthfully reveal their interests - an important step which facilitates the adoption of cooperative bargaining strategies in the incomplete information setting that characterizes much international bargaining. Combined with the incentives created by the issue linkage structure, truthful revelation leads states to adopt cooperative, rather than non-cooperative, bargaining strategies. To empirically test this argument, the project first presents empirical measurement rules for the central variables of interest. Interview evidence with state representatives in the European Union is coded using these rules to construct a large-N dataset on which MLE analyses are conducted to test the central hypoth

In international negotiations, it is often accepted that powerful states, by way of their large militaries and market power, can easily extract concessions from weaker ones. Drawing on examples from international negotiations, Heather Elko McKibben challenges this belief, arguing that structural factors, rather than base power dynamics, often determine success in negotiations. She recommends that state leaders consider these contextual features to improve their bargaining positions.