ABSTRACT
My objective in this study is to explore the dynamics of China’s conflict, negotiations, and settlement attempts over disputed territories with its neighbors. At the same time, I hope to contribute to two-level games bargaining theory by testing its integrative approach against this particular territorial aspect of foreign policy making. For various reasons, states choose to bargain, make promises, or use threats, to exact concessions from other states on issues of territorial claims, economic disputes and security challenges. The appearance in 1988 of Robert Putnam’s seminal work on “two-level games,” focused on the effect diplomacy has on domestic politics and vice-versa. Since then, there have been many studies on why and how certain bargaining strategies and negotiating positions as employed by statesmen or diplomats led either to success in achieving the results they want, or at least some measure of it, or to the collapse of negotiations. Much less work seemed to have been done on comparing why some inter-state disputes in the territorial, economic or security arenas failed to get off the ground, or were quickly aborted at the stage of preliminary talks, while others were speedily disposed of to the satisfaction of both sides, even after long years of intermittent and fruitless negotiations. In other words, the bulk of the work done on illustrating or stretching Putnam’s “two-level game” hypothesis focus on the challenges faced by the statesmen/diplomats in negotiating an agreement with their (Level I) counterparts elsewhere, and submitting the agreement for ratification by their domestic (Level II) constituents, and the art of politicking, coalition-forming, and opinion-making involved in both levels of negotiations.1
