Choosing a bargaining strategy in EU negotiations: power, preferences, and culture

We introduce a series of arguments that explain how country characteristics influence the choice of bargaining strategies. The country characteristics that we consider are a country's power resources, preferences and culture. We derive a series of hypotheses from these variables, and present their implications for intergovernmental negotiations in the European Union (EU). We also discuss the methodological difficulties inherent in studying negotiation behaviour: the secrecy surrounding the negotiations; the biases introduced by asking participants; and the difficulty of inferring from role plays to real-world negotiations. While recognizing these difficulties, we conclude that research on this topic is essential to arrive at a better understanding of how the negotiation process influences negotiation outcomes.