Optimal Imperfection?

"Domestic politics matters" has become a rallying cry for international relations scholars over the past decade, yet the question still remains: Just how does it matter? In this book, George Downs and David Rocke argue that an important part of the international impact of domestic politics springs from the institutional responses to its many uncertainties. This impact is due not so much to the errors in judgment these uncertainties can cause as to the strategic and institutional consequences of knowing that such errors are possible. The heart of the book is its formal analysis of how three kinds of domestic uncertainty have shaped international relations through their influence on three very different institutions. One chapter deals with the decision rules that citizens create to cope with uncertainty about the quality of their representation, and how these can lead to the paradoxical "gambling for resurrection" effect. Another chapter describes the extent to which the weak enforcement provisions of GATT can be understood as a mechanism to cope with uncertain but intermittent interest group demands for protection. The third chapter looks at the impact of uncertainty on the creation, survival, and membership of multilateral regulatory institutions, such as the Montreal Protocol and EU, when some states question the capacity of other states to meet their treaty obligations.

List of Figures	p. ix
List of Tables	p. xi
Preface	p. xiii
The Impact of Uncertainty	p. 3
Introduction	p. 3
Realism and Early Rational Choice	p. 9
The Psychological Tradition	p. 13
The Institutionalist Tradition	p. 19
Recent Research	p. 23
Conclusion	p. 25
Game Theory and Uncertainty	p. 27
Modeling Uncertainty	p. 27
Games of Incomplete Information	p. 28
Introduction	p. 28
Bayesian Updating	p. 31
Signaling and Reputation	p. 35
Principal-Agent Models	p. 41
Trigger Strategies	p. 44
Conclusion	p. 54
Gambling for Resurrection	p. 56
Introduction	p. 56
The Theory	p. 59
The Executive's Dilemma	p. 67
Gambling for Resurrection	p. 68
Conclusion	p. 71
Appendix: Optimal Bayesian Policies	p. 72
Optimal Imperfection: Gatt and the Uncertainty of Interest Group Demands	p. 76
Introduction	p. 76
Modeling Trade Treaties	p. 77
Treaty Maintenance under Perfect Information	p. 79
Reversionary Strategies	p. 79
Reciprocity and Tit-for-Tat	p. 85
Interest Group Uncertainty	p. 87
Asymmetric Preferences	p. 91
Coping with Nontariff Barriers: U.S. Section 301	p. 93
Conclusion	p. 99
Appendixes	p. 101
Assumptions	p. 101
Proof of Proposition 4.1	p. 101
Proof of Proposition 4.2	p. 102
Proof of Proposition
104 5 Willing but Maybe Not Able: The Impact of Uncertainty about State Capacity	p. 105
Introduction	p. 105
An Environmental Model	p. 107
Enforcement Ill
Trigger Strategy	p. 112
Capacity Uncertainty and Change	p. 114
Capacity Uncertainty	p. 114
Capacity Change	p. 117
Equilibrium Behavior	p. 119
The Effects of State Capacity Uncertainty	p. 121
Informational Issue-Linking and a Multivariate Model	p. 123
Conclusion	p. 125
Appendixes	p. 127
Normal Mixture Distributions	p. 12
Proof of Proposition 5.1	p. 127
Conclusion	p. 130
Domestic Uncertainty and Institutions	p. 130
Policy Prescriptions	p. 138
Bibliography	p. 143
Index	p. 155
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Optimal Imperfection?

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