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environmental agreements. Robert Pahre (1997), Paul A. Papayounou et al. (1997), Madeleine O. Hosli (2000) have utilized it to better understand European Union (EU) policymaking. Finally, Robert Paalberg (1997), William D. Coleman et al. (1999) and, as mentioned before, Lee Ann Patterson (1997) have used this approach to analyse the 1992 MacSharry reform of the European Common Agricultural. Core elements of multi-level game theory As noted above, MLGT has its focus on cooperative games, such as international economic bargaining, where more than one actor has the possibility to gain from successful cooperation and where actors have an incentive to participate in the distributional struggle over the gains. Mayer (2010, 49) writes that similar to the negotiations that take place between unitary actors, 5 the main task of MLGT is to explain why seemingly rational actors often fail to take full advantage of the possible joint gains. Why do they fail to reach agreement when they could gain a lot from doing so? And perhaps more practically for the CAP, why do they often reach economically Pareto inefficient agreements? While 'one-level' theory that is also briefly discussed explains such failures in terms of inter-party bargaining dynamics, MLGT theory points towards the obstacles presented by internal bargaining as the cause for these failures (Mayer 2010, 49). Variations in the internal decision making can be divided largely into two (Mayer 2010, 60). Firstly, domestic decision making is structured by country specific political and social institutions. These institutions determine how much power subnational actors have over the 5 ‘Seemingly rational’ is appropriate term here because actors, considered as a whole, cannot be rational at all levels of multi‐level game. For example, rational chief negotiator might draw support from rational domestic actors and form a coalition in support of an international agreement that is irrational for the nation as whole. (Mayer, 2010, p. 62) 16