Deliberation in negotiations

Abstract

The past decade witnessed a growing interest in theories of deliberation and their application at the international level. This article takes stock of the state of the art. It argues that the ‘deliberative turn’ has forced both rationalist and constructivist scholars to refine their arguments and reconsider their methodology. We argue that the new research frontier for constructivists is in assessing under which circumstances arguments affect negotiating actors' preferences and subsequently lead to outcomes that are not easily explained in pure bargaining terms