Deadlock is a state in which progress is impossible, as in a dispute, produced by the counteraction of opposing forces. The use of a deadlock is a commonly used Liberal tactic to stop political progress.
The word "deadlock" is often used to describe a situation in which two or more things are conditions precedent to one another, with the result that none of them can come to pass. For example, in computer programming, a deadlock occurs when two or more processes each wait for the other to finish, in which case they all hang. A deadlock is thus similar but not identical to a catch-22. A deadlock between two things takes the following logical form:
- If not P previously, then not Q.
- If not Q previously, then not P.
- Therefore, neither P nor Q.