What game? By which rules?

Whatever its shortcomings in foreign and security policy, the European Community is now generally accepted as an international actor in economic affairs. Despite an extensive literature, however, how this international organization functions as an international actor is still poorly understood. I argue that the failure to come to grips with the complexity and subtlety of the EC’s role as an international economic actor stems from an insufficiently nuanced application of Robert Putnam’s (1988) two-level game metaphor.