Non-binding Commitments Research Articles

Article: Unraveling Friendshoring in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity and Forging a Novel Form of Standard Setting

The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) signifies an important attempt by the United States of America (US) to establish a strategic presence in the Indo-Pacific region, following its setback in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The Biden administration actively promotes IPEF as an economic initiative aimed at countering Chinese hegemony in the region, exemplifying the push for friendshoring. Nevertheless, the distinctive architecture of IPEF demands attention, the non-binding commitments not only makes it an appealing initiative for heterogenous interests in the Indo-Pacific region but also heralds a new era of rulemaking in international trade. The article attempts to undertake a nuanced exploration of the growth of friendshoring in the wake of global supply chain disruptions with the examination of IPEF in the Indo-Pacific Region. It further examines the political and economic strategies employed to rebuild trust with Indo- Pacific nations and finally integrate India and US into the network of economic partnerships in the region. Such an exploration facilitates a deeper appreciation of how the non-binding commitments within IPEF usher in a new era of rulemaking in international trade through standard setting, reminiscent of the ‘Brussels Effect’ and ‘California Effect’. friendshoring, IPEF, US, India, supply chains, Indo-Pacific, ESG, standards

International law in the China–Russian energy partnership: mapping the partnership-based relational approach

Abstract Over the past decades, the China–Russian energy partnership has become firmly established. Significant milestones such as the 2009 oil and the 2014 gas deals demonstrate the geopolitical impact of this partnership. The article finds that the China–Russian energy cooperation uses a partnership-based relational approach that eschews rulemaking by treaty. Instead, the legal framework of this partnership is multi-layered and has distinct features. It relies heavily on bilateralism, pragmatic cooperation, and non-binding commitments. A range of instruments applies at the bilateral level, including a bilateral investment treaty, energy cooperation agreements, intergovernmental agreements on significant energy deals, and many joint communiques and statements of a soft law nature. Regarding regional energy governance, China and Russia prefer different approaches, as reflected in their participation in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Eurasian Economic Union, and the Belt and Road Initiative. While these regional mechanisms contribute to the energy partnership, their impact on the legal framework is limited.

The Legal Nature of the Climate Change Regime: Fluctuation between Lex Lata and Lex Ferenda

International law is faced with the challenge between lex lata and lex ferenda in nature. Lex lata, based on legal positivism, has binding obligations and a top-down compliance structure, while lex ferenda, on the contrary, is based on non-binding values and bottom-up adherence architecture. Determining the legal nature of each regime is important because depending on its nature, the assessment of its efficiency will be different. The question is whether the evolution process of the climate change regime is towards lex lata or lex ferenda? Examining indicates that initially the Framework Convention, in terms of some indicators, was lex lata and in others it was lex ferenda. Subsequently, to address the shortcomings of the Convention, especially the lack of legally binding targets and timelines, the Kyoto Protocol shifted to a strong lex lata. Finally, due to the inefficiency of the Protocol arising from the institutional design failure, the Paris Agreement became a lex ferenda. Analyzing the Sharm el-Sheikh Implementation Plan (2022) indicates that the Regime is still mainly based on ideal values and non-binding commitments. For the future transformation of the Regime into an efficient lex lata, a gradual process, rather than a strong shift, shall be followed that is being done in the case of the fund for loss and damage that was previously lex ferenda and is becoming lex lata.

Climate shaming: explaining environmental NGOs targeting practices

ABSTRACT How do non-governmental organizations (NGOs) target governments for climate shaming? NGOs increasingly function as monitors of states climate performance and compliance with international climate treaties such as the Paris Agreement. Lacking formal sanctioning capacities, NGOs primarily rely on ‘naming and shaming’ to hold states accountable to their commitments in climate treaties and to ramp up their climate mitigation efforts. However, we know little about how and why NGOs engage in climate shaming. This article advances two arguments. First, we argue that NGO climate shaming is likely to be shaped by the international and national climate records of governments. Second, governments’ climate actions can create contradicting expectations by both inviting and repelling NGO climate shaming. To test our arguments, we complied an original global data set on climate shaming events carried out by environmental NGOs. Our empirical analysis suggests that while NGOs are generally more likely to shame climate laggards, climate frontrunners may also be shamed if they engage in non-binding climate commitments.

Signal strength adjustment behavior: Evidence from share repurchases

This paper extends the signaling hypothesis by investigating the signal strength adjustment behavior with respect to the announcement of an open market repurchase (OMR). Given that an OMR is a non-binding commitment for the repurchasing firm, the stock market would likely scrutinize the credibility of the undervaluation signal from the OMR announcement of the firm. This may compel the manager to engage in various mechanisms in order to strengthen the undervaluation signal of the OMR announcement. This paper investigates whether managers of repurchasing firms would modify the terms of the OMR program when the simultaneous announcements of bad news threaten the credibility of the signal from the OMR announcements. Consistent with our signal strength adjustment hypothesis, we find that managers of repurchasing firms increase (shorten) the repurchase plan size (period) with the magnitude of bad news in the simultaneous announcements. Our results also show that the stock market reacts positively to the signal strength adjustments, indicating that they are informative to the market. These results hold after using various techniques to control for sample selection bias.

Understanding Carbon Capture And Storage (Ccs) Potential In Indonesia

National energy policy drawn up by the government through Energy Mix Target 2025 (Presidential Regulation No.5/2006) is still dominated by fossil fuel. Moreover, it is coupled with high dependence on fossil fuel, increasing demand of energy and standard of living and high rate population growth, it can turn Indonesia into one of the biggest emitter in the future. On 2009, the government has pledged a non-binding commitment to reduce country emissions by 26% in 2020. This aspiring target requires great efforts besides reliying on current strategies such as energy mix improvements, the switch to less-carbon intensive fuels and renewable resources deployment as well as conservation. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is one of the climate change mitigation tools with the technological capability to reduce CO2 in substantial amount and deep cut particularly on energy sector. CCS is typically defined as the integrated process of CO2 separation at industrial plants, transportation to storage sites and injection into subsurface formations. This paper explains the possibility of CCS potential deployment in Indonesia by reviewing required components and provides comprehensive understanding in each CCS key lements.

Does nonbinding commitment promote children’s cooperation in a social dilemma?

Communication is a powerful tool for promoting cooperation in adults and is considered one of the most important solutions to social dilemmas. One feature that makes communication particularly useful in cooperative contexts is that it allows people to advertise their intentions to partners. Some work suggests that adults cooperate more after making nonbinding commitments to cooperate (i.e., commitments they do not need to uphold) than when they are not allowed to communicate their intentions to their partners. However, we know little about whether nonbinding commitments play a similar role in children. We addressed this gap by testing 6- to 9-year-old children in a simultaneous version of the iterated prisoner’s dilemma game. In the communication condition, children could communicate their intended decision prior to their actual choice, whereas in the silent condition, they could not communicate. Overall, children in the communication condition were no more likely to cooperate than children in the silent condition. However, in the communication condition, but not in the silent condition, children’s behavior was contingent on their previous decision; they were more likely to cooperate or defect when they had previously cooperated or defected, respectively. In addition, they rarely reversed their intended decisions in the game. Our findings suggest that, although nonbinding commitment does not promote children’s cooperation in general, it may encourage children to stick to their chosen strategy, perhaps for the sake of appearing consistent. More broadly, these results contribute to our emerging understanding of the ways in which children solve social dilemmas.

Testing-the-Waters Policy With Hypothetical Investment: Evidence From Equity Crowdfunding

Digitization has enabled “testing-the-waters” in entrepreneurial finance whereby investors can make nonbinding commitments in equity crowdfunding prior to an actual campaign to ascertain interest in the project. We consider whether these nonbinding equity investment commitments are informative about actual investments during the campaign and, thus, ultimate startup funding success. The data indicate that only 18% of nonbinding commitments are, in fact, invested. The evidence is consistent with hypothetical bias. Hypothetical bias is significantly less pronounced among women and among investors living in higher income areas or in areas with higher levels of education. While investment intentions are only partially reliable at the individual level, the aggregate amount of collected investment intentions is a strong predictor of campaign success. We investigate alternative reasons for withdrawals, such as lying and informational motives, both of which we find implausible alternatives to hypothetical bias.

The effectiveness of soft law in international environmental regimes: participation and compliance in the Hyogo Framework for Action

A number of recent international environmental regimes including the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement on climate change and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction rely on soft law featuring voluntary action, wide-ranging provisions for participants and non-binding commitments, while skirting the idea of sanctions. Because of the increasing prevalence of soft law regimes, their intuitional design attributes and characteristics give rise to new questions about regime effectiveness. Concepts such as compliance and participation that originate from the assessment of the effectiveness of hard law regimes need to be revisited and adapted to this new subset with its distinct characteristics. The aim of this study, then, is to empirically investigate the prospects of effectiveness in the specific case of the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005–2015 on disaster risk reduction (DRR) as an illustrative case study of soft law regimes. The study, thereby, examines participation and compliance as key factors of regime effectiveness by analysing data and descriptive statistics based on national reports and their indicators on DRR measures. The study not only aims to advance the understanding of concepts central to the assessment of regime effectiveness in the context of soft law regimes. It also investigates DRR for the first time on a global scale from a regime effectiveness perspective documenting variation on the country level and serving as a guide to interesting cases and comparative research for future study.

Job Satisfaction and Work-Life Balance: Differences between Homework and Work at the Workplace of the Company

Working remotely can complement and sometimes completely substitute conventional work at the workplace of the company. Until the COVID-19 crisis the share of remote workers was relatively low and empirical investigations show inconsistent results. The recent work has highlighted a dramatic shift toward working from home The objective of this contribution is to empirically analyze the relationship between working remotely and job satisfaction on the one hand, as well as between working remotely and work-life balance on the other hand, based on three waves of the German Linked Personnel Panel.Our control variables are personality traits, skills, employment and job characteristics. We present average effects and demonstrate under which conditions remote work is advantageous for employees. Work-life imbalance may be induced by job-related causes. A private life can reduce work-life balance under specific conditions, namely, if remote work takes place outside of contracted working hours and during the first phase of remote work. On average, remote work has no significant impact on work-life balance, which is conditioned by private interests.However, the termination of remote work causes a clear imbalance. In contrast, the introduction of remote work increases job satisfaction, although only temporarily. When we compare employees working from home with those who want to work at home, we find that the former are happier. If we consider remote workers only, our results reveal that job satisfaction is higher, and work-life balance is not worse under a strict contractual agreement than under a nonbinding commitment.

Congress's Power to Constrain Presidential Withdrawal from International Agreements: A Working Paper

This working paper aims to assess the tools available to Congress to restrict or constrain the President’s capacity to withdraw from international agreements. Many assume that Congress has little or no power to restrict withdrawal from treaties and, in practice, that has proven largely true. But this paper tries to explore more fully whether there any ways in which Congress can act — either in advance or in the moment — to restrict, slow, or even stop withdrawal. The paper is organized according to the ways in which the United States makes international commitments: (1) Article II Treaties; (2) Congressional-Executive Agreements; (3) Sole Executive Agreements; and (4) Non-Binding Commitments (which are not, technically speaking international agreements, but nonetheless are worthy of consideration given their growing prominence in the U.S. diplomatic sphere). The paper briefly assesses each in turn.

HIV and AIDS among adolescents who use drugs: opportunities for drug policy reform within the sustainable development agenda.

IntroductionThe international community's commitment to halve by 2015 the HIV transmission among people who inject drugs has not only been largely missed, instead new HIV infections have increased by 30%. Moreover, drug injection remains one of the drivers of new HIV infections due to punitive responses and lack of harm reduction resourcing. In the midst of this situation, adolescents are a forgotten component of the global response to illegal drugs and their link with HIV infection. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) present an opportunity to achieve the global objective of ending AIDS among adolescents who use drugs, by addressing the structural vulnerabilities they face be they economic, social, criminal, health‐related or environmental.DiscussionThe implementation of the SDGs presents an opportunity to address the horizontal nature of drug policy and to efficiently address the drugs‐adolescents‐HIV risk nexus. Adolescent‐focused drug policies are linked to goals 1, 3, 4, 10, 16 and 17. Goals 3 and 16 are the most relevant; the targets of the latter link to the criminalization of drug use and punitive policy environments and their impact on adolescents' health and HIV transmission risks. Moreover, it presents an opportunity to include adolescent needs that are missing in the three drug control conventions (1961, 1971 and 1988), and link them with the provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989). Finally, the six principles to deliver on sustainable development are also an opportunity to divert adolescents who use drugs away from criminalization and punitive environments in which their vulnerability to HIV is greater.ConclusionsAddressing HIV among adolescents who use drugs is an extremely complex policy issue depending on different sets of binding and non‐binding commitments, interventions and stakeholders. The complexity requires a horizontal response provided by the SDGs framework, starting with the collection of disaggregated data on this specific subgroup. Ending AIDS among adolescents who use drugs requires the implementation of national drugs and HIV plans based on the multi‐sectoral approach and the transformative nature of the SDGs, to provide a comprehensive response to the epidemic among this key affected subgroup.

What the Convention requires

Abstract How can conduct be enforced when governmental relations are entirely reliant on linguistic exchange? This is the question at stake in such jurisdictions as the United Nations when nations sign up to legally non-binding commitments. The few commentators in this area hold that non-enforceability gives states the upper hand in this relationship. The research reported here, however, challenges that conclusion. By looking at textual exchanges of reporting and assessment respectively between the New Zealand government and the Committee on the Rights of the Child over a twenty year period, this paper identifies the linguistic and rhetorical strategies by which each party attempts to orient the conduct of the other. The conclusion reached, which can still only be provisional, is that, through nothing other than unwavering reiteration of its mandate, the UN committee gradually exhausts the evasive and countering tactics of the state party to bring about a degree of compliance.

The Chill of the Moment: Emotions and Proenvironmental Behavior

Many serious problems, including those associated with the environment, warrant a sustained response, but the emotions that motivate action are often transient. The authors conducted five online experiments examining the impact of affective ads about global warming on proenvironmental behaviors. They find that sadness-inducing videos lead to more time devoted to an energy-footprint calculator and greater donations to an environmental organization than nonaffective videos. However, once emotions have cooled off after a delay, there are no differences in induced behavior between affective and nonaffective messages. Warning people that emotions, and their effects on behavior, cool off does not reverse the effects of the time delay unless people make a nonbinding commitment just after watching the affective ad. These results help to explain why emotion-evoking ads designed to promote proenvironmental behaviors, such as cutting energy use, often fail to produce sustained behavior change, and they suggest that those who seek to promote a sustained response may need to elicit behavioral commitments in moments of high emotion.

Legal Traditions and Nonbinding Commitments: Evidence From the United Nations' Model Commercial Legislation

Non–legally binding agreements provide an important tool for establishing international cooperation. We know little, however, about the variation in the implementation of such agreements. This article identifies a major cause of this variation: legal tradition. Nonbinding agreements, which may be adapted to local needs and circumstances, are consistent with the gradual, organic evolution of common law; by contrast, they are an uneasy fit with the civil-law tradition that neatly distinguishes between “law” and “nonlaw.” Consequently, common-law countries are more likely to implement nonbinding agreements than civil-law countries. Survival analysis of three nonbinding instruments—United Nations model laws aimed at harmonizing commercial legislation—finds strong support for this argument: common-law countries prove significantly more likely to implement these model laws.

Do Comprehensive Trade Agreements Generate More Trade? A Conjecture to Reconcile Alternative Theories

This note is motivated by the contradictory conclusions reached concerning the amount of trade generated by trade agreements of varying comprehensiveness and depth when agreements are examined through different prisms: analysis of the text of agreements with a view to identifying liberalizing content; analysis of the text of agreements to establish breadth; and quantitative modelling analyses of trade creation. “Deep integration” or “deep and comprehensive” agreements have more chapters touching on more subjects. At the same time, critically examined from the perspective of imposition of requirements to change laws or practice, they often do very little. From a legal perspective, the addition of chapters brimming with non-binding commitments seems to add little to trade creation. Econometrically, additional chapters are, however, associated with a gain in trade. I argue that these observations can be squared if more comprehensive agreements are associated with deeper commitments in the core chapters. The additional chapters add little if anything to trade growth directly; however, the commitment to deeper liberalization on core matters leads the parties to embellish the agreements, resulting in chapter inflation. This is a form of commitment bias, resulting in econometric findings that agreements with longer texts induce more trade.

Quota Nonadoption in Japan: The Role of the Women's Movement and the Opposition

In 2003, Japan's dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) committed to the goal of 30% female representation in management and political positions by 2020 to conform with the international norm to promote women's leadership. This nonbinding commitment received widespread media attention. In 2012, Prime Minister Shinzō Abe reemphasized this goal before the lower house election. Yet, in his first cabinet, Abe appointed only two women. Moreover, in the 2013 upper house election, the LDP fielded only 9 women out of 79 candidates, nowhere near the 30% candidate goal (Torres 2013). In September 2014, Abe appointed five new women in his cabinet reshuffle, two of whom were forced to resign a month later due to scandals. Four women currently sit on the cabinet due to one female replacement (Flackler 2014). Despite Abe's attempts to increase women in his cabinet, most agree that Japan is not on target to meet the 30% benchmark (Gender Equality Bureau 2012).

Changes in Norwegian forest policies: what are the effects of the international forest regime complex?

An increasing complexity is seen in global governance systems for forests, with multiple policy processes providing binding and non-binding commitments and partly conflicting objectives. This paper intends to contribute to clarifying domestic influences of global initiatives, by an exploratory contrasting of two alternative analytical perspectives. For the first perspective, regime effects, two cases of policy changes in Norway revealed variation in effects depending on the scope of analysis and reference points used for measurement. Compared to a situation with no regime, an effect is revealed for the climate regime, while for biodiversity, the effect is uncertain. For problem-solving achievements, both cases of policy change indicate difficulties in determining effects, due to ambiguity in regime objectives. The initial contrasting of regime effects with global governance influences, the second perspective, find that these are incompatible concepts, with the governance influences encompassing broader sources of influences and their dynamic interactions. The explorations point to the need for clarity in what is the topic under study (effect of one or more regimes, or governance influences) and to the analytical delimitations (regime obligations, process-generated effects of regime, broader regime consequences, or governance influences). Finally, promising topics for extending our understanding of national–global interactions are identified.

Assessing implementation mechanisms for an international agreement on research and development for health products.

The Member States of the World Health Organization (WHO) are currently debating the substance and form of an international agreement to improve the financing and coordination of research and development (R&D) for health products that meet the needs of developing countries. In addition to considering the content of any possible legal or political agreement, Member States may find it helpful to reflect on the full range of implementation mechanisms available to bring any agreement into effect. These include mechanisms for states to make commitments, administer activities, manage financial contributions, make subsequent decisions, monitor each other's performance and promote compliance. States can make binding or non-binding commitments through conventions, contracts, declarations or institutional reforms. States can administer activities to implement their agreements through international organizations, sub-agencies, joint ventures or self-organizing processes. Finances can be managed through specialized multilateral funds, financial institutions, membership organizations or coordinated self-management. Decisions can be made through unanimity, consensus, equal voting, modified voting or delegation. Oversight can be provided by peer review, expert review, self-reports or civil society. Together, states should select their preferred options across categories of implementation mechanisms, each of which has advantages and disadvantages. The challenge lies in choosing the most effective combinations of mechanisms for supporting an international agreement (or set of agreements) that achieves collective aspirations in a way and at a cost that are both sustainable and acceptable to those involved. In making these decisions, WHO's Member States can benefit from years of experience with these different mechanisms in health and its related sectors.

A Simple Economic Teaching Experiment on the Hold-Up Problem

The hold-up problem is central to the theory of incomplete contracts. It shows how the difficulty to write complete contracts and the resulting need to renegotiate can lead to underinvestment. We describe the design of a simple teaching experiment that illustrates the hold-up problem. The model used is a simple perfect information game. The experiment can hence also be used to illustrate the concept of subgame perfect equilibrium and the problem of making non-binding commitments.