Abstract
The thesis considers formal abstractions for reasoning
about the role of domestic politics in international environmental
negotiations, by discussing three formal developments of the theory
of two-level games.
Formal abstractions for reasoning about the role of information,
domestic political competition, and how the incentive to cooperate
varies with institutional setup, are discussed using U.S. climate
policy as the empirical reference point.
U.S. rejection of Kyoto is analysed first as a case of involuntary
defection and then in terms of the influence of the U.S. coal
industry.
The main conclusions are: 1) although formal developments of the
theory of two-level games provide examples of plausible mechanisms
for describing the role of domestic politics, the specific
applications to U.S. climate policy are less than satisfying; and 2)
relaxing the assumption of zero payoff for failure to ratify
would increase the expressive power of formal two-level models.