Abstract

In the Year 2000 Bolivia requested the Chilean Government – despite the longstanding tense bilateral relations – for negotiations on an agreement to implement a major investment Project to export the new discovered Bolivian Natural Gas Reserves. Bolivia, a country in financial distress and without a territorial access to the Pacific Ocean of his own, needed the acquiescence of one neighbour country, either Chile or Peru. In Bolivia, the majority of the political Parties that participate from a similar political and economical approach, approved to negotiate with Chile. Already at the first negotiations rounds the two governments in agreed upon the Key Issues. Still, despite the anticipated initial substantial harmonic state preferences, the Bolivian – Chilean gas negotiations ended in a failure. The empirical Research suggests a connection between the variation of the Bolivian foreign policy and the mobilization of nationalistic Bolivian critics, adversaries of the natural gas negotiations with Chile. The outcome of the Bolivian – Chilean natural gas negotiations challenges the explanatory force of the most used interest and power based approaches. The theoretical frame of this research uses the premises of the Two Level Approach and especially of the Liberal Intergovernmentalism. Nevertheless under the logic of this approach, it was to be expected in the empirical case, that the governments should have chosen the bilateral cooperation. The present research inductively searches to identify factors for an explanation of the empirical outcome, which at the same time should complement the explanatory force of the Liberal Intergovernmentalism. With the above mentioned intention, this doctoral dissertation integrates elements that traditionally have been linked to Constructivism, in a rational Two Level Frame. Therefore this research follows an actual trend in the Study of the International Relations which is to build and test theoretical Bridges between Rationalism and Constructivism. The Actors continue to be considered as target-oriented, strategic and rational. Furthermore in order to evaluate and explain the behaviour of the domestic political actors this research integrates Instruments of the Framing Approach in its theoretical frame. The Variation of the Discourse of the domestic political actors was examined through a causal narrative. Under the light of the empirical evidence, this doctoral thesis argues that domestic activists can frame negatively a running bilateral negotiation through the use of deep cultural anchored Identity Constructions and through this they can rise the reputation costs for the government and the ruling party coalition. As a result of these events, the domestic win-set gets narrower, the foreign policy state preferences move away from the original consensus and the bilateral cooperation will not be agreed.