Negotiation systems

It really can be shockingly hard to force oneself to skip over articles or chapters one knows are of no earthly use or interest, but which are on the general topic one is researching. "Maybe I should just skim the first lines," one thinks. "Sure, it doesn't look interesting, but maybe that's just because I don't yet understand this really important chunk of the literature.

The best thing I found today was a quote:

...once it is part of a system [of international negotiations], a negotiation has to respond to the needs and demands of that system. The main demand is that it should contribute to the stability and growth (optimization) of the system.

--Victor Kremenyuk, "The Emerging System of International Negotiation", International Negotiation: Analysis, Approaches, Issues (2002)

I find this a bit overstated, but I think it's basically true. The international negotiation structure is biased toward protecting and stabilizing consolidated parts of itself. Thus, for instance, everyone knows that one possible way to force emissions mitigation commitments from reluctant countries would be to tie them to trade - no commitments, no favorable trade terms. But it's a non-started, because there's a whole, existing, relatively stable chunk of the international system built around the idea that most of the nations have agreed not to pull stuff like that. Nobody seriously talks about messing with the WTO in order to push climate change action. A big part of that, of course, is that there are sets of countries that have, or believe they have, individual interests in preserving that chunk of the system. But I do also think there's a big psychological and institutional inertia as well. The WTO has a kind of normative and structural precedence because it is stable and settled.

Of course, if you didn't buy that a priori, how would I prove it to you? How would I separate out effects of individual interests from effects of normative stability?