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negotiation and ratification
    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
    Not at all to gainsay the importance of this continuing line of fruitful research, perhaps we should also pay attention to why outstanding inter-state disputes are left to simmer and linger in the popular consciousness and stand in the way of better relations between the disputant states without any of their governments taking action to force a confrontation, to withdraw from the contention, or to take steps in achieving a comprehensive solution, or even a piecemeal settlement, by starting negotiations. Could it be due to the absence of an intersecting “win-set” or common grounds for agreement, as a result of exactly overlapping areas of contested sovereignty, uncompromising popular feelings arising out of historical grievances, extremely prejudiced cultural bias or perceptions, or some other factors which lead states to adopt intransigent positions if and when they even contemplate negotiations? Could it be that mutual distrust and lingering hostility among the people of the disputant states is so deep that the uniformly intransigent position taken by pressure groups or social forces on the issue or issues at hand make it impossible for negotiators on one side to appeal to, or take advantage of, a possible breach or division of public opinion on the other side, which would allow for meaningful dialog even to begin, let alone concessions to be made?
    In answering the two foregoing questions, I hope to be able to bring the rationality of “two-level game” theory to rest on a cultural paradigm, by shedding light on how one type of analysis is enriched by the other in terms of the power to explain the international and domestic forces of interaction. It is not my purpose to get entangled in the often-animated academic discussion on the relative virtues of rational choice versus cultural analysis, except to say that I believe that rational goal-achieving behavior of an individual or a group can have no meaning except within the context of historical knowledge and cultural assumptions. Culture in this sense refers to the political, social, legal and value system of a particular people in a particular place at a particular time. This is because the cultural