Abstract
Much of the International Relations literature assumes that there is a “depth versus participation” dilemma in international politics: shallower international agreements attract more countries and greater depth is associated with less participation. We argue that this conjecture is too simple and probably misleading because the depth of any given cooperative effort is in fact multidimensional. This multidimensionality manifests itself in the design characteristics of international agreements: in particular, the specificity of obligations, monitoring and enforcement mechanisms, dispute settlement mechanisms, positive incentives (assistance), and organizational structures (secretariats). We theorize that the first three of these design characteristics have negative and the latter three have positive effects on participation in international cooperative efforts. Our empirical testing of these claims relies on a dataset that covers more than 200 global environmental treaties. We find a participation-limiting effect for the specificity of obligations, but not for monitoring and enforcement. In contrast, we observe that assistance provisions in treaties have a significant and substantial positive effect on participation. Similarly, dispute settlement mechanisms tend to promote treaty participation. The main implication of our study is that countries do not appear to stay away from agreements with monitoring and enforcement provisions, but that the inclusion of positive incentives and dispute settlement mechanisms can promote international cooperation. In other words, our findings suggest that policymakers do not necessarily need to water down global treaties in order to obtain more participation.
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Notes
Note that we are not the first ones to question the ‘depth versus participation’ perspective. Gilligan (2004) develops a formal model that shows that this alleged ‘broader-deeper’ trade-off occurs only when all members of an international agreement set their policy at the same level. If states are allowed to set their policies at different levels, however, this ‘broader-deeper’ trade-off disappears.
International treaty-making typically involves two key steps: signature, which formally concludes the bargaining phase and expresses the consent of the negotiating government to the treaty text; and ratification, which expresses legislative consent and thus makes the treaty legally binding for the respective country at the domestic level.
Specific obligations, for instance in the form of clear-cut quantitative targets expressed in international treaties, are an important manifestation of this type of institutional design features.
Hathaway (2003:1834) posits that “When deciding whether to ratify a treaty, a country will take into account the expected compliance costs – that is how much the country will change its behavior as a result of the ratification.” Similarly, Helfer (2002:1852–1853) states that “Altering domestic policies to conform to international human rights standard is not costless. Such alternations impose external constraints on a government’s ability to respond to legitimate social problems by regulating the behavior of individuals within its borders or by allocating resources to other areas of social policy – both traditional aspects of state sovereignty.” See also Pae (2006) for an economic analysis of sovereignty costs associated with adhering to international human rights treaties.
Several studies find empirical evidence that countries are less likely to ratify treaties in issue-areas such as economic, human rights, environmental, and security policy if they have to change their behavior as a consequence (Hathaway 2007; Goodliffe and Hawking 2006; Downs et al. 2000). In addition, several authors show that treaties that include flexibility provisions and “escape clauses” are ratified by more countries (von Stein 2008; Koremenos 2001, 2005; and Rosendorff and Milner 2001).
Loss of reputation can also have serious repercussion for the offending country, notably by making it more difficult to enter into agreements with other countries in the future (Guzman 2002).
Since the results are very similar and inference does not change whether we use robust standard errors or not, we refrain from showing the results with non-robust standard errors. They are available from the authors on request.
Rosendorff (2005:389) also reports results that are similar to the ones presented here. In particular, he finds that preferential trade agreements (PTAs) that include dispute settlement procedures are “more acceptable to a wider range of countries than agreements without DSP.”
In fact, if we calculate the predicted number of ratifications for both treaties while setting the value of global public goods to zero, our model predicts a considerably higher number of ratifications.
For example, the Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution from Land-Based Sources includes very detailed dispute settlement provisions.
See also Fearon (1998) on how the shadow of the future can affect international bargaining and consequently the level of cooperation achieved.
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A version of this manuscript was presented at the 3rd Annual Conference on the Political Economy of International Organizations, January 28–30, 2010, Washington DC, at the ISA Annual Convention, February 17–20, 2010, New Orleans, and at the 2009 Amsterdam Conference on the Human Dimension of Global Environmental Change, December 2–4, 2009, Volendam. Atushi Ishi, Lawrence Broz, Dan Maliniak and Kenneth Oye gave valuable comments on an earlier draft. Marianne Furrer and Juliane Krüger provided excellent research assistance. Finally, we thank two anonymous reviewers and the journal’s editor, Axel Dreher, for extremely helpful advice that improved this research.
The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the ECB.
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Bernauer, T., Kalbhenn, A., Koubi, V. et al. Is there a “Depth versus Participation” dilemma in international cooperation?. Rev Int Organ 8, 477–497 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11558-013-9165-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11558-013-9165-1