Failure

Treaty failure has two definitions:
1) Parties to negotiation fail to sign any treaty.
2) Parties to negotiation sign a treaty in some manner that is suboptimal: for instance, a treaty is signed, but only after a negotiation process that costs more than the treaty gains; or, a treaty is signed, but its terms are such that the parties to negotiation collectively do not realized the desired gain from cooperation.

The first category, failure to sign, has two subcategories:
1a) A potential treaty existed, but participants to negotiation failed to find it for some reason.
1b) No potential treaty existed, at least at the time of negotiation, because parties' interests did not overlap.

I'm interested in case 1b. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it's actually rather hard to find literature about 1b - or at least, I'm finding it so thus far. I suppose that could be either good or bad, depending on your perspective.