From London to Bretton Woods; Sources of Change in Bargaining Strategies and Outcomes

Abstract

Our most prominent theories of international bargaining miss elements essential for understanding national bargaining strategies and international outcomes. In particular they lack sufficient mechanisms of change over time. A focused contrast between the London economic and monetary conference of 1933 and the Bretton Woods conference of 1944 suggests three new dynamic hypotheses. (1) Changes, especially extreme ones, in national market conditions are likely to shift the state's bargaining strategy sharply even if its relative international position has not changed. A slump will produce a more exploitative strategy, while a boom will encourage either a passive or an expansive strategy. (2) Painful national experience running contrary to prevailing policy ideas is likely to discredit those ideas among politicians and officials, turn them toward alternative doctrines, and lead to corresponding strategy changes. The ideas most likely to spread politically are ones which had predicted the currrent problem, and those whose advocates mount the most sophisticated publicity campaign. (3) International technical disagreement can pose a decisive impediment to intergovernmental agreement, while in some conditions at least technical convergence facilitates official agreement.