Summer 2019 POL 241 Chap 4- Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games @ Robert D. Putnam

Elayne Guzman

Summer 2019 POL 241 Chap 4

Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games @ Robert D. Putnam

Quote:

“The politics of many international negotiations can usefully be conceived by a two level game. At the national level, domestic groups pursue their interests by pressuring the government to adopt favorable policies, and politicians seek power by constructing coalitions among those groups. At the international level, national governments seek to maximize their own ability to satisfy domestic pressures, while minimizing the adverse consequences of foreign developments. Neither of the two games can be ignored by central decision-makers, so long as their countries remain interdependent, yet sovereign.”  

Meaning/Chosen:

    Putnam wants to model how domestic politics affects international relations, thus leaving purely statistic/realist perspectives. He assumes that international decision makers are concerned both with domestic and international pressures. Additionally, these decisions makers known as the “state” are not the unitary actors whose preferences do not change despite successive governments as in the realist formulation. Rather parties, social cleavages, elections etc, affect international relations not merely state actors and institutional arrangements.

   At the national level politicians win power by constructing coalitions of groups who pressure the government to adopt favorable policies. At the international level governments seek to maximize their own ability to satisfy domestic pressures while minimizing any unwanted consequences of foreign developments. Leaders are in both games. What may be rational in one game, may be irrational in the other.

Reference:
           Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games @ Robert D. Putnam International Organization, Vol. 42, No. 3. (Summer, 1988), pp. 427-460.