Why do governments choose to negotiate indigenous land claims rather than resolve claims through some other means? In this book Scholtz explores why a government would choose to implement a negotiation policy, where it commits itself to a long-run strategy of negotiation over a number of claims and over a significant course of time.

Through an examination strongly grounded in archival research of post-World War Two government decision-making in four established democracies - Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States - Scholtz argues that negotiation policies emerge when indigenous people mobilize politically prior to significant judicial determinations on land rights, and not after judicial change alone. Negotiating Claims links collective action and judicial change to explain the emergence of new policy institutions.