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about how reaching an agreement or the failure to do so will affect a politician's overall political standing” (144). Figure 1: ZOPA with two unitary actors and one issue Origin of actor A (zero Origin of actor B (zero utility for A) utility for B) Increasing utility of actor A Increasing utility of actor B Reservation value of Reservation value of unitary actor A unitary actor B Complete triumph of B Complete triumph of A (maximum utility for B) The zone of possible (maximum utility for A) agreement (ZOPA) Regardless of the blurriness of exact BATNA levels, it is obvious that if there are no overlapping interests, e.g. there is no ZOPA, then there cannot be any agreement on the international level. However, the impact of the ZOPA’s size on the likelihood that agreement will be reached is still ambiguous. In this simple model with only two parties, negotiation strategies matter. Large ZOPA can increase the risk that actors incorrectly estimate the reserve value of their opponent and opt for strategy results in gridlock. The opposite is true, if ZOPA is very small and its location is transparent to the parties (which is more likely, if for nothing else, because actors can probe the limits of their opponent with a lower number of trial-and- error technique repetitions). A well-defined agreement preferred by both parties to the alternative could be therefore simply reached because ZOPA was small. Extreme examples are prices of goods and services in perfect markets. When there are many buyers and many sellers, the ZOPA collapses into a single point, known as the market price and all bargaining possibilities are therefore eliminated (Mayer 2010, 51). 20