Students of international negotiations often examine strategic interactions among a given set of parties dealing with a specified group of issues. The issues and parties themselves are often choice variables whose ultimate configuration can have decisive effects on a bargain's outcome. Using a variety of international cases, I investigate the properties of several classes of moves that are intended to alter the issues and parties of an original negotiation. A unified approach to the analysis of such situations suggests numerous distinct means by which the “addition” or “subtraction” of issues can yield one-sided gains to the use of power; can yield joint gains that create or enhance a zone of possible agreement; and can reduce or destroy a zone of possible agreement. The effects of adding or subtracting parties are similarly analyzed. However, unintended complexity, unforeseen interrelationships, organizational considerations, transactions costs, and informational requirements may alter the analysis of such moves.

"Negotiation analysis" seeks to develop prescriptive theory and useful advice for negotiators and third parties. It generally emphasizes the parties' underlying interests (as distinct from the issues on the table and the positions taken), alternatives to negotiated agreement, approaches to productively manage the inherent tension between competitive actions to "claim" value individually and cooperative ones to "create" value jointly, as well as efforts to change perceptions of the game itself. Since advice to one side does not necessarily presume the full game-theoretic rationality of the other side(s), negotiation analysts often draw on the findings of behavioral decision analysts and economists. Further, this approach does not generally assume that all the elements of the "game" are common knowledge. Thus, the negotiation analytic approach tends to de-emphasize the application of game-theoretic solution concepts or efforts to find unique equilibrium outcomes. Instead, to evaluate possible strategies and tactics, negotiation analysts generally focus on changes in perceptions of the "zone of possible agreement" and the (subjective) distribution of possible negotiated outcomes conditional on various actions. This approach is especially sensitive to potentially unrealized joint gains. It has been used to develop prescriptive advice for the simplest bilateral negotiations between monolithic parties, for negotiations through agents or with linked "internal" and "external" aspects, for negotiations in hierarchies and networks, as well as for more complex coalitional interactions.negotiation analysis, game theory: equilibrium concepts, common knowledge, behavioral decision analysis, negotiation, bargaining

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