“We Don’t Talk to Terrorists”: On The Rhetoric and Practice of Secret Negotiations

Political actors sometimes make public commitments not to negotiate with other actors whom they label as being beneath diplomacy. Interestingly, such commitments are sometimes made even as they are being broken. Why do actors sometimes publicly denounce adversaries with whom they intend to negotiate? What factors influence actors’ incentives to label adversaries in one way as opposed to another? What effect does such pre-negotiation rhetoric have on the prospects for successful negotiated settlements? This paper presents a novel game-theoretic model of conflict bargaining, in which actors can make public commitments not to negotiate before deciding whether to engage in secret negotiations with an adversary. We model such commitments as affecting actors’ audience costs; a decision to denounce an adversary increases an actor’s motivation to reach a successful negotiated settlement if negotiations are undertaken. Despite the fact that such a decision weakens an actor’s own bargaining power, we find in equilibrium that actors nonetheless sometimes choose publicly to denounce their counterpart. Under certain conditions, both actors agree to take part in negotiations only if such a denunciation has taken place. We present and interpret equilibrium behavior in our model, and discuss the implications of our results for future research. ∗Julie Browne ([email protected]) is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Politics at New York University. Eric S. Dickson ([email protected]) is Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics at New York University.