| In an image from Robert Putnam's two-level-game metaphor, "national political leaders" from nation-states engaged in international negotiations, sit astride two game boards to balance the requirements of playing the international and domestic games simultaneously and effectively. The constraints and interests at one game can be at odds with those of the other, and the overlap or win-set of what is negotiable at the international level and ratifiable at the domestic level has implications for how the leaders play the two games.; This dissertation seeks to present an extension of Putnam's two-level-game framework to comprise not only the inter-state negotiations but any interactions between the two nation-states, including conflict behavior. It also adds a third board to the metaphor for the national political leaders to play another game, the transnational game.; The study examines the three-level-diplomacy of Iran-U.S. conflicts for the period between the winter of 1979, when American officials of the Embassy in Tehran were taken hostage by Iranian students and the spring of 2003, when a coalition of U.S., British and a number of other countries toppled Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq by military force.; Two case studies are used to conduct plausibility probe regarding Putnam's two-level-game model and to seek extension of the model to the interaction between two nation-states with a history of protracted conflict. The first case is the "Hostage Crisis" which, in Iran, became the central part of the post-revolutionary power struggle, and in Washington, a daily factor in the complex domestic political equation, eventually influencing the outcome of the 1980 presidential election. The second case looks into the consequences of President George W. Bush's January 29, 2002 State of the Union address in terms of the Iran-U.S. relations within the context of the three-level-game model. In that speech, the President lashed out at Iran, Iraq and North Korea, labeling the three countries as the "axis of evil."; The dissertation takes special note of the hybrid of theocratic and democratic institutions of the post-revolutionary Iran and conducts its analysis within the context of the diarchy of President Khatami and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamnei. |
