LINKAGE POLITICS

In this article, the author extends the basic repeated prisoners' dile mma to allow for the linkage of punishment strategies across issues (i ssue linkage) as well as decentralized third-party enforcement (player linkage). The concepts of issue and player linkage are then synthesiz ed to develop the notion of domestic-international linkage, which conn ects trigger strategy punishments across games played over different i ssues by different sets of players. In a two-level game, domestic and international cooperation may be reinforced by a punishment linkage; a defection in the domestic game may trigger a breakdown of internation al cooperation and vice verse The author also examines the conditions under which the incentives to cooperate are stronger at the domestic l evel than at the international level and vice versa. With domestic-int ernational linkage, the credibility surplus on one level spills over t o offset the credibility deficit on the other level. Finally, the auth or provides conditions under which governments are better off delinkin g domestic and international issues.