Shallow commitments may bite deep: domestic politics and flexibility in international cooperation

Abstract

ABSTRACT Scholars generally view flexibility in international institutions as a trade-off – flexible agreements attract more signatories at the cost of limiting the institution’s ability to change behavior, because flexibility allows states to make shallow commitments that require little, if any, deviation from current behavior. This paper argues that this trade-off is less severe than previous research suggests, because initially shallow commitments can deepen over time as domestic groups mobilize to press governments to widen the scope of their formal commitments. Such mobilization is most likely to arise in democratic societies, where citizens enjoy greater freedom to communicate, express their views, and direct political pressure toward elites. By contrast, in nondemocracies, influxes of information and assistance from international actors catalyze mobilization processes and enhance domestic actors’ ability to exert influence. I find support for this argument in the context of human rights, where states often use reservations to limit the extent to which a treaty requires modification of existing policies. These findings suggest depth can increase over time, allowing flexible treaties to deliver benefits from cooperation that may not have been achieved if the treaty mandated deep commitments from the start.