ABSTRACT
It is quite obvious nowadays that both scholars and policy makers overlook key elements in explaining countries' behavior if they fail to consider domestic politics. In the 1960s and 1970s theories of international relations that focused on domestic factors abounded. Marxist, bureaucratic politics and psychological approaches tried to explain states' actions in foreign policy as a result of internal variables. Despite its shortcomings, Helen Milner's theory provides a satisfactory conceptual framework for analyzing the case at hand. This framework focuses exclusively on the domestic sources of foreign policy within a cooperative environment; the outcome of international cooperative behavior is determined within this framework by the struggle for power among actors with interest in a given agreement. Two-level games and leadership politics of course do not take place in a vacuum. It is commonly accepted that the United States Founding Fathers designed a system that prevents the concentration of political power.
