Bargaining power among potential allies: negotiating the North Atlantic Treaty, 1948–49

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Abstract
Bargaining power is a somewhat neglected concept in the study of international negotiations. Who comes on top in the negotiating process and why, i.e. its power or influence aspect, has never been a central perspective of negotiation theorists. The ‘classical’ negotiation theorists of the 1960s1 make only passing references to the effects of differences in power resources on international negotiations, and even though more recent works pay considerably more attention to such variables,2 they can hardly be said to be central to the field. Nor has bargaining as a particular instance of the exercise of power been an important preoccupation of power theorists. Perhaps for these very reasons, the concept has remained a rather tricky one, often being used as an ad hoc or residual factor to ‘explain’ what cannot otherwise be accounted for. However, Christer Jönsson has argued that ‘focussing on bargaining power promises to be… an avenue to further clarification of the perennially elusive concept of power’.3 To what extent what he calls the ‘bridge-building and cross-fertilization between power analysis and bargaining studies’4 may also contribute to a better understanding of international negotiations, is an empirical question to which this article will attempt to give at least a preliminary answer.