Binding Treaty Research Articles

Economic and Monetary Union – A Model for Flexibility?

With hindsight, the Maastricht Treaty introduced two different forms of flexibility or differentiated integration. The Social Protocol took the form of a permission by all the Member States to a group of Member States to use Community institutions and legislation, which can be seen as the precursor of the general provisions on “closer cooperation” in the Amsterdam Treaty. On the other hand, the provisions on Economic and Monetary Union provide for some Member States to receive opt-outs or derogations from binding Treaty obligations and thus provide the model for the new Title of the EC Treaty on visa, asylum and immigration introduced by the Amsterdam Treaty.

White House pitches greenhouse controls

President Bill Clinton on Oct. 6 convened a daylong conference on climate change during which he gave several indications of the sort of proposal the U.S. will present at the December United Nations climate conference. At the conference, which will convene Dec. 1-10 in Kyoto, Japan, nations will try to agree on a binding treaty to limit emissions of greenhouse gases. Last week's meeting, held at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., was unusual in both Clinton and Vice President Al Gore jointly presided over the entire morning session and Gore led the afternoon panels. Many Cabinet members also participated in the meeting, including Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Energy Secretary Federico F. Pena. Leading climate experts, economists, and business leaders also took part. Clinton opened the meeting with the strongest speech on climate change he has given to date. I am convinced, he said, that the science of global climate change is real. ... ...

The Long Cycle of Global War and the Transformation of Alliance Norms

Within the study of world politics, the relationship between alliance formation and war remains one of the most perplexing problems. This paper contends that explanations of the linkage can be improved by inspection of the effects of global war on changes in the degree to which alliance norms support or reject binding treaty obligations. A macro indicator of alliance commitments is devised that is anchored in international law, and a longitudinal analysis of temporal variations in this indicator in the aftermath of global wars is conducted. Two hypotheses regarding changes in the content of alliance norms are derived from Modelski's well-known theory of the long cycle of world leadership, and are tested through focused comparisons of discrete historical systems. The results suggest that in the 19th century flexible conceptions of alliance commitments tended to predominate in the wake of global war. However, the evidence also suggests that in the aftermath of 20th-century global wars a secular trend toward support for binding conceptions of treaty commitments has prevailed. The historical patterns and permutations within alliance norms observed are evaluated in terms of their implications for cyclical theories of global change.