154 CHAPTER FivE ■ The STaTe
reach agreement. Parties may conduct this negotiation tacitly, with each party recog-
nizing that a move in one direction leads the other to respond in a way that is strate-
gic. The parties may conduct open, formal negotiations, where one side offers a formal
proposal and the other responds; this pro cess is generally repeated many times until
the parties reach a compromise. In either case, reciprocity usually occurs, whereby
each side responds to the other’s moves in kind.
Yet for negotiations to be successful, each party needs to be credible; that is, each
party needs to make believable statements, assume a likely position, and be able to
back up its position by taking action. Well- intentioned and credible parties will have
a higher probability of engaging in successful negotiations.
States seldom enter diplomatic bargaining or negotiations as power equals. Each
state knows its own goals and power potential, of course, and has some idea of its
opponent’s goals and power potential, although information about the opponent may
be imperfect, incomplete, or just wrong. Thus, although the outcome of the bargaining
is almost always mutually beneficial (if not, why bother?), that outcome is not likely to
please the parties equally. And the satisfaction of each party may change as new infor-
mation is revealed or as conditions change over time.
Bargaining and negotiations are complex pro cesses, complicated by at least two
critical factors. First, most states carry out two levels of bargaining si mul ta neously:
international bargaining between and among states, and the bargaining between the
state’s negotiators and its vari ous domestic constituencies, both to reach a negotiating
position and to ratify the agreement. The po liti cal scientist Robert Putnam refers to
this as a “two- level game.”^12
The negotiations between the P5 +1 and Iran over Iran’s nuclear weapons pro-
grams illustrate the two- level game because each country conducted two sets of nego-
tiations: one with the foreign states and the other within their own domestic po liti cal
arena. Iran’s negotiators had to satisfy the demands of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei,
whose strident words to the country’s conservative constituency extolled Iran’s sover-
eignty to make its own security choices, while at the same time keeping the United
States and its partners hopeful that a compromise could be negotiated. The U.S. nego-
tiators had to mollify the demands of their domestic opposition including members
of the Republican Party, supporters of Israel, and the pro-Israel American Israel Public
Affairs Committee (AIPAC), who opposed any negotiations with terrorist state
Iran. What makes the game unusually complex is that “moves that are rational for
one player at one board... may be impolitic for that same player at the other
boa rd.”^13 The negotiator is the formal link between the two levels of negotiation.
Realists see the two- level game as constrained primarily by the structure of the inter-
national system, whereas liberals more readily acknowledge domestic pressures and
incentives.