Simulating international disarmament negotiations

Although the era of has already begun, we know very little about processes of international negotiation. Discussions about the future of Vietnam are being conducted in Paris, Strategic Arms Limitation Talks are continuing in Vienna and Helsinki, and in Brussels and Luxembourg negotiations to enlarge the European Community have made substantial progress, but scholarly research on negotiation is still in the pre-theory stage. Most of the literature on international negotiation is descriptive and anecdotal, consisting of case studies of specific negotiations and negotiators' memoirs.2 While the absence of systematic research on international negotiation may be attributed, in part, to the disinterest and skepticism of social scientists, especially with respect to disarmament negotiations, research has been impeded by the difficulty of gaining access to negotiations that are conducted in private.