Influence State Behavior Research Articles

Do Nationals in Leadership Positions Affect Cooperation with International Organizations? Evidence from the International Criminal Court Using a Regression Discontinuity Design

Recent scholarship argues that even weak international organizations can influence state behavior by affecting information and accountability politics. A prominent national in a leadership position increases such leverage. This can be exploited by scholars interested in estimating whether international organizations have an independent effect on state behavior, especially when the selection of high-level officials occurs through an observable process such as rotation or competitive elections. I illustrate this point with an analysis of whether having a national elected as permanent judge increases cooperation with the International Criminal Court (ICC). Judges were chosen through competitive elections. I use a regression discontinuity design to obtain valid causal estimates; essentially comparing states that just did and just did not have a national elected as judge. The results show that states with nationals as permanent judges were less likely to undermine the ICC by signing non-surrender agreements with the United States and more likely to adopt a broad range of legislative measures that integrate the Rome Statute and cooperation with the Court into domestic law. This suggests that even indirect institutional participation that confers no meaningful influence can have meaningful behavioral effects.

The Experience of the Inter-American Human Rights System

This article is one of four which provide a useful comparative paradigm to any discussion of a Pacific human rights charter or regional mechanism. The article describes the Inter-American system of human rights protection, which stretches across the Americas. After an historical introduction, the article analyses the advances that took place after 1990. The discussion focuses mainly on the roles of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The article concludes that the system is able to influence state behaviour and has made significant contributions to the protection of human rights in the region.

International Common Law: The Soft Law of International Tribunals

Rising legalization in the international community has lead to greater use of international tribunals and soft law. This paper explores the intersection of these instruments. The decision of an international tribunal interprets binding legal obligations but is not itself legally binding except, in some instances, as between the parties. The broader, and often more important function of a tribunal's decision - its influence on state behavior beyond the particular case and its impact on perceptions regarding legal obligations - is best characterized as a form of soft law. Despite its inability to bind states, a tribunal can influence state behavior by implicating a state's reputation for compliance with international law, by bolstering the reciprocity underlying an agreement, or by triggering retaliation. In this sense the rulings of a tribunal influences states through the same mechanisms as does binding international law. Because tribunal rulings are soft law, however, they avoid the need for unanimity among states, thereby making it easier for the legal system (including the non-binding aspects of that system) to adapt to changing circumstances and conditions. By establishing a tribunal to interpret legal obligations in a way that gives rise to a soft law jurisprudence, therefore, states are able to expand the tribunal's influence beyond those states that submit to the tribunal's jurisdiction. In effect, all states subject to the underlying legal obligation come to be subject to the soft law impact of the tribunal, regardless of whether they have formally submitted to the tribunal's jurisdiction. In this way tribunals create what can be called an international common law able to evolve without formal agreement from states.

The State or Else! Statism's Resilience in NGO Studies

The Resilience of the State: Democracy and the Challenges of Globalization. By Samy Cohen. Translated by Jonathan Derrick. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2006. 198 pp., $49.95 (ISBN: 1-58826-420-6). For most of the discipline's history, international relations scholars have ignored nonstate actors such as businesses, civic groups, transnational terrorist organizations, and the like because these entities seemed to stand on the sidelines of world politics. They existed, but their size, power, and activities made them third-rate factors in the analysis of world affairs. Most scholars saw states as the primary actors and, therefore, the sole legitimate object of study because state action—mainly in the form of military, diplomatic, and policy activity—by-and-large shaped the contours of international collective life. This neglect of nonstate actors started to change in the latter part of the last century. At first, scholars demonstrated that nonstate actors, although still in the shadow of states, significantly influence state behavior. They began to see nonstate actors as transnational pressure groups that lobby or otherwise try to influence government officials (see, for example, Rochon 1988; Forsythe 1989; Bramble and Porter 1992). Over time, it became clear that nonstate entities were not simply appendages to the state-system but had a political life of their own. Transnational businesses, especially multinational corporations, alter the economic landscape of world affairs. Public-minded nongovernmental organizations not only lobby government officials in various countries but work to shift widespread cultural understandings about human rights, environmental protection, and international peace. Humanitarian relief organizations undertake action on the ground to feed, clothe, shelter, and provide medical assistance to those in need. Global media outlets construct and widely disseminate new understandings of world affairs. Terrorist networks instill fear and alter political calculations in various parts of the world. Far from being at the margins of political life, nonstate actors appear to be key players (see, for example, Walker 1988; Rosenau 1990). Recognition of the importance of nonstate actors soon gave way to love. Normatively …

Saving Customary International Law

The theory of international law has a variety of problems, but none are more glaring than those present in customary international law (CIL). Though CIL is one of the two main sources of international law, it is both poorly understood and under-theorized. Attracted by this weakness, critics have sought to demonstrate that CIL is irrelevant or non-existent. This Article lays a solid theoretical foundation for CIL and responds to critics by showing that CIL can be a meaningful influence on state behavior. Consistent with much of the current writing on international law, including the strongest criticisms in both legal and political science scholarship, the Article makes standard rational choice assumptions about state behavior. It is assumed that states are self-interested and that they will comply with international law only when it is in their interest to do so. It is shown how, under these assumptions CIL can exist and can influence state behavior. What emerges is a robust and coherent theory of CIL. The theory is then used to examine the doctrine of CIL. Where existing views of CIL are consistent with the theory, the Article provides them with a stronger and more satisfying theoretical justification. For example, the theory provides a novel and more persuasive explanation for the persistent objector doctrine. Where existing perspectives are in conflict with the theoretical approach, the Article explains how and why current views should be adapted. For example, the Article argues that opinio juris should be at the center of our understanding of CIL, and that state practice, traditionally considered the second requirement for the establishment of a rule of CIL, should be viewed only as evidence of opinio juris rather than an independent requirement. In addition to the opinio juris and practice requirements, the article examines the most salient doctrinal issues in CIL, including the relationship between treaties and CIL formation, the persistent and subsequent objector doctrines, the role of new states, instant custom, regional or special custom, and the relationship between jus cogens norms and CIL.

The Role of Economic Incentives and Disincentives in Effecting State Behavior

This paper provides a critical historical evaluation of three general types of economic incentives and disincentives which have been used to influence state behaviour: (i) treaties concerning trade and international property rights of foreign capital, (ii) various status incentives from joining economic clubs like the EU and WTO and (iii) various forms of econonic sanctions including econonmic conditionality of the World Bank and IMF.

Taking Preferences Seriously: A Liberal Theory of International Politics

This article reformulates liberal international relations (IR) theory in a nonideological and nonutopian form appropriate to empirical social science. Liberal IR theory elaborates the insight that state-society relations—the relationship of states to the domestic and transnational social context in which they are embedded—have a fundamental impact on state behavior in world politics. Societal ideas, interests, and institutions influence state behavior by shaping state preferences, that is, the fundamental social purposes underlying the strategic calculations of governments. For liberals, the configuration of state preferences matters most in world politics—not, as realists argue, the configuration of capabilities and not, as institutionalists (that is, functional regime theorists)maintain, the configuration of information and institutions. This article codifies this basic liberal insight in the form of three core theoretical assumptions, derives from them three variants of liberal theory, and demonstrates that the existence of a coherent liberal theory has significant theoretical, methodological, and empirical implications. Restated in this way, liberal theory deserves to be treated as a paradigmatic alternative empirically coequal with and analytically more fundamental than the two dominant theories in contemporary IR scholarship: realism and institutionalism.

How Do International Institutions Matter? The Domestic Impact of International Rules and Norms

Generally, scholars of international relations have attempted to show that international rules or norms influence state behavior by locating their causal significance at the level of state interactions. However, international rules and norms also affect a country's policy choice by way of the actions of domestic political actors. In particular, government officials and societal interest groups can appeal to an international rule or norm in an effort to further their objectives in the national arena. Through such appeals, international rules and norms can become incorporated into the policy debate, and, under some conditions, may ultimately affect national policy choice. The article identifies two factors that condition the extent to which an actor's appeal to an international rule or norm will influence state behavior: the domestic structural context and the domestic salience of the international rule or norm. This argument is explored through an examination of how international rules and norms have affected U.S. policy choices in both the economic and security realms. The security case examines the impact of President Bush's appeal to the norm of collective security to justify a response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The economic case covers the U.S. semiconductor industry's efforts to persuade the Reagan administration to obtain Japanese liberalization of its trade practices with regard to semiconductor devices.

Toward a Theory of International Norms

This article looks conceptually and empirically at how international norms influence state behavior. Using the decolonization norm as an example, guidelines are developed for the conceptualization, measurement, and testing of international norms and their effects on state behavior. In particular, the role of norms vis-à-vis self-interest and power politics concerns are discussed.