Involuntary defection in two-level games

Abstract

Ratification failures are prevalent in international relations, but due to the assumption of unitary actors in international relations theory, theoretical analysis has been underdeveloped. In formalizing Putnam's metaphor of two-level games, this article shows that incomplete information about the preferences of domestic actors is crucial for understanding ratification failures. Furthermore, institutional mechanisms affect bargaining outcomes through their impact on information revelation. In particular, it is found that two-sided constraints lead to relatively equitable bargaining outcomes and that renegotiation and pre-negotiation poll-taking can induce strategic voting by domestic constituents, thereby exacerbating domestic constraints.

Why risk popular ratification failure? A comparative analysis of the choice of the ratification instrument in the 25 Member States of the EU

“…Empirical studies on the two-level game of EU treaty negotiations found that status quo-prone governments increased their bargaining leverage at IGCs when credibly referring to Euro-sceptic voters (Hug and König 2002;König and Hug 2000;Slapin 2006). In other words, governments may tie their hands by domestic constrains and accept higher risks of ratification failure by initiating a referendum (Ilda 1996). Overall, it is argued that the choice of the ratification instrument is a function of the expected benefits of governments from a treaty reform, which we will consider by the parameter t g .…”

Strategic ratification

“…Many models of ratifier effects assume that the negotiators propose divisions of a pie and that an individual's preferences are a function only of their own cut (Iida, 1993;Mo, 1994Mo, , 1995Iida, 1996;Haller & Holden, 1997;Tarar, 2005). In some ways such situations approximate a multidimensional environment since the set of possible divisions of a pie can be represented as a multidimensional simplex.…”

“…However, since smaller winsets may also rule out good outcomes, it is not clear whether a small winset will in fact benefit or harm a negotiator. These possibly ambiguous effects led to a series of more formal attempts to identify when and how ratifiers matter (see for example Iida, 1993;Mo, 1994Mo, , 1995Iida, 1996;Milner & Rosendorf, 1997;Haller & Holden, 1997;Tarar, 2001;Butler, 2004).…”

“…The extensions examine the effects of one sided constraints, of two sided constraints, of domestic uncertainty, and of a variety of different types of domestic institutions, including institutions for information aggregation (Iida, 1996), supermajority rules (Haller and Holden, 1997), presidential versus parliamentary systems (Tarar, 2005), and possibilities for domestic amendments (Tarar, 2004). However, although there has been much work done to develop the institutional environment, this work has relied on very stylized models that put severe constraints on three key aspects of a model's design: the nature of the set of outcomes over which players make choices, the preferences of players over feasible outcomes, and the strategic behavior of the players.…”

The paradox of weakness in the politics of trade integration

“…From an economic perspective, the free-rider problem of domestic political engagement thus remains unsolved in this setup, so that the constraints appear rather weak. 4 Iida (1996) focuses more closely on domestic constraints (including two-sided constraints). Yet, following previous work, he tries to illuminate in particular the role of institutions in revealing or hiding information, thereby affecting negotiation outcomes.…”