Two-level Game Research Articles

Using Mass Survey Data to Infer Political Positions

An increasing number of member countries of the European Union (EU) is heading for ratification through referendum of the yet to be adopted constitution for Europe. Such popular votes will add an additional ratification constraint and empirical models will require information on the positions of the voters on various issues related to the new treaty. This information can come only from mass surveys. In this paper we discuss the ways in which data from mass surveys may be used to infer the policy positions of voters on the most salient aspects of the constitutional treaty. We also propose a way in which these policy positions may be connected with information on the policy positions of the member states’ governments. Combining this information, which is almost imperative for systematic tests of two-level games, allows us to demonstrate that certain referendums are likely to lead to ‘involuntary defections’. In addition, our analysis shows that the prospect of referendums has already led to changes in the draft constitution.

The European Central Bank: Between Growth and Stability

The European Central Bank (ECB) is the most independent of all Central Banks. Indeed, its independence was guaranteed by its statute in order to ensure, as its exclusive goal, the achievement of monetary stability, defined as a level of inflation below 2%. While independence from political constraints, both national and supra-national, provoked concerns about the Union's democratic deficit, it allowed central bankers to concentrate, at least in theory, solely on monetary variables, and to ignore the performance of the real economic indicators, namely growth and employment rates. However, the ECB's monetary policy has not been conducted entirely without regard to the performance of the real economy. This article seeks to explain why the ECB departed from its stated commitments to monetarism from the inception of the euro in 1999 until 2002. The dependent variable is therefore the shift of emphasis in the monetary ‘practice’ of the ECB from price stability to growth and employment. The shift in orientation is explained with reference to the interests of the most powerful euro-zone states, which were, in turn, responding to powerful domestic actors. This analysis is conducted within the framework of a revised, ‘embedded’ version of intergovernmentalism by Moravcsik, which adds to the traditional intergovernmentalist framework an explicit theory of state interest formation within a two-level game approach to European economic policy-making. In particular, this article suggests the utility of Frieden's model on the exchange rate preferences of economic sectors for the analysis of ECB policies.

Patently Misleading: Partial Implementation and Bargaining Leverage in Sino-American Negotiations on Intellectual Property Rights

We develop a model of international negotiation in which states anticipate that the agreements they sign will only be partly implemented. The results differ significantly from theories of domestic ratification that have previously been applied to this problem. Negotiators do not try to satisfy the implementer and may even choose agreements that the implementer would explicitly reject in a ratification model. Partial implementation also makes it possible for two negotiators to reach agreements outside their usual win-set. This situation may allow one country to make extraordinary concessions, knowing that some provisions will never be fully implemented. We apply these claims to Sino-American negotiations over intellectual property rights, where implementation has been a recurrent issue. The theory enriches the theory of two-level games, which has focused much too narrowly on formal ratification without amendment as the canonical case of domestic influence over international bargaining.An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2003 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association in Chicago. We would like to thank Aslaug Asgeirsdottir, Brian Gaines, Lisa Martin, two anonymous referees, and attendees at the MPSA panel for their comments. Any errors remain our responsibility.

Constituencies and Preferences in International Bargaining

Previous formal models of two-level games, which try to determine whether a domestic ratification constraint provides an executive with bargaining leverage in international negotiations, pay little attention to the exact nature of the executive's constituency and the source of the constraint. The author uses a gametheoretic model to show that an executive with a national constituency such as a nationally elected president benefits by being constrained. An executive with a constituency distinct from that of the ratifying legislators, however, isworse off under greater constraints, when the constraintscome from constituencies other than his or her own. This can occur, for instance, in a minority or coalition parliamentary government consisting of parties with different and in fact opposing constituencies. Testable hypotheses are derived on the effect of the party composition of the legislature on the executive's constraint.

Public Opinion in the Israeli-Palestinian Two-Level Game

The article focuses on public opinion as a policy-relevant imperative in negotiators’ two-level games, in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Specifically, it highlights two characteristics of public opinion: its multifaceted nature and its susceptibility to framing efforts. The two are related in the sense that they provide negotiators with opportunities to shape their own and the other side’s win-sets: the sets of possible agreements that will gain majority support among their constituents. Both characteristics are exemplified using data from joint Palestinian-Israeli surveys focusing on two of the most difficult issues in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute: the recognition of the Palestinian refugees’ right of return by Israelis and the recognition of the Jewish identity of Israel by Palestinians. First, the study shows how framing a solution to the Palestinian refugees’ problem as the implementation or surrender of the right of return greatly affects respondents’ support for it. The article then discusses the implications of constructive ambiguity and framing for negotiators. Next it demonstrates the utility of a multifaceted approach to public opinion research in detecting pluralistic ignorance and mutual misperceptions on the issue of Israel’s national identity, pointing again to the implications of these conditions for policy-makers involved in two-level games.

The Logic of Two-Level Games with Endogenous Lobbying: Case of International Environmental Agreements

International environmental agreements (IEAs) are increasingly important in a globalized economy. The aim of our paper is study the effect of political pressure groups-lobbies- on the size and stability of IEAs. To this purpose we use the framework of two-level games to explain how national political situation influences the decisions of governments at the international negotiations arena. we present an endogenous lobbying model in which we assume that lobbies try to influence the policy choice of governments by offering political contribution in return for policy compromise. Indeed, we use the “interest based explanation” of international environmental policy to describe the incentives of countries to join an agreement. This approach classifies countries in four categories: pushers, bystanders, intermediate and draggers. We found that, when government gives the same weight to contribution and to social welfare, the contributions from the industrial lobby give incentives to government (Pushers, intermediate) to participate in the grand coalition making it stable. Our results suggest that in order to sustain the grand coalition, weak global environmental agreements — i.e. those involving small abatement targets–should be negotiated. The result is similar if governments are more interested by political contribution. However, if governments care less about political contribution than about social welfare, industrial contribution is not enough to limit the free riding incentives of each type of government. In this situation, pushers are the more expected to sustain a small stable coalition.

European Integration and the Nationalities Question

European integration questions the relationship between nation and state. It under-mines traditional sovereignty and weakens the need for statehood. Minority nationalist movements have in many cases adopted the European theme, adjusting their ideology and strategy accordingly. Some have used “new regionalist” themes to construct new systems of action below and beyond the state. Europe provides opportunities for territorial movements and grants some minority protections. There are differences between Western Europe and Central and Eastern Europe because of the evolution of state structures. The prospective European constitution risks formalizing the European Union as a two-level game of states and the Union, with little room for regional and minority claims.

A two-level computable equilibrium model to assess the strategic allocation of emission allowances within the European union

This paper deals with the modeling of the strategic allocation of greenhouse gases emission allowances in the EU-wide trading market that results from Kyoto agreement implementation. An M-matrix game is formulated where the players are countries or groups of countries that may have a strategic influence through their allocation of emission allowances and the payoffs are the welfare gains of these countries, evaluated from a multi-country computable general equilibrium model. To solve the matrix game one uses the concept of correlated equilibrium which makes sense in the context of EU negotiations. One studies several formulations of that two-level game structure and, in all these instances, we obtain a unique equilibrium solution that can be given an interesting interpretation for establishing a scheme for greenhouse gas emission allowance trading within the community.

Modeling Compromise at the International Table

A number of people have modeled Putnam's (1988) analogy of the two-level game to better understand the interaction between domestic and international politics. Milner and Rosendorff's model (1997) has taken on particular significance in this area of research. By applying a Nash bargaining solution to a standard spatial model, they were able to make specific predictions of bargaining behavior with and without domestic constraints. In this paper, I argue that some compromise should be expected in the bargaining, compromise that the Nash bargaining solution does not allow when paired with a linear utility assumption. I present a number of theoretical alternatives for which some degree of compromise is predicted. General solutions are derived given the unidimensional spatial model for the Nash (1950), the Kalai—Smorodinsky (1975), and the Felsenthal—Diskin (1982) bargaining solutions with linear and with quadratic equations. Given the unidimensional spatial context, more compromise is proposed under a given bargaining solution when using quadratic utilities rather than linear utilities. The most compromise is proposed by the Felsenthal—Diskin bargaining solution, followed by the Kalai—Smorodinsky, and then the Nash bargaining solutions.

Forecasting Israeli–Palestinian Relations

This article addresses the issue of how international relations theories and experts do at forecasting Israeli–Palestinian relations. A group of academics who study the Middle East were brought together to set forth their logic and arguments concerning possible future scenarios of Israeli–Palestinian relations. The article reports on a ‘rule-based’ computational model built upon the reasoning of these experts. Sensitivity analysis of the model is summarized, and four empirical tests of the model are reported. Relations between Middle East states, externally generated existential threats to Israel, and domestic structural factors such as coalition politics in Israel emerge as driving forces in the sensitivity analysis. Further examination shows that the model is in theoretical harmony with scholars who have employed two-level games and has some similarity to realist explanations and frameworks emphasizing public opinion. Model tests reveal relatively solid results: comparisons with other forecasts generally favor this model, while both the cases of the Labor Party coming to power in Israel and a change in Jordanian behavior after the death of King Hussein lend further support to the model presented here. Finally, when the scholars who served as the expert group to produce these forecasts were asked to reflect back on the process, they exhibited the same rationalizations that have been found in other expertbased forecasts, even though the results of the forecasts were more favorable than many such forecasts.

Theory of ‘Soft' Policy Implementation in Multilevel Systems with an Application to Social Partnership in the Netherlands

This paper develops a theory of policy implementation in a specific category of multilevel policy-making systems. In state centric policy systems, regulatory agencies can drift away from ‘hard' decisions. In multilevel systems, relatively autonomous levels of decision-making sometimes implement voluntary, non-binding recommendations and guidelines. In this paper, we adapt the ‘state of the art model' of policy implementation in order to analyse the implementation of ‘soft' policies in these multilevel systems. We propose a new dependent variable of policy implementation: cross-level policy coherence. To explain cross-level policy coherence, a ratification hypothesis is derived from the theory of ‘two-level games’, while two hypotheses regarding agenda coordination and outcome coordination are derived from the concept of collective support for policies. We apply the adapted model to the implementation of the 1997 national Dutch social pact ‘Agenda 2002' in the sectoral collective bargaining agreement in the metal industry in 1998. The empirical evidence rejects the ratification hypothesis and corroborates the two coordination hypotheses, suggesting that the implementation of ‘soft’, non-binding policies can be coordinated across autonomous levels.

The Politics of European Union Immigration Policy: Institutions, Salience, and Harmonization

This article examines recent attempts to create a common European Union (EU) immigration policy. This “harmonized” policy has faced political blockages, despite being seen by most observers as necessary if the EU is to meet its goal of free movement of labor. Because of this resistance, immigration harmonization has lagged behind other EU policy areas. To explain national resistance to harmonizing immigration policy, our article develops a theoretical and conceptual model of how immigration policy is potentially harmonized at the EU level, but how this harmonization can be blocked or restricted. We explain these political blockages with a model of intergovernmental bargaining that focuses on political salience, political partisanship, and institutions that protect immigrant rights. We argue that these national-level factors have determined the success and the nature of various harmonization proposals, by determining the positions of member states when negotiating in the European Council. Our primary hypothesis is that when the political salience of a given immigration issue is high, any harmonization that results is more likely to be restrictive toward immigrant rights. We also hypothesize that the impact of institutions that protect immigrant rights, and of political partisanship, is variable depending on the issue area and the national context. We use literature on European integration, immigration politics, agenda-setting, venue-shopping, and two-level games to theorize, operationalize, and test these hypotheses. The article helps to advance scholarly work on immigration politics, but our model could also conceivably be applied to other high-salience policy areas in the EU.

The Politics of Deception Forging Peace Treaties in the Face of Domestic Opposition

DEMOCRATIC POLITIES DEEIBERATELY construct institutions and procedures to hold their governments accountable. In the foreign policy realm, this usually involves some degree of legislative participation in the policy process, a ratification procedure for international treaties, and a forum for public review of policies, at a minimum during election campaigns. While some democracies devise institutions and procedures to allow their national security executives some degree of autonomy to make decisions in the national interest even when there is large-scale domestic opposition, others keep their executives within tight institutional constraints. Due to the secret nature of many international negotiations, however, even less autonomous democratic governments may be able to escape their domestic constraints by deceiving the legislature and the public about their behaviour in secret talks. In this article, I investigate their ability to do so, and the consequent challenge this presents to democratic accountability.To this end, I examine the policy independence of Great Britain, France, and the United States when they negotiated the Versailles treaty of 1919, and Israeli efforts to negotiate a political settlement with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1993. These cases present excellent opportunities to study the independenceenhancing potential of deception since, as I will demonstrate, all four governments possessed relatively low levels of foreign policy autonomy. Hence, any differences in their observed policy independence cannot be attributed to differences in executive strength. Furthermore, during these negotiations the preferences of national leaders diverged sharply from public and legislative opinion; therefore, each of these leaders faced comparable countervailing domestic pressures. By observing the actual policy independence of David Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau, Thomas Woodrow Wilson, and Yitzhak Rabin-the national leaders and principal negotiators-assessed in terms of their ability to pursue unpopular policies and accept treaty provisions that conflicted with domestic demands, as well as the frequency with which they resorted to deceptive tactics to escape domestic pressures, we can gauge the ability of skilful national agents to magnify the scope of structural autonomy with which they are endowed. Finally, these cases allow me to explore whether executives resort to deception in different negotiating conditions and different eras. The 1919 settlement was negotiated in a multilateral context amongst sovereign democratic states; Israel negotiated the 1993 agreement bilaterally with a nonstate actor.This article is divided into five parts. Part I considers the dynamics of international negotiations and the opportunities they present for less autonomous democratic executives. Part II overviews the domestic decision-making environments of the four democracies in question in order to demonstrate that they all had relatively constrained executives. Parts III and IV present the case studies. My conclusions, which consider the contemporary incentives for deception and the paradox of accountability it creates, are presented in Part V.I DOMESTICALLY WEAK DEMOCRATIC EXECUTIVES AND INTERNATIONAL NEGOTIATIONSPutnam has likened international negotiation to a complex two-level game.1 National leaders must play to two audiences while they strive to achieve their own preferences: the international (level I) and the domestic (level II). The demands of these audiences often conflict, creating difficulties for leaders under the condition of strategic interdependence. Concessions to public and legislative opinion may irritate other states, and international concessions can ignite domestic opposition. In addition, the demands of both groups might be inimical to the government's own objectives. In order to reach an international agreement, the substance of the accord must be at least minimally acceptable to a state's bargaining partners. …

A Regulator's Dilemma and Two-level Games: Japan in the Politics of International Banking Regulation

Employing a two-level-game framework, this paper examines Japanese participation in the negotiation process leading up to the 1988 Basle Capital Accord.The argument made here is that the Japanese Ministry of Finance (MoF) simultaneously pursued different international and domestic goals; moreover, the ministry assessed the outcomes of these negotiations as successful at the time. On the one hand, the ministry's international goal was to preserve the international competitiveness of Japanese banks.To this end, the MoF won a concession from its foreign counterparts. On the other hand, its domestic goal was to introduce statutory capital adequacy rules, which the ministry had been unable to put in place owing to opposition from banks.This study marks a departure from existing accounts that (I) treat Japan as a unified front merely seeking to gain an international competitive advantage for Japanese banks; and/or (2) emphasize market pressure as a driving force behind participation in an international regulatory regime.

Do International Institutions Matter?

Locating the Proper Authorities: The Interaction of Domestic and International Institutions. Edited by Daniel W. Drezner. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002. 240 pp., $52.50 (ISBN: 0-472-11289-9). Within international relations, interest in the interplay between international and domestic politics dates from at least the 1960s and the development of “across-systems-theory” (Rosenau 1969; Wilkenfield 1973). However, it has only been in the past fifteen years that the field of international relations has placed any real emphasis on including domestic factors in its explanations of international behavior. In the past decade, for example, constructivists have advocated the importance of agents as well as structure in explaining politics, redirecting attention away from purely structural explanations of international politics and opening the door for the analysis of the interaction between the international system and substate actors (Koslowski and Kratochwil 1994; Kubalkova, Onuf, and Kowert 1998; Ruggie 1998). Foreign policy analysts, similarly, have asserted a need to account for both international and domestic politics when explaining the actions of decision makers (Holsti and Rosenau 1988; Karvonen and Sundelius 1990; Anderson, Hermann, and Hermann 1992; Carlsnaes 1992; Hagan 1994; Foyle 1997). To a large degree, this heightened interest in the interaction between domestic and international factors dates from the publication of Robert Putnam's (1988) article “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games.” Putnam argued that the outcomes of international negotiations are determined by decision makers' efforts to reconcile the competing political demands of the international arena and critical domestic constituents. Specifically, the ability to reach an agreement with another state is contingent on a leader's ability to craft a proposal that is not only acceptable to the opposing government but can also be ratified domestically. Although very simple in design, Putnam's model is powerful in that it provides a way to link activities at the international and domestic levels and to account for their interaction. Putnam's work inspired further research on the …

Greenland, US Bases and Missile Defence

The US Thule Air Base in Greenland will need upgrading should President Bush's missile defence programme go ahead. This has already brought the US administration into three-sided negotiations between itself, Denmark and Greenland. The article looks at the historical background to the present negotiations and, using an adaptation of Putnam's `logic of two-level games', traces the move from one-level to two-level and three-level negotiations in previous negotiations and the ones now emerging. Over time, US dealings about their bases in Greenland have evolved from the one-level negotiations of 1941 and 1951 to the two-level game of the 1980s — with a smattering of early Greenlandic involvement — to the current three-level game. Should the US and Greenland face each other directly over the negotiating table, a new two-level game will begin with the Greenlanders in a stronger bargaining position than Denmark, according to a reading of Putnam.

A Two-Level Game: Spain and the Promotion of Democracy and Human Rights in Morocco

Spain has declared its aim to promote democracy and human rights abroad and specifically in Morocco. This goal appears very ambitious in view of the low degree of institutionalization and consolidation of Spanish human rights foreign policy mechanisms. Moreover, from the outset other factors rule out the possibility of Morocco becoming an object of forceful action: it has a better human rights situation than other North African countries and is of vital importance to Spain, which fears that its own interests could be adversely affected by a resort to coercive policies. Having discarded the use of negative instruments, the route of incentives and rewards for positive evolution entails fewer risks for the promoter country, and seems reasonably appropriate in the case of Morocco. But circumstances such as the low profile of Spanish cooperation policy and the distrust of Spanish civil society towards Morocco have also prevented greater use of actions of a more positive nature.

Bosnian Peacekeeping and EU Tax Harmony

Michael J. Butler is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Connecticut and a Simulation Coordinator for the GlobalEd Project. Mark A. Boyer is a Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Connecticut, where he is Co-Director of the GlobalEd Project (www.globaled.uconn.edu). The authors would like to thank Ernie Zirakzadeh for inspiring the conceptual underpinnings for this article.THE EVENTS OF 11 SEPTEMBER 2001 VIVIDLY ILLUSTRATE how an international issue can leap to the top of a nation's foreign policy agenda. Although combating terrorism has long been a focus for collaboration among the dominant players in the international system, it has rarely occupied the attention of high-level policy-makers as it has since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. This changed policy environment forces us to consider why some issues (such as terrorism) come to the fore on the foreign policy agenda, whether dramatically or in a more evolutionary fashion, while others (such as foreign aid programmes) persist in relative obscurity and still others (such as most trade issues) command a significant but not excessive share of the policy spotlight over long periods of time. If we accept the likely proposition that the fundamental characteristics of the issues themselves change very little (if at all), we then need to understand what causes the relative importance of particular issues to change, at least for short periods of time.Understanding the changeability of the international policy environment has several important implications for both citizens and elites. For the former, changing policy priorities means that it is more difficult to stay informed on the nuances of particular issues. Citizens making electoral and other political decisions must synthesize new and necessary information as it becomes available. If we believe, as some in the public opinion field do,(1) that citizens are not particularly attentive to foreign policy and international relations, the changing policy environment and the demands it imposes for more information will make the average citizen even less inclined to worry about the world and more inclined to cede decision-making power over complex and dynamic issues to political elites.The problems may be even greater for elites as they try to cope with the need to learn about newly important issues even as they hammer out policy 'on the fly' with incomplete and sometimes inaccurate information about emergent international challenges. Even a layman's eye could discern the scramble that took place in official Washington in the wake of 11 September to find experts on the new buzzwords of the day: Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and the Taliban. Policy challenges such as these are made more difficult when we factor in the complexity of the foreign policy decision-making process and the need to identify and court international coalition members in an age of increasing multilateralism and interdependence.Recently, international relations scholarship has begun to show an appreciation for these and other challenges faced by policy-makers. Works such as Robert Putnam's study of two-level games, Terrence Hopmann's comprehensive analysis of the complexity of negotiation, David Held and Anthony McGrew's excellent compilation examining the impact of globalization on domestic and international policy challenges, and even Paul Sharp's article on the centrality of studying diplomacy within the international relations field have helped push toward more complex analyses of international and global phenomena and the policy-making process more generally.(2) As a result of studies such as these and the growing diversity of methodological approaches available in the field, scholars are beginning to place foreign policy decision-making more directly into the complex of relationships that engender contemporary global affairs.In this vein, this article examines two recent cases of international policy change - discord within the European Union (EU) over the harmonization of fuel taxes and the evolution of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) operations in Bosnia - in an effort to understand the forces at work in changing the policy environment in each case and the implications of those changes for policy outcomes. …

Politicians, Electoral Law & International Bargaining Approaches: A Case Study of Korea‐U.S. Agricultural Trade Negotiation

The purpose of this paper is to explain the change in the Korean government̂s bargaining approach from a soft‐line to a hard‐line approach. This paper introduced a two‐level explanation to find an explanatory variable. The two‐level explanation concentrates on the ratification process connecting domestic to international politics. This explanation holds that strong domestic pressure forces a negotiator to employ a hard‐line stance, whereas weak domestic pressure makes possible a concessive soft‐line approach. The two‐level theorists suggest conditions that create strong domestic pressure. Those are the features of bargaining issues and the existence of an electoral system that strengthens some domestic constituents' power by over‐representing them. The homogenous bargaining issue and domestic constituents' over‐represented electoral power produce strong domestic pressure. Hence a negotiator is inclined to take a hard‐line stance, when the feature of a bargaining issue is homogenous and a domestic group whose interest is closely related to the bargaining issue is over‐represented by the electoral system.This paper argues that these conditions are not sufficient. Under an electoral law permitting mobilized voting, these variables do not yield strong domestic pressure during the ratification process. It is because politicians, who participate in the ratification process, are able to get votes by means of mobilization, and they, therefore, are less responsive to domestic constituents' demands so as to get their votes. We found this to be the situation in the case of the Korean government̂s adoption of a soft‐line stance.In 1993, a new electoral law was proposed to hinder politicians from mobilizing votes with money. The new law led to changes in politicians' behavior. Politicians had no choice but to appeal to their constituents with a policy consistent with their constituents' interests and demands in order to get their votes. Politicians' changed behavior enabled such variables as the feature of a bargaining issue and a domestic constituent̂s electoral power to produce strong domestic constraints, as the two‐level game theorists argue. As a result, the Korean government changed its bargaining approach from a soft‐line to a hard‐line one after the reform of the electoral law.To show the effect of the change in the electoral law on a negotiator's adoption of a bargaining approach, this paper considers such variables as the nature of a bargaining issue and an electoral system that over‐represents some domestic constituents. The selection of Korean trade negotiation cases allows this paper to put those variables under scrutiny. The cases also enable us to consider the international variable such as the United States' international pressure. There were no variations in those variables in Korean cases.This work has useful implications for cases in which a country undergoing the transition to democracy negotiates with other countries. Democratization creates new democratic laws and institutions. New laws and institutions in countries like Korea may push politicians into responding more to their domestic supporters' demands than before. As a result, they may create a situation in which “domestic politics and international relations become entangled.

Analyzing the Canada–U.S. Environmental Relationship A Multi-Faceted Approach

The topography and hydrology bisected by the political boundary dividing Canada and the United States makes binational environmental policy problems inevitable. Many of these problems are handled without dissention, but some are causes of conflict. From the Lake of the Woods to Puget Sound, and from the Gulf of Alaska to the Beaufort Sea, the international boundary is ruler-straight. Geophysical and bioregional features are bisected politically, with little regard for ecosystemic relationships. (Lynton Caldwell 1992) ********** Canada and the United States share a set of ecosystems that span the North American continent and the transboundary nature of environmental problems creates the need for cooperation between the two countries at multiple levels. Certainly, we have learned much over the past two decades about the binational environmental relationship, where federal officials in both countries seek to exercise influence through diplomatic channels and collaborate via joint mechanisms such as the International Joint Commission. Adding to the state of knowledge on Canada-United States environmental relations are the growing number of studies aimed at unearthing less prominent subnational cross-border linkages. Subnational interactions are more likely to take place within the realm of the workaday, yet are just as important for the state of the overall environmental relationship as national-level diplomatic interactions. Our understanding of the trilateral environmental context is rather more recent, although it is becoming clear that the continental influence tends to operate through collaborative science and shared problem definition. As Alan Schwartz, a long-time observer of Canadian-American environmental relations, explains: there is a complex web of interactions on many levels...which holds most issues at bay as minor, behind-the-scenes irritants rather than allowing them to develop into full-blown crises. (1) To grasp the full complexity of the Canada--U.S. environmental relationship, one must employ a multi-faceted framework for analyzing cross-border interactions. This requires both a multi-level approach that takes into account interactions at the subnational, national, and continental levels and attention to different modes of cross-border interaction. More specifically, it is necessary to combine examinations of, first, formal relations or negotiations generally conducted by senior-level officials and, second, less visible, working relations among mid-level officials, experts and non-governmental organizations, which can lead to the development of likeminded epistemic communities. The recent Canadian-American negotiations on the Ozone Annex to the Canada--United States Air Quality Agreement demonstrate that analyses ought not to focus on national-level interactions at the expense of subnational and supranational relations or, alternatively, concentrate on formal, high-level interactions at the expense of mid-level working relations. Certainly, the manner in which the binational negotiations unfolded over 1999-2000 is an important part of the overall story. However, the development of a transboundary network of officials, experts and nongovernmental actors at multiple levels during the 1990s was critical. Out of this network, a web of cross-border support for addressing ground-level ozone via specific policy instruments gradually evolved. Framing the Analysis: Lessons From a Burgeoning Literature During the 1980s and into the 1990s, many studies of CanadianAmerican environmental relations focused primarily on the efforts of federal officials in the two countries to coordinate domestic and crossborder political dynamics in order to further bilateral aims, much as two-level game theorists would. In Putnam's classic characterization, cross-border negotiations consist of, first, Level I negotiations, or bargaining between negotiators from different countries which leads to tentative agreement, and, second, Level II negotiations, or separate discussions with domestic interests about whether to ratify this tentative agreement. …