Final answer:
Trust is fundamental in negotiations, influencing the amount of information shared and the quality of the agreement. Lack of trust, as seen in realist political contexts, leads to less cooperative and typically less mutually beneficial outcomes. Rebuilding trust is difficult once it's lost, often requiring third-party intervention to facilitate future cooperation.
Step-by-step explanation:
Even cooperatively motivated negotiators have less trust, exchange less information about preferences and priorities, and achieve agreements of lower joint profit when they can observe and predict the other party than when they do not have this capability. In negotiations, such as those described in a prisoner's dilemma scenario, participants who have mutual trust are more likely to cooperate and achieve higher joint profits. High levels of distrust, often seen in realist approaches to political negotiations, lead to withholding information, which can hinder the development of a fully cooperative and beneficial agreement.
Rebuilding trust after a defection or betrayal in negotiations is challenging. It often requires a third party to enforce cooperation or to punish those who breach agreements to induce future cooperation. Ultimately, trust is a crucial element to successful negotiation outcomes, and without it, the tendency is to approach negotiations with caution, to share less information, and to reach suboptimal agreements.
The dynamics of political bargaining can result in various outcomes, including status quo persistence due to lack of agreement, compromises based on shared goals despite differing details, or failure to negotiate due to diametrically opposed goals. These dynamics exemplify the complex interaction between trust, information exchange, and the resultant quality of agreements in negotiation settings.