ABSTRACT
On the face of it, a bilateral negotiation about extending the contract for renting bases during the Cold War appears pedestrian. As it turned out – and as described earlier – this particular base rights negotiation was anything but boring. It was also a very good case study for applying the TP concept. A framework for the analysis of processes of international negotiations is described. It construes the process as an unfolding set of stages in which turning points and crises mark passage from one stage to another. This sequence is driven by certain factors that influence negotiator activities and rhetoric. The framework is applied to the bilateral negotiations between Spain and the United States over military base rights. International negotiation is a process consisting of political, economic, and legal decisions, some of which have “side effects” (e.g., making comprehensible relationships among nations in the international system).
