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

International Organization, Vol. 42, No. 3. (Summer, 1988)

Domestic politics and international relations are often somehow entangled, but our thkories have not yet sorted out the puzzling tangle. It is fruitless to debate whether domestic politics really determine international relations, or the reverse. The answer to that question is clearly "Both, sometimes." The more interesting questions are "When?" and "How?" This article offers a theoretical approach to this issue, but I begin with a story that illustrates the puzzle.