The Formal Model and Axiomatic Derivation

Abstract

Because the rules of the bargaining problem permit the final outcome to be determined only by the coalition of all the participants acting together, or by the individual participants acting alone, the special case of bargaining among two participants shares many of the properties of the general case of bargaining among n participants, for n ≥ 2. That is, even when n is greater than two, so that intermediate coalitions exist which contain more than one participant but fewer than n, these coalitions cannot by themselves secure any outcome but the disagreement outcome; i.e., they cannot secure any outcome which is not available to their members acting individually. So the effect of intermediate coalitions on the bargaining process is of generally minor importance.¹