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According to the theory of two-level games, negotiators will tailor the agreement at level I so as to be ratifiable at level II in all major countries. This did not happen in the Kyoto negotiations as far as the United States is concerned. We interviewed 27 German, Norwegian, and U.S. participants in and observers to the climate change negotiations regarding their views on three explanations of why the United States did not become a party to the Kyoto Protocol. Explanation 1 argues that delegations in Kyoto mistakenly thought the U.S. Senate was bluffing when adopting the Byrd-Hagel resolution. Explanation 2 contends that the Europeans preferred a more ambitious agreement without the United States to a less ambitious agreement with the United States included. Finally, explanation 3 suggests that in Kyoto the Clinton-Gore administration had already given up on achieving ratification by the Senate, and essentially pushed for an agreement that would provide them with a climate-friendly face. All three explanations received at least some support from people we interviewed. However, explanations 1 and 3 received more support than explanation 2. Moreover, while explanation 1 received most support in Germany and Norway, explanation 3 received most support in the United States. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is an extremely important and challenging long-term policy problem, which consists of two main challenges. The first is to determine ? under considerable uncertainty ? a plan for the optimal allocation of resources over time to mitigation of climate change, acknowledging that adaptation will to some extent be an alternative option. The second is to implement and stick to this optimal plan over time once it has been determined. This paper argues that the latter challenge might be divided in (at least) three analytically distinct, yet tightly interrelated commitment problems. First, even for an individual it might be tempting at any given point in time to devote fewer resources to mitigation of climate change than it considers optimal for the long term (the time consistency problem). Second, for a government it might be tempting to allocate a sub-optimal amount of resources on mitigation of climate change whenever this would increase its chances of re-election (the domestic politics problem). Finally, the logic of international negotiations makes it difficult to design and enforce an international agreement that corresponds with the optimal long-term plan (the anarchy problem). This paper discusses these commitment problems in some detail, considers how they relate to each other, and explores institutional designs to limit their significance. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]