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From a pragmatic perspective, the third party can be defined as a pragmatic constraint on the negotiating parties’ manners of behavior. This paper distinguishes three forms of pragmatic constraints, and hence three forms of third parties: the “empirical third party,” the generalized third party, and the reflexive third party, and tests their relevance in negotiation practice. We thus distinguish two ways in which to produce common rules and to set up negotiations depending on the form of the third parties who are involved. Differentiating between these forms of third parties allows us to better understand the issues involved in negotiation today. One of the problems of modernity is the construction of a complex coordination mechanism between generalized third parties and reflexive third parties.