International Institutions and National Policies

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Author: Xinyuan Dai

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International Institutions and National Policies The proliferation of international institutions and their impact has become a central issue in international relations. Why do countries comply with international agreements and how do international institutions influence national policies? In contrast to theories that focus on the extent to which international institutions can wield ‘carrots and sticks’ directly in their relations with states, Xinyuan Dai presents an alternative framework in which they influence national policies indirectly by utilizing nonstate actors and expowering domestic constituencies. In this way, even weak international institutions that lack ‘carrots and sticks’ may have powerful effects on states. Supported by empirical studies of environmental politics, human rights, and economic and security issues, this book sheds fresh light on how and why international institutions matter. It will be of interest to students, scholars and policymakers in both international relations and international law. x i n y ua n da i is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her work has appeared in American Political Science Review, International Organization, World Politics, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Journal of Conflict Resolution and Social Networks.

International Institutions and National Policies x i n y ua n da i

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521874045 © Xinyuan Dai 2007 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2007 eBook (EBL) ISBN-13 978-0-511-36643-7 ISBN-10 0-511-36643-4 eBook (EBL) ISBN-13 ISBN-10

hardback 978-0-521-87404-5 hardback 0-521-87404-1

ISBN-13 ISBN-10

paperback 978-0-521-69631-9 paperback 0-521-69631-3

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

List of tables

page vi

Acknowledgments

vii

1 2 3

Introduction The study of international institutions Monitoring arrangements

1 13 33

4 5 6

Compliance mechanisms The power of weak international institutions Conclusion

69 100 140

Appendix A Formal solutions Appendix B Ranking of signatory countries in LRTAP

152 158

Bibliography

161

Index

183

Tables

2.1 The prisoner’s dilemma 3.1 Organizational forms of information systems 3.2 3.3

page 22 39

Interest alignment between victims and their states Availability of noncompliance victims as low-cost monitors

3.4 4.1

Empirical examples of monitoring arrangements Variables used to measure domestic environmental activism 4.2 Average level of sulfur emission reduction by

40 42 50 88

domestic environmental activism mobilized over acid rain, with signatory countries categorized into three groups 4.3 Average level of sulfur emission reduction by domestic environmental activism mobilized over acid rain, with signatory countries categorized into four groups B.1

90

91

Ranking countries by domestic environmental

activism over acid rain, with Euro-barometer 25, 29, 31A, and 35 B.2 Ranking countries by domestic environmental activism over acid rain, with ISSP Environment and Euro-barometer 43

159

160

Acknowledgments

I have benefited from much support and assistance while writing this book. First and foremost, I gratefully acknowledge the intellectual and personal debt to my dissertation advisors. Duncan Snidal read numerous versions of this work, providing invaluable guidance along the way. Always challenging yet unfailingly supportive, Duncan is the kind of advisor many people can only wish for. Similarly, James Fearon contributed immensely to my training as a scholar. I might not have gone to the University of Chicago had it not been for Jim and his encouragement. Throughout my graduate career and beyond, he devoted tremendous care and insight to my work. Always incisive and thought-provoking, his comments have helped me formulate and sharpen many key arguments in this book. My other dissertation advisor, Charles Lipson, not only commented on multiple drafts of this work but also guided me through many other diverse aspects of an academic career. He facilitated tremendously my transition from a graduate student to a full-blown academic. Many other friends and colleagues have contributed their time and insight to this project. I wish to thank Thomas Bernauer, Tim Buthe, Jeffrey Checkel, Damon Coletta, Russell Dalton, Daniel ¨ Drezner, John Duffield, Cedric Dupont, Giulio Gallarotti, Hein Goe´ mans, Owen Greene, Joseph Grieco, Bernard Grofman, Lloyd Gruber, Carsten Helm, Simon Hug, Atsushi Ishida, Judith Kelly, Hyeyeong Lee, Marc Levy, Urs Luterbacher, Lisa Martin, James Marquardt, Margaret McKean, Andrew Mertha, Andrew Moravcsik, Sharon Morris, Layna Mosley, Charles Myers, Kal Raustiala, Anne Sartori, Frank Schimmelfennig, Gerald Schneider, Andrew Sobel, Dorothy Solinger, Detlef Sprinz, Michael Tomz, Pieter Van Houten, Daniel Verdier, David Victor, Yael Wolinsky, and an anonymous reviewer. My apologies to those I have inadvertently omitted. Their insightful comments

viii ac k n ow l e d g m e n t s

helped me formulate and clarify many ideas in this book. I am particularly grateful to Robert Keohane, Ronald Mitchell, and Oran Young for their invaluable comments on the entire manuscript. While I already owe a great deal of intellectual debt to these scholars, I am further humbled by their extraordinary generosity. I am also fortunate to have such supportive colleagues at the University of Illinois. Todd Allee, William Bernhard, Brian Gaines, Thomas Ginsburg, James Kuklinski, Milan Svolik, Tracy Sulkin, and Dina Zinnes have each commented on certain aspects of this project. In particular, Paul Diehl and Robert Pahre have gone beyond the call of duty, commenting on multiple iterations of this manuscript. Their advice has vastly improved the final product. I have presented parts of this work – including some initial ideas – at a number of seminars and conferences. I appreciate the helpful insights from PIPES participants at the University of Chicago, as well as seminar participants at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Yale University, the University of Virginia, the University of Minnesota at Duluth, the University of California at San Diego, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan, the University of Pittsburgh, Georgetown University, the Ohio State University, Washington University in St. Louis, Duke University, the Graduate School of International Relations at Geneva, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, and the University of Konstanz in Germany. This book has also benefited from the generous financial support of numerous institutions. The University of Chicago, the Mellon Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the US Institute of Peace, the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, and the Research Board at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign sponsored various phases of this research. IIASA, in addition, served as a resourceful hub for my fieldwork in Europe. I thank David Victor for inviting me to his environmental compliance project at IIASA. During my stay there, I benefited from interviewing many governmental

ac k n ow l e d g m e n t s ix

officials and environmental activists in Europe as well as at the LRTAP Secretariat. I thank John Haslam at Cambridge University Press for his interest in my manuscript and able guidance throughout the publishing process. I also appreciate the excellent research assistance by Douglas Stinnett, Nazlı Avdan, and Burcu Ucaray. Among many other people who have helped me along the way, I would particularly like to thank Mark Petracca at the University of California, Irvine. Mark facilitated tremendously my pursuit of graduate studies. For his faith in me I am forever grateful. Parts of this book are based on articles that were published in World Politics and International Organization (Dai 2002a, Dai 2005). My greatest debt is to my family. I thank my parents for encouraging my dreams and respecting my choices. I am eternally grateful to my husband, Michel Regenwetter, for his loving support and wise counsel through the ups and downs of my work. Although he is busy with his own academic work, Mike keeps us fed and makes life so much more fun. I dedicate this book to him and our children, Lyle and Jake, for the immense joy and happiness they bring to my life.

Introduction

1

Why do countries comply with international agreements? How do international institutions influence states’ compliance? These are central questions in international relations (IR) and arise naturally in many situations. One example is the following. In the framework of the Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP) Convention, twenty-one European countries agreed in 1985 to reduce their sulfur emissions by at least 30 percent, with 1980 as the base year. By the deadline for implementation in 1993, most countries had reported reaching this goal, and some reported much steeper reductions. This presents the characteristics of a classic collective action problem. Sulfur emission reduction entails large short-term costs. Furthermore, because acid rain travels over a long distance and often across borders, the potential benefits of emission reduction are widely diffused. The combination of concentrated costs and diffuse benefits may give rise to free-riding incentives. So it is natural to ask: why do countries comply with their commitments and how do international institutions influence national compliance? According to a central argument in IR, international institutions can resolve such collective action problems among states: they monitor states’ compliance with treaties and, by providing compliance information, they facilitate reciprocity and thus induce compliance.1 Empirically, however, the monitoring program under the LRTAP Convention monitored only the aggregate pollution levels. It did not monitor or verify each country’s emission reduction. Rather, for compliance measurement, the Convention essentially relied on

1

For the analytic foundation of neoliberal institutionalism, see Keohane (1984), Krasner (1983), and Oye (1986).

2 i n t e r n at i o n a l i n s t i t u t i o n s a n d n at i o n a l p o l i c i e s

governmental self-reports. Indeed, faced with collective action problems, many international institutions do not directly monitor states’ compliance with treaties. In those situations where they provide compliance information, it is often not states that use the information to either reward or sanction other states. We are therefore confronted with three critical puzzles on international institutions in general. First, do international institutions by and large monitor states’ compliance with treaties? If so, how? Second, when international institutions do not have independent monitoring capabilities and consequently also lack the ability to enforce compliance, what drives states’ compliance with international commitments? Third, limited in both monitoring and enforcement, how do weak international institutions influence states’ compliance? These puzzles present themselves frequently and repeatedly. How, for example, does the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitor states’ compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)? How does the World Trade Organization (WTO) detect noncompliance with trade agreements? If international institutions adopt varying modes of monitoring, what is the pattern and what explains the empirical regularity? Furthermore, when treaty organizations do not detect noncompliance or enforce states’ compliance directly, as with many environmental agreements, why do states comply with these agreements? Is it merely because the agreements are shallow? If so, why are different countries able to overcome different numbers of obstacles toward complying with these agreements? Finally, when international institutions do not have much capacity in either monitoring or enforcement, as in the areas of environment and human rights, are they simply irrelevant? Or do some international institutions perform indirect functions that have previously been underspecified in IR theorizing? Resolving these puzzles is vital to a better understanding of why and how international institutions matter. While the earlier cooperation theory and regime theory have shed much light on the creation and maintenance of international institutions, a central question in

i n t ro d u c t i o n 3

recent years concerns the effects of international institutions. Specifically, how do international institutions influence sovereign behavior? This book seeks to resolve each of the three critical puzzles on international institutions. In this chapter, I first outline key components of my argument on monitoring arrangements, compliance mechanisms, and the power of weak international institutions. I then discuss the methodology and organization of the book. I postpone a thorough literature review until chapter 2 in order to carefully situate this book in the appropriate context of IR theorizing.

argument in brief This book argues that international institutions can influence national policies through alternative mechanisms than carrots and sticks. Specifically, they can employ victims of noncompliance and empower domestic pro-compliance constituencies to monitor and enforce national compliance. Resolving the first puzzle about monitoring arrangements, I specify the underlying incentive structures in different types of regimes. I highlight states’ interests as well as their desire to utilize victims of noncompliance in diverse monitoring arrangements. Resolving the second puzzle about compliance mechanisms, I use a game-theoretic model to construct what I call the domestic constituency mechanism. I argue that national compliance reflects the political leverage and monitoring ability of domestic constituencies. Resolving the third puzzle about the effects of weak international institutions, I show how international institutions can empower domestic constituencies and thereby alter the strategic environment that governments face domestically. International institutions can increase the political leverage and improve the informational status of pro-compliance constituencies in specific ways. This book thus develops a theoretical framework to bring nonstate actors and domestic mechanisms into the study of international institutions. By spelling out important yet previously underspecified indirect channels of influence, this book sheds important light on why and how international institutions matter.


Monitoring arrangements Although it is a centerpiece of neoliberal institutionalism that international institutions provide information to facilitate compliance with international agreements, few have asked exactly how they provide this information. Empirically, except in a few large and strong international treaty regimes, treaty organizations rarely provide the information completely by themselves. A host of nonstate actors participate in monitoring states’ compliance to a varying extent. There is in fact much diversity in monitoring arrangements. For example, in the NPT regime, the treaty organization carries out both routine and special inspections. In contrast, human rights treaty organizations rarely go beyond collecting governmental self-reports. While these examples show the diversity in how much or how little treaty organizations do, the following examples illustrate the diversity in how involved other actors are in different treaty regimes. The rules of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and subsequently WTO, are only enforced as a result of formal complaints filed by states. In many environmental regimes, in contrast, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) detect noncompliance and bring it to light. Why do arrangements to monitor compliance differ among regimes? In particular, who detects noncompliance and who brings it to light? What is the function of treaty organizations, states, and nonstate actors respectively in diverse treaty regimes? And what accounts for such variations? Chapter 3 seeks to resolve the puzzle about monitoring arrangements. In particular, I develop a theory of monitoring arrangements by specifying the underlying incentive structures in regimes across a range of issue areas. Two critical questions present themselves: do states have interests in monitoring compliance and how do they pursue cost-effective monitoring arrangements? I argue that two factors – (1) the interest alignment between victims of noncompliance and their states, and (2) the availability of such victims as low-cost monitors – provide a concrete handle with which to address these questions. To assess states’ interests in


monitoring, we need to know whether they have incentives to protect the potential victims of noncompliance. This will depend on who the victims of noncompliance are and whether their interests are aligned with that of their states. Additionally, because states simultaneously tackle multiple domestic and international tasks, they face resource constraints. To pursue cost-effective solutions, states may take advantage of other stakeholders who are able to detect noncompliance and who are willing to bring this information to light. The availability of noncompliance victims as low-cost monitors thus interacts with states’ interests in shaping how they design monitoring arrangements. Along these two dimensions, cost-effective monitoring solutions differ between regimes. As a result, treaty organizations, states, and nonstate actors play different roles in different kinds of regimes. I detail four types of monitoring: by treaty organizations, by victims and states, by victims and NGOs, and by NGOs. I demonstrate the utility of this theory by examining a series of regimes in such diverse areas as money, trade, security, human rights, and the environment. The empirical cases – the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the NPT regime, the GATT/WTO, and various human rights and environmental regimes – display variations in the interest alignment between victims of noncompliance and their states on the one hand and the availability of such victims as low-cost monitors on the other. As these empirical cases vary along the two dimensions, international institutions adopt different modes of monitoring, subscribing varying tasks to treaty organizations, states, and nonstate actors.

Compliance mechanisms While international institutions often solve the prisoner’s dilemma (PD) type of problems by providing compliance information and thereby facilitating reciprocity or reputation mechanisms, problems that resemble a PD game at the international level may present governments with an entirely different strategic environment domestically. Some domestic actors gain, while others may lose, if the


government does not comply with an international agreement. Trade agreements, for instance, affect import-competing industries and consumers differently within a single country. Similarly, regarding environmental agreements, industries and environmental groups often take opposing stands. When those who are victimized by noncompliance have crucial leverage over the government, compliance can be rational even if the country as a whole pays for it more than benefits from it. We need to specify such domestic sources of enforcement before we can begin to identify, in theoretically coherent ways, how international institutions may work through these sources to influence national compliance. How should we conceptualize domestic sources of enforcement? Chapter 4 seeks to resolve the puzzle about compliance mechanisms. I model a government’s compliance decision in the shadow of competing domestic constituencies. While the government makes a compliance decision on behalf of domestic constituents, the latter may have a certain leverage over the government. While this leverage varies with political institutions, it also varies with certain attributes of domestic constituents. For instance, domestic interest groups vary not only in their size and resulting political clout; they may also be informed of the governmental policy or understand the policy process to different extents. Using a game-theoretic model, I show that a government’s compliance decision is determined not only by the electoral leverage of domestic constituencies but also by their informational endowment. On the one hand, compliance decisions tend to be biased toward large interest groups which have a significant electoral influence. On the other hand, interestingly, compliance decisions can also be biased toward special interests, if these groups are much better informed about the policy process. This is because, facing an inference problem, the relatively better-informed group is more likely to base its approval of the government on the actual policy rather than random disturbances in the policy process. Accordingly, the policymaker would lose more support by fooling the well informed than by fooling the ill informed.


I demonstrate how the domestic constituency mechanism works empirically by studying European countries’ compliance with the LRTAP Convention. Typically viewed as in a classic collective action problem, European countries’ compliance with the LRTAP Convention is often taken as evidence for the direct effect of international institutions. A closer look at it, however, reveals that national compliance varies significantly from country to country, which suggests a domestic story in the first place. To illustrate how the domestic constituency mechanism works in this case, I conduct categorical data analysis involving all participating countries, as well as in-depth examination of some signatory countries. Consistent with the central finding in the model, European countries’ compliance with the 1985 Sulfur Protocol reflects the electoral leverage and informational status of domestic constituencies.

Power of weak international institutions Driven by the realist challenge to demonstrate the effect of international institutions, the rationalist institutional literature tends to prize powerful economic and financial institutions in the interstate context. As a result, that literature has been rather quiet on how weak institutions, such as many in the areas of environmental and human rights, influence states’ behavior, possibly through alternative channels. However, my studies of monitoring arrangements and compliance mechanisms suggest that there exist nonstate stakeholders that international institutions may utilize. In particular, if international institutions can work effectively through domestic compliance mechanisms, even weak international institutions may have powerful effects on states’ behavior. Limited in monitoring and enforcement capacities, how do weak international institutions influence states’ behavior? Chapter 5 seeks to resolve the puzzle about the effects of weak international institutions, by locating the analysis in the domestic context, where international institutions may influence a state’s behavior by altering the strategic environment that a government faces domestically.


Whenever an international agreement has domestic consequences, there are domestic stakeholders with an interest in states’ compliance with the agreement. These domestic constituents may influence the government’s compliance decisions to a varying extent. Thus, to facilitate states’ compliance with their international commitments, international institutions may seek to empower domestic pro-compliance constituents in specific ways. Drawing from the model of domestic constituency mechanism, international institutions may alter the domestic environment in at least two ways. They can increase the political leverage and further improve the informational status of procompliance constituents. While these indirect channels of influence are arguably important for all international institutions, they provide a feasible and important pathway particularly for weak international institutions to influence states’ behavior. This pathway is feasible because the stakeholders with the most profound interest in compliance with weak international instruments are often domestic constituents which are the victims of their own governments’ noncompliance. Meanwhile, this indirect pathway is important to both weak international institutions and domestic constituents, which have an incentive to utilize each other. To the extent that they can do so, such weak institutions may nevertheless prove powerful in influencing states’ behavior. To demonstrate how weak international institutions influence states’ compliance through domestic constituencies, I first revisit the acid rain case. I argue that the LRTAP Convention has empowered domestic environmental activists by providing them with specific relevant information and by legitimizing their demands. I then broaden the empirical analysis to trace how a weak international institution in a different issue area realized its potential power. By legal standards, the Helsinki Final Act in the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) was not even a formal treaty. Yet it had a historical impact on the political changes in the former Soviet bloc. I argue that such an impact was realized largely through domestic constituents. Besides providing human rights activists and the public


with vital information, the Helsinki Final Act strengthened the leverage of human rights activists in specific ways: it legitimized human rights initiatives, enabled human rights activists to make strategic use of the Final Act, and provided a focal point for various opposition movements. Furthermore, through follow-up meetings, the CSCE provided a forum for the continuing mobilization of human rights activism.

methodology and organization This book develops a rationalist framework to bring nonstate actors and domestic mechanisms into the study of international institutions. Along with mainstream political science, I assume that political actors are goal-oriented and instrumental in that they try to maximize their goal achievement. Two considerations dictate this methodological approach. First, my concern with causal mechanisms implies an analytical approach. In order to specify why states comply with international agreements and how international institutions influence states’ compliance, one needs to pay close attention to the strategic environment that shapes actors’ incentives. In other words, specifying causal mechanisms requires a careful examination of micro-level incentives. I extract explicit and formal lines of reasoning and, where appropriate, employ game theory to facilitate explanation. Second, recent debates on international institutions suggest the need to reexamine the rationalist framework in which important theories of international institutions have been founded. Scholars have criticized neoliberal institutionalism for its systemic orientation, and some have attributed this shortcoming to its methodological rationalism. However, at the foundation of neoliberal institutionalism are two distinct characteristics. One is instrumental rationality and the other is the state-centric focus. One does not need to imply the other. In fact, I contend that earlier theories of international institutions fail to incorporate nonstate actors systematically, not because of their rationalist orientation but because of their state-centric focus. Indeed, this book provides a rationalist account of how international institutions


influence states’ behavior through nonstate actors and domestic mechanisms. The rationalist approach has limitations as well as advantages.2 Like all efforts at IR theorizing, the analytical approach adopted here entails abstracting away from many of the details of the real world. Instead, it focuses on the essential logic of the simple stylization of world politics. Such stylization often requires the analyst to focus on certain dimensions (particularly rational concerns) rather than all dimensions (including nonrational concerns). However, for example, to say politicians care about the reward of staying in power is not to say that in reality they care about nothing else. The interesting question is, to the extent that politicians care about the reward of staying in power, what are some of the implications? Ultimately all theories extract certain dimensions out of many and no theory can fully capture the complex workings of the real world. To some extent, in fact, stylization is often a necessary part of systematic theorizing. Its goal is to identify crucial causal mechanisms in an analytically coherent framework. While I seek both rigor and parsimony in developing theoretical arguments, I attempt to avoid some pitfalls of abstract theorizing. First, I assume only that actors act rationally, in that they by and large follow the logic of instrumental rationality.3 Accordingly, actors do not need to be motivated by material interests. Indeed, rational choice theory only presupposes that actors pursue their goals in an instrumentally rational manner, regardless of whether these goals are defined in terms of material self-interest. Thus, based largely in the rational choice tradition, this book is nevertheless open to the

2

3

Many pioneering scholars have discussed these issues. See, for examples, Gowa (1994), Milner (1997), Powell (1999a), Kahler (1998), Snidal (2002), Lake and Powell (1999), as well as Martin (1999), Bueno de Mesquita and Morrow (1999), and Powell (1999b) in a special volume of International Security devoted to this topic. This is closer to what John Ferejohn (1991) terms as “thin” rationality rather than “thick” rationality. Among key differences, thin rationality does not eliminate otherregarding concerns. For a similar distinction of “rational man” as opposed to “economic man,” see Elster (1984).


constructivist emphasis on the role of normative ideas and goals in influencing states’ behavior.4 Second, contrary to what critics of rational choice theory might fear,5 this book is problem-driven rather than theory-driven. While I emphasize the importance of theorizing and the need to specify causal mechanisms, such efforts are devoted to resolving pervasive empirical puzzles. Third, I subject all theoretical arguments to empirical investigation, involving diverse empirical methods including controlled comparisons, process tracing, interviews, and categorical data analysis.6 More importantly, I let the research question at hand guide research design. In chapter 3, because the puzzle of monitoring has to do with variations between treaty regimes, I conduct empirical work across a wide range of regimes. In chapter 4, because the puzzle of compliance concerns variation across countries, I compare a variety of countries within a single regime. In chapter 5, because my goal is to trace specific ways in which weak international institutions work through domestic mechanisms, the necessary method of process tracing requires zooming into specific countries within a specific regime. Because this book is driven by empirical problems rather than theory or methodology, I organize the book by the substantive puzzles that it seeks to resolve. This organization offers three key advantages. First, each chapter is aimed at resolving one substantive puzzle. This allows the argument in each chapter to be tight and forceful. Second, this also allows me to adopt the most fitting empirical mode for each theoretical argument, and enables the theory and empirical analysis in each chapter to engage in a closer dialogue. Third, these chapters, each

4

5 6

To the extent that norm-driven behavior is outcome-oriented, it may contain elements of instrumental rationality. This of course has been debated. See, for examples, Elster (1989) and Hardin (1995). Also see Krasner (1999) for the logic of consequence versus the logic of appropriateness. Efforts to bridge the rationalist and constructivist approaches are numerous. See, for examples, Johnson (1993), Goldstein and Keohane (1993), Kahler (1998), Finnemore and Sikkink (1998), and Fearon and Wendt (2002). See, for instance, Green and Shapiro (1994). For efforts to foster a closer link between the formal reasoning realm and the empirical realm, see Bates, Greif, Levi, Rosenthal, and Weingast (1998).


addressing a key aspect, together form a broad framework in which to study how international institutions work. In the rest of this book, chapter 3 discusses how international institutions utilize victims of noncompliance in monitoring states’ behavior. Chapter 4 explains how states’ compliance decisions respond to domestic constituencies. Chapter 5 addresses how international institutions facilitate states’ compliance by empowering domestic constituencies. Before I set out to resolve these empirical puzzles, chapter 2 reviews the study of international institutions in order to locate this book in the appropriate context of IR theorizing.

The study of international institutions

2

International agreements are an essential element in the increasingly interdependent world.1 Countries may agree to stop fighting one another, to reduce trade barriers, to protect the environment, or to respect human rights.2 Subsequent compliance with these agreements affects international cooperation not only in the short term, by affecting the immediate success of these agreements, but also in the longer term, by affecting the feasibility of future agreements. Compliance with international agreements is thus a critical component in international cooperation in general.3 How to secure compliance? How can the rising number of international institutions help facilitate states’ compliance with international agreements?4 These issues have important theoretical and empirical implications. This book addresses how international institutions influence international cooperation generally and facilitate states’ compliance with international agreements specifically. The purpose of this chapter is to review important works in these areas. This review helps guide my research agenda and locate the contribution of this book in the appropriate context. With vast theoretical and policy implications, issues concerning compliance and the role of international institutions have attracted 1 2

3

4

See, for example, Goldstein, Kahler, Keohane, and Slaughter (2000). International cooperation is not always a good thing. Indeed, cooperation can disadvantage those excluded (Keohane 1984) and can even disadvantage some who are included (Gruber 2000). Yet, under a broad range of circumstances, states find international cooperation necessary to provide public goods, to improve Pareto efficiency, or simply not to be left behind. See, for examples, Henkin (1979), Young (1979), Fisher (1981), Keohane (1984), Mitchell (1994b), Chayes and Chayes (1995), Weiss and Jacobson (1998), and Simmons (2000). Also see Walter (1997) in the case of civil wars. On the proliferation of international organizations, see Shanks, Jacobson, and Kaplan (1996). Also see Diehl (2005).


the attention of IR scholars from diverse theoretical perspectives. Neoliberal institutionalism, in particular, has suggested analytically rigorous answers to the puzzle of compliance and the role of international institutions. However, due to its state-centric focus, studies in this literature tend to limit the scope with which international institutions may influence sovereign behavior in the interstate context. Largely maintaining the rationalist orientation while relaxing the state-centric focus in neoliberal institutionalism, this book explores how international institutions influence sovereign behavior by employing nonstate actors and through domestic mechanisms. By broadening the ways in which international institutions influence sovereign behavior, this book heeds an important call to specify exactly how international institutions matter (Keohane and Martin 1995, Martin and Simmons 1998). It further provides an analytical framework to bring nonstate actors and domestic politics systematically into the study of international institutions. The chapter is organized as follows. In the first section, I define key concepts such as compliance and international institutions. In the second section, I discuss three major theoretical perspectives in the study of international institutions. In the third section, I focus on the rationalist foundation of neoliberal institutionalism. In the fourth section, I discuss recent efforts to relax its state-centric focus. In the concluding section, I lay out the research agenda that builds on and further contributes to the literature reviewed here.

key concepts Compliance refers to the degree to which a country conforms to an explicit provision in an international agreement (Young 1979, Fisher 1981, Mitchell 1994b). Weiss and Jacobson (1998) discuss several dimensions of compliance: compliance with procedural obligations, such as the requirement to report; compliance with substantive obligations stipulated in the treaty; and compliance with the spirit of the treaty. I focus primarily on the second dimension, and to some extent the third.

t h e s t u dy o f i n t e r n at i o n a l i n s t i t u t i o n s 15

This definition of compliance has several characteristics. First, compliance is a continuous variable ranging from noncompliance to overcompliance. Second, although compliance is in general an increasing function of efforts taken in conformance with a treaty provision, it is not identical to such efforts. Third, and more generally, compliance is not necessarily driven by either instrumental calculations or normative concerns (Simmons 1998, Raustiala and Slaughter 2002). Furthermore, compliance differs from implementation, which is the process of putting international agreements into practice (Victor, Raustiala, and Skolnikoff 1998). Compliance also differs from effectiveness, which can mean various things including effectiveness as problem solving, effectiveness as goal attainment, behavioral effectiveness, process effectiveness, and evaluative effectiveness (Young 1994). Compliance need not require or result in effective rules and regimes. By international institutions, I mean international agreements or international organizations, or both. Thus international institutions differ from international regimes. Stephen Krasner (1983) defines international regimes as rules, norms, principles, and procedures that focus expectations regarding international behavior. International institutions include many elements of regimes such as agreements and understandings that states share. In addition, international institutions include the formal embodiment of international regimes, such as a bureaucratic structure and staff at treaty organizations. Martin and Simmons (1998) refer to these elements as international organizations. This definition of international institutions can find some resemblance in the broader new institutionalism. In that literature, the definition of institutions varies, particularly in relation to organizations. Douglas North (1990) distinguishes between institutions and organizations.5 Institutions are a framework of rules and constraints,

5

IR scholars also emphasize the need to distinguish institutions and organizations. See, for instance, Kratochwil and Ruggie (1986), Young (1989a), Martin and Simmons (1998), and Simmons and Martin (2002).


formal and informal, which govern interactions between individuals. Organizations are groups of individuals that operate within that framework of institutions, and implement the rules and norms of the institutions. In contrast, Avner Greif (2000) defines institutions as ”a system of social factors” that guide, enable, and constrain the actions of individuals. Such a system of social factors can include rules, beliefs, and norms as well as organizations. The definition of international institutions in this book is closer to Greif’s (2000) definition of institutions, in that organizations can be part of institutions rather than alternatives to them. Defining international institutions as such, my goal is to specify how they – international agreements and/or international organizations – constrain the actions of states. This definition is more concrete and thus more workable than some alternatives. It is useful because rules and organizations are often closely linked and it can be difficult to disentangle their effects (Haas, Keohane, and Levy 1993, 5). This definition also helps to bring formal international organizations back into institutional theories, where “international organizations are not merely sites of, but rather agents in, international cooperation” (Abbott and Snidal 1998).

theoretical perspectives The traditionally dominant approach in IR, realism or neorealism, sees international institutions as epiphenomena.6 Scholars from this perspective tend to suggest that a nation will fulfill its commitments only so long as they are convenient and will disregard them when they no longer serve immediate needs. In this view, international institutions merely codify states’ interests and power but they do not have an independent effect on sovereign behavior.7 Arguably, states sign an

6

7

Some realists, however, take international institutions seriously and they bring important insights to the study of international institutions. See, for examples, Grieco (1988), Grieco (1990), Glaser (1995), and Gruber (2000). See, for examples, Morgenthau (1948), Waltz (1979), Strange (1983), and Mearsheimer (1995).


agreement only when it is in their self-interest. This, however, does not necessarily mean that the resulting agreement has no constraining ability. If international institutions are indeed inconsequential, why do states often engage in heated bargaining over them? In contrast to and partly reacting against neorealism, neoliberal institutionalists argue that the very act of entering into an international agreement modifies a country’s self-interest calculations.8 To resolve international collective action problems, countries may be willing to comply with an international agreement if other countries in turn comply with the same agreement or other related agreements. Thus, one way for international institutions to influence states’ compliance is by facilitating reciprocity or, in other words, enabling states to use carrots and sticks on each other. By facilitating such mechanisms as reciprocity and reputation, international institutions can impose significant constraints on states’ compliance behavior. This analytical framework, as I will discuss in more detail later, has an enduring impact on the contemporary theorizing of international institutions. In addition to neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism, the normative approach or recent constructivism also contributes to the study of compliance and international institutions. Without denying the vital importance of interests and power, Hedley Bull (1977) emphasizes the normative dimension of international society in the functioning of international law. Although limited, international law can help mobilize compliance with the rules of international society. The underlying logic of such arguments is that states’ compliance with international rules is not so much or not merely conditioned by

8

This highly productive scholarship – particularly with the development of cooperation theory and regime theory – continues to be influential. See, for examples, Krasner (1983), Keohane (1984), Axelrod (1984), Axelrod and Keohane (1985), Oye (1986), Jervis (1978), Stein (1983), Wagner (1983), Lipson (1984), Snidal (1985a), Snidal (1985b), Donnelly (1986), Taylor (1976), Taylor (1987), Conybeare (1987), Young (1989a), Gowa (1989), Stein (1990), Snidal (1991), Powell (1991), Martin (1992a), Martin (1992b), Morrow (1994), Mitchell (1994b), Fearon (1998), Drezner (2000), McGillivray and Smith (2000), and Morrow (2002).


self-interest calculations but rather by normative considerations such as the legitimacy of these rules.9 Constructivist scholars emphasize the constitutive effects of shared knowledge and norms.10 These approaches are not exhaustive. Neither are they mutually exclusive.11 Indeed, they share certain elements and are often complementary. First, while neoliberal institutionalism and constructivism attribute substantial influence to international institutions in facilitating states’ compliance, many realists also see international institutions as more than epiphenomena.12 Second, while neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism share a rationalist orientation, constructivist scholars also recognize the importance of instrumental rationality.13 Third, important works from all three approaches (e.g. Waltz 1979, Keohane 1984, Wendt 1999) have been criticized as statecentric to a varying extent.14 Indeed, as I discuss later, incorporating nonstate actors into IR theories and opening the black box of domestic politics are two major related research programs in contemporary IR scholarship. This book builds on important elements from the above approaches. First, maintaining the importance of a strong microfoundation, it adopts a rationalist orientation. The analytical framework offered by rationalist institutionalism, in particular, continues

9

10

11

12 13

14

See, for examples, Kratochwil and Ruggie (1986), Franck (1990), Young and Levy (1999), and Diehl, Ku, and Zamora (2003). See, for examples, Wendt (1992), Wendt (1994), Sikkink (1993), Klotz (1995), Finnemore (1996), Katzenstein (1996), Keck and Sikkink (1998), Price (1998), Risse (2000), Thomas (2001), and Checkel (2001). Hasenclever, Mayer, and Rittberger (1997), for instance, categorize theories of international regimes into interest-based, power-based, and knowledge-based theories. Again, see, Grieco (1988), Grieco (1990), Glaser (1995), and Gruber (2000). See, for examples, Goldstein and Keohane (1993), Legro (1996), Legro (1997), Katzenstein, Keohane, and Krasner (1998), Kahler (1998), Finnemore and Sikkink (1998), Checkel (1997), Checkel (2001), Fearon and Wendt (2002), Snidal (2002), Adler (2002), Schimmelfennig (2003), Schimmelfennig (2005), and Zurn ¨ and Checkel (2005). According to Jeffery Checkel (1997), constructivist scholarship – which is perhaps less guilty of state-centric orientation – has not paid sufficient attention to bringing in the agency of domestic-level actors. Also see Checkel (1999).


to serve as a sound basis for theorizing, debates, and the incorporation of new perspectives in the study of compliance and international institutions.15 Second, in tracing how international institutions may help empower domestic pro-compliance activism, my analysis is complementary to the constructivist insight on the legitimizing effect of international norms. I study how governments instrumentally respond to domestic interest competition and how international institutions can influence such competition. Thus, while complementary, this book provides an alternative to the constructivist argument regarding the effects of international institutions. Third, to relax the rather common state-centric focus, this book seeks both to incorporate nonstate actors and to capture domestic compliance mechanisms. It broadens the ways in which international institutions can influence states’ compliance indirectly by utilizing victims of noncompliance and domestic constituencies. In the following two sections, I discuss how this book builds on the rationalist framework in neoliberal institutionalism while altering the state-centric focus.

rationalist institutional framework Driven to disprove the realist assertion that cooperation is impossible under anarchy, neoliberal institutionalism seeks to demonstrate that it is possible and international institutions can facilitate it even in a realist world of anarchy. Theorizing in this tradition has relied heavily on the prisoner’s dilemma (PD) game, where states are unitary and primary actors (Milner 1992). Two strands of effort, however, diverge from this reliance solely on the PD game. First, Duncan Snidal (1985a) argues that some collective action problems are better captured by alternative games and they accordingly demand different institutional

15

See, for examples, Morrow (1994), Chayes and Chayes (1995), Downs, Rocke, and Barsoom (1996), Mearsheimer (1995), Keohane and Martin (1995), Barrett (1994), Barrett (1999), Fearon (1998), McGillivray and Smith (2000), Drezner (2000), Simmons (2000), Koremenos, Lipson, and Snidal (2001), and Morrow (2002).


functions (see also Martin 1993, Stein 1983, Krasner 1991).16 Second, James Fearon (1998) differentiates the dynamics at the negotiation stage from that at the compliance stage. While actors’ preferences can be captured by different game forms at the agreement-making stage, compliance with an already made agreement is most appropriately captured by a PD game. This is because, except for self-enforcing agreements such as those that are designed to solve pure coordination problems, parties may have incentives to shirk their responsibilities while benefiting from others’ compliance with the agreement. In this sense, the rationalist institutional framework that relies heavily on the PD game captures compliance dynamics more precisely than negotiation dynamics. Indeed, the rationalist institutional framework, as developed by Robert Keohane (1984) and others, has an enduring impact on the study of compliance and the role of international institutions in facilitating compliance.17 Simply put, the puzzle of compliance is: why do countries comply with international commitments when they benefit from others’ compliance but their own compliance incurs short-term costs? Cooperation theory and regime theory have demonstrated that, despite anarchy, countries may gain by complying rather than defecting under many circumstances. In particular, international institutions can affect governments’ self-interest calculations. Two compliance mechanisms are theoretically central. They are reciprocity and reputation.18 Although these mechanisms are clearly different (Downs and Jones 2002), they share a similar analytical logic. Facilitating both mechanisms is the fact that states often interact with

16

17

18

An exciting recent strand of theorizing suggests that international institutions are often created for purposes other than mutual gains. See, for examples, Oatley and Nabors (1998), Richards (1999), Gruber (2000), Moravcsik (2000), and Ikenberry (2001). For a pathbreaking study of social institutions that takes their distributional consequences seriously, see Knight (1992). See, for examples, Mitchell (1994b), Chayes and Chayes (1995), Downs, Rocke, and Barsoom (1996), and Simmons (2000). Scholars have studied these mechanisms in diverse issue areas. See, for instance, Bayard and Elliott (1994), English (1996), Simmons (2000), and Satori (2002).


each other over a long period of time and/or over many issues. In such situations, similar to an iterated PD game, reneging on one’s commitments may affect others’ actions on the same issue later, and/or others’ actions on other issues at the same time. That is, noncompliance may induce retaliation in either a temporal or a spatial sense or both. Even in the absence of immediate or foreseeable retaliation, governments may still have incentives to comply with regime rules and principles if they believe their reputation is at stake, which may affect their welfare far into the future. Thus, the logic underlying these mechanisms is that one’s compliance today on one issue may affect others’ actions on this or other issues immediately or in the future. Indeed, reputation works in a similar way to diffused reciprocity (Keohane 1986). The underlying logic of reciprocity and reputation, however, requires a necessary condition. That is, compliance has to be observable to some extent (Kreps 1990a). To understand this, let us focus on the logic of reputation mechanism directly and reciprocity mechanism indirectly. Not relying on immediate retaliatory linkages, the reputation mechanism requires fewer conditions to work than the reciprocity mechanism.19 Thus, if compliance observability is a necessary condition for the reputation mechanism, it is also for the reciprocity mechanism. To show how unobservability may complicate these compliance mechanisms, I take a closer look at the PD game that has so much motivated the rationalist institutional literature. Suppose that, after reaching an agreement, country A and country B face a PD situation as depicted in table 2.1. After implementing the first agreement, these two countries will face similar choices regarding many other agreements. It is well known that if each player complies as long as the other does and defects throughout as soon as the other defects, both may be better off complying than defecting,

19

For complications with the reputation mechanism, see Downs and Jones (2002).


Table 2.1. The prisoner’s dilemma Country B comply

defect

comply

3,

3

1,

4

defect

4,

1

2,

2

Country A

provided that they value future payoff sufficiently.20 Thus, in repeated games, countries may overcome their short-term incentives to defect by considering future benefits from compliance. However, this straightforward logic gets complicated in practice. Usually, country A cannot observe directly whether country B complies with the terms of their agreement. Rather, A only experiences its own payoff. If A’s payoff is determined only by A’s and B’s behavior, then A can infer from its payoff whether B has lived up to its commitment. In this case, B will not cheat if it expects to gain from a good reputation. In reality, however, A’s payoff results from many factors in addition to B’s behavior. Thus, each player is unable to accurately infer the other’s compliance behavior. Given that country A may not be able to detect noncompliance, country B may have incentives to be opportunistic when such behavior does not necessarily damage its reputation and thus does not affect its future payoffs.21 Indeed, the observability of compliance behavior is essential to the reciprocity argument in general. How to improve observability, 20

21

The subgames need not be infinite in an incomplete information game. As shown by Kreps, Milgrom, Roberts, and Wilson (1982), as long as a large number of rounds are left to go, mutual cooperation can be supported as equilibrium. When compliance behavior is not perfectly observable, to sustain cooperation, some punishment methods have to be employed at least occasionally, which of course involves inefficiency. Green and Porter (1984) demonstrated formally that, with imperfect information, a period of noncooperative behavior is essential in maintaining cooperation.


therefore, becomes a significant issue in itself. Neoliberal institutionalism provides a natural answer: international institutions provide compliance information to facilitate the reputation and reciprocity mechanisms. In other words, international institutions influence states’ compliance by monitoring their compliance behavior and, by providing compliance information, they facilitate reciprocity or reputation. The analytical logic underlying such institutional functions is a powerful one. Indeed, it is this same logic that undergirds the importance of reputation in the managerial school (Chayes and Chayes 1995) and the importance of enforcement in the political economy approach (Downs, Rocke, and Barsoom 1996). However, as in the case of the LRTAP Convention and other similar cases, it is not clear to what extent international institutions monitor states’ compliance and to what extent international institutions utilize compliance information to enforce compliance between states.22 More importantly, a wider set of actors are involved with monitoring states’ compliance and international institutions may facilitate compliance through a broader set of channels than interstate carrots or sticks. To fully understand how international institutions matter, we need to incorporate nonstate actors and domestic politics into the study of international institutions. In the next section, I review recent scholarship that points in these directions, in order to broaden ways in which international institutions influence sovereign behavior.

nonstate actors and domestic politics The state-centric focus in dominant IR theories entails two assumptions. One assumption is that states are the most important, if not the sole, actors of consequence in world politics. The other assumption is

22

Charles Glaser (1995) argues that neoliberal institutionalists do not explain why monitoring must be done by international institutions. Abbott and Snidal (1998) suggest that scholars need to devote more careful attention to understanding institutional arrangements. Also see Koremenos, Lipson, and Snidal (2001) and Raustiala (2005).


that states are unitary actors. Accordingly, efforts to relax the statecentric focus have taken two general directions. An increasingly large literature focuses on a broader set of actors, particularly nonstate actors in international relations. Another equally active literature aims to bring domestic politics into theories of international relations. Both of these directions are important for the study of international institutions.23 By treating states as the only consequential actors and neglecting domestic politics, many rationalist institutional accounts have neglected ways in which international institutions may influence sovereign behavior indirectly (Haggard and Simmons 1987, Milner 1992). Relaxing the state-centric assumption in these directions helps account for a broad range of indirect pathways through which international institutions may influence national policies.

Nonstate actors Relaxing the assumption that states are the sole actors of consequence, scholars have identified an increasing number of nonstate actors influencing international affairs.24 The research question, of course, goes beyond simply recognizing the relevance of these nonstate actors. Even theorists who focus primarily on states (Keohane 1984) understand intimately the importance of nonstate actors (Keohane and Nye 1977). Thus the question is not so much whether certain nonstate actors are consequential. Rather, the research task is to develop a coherent framework in which one can examine how nonstate actors matter, possibly interacting with states. Two types of nonstate actors are particularly noteworthy in recent IR scholarship. Studies on epistemic communities examine

23

24

These directions are not mutually exclusive. Consequential nonstate actors, for instance, can be subnational or transnational actors and work through domestic or international channels. International institutions are one type of such actors. However, international institutions are largely inter-governmental products. My review below focuses on those studies that examine nongovernmental actors.


how experts, through scientific consensus on a particular policy issue, influence the beliefs of state officials and subsequently their behavior (Haas 1989, Haas 1992, Reinicke 1998). Studies on NGOs and social movements examine how these nonstate actors, as simultaneously domestic and international actors, interact with states and international organizations (Sikkink 1993, Keck and Sikkink 1998).25 Although generalizations do not do justice to this large and diverse literature, we can say two things about many studies in this literature. First, they tend to find or assume that nonstate actors weaken states. This, however, does not need to be the case. In fact, the activities of nonstate actors can be an advantage to states (Krasner 1995, Raustiala 1997a, Moravcsik 1999, Drezner 2007). Second, they tend to privilege normative over rational concerns. However, instrumental rationality has much to contribute to the success of nonstate actors in reaching their goals (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998). The vast literature on nonstate actors has documented both the increasing number of nonstate actors and their influence in world politics. Particularly in the environmental arena, most studies find that transnational NGOs and epistemic communities have a significant influence on governance not only by shaping agendas but also improving the implementation of international commitments (Zurn ¨ 1998, Fox and Brown 1998, O’Brien, Goetz, Scholte, and Williams 2000) .26 Critics of this literature argue, and many contributors to this literature agree, that studies on nonstate actors tend to be rich on

25

26

However, some scholars argue that a global civil society bypasses states (Wapner 1995, Adler and Haas 1992, Princen and Finger 1994). Important works in international environmental politics include, among others, Young (1989a), Young (1994), Young (1997), Young (1999), Haas (1990), Haas, Keohane, and Levy (1993), Keohane and Levy (1996), Choucri (1993), Mitchell (1994b), Mitchell (1994a), Princen and Finger (1994), Sprinz and Vaahtoranta (1994), Keohane and Ostrom (1994), Gehring (1994), Bernauer (1995), Stokke and Vidas (1996), Schreurs and Economy (1997), Weiss and Jacobson (1998), Victor, Raustiala, and Skolnikoff (1998), Wettestad (1999), Underdal and Hanf (2000), DeSombre (2000), Luterbacher and Sprinz (2001), Barrett (2003), Breitmeier, Young, and Zurn (2006), and ¨ Conca (2006).


description but short on causal explanation about when and how these actors affect behavioral change (Drezner 2007). For instance, although the research on epistemic community has shed tremendous light on international environmental policy, it is relatively poor at explaining how scientific consensus translates into effect. This may be because it lacks a clear idea about bargaining process (Young 1994), or because it lacks an explanation of how scientific information is used or politicized to mobilize public opinion (Lidskog and Sundqvist 2002). To better understand how nonstate actors generate effects, we need to pay more attention to the causal pathways by which nonstate actors become consequential. While nonstate actors can influence many other actors, oftentimes their ultimate targets are states. For instance, how do subnational actors and transnational actors influence states’ compliance with international agreements?27 Do they work through the same causal mechanisms? What drives states’ behavior through domestic channels of influence versus transnational channels of influence? Answers to these questions will help us better understand the ways in which nonstate actors influence states’ behavior. This book brings nonstate actors into a study of how international institutions influence states’ compliance. Specifically, I ask and answer the question of how states design international institutions to utilize nonstate actors in monitoring states’ compliance.

Domestic politics To relax the assumption that states are unitary actors, scholars increasingly bring domestic politics into IR theorizing. In order to answer the realist challenge, earlier studies on international institutions tend to focus on the direct effects of international institutions on states’ behavior. A persistent puzzle in these studies is why does compliance with the same agreement differ among countries? Increasingly, scholars look into domestic politics for answers,

27

Risse-Kappen (1995), for instance, argues that domestic structures mediate transnational interactions.


from either or both second-image and second-image-reversed perspectives.28 Domestic politics provide sources for foreign policy and thus international outcomes. First, important domestic actors and their preferences may affect international cooperation. For instance, interest groups and political parties anticipate the distributive consequences of international cooperation and thus utilize their resources to shape their government’s preference in international politics.29 Victor, Raustiala, and Skolnikoff (1998) emphasize the effects of participation by societal actors on the national implementation of international agreements. Knopf (1998) studies the impact of protest on states’ preference to seek cooperation. Second, domestic institutions can affect whether and how much to cooperate internationally. For instance, political institutions may influence domestic actors’ preferences as well as their access to policymaking (Ikenberry 1990). States with strong budget institutions and independent central banks are more likely to sustain a commitment to adjustments backed by the IMF (Alesina and Perotti 1995, Cottarelli 1993, Leone 1991). The nature of the electoral system, the structure of governing institutions, and the transparency of the political system influence the credibility of foreign policy promises (Cowhey 1993). Similarly, democratic legislatures may give credibility to international commitments that democracies make (Martin 2000). Furthermore, certain types of political regime such as democracies may carry over their respect for the rule of law into the international sphere and thus may be more likely to comply with international commitments (Slaughter 1995).30

28

29

30

For earlier works that emphasize the importance of domestic politics in understanding international politics, for example, see Rosenau (1967), Allison (1971), and Katzenstein (1976). See Gourevitch (1986), Milner (1988), Rogowski (1989), Frieden (1991), Snyder (1991), Eichengreen (1992), Simmons (1994), and Moravcsik (1997) among others. It is, however, debated whether or not democracies are better able to comply with international agreements. On the one hand, there are important affirmative findings in broad areas such as security alliances (Gaubatz 1996, Smith 1996), trade (Mansfield, Milner, and Rosendorff 2002), investment (Schultz and Weingast


Third, domestic uncertainty about key actors’ demands can also influence a state’s preference in international negotiations. Indeed, uncertainty at home about the future demands of key interest groups has been shown to explain the enforcement of GATT rules (Downs and Rocke 1995). Of course, these domestic factors are interrelated and they interact in determining foreign policy and international outcomes. The two-level game literature is an example in this regard.31 Although the two-level metaphor is useful for understanding the arrow of causation both from domestic to international and from international to domestic, the literature has focused primarily on how domestic political opposition affects the ability of leaders to bargain at the international level. It has not focused on how international institutions can affect domestic politics (Moravcsik 1993). In an important book, Milner (1997) shows how domestic actors, political institutions, and information shape how the international game is played out.

31

2003, Jensen 2003), monetary policies (Broz 2002), the environment (Raustiala and Victor 1998, Neumayer 2002), and the credibility of commitments in general (Leeds 1999, Martin 2000). On the other hand, there are also negative findings regarding the effect of democratic institutions on compliance with international commitments. Gartzke and Gleditsch (2004) argue that democracies are less likely to fulfill security commitments to allies. Busch and Reinhardt (2002) find democracies less likely to comply with GATT rulings. Simmons (2000) demonstrates that, due to popular pressure, democracies are less likely to comply with Article VIII of the IMF. Overall, compliance by democracies with international commitments seems conditional on, among other things, domestic public support (Dai 2006a). Similarly, there does not seem to be any consensus over the effects of democratic institutions on conflict behavior or trade policy. See Russett (1993), Gowa (1999), Reiter and Stam (2002), Bueno de Mesquita, Smith, Siverson, and Morrow (2003), Lipson (2003), Verdier (1994), Verdier (1998), Mansfield, Milner, and Rosendorff (2000), Dai (2002b), and Dai (2006b) among others. This literature is large. Among others, see Putnam (1988), Evans, Jacobson, and Putnam (1993), Morrow (1991), Lehman and McCoy (1992), Mayer (1992), Avery (1993), Friman (1993), McGinnis and Williams (1993), Schoppa (1993), Iida (1993), Mo (1994), Mo (1995), Fearon (1994), Pahre and Papayoanou (1997), Pahre (1997), Milner and Rosendorff (1996, 1997), Schultz (1998), Smith (1998), Hug and Konig (2002), Mertha ¨ and Pahre (2005), Dai (2006b), and Pahre (2006). For efforts to further enrich the research program of two-level games conceptually, see Knopf (1993), Patterson (1997), and Paarlberg (1997).


The arrow of causation between the domestic and the international goes the other way as well. That is, international factors such as international institutions can impact domestic politics (Haggard and Simmons 1987, Moravcsik 1991, Drezner 2003). First, international factors can impact domestic political institutions. For instance, the position of small countries in the international political economy shapes their domestic institutions (Katzenstein 1985). Pressure from international institutions can influence domestic institutional and policy choices (Pevehouse 2002, Kelley 2004). International regimes can construct norms that permeate domestic structures (Klotz 1995, Finnemore 1996). International institutions can also enhance the administrative capacity in member states (Chayes and Chayes 1995, Weiss and Jacobson 1998). Second, international factors including international institutions can provide benefits to some domestic actors and thus may shape domestic interest competition. Various domestic actors can appeal to international rules and norms to push their domestic agenda. They can be elected executives who utilize international agreements to redistribute domestic political resources (Goldstein 1996, Moravcsik 1994). They can be certain governmental bureaucracies or social interest groups which pursue international rules for normative or strategic reasons (Duffield 1992, Cortell and Davis 1996, Checkel 2001). They can be lawyers and judges in national courts who value additional international legal instruments to advance their agendas (Burley and Mattli 1993, Alter 2000, Keohane, Moravcsik, and Slaughter 2000). Alternatively, they can be epistemic communities or norm-based networks and social movements, which use international institutions as simply another channel of influence (Haas 1989, Haas 1990, Sikkink 1993, Keck and Sikkink 1998). Such international support or pressure can tip the balance of domestic interest competition (Putnam and Bayne 1984). Although the scholarship has made great strides in bringing domestic politics into IR studies, I identify three areas that can be improved. First, studies tend to focus explicitly on either the effect of domestic politics on international outcomes or the effect


of international factors on domestic politics, but infrequently both. For instance, studies on domestic sources of international cooperation often do not address how international factors such as international institutions play into domestic politics to influence domestic sources of international cooperation. Second, domestic politics are often underconceptualized. Oftentimes, relevant actors are simply identified without a theory about how their preferences are aggregated, either through bargaining or through gaining access to policymaking. At other times, political institutions are privileged to trump actors and preferences. Rarely, for instance, do studies on democracy and foreign policy look into the variations of societal actors and their preferences. The study on the effect of international institutions on domestic implementation and compliance, in particular, requires a theory of domestic politics before one can specify how international institutions play into the domestic game. Third, and partially related to the second problem, the literature tends to list relevant factors rather than specify causal mechanisms.32 Of course, listing relevant factors is a useful first step.33 Frequently, however, while the list of plausible channels of influence gets longer, insufficient attention is paid to specifying why and how each channel works, let alone how different channels interact. This book responds to these challenges by bringing domestic politics into the study of international institutions. First, I present a theory of domestic enforcement of international agreements. This 32

33

That causal mechanisms are often underspecified is a common problem in international relations. For an excellent discussion of this problem in security studies, see Fearon (1995). For instance, Haas, Keohane, and Levy (1993) explore the impact of international environmental institutions on governmental concern and political and administrative capacity, as well as contractual environment. The latter element assumes states to be unitary actors while the former two do not. Weiss and Jacobson (1998) identify four general types of factors that affect a country’s implementation of and compliance with international accords: characteristics of the activity, characteristics of the accord, the international environment, and factors involving the country. Emphasizing the importance of causal pathways, Young (1999) explores a broad range of regime functions, e.g. regimes as utility modifiers, enhancers of cooperation, bestowers of authority, learning facilitators, role definers, and agents of internal realignment.


theory of domestic politics takes seriously actors and preferences, political institutions, and informational uncertainty. Second, going beyond the domestic mechanism of compliance, I further specify how international institutions may play into the domestic game. I identify specific ways in which international institutions can influence the domestic enforcement of compliance.

conclusion Why do countries comply with international agreements? How do international institutions influence states’ compliance? The importance of these questions is manifest, in part, in the proliferation of international agreements and international organizations. From diverse theoretical perspectives, the IR scholarship has sought to broaden our understanding of compliance and the role of international institutions in facilitating compliance. This book builds on and further contributes to the literature in several ways. First, emphasizing the importance of a microfoundation, it maintains a rationalist orientation while taking the constructivist insights as complementary. Second, it further develops neoliberal institutionalist logic of compliance and the role of international institutions in facilitating compliance. Rather than focusing on the direct effects of international institutions on states, however, this book explores how international institutions influence states’ compliance by employing nonstate actors and by working through domestic mechanisms. Specifically, it answers the questions of how nonstate actors help to monitor states’ compliance, how domestic constituencies influence states’ compliance through domestic enforcement, and how international institutions facilitate such domestic mechanisms of compliance. Third, by relaxing the state-centric focus in the literature, this book provides an analytical framework to bring nonstate actors and domestic politics systematically into the study of international institutions. In that framework, I specify important yet previously undertheorized causal mechanisms through which international institutions may influence sovereign behavior.


Helping us better understand how international institutions influence states’ behavior, this book also provides useful policy implications on how to design new institutions and reform existing ones to enhance their ability to influence states’ behavior effectively. For instance, how desirable is centralized monitoring and enforcement by international institutions? How sustainable and cost-effective are they? How does the desirability of centralized monitoring and enforcement vary between international regimes? When and under what conditions can decentralized monitoring and enforcement be feasible and effective? In particular, if international institutions can influence sovereign behavior indirectly, can those international institutions that lack carrots and sticks be nevertheless effective? Accordingly, what is the comparative advantage of nonbinding agreements and weak international institutions? Given the enormous resource constraints facing many international institutions, answers to these questions have important policy implications.

3

Monitoring arrangements

As chapter 2 has suggested, work on international institutions has been greatly shaped by the repeated PD game. In light of this model, international institutions resolve the collective action problem by providing compliance information and thereby facilitating compliance mechanisms such as reciprocity or reputation (Keohane 1984). Although information provision by international institutions lies at the foundation of neoliberal institutionalism, little effort has been made to specify exactly how international institutions provide information on compliance. Empirically, except in a few large and strong regimes, treaty organizations rarely provide information completely by themselves. Rather, a host of nonstate actors often participate in monitoring states’ compliance to a varying extent. Indeed, treaty regimes vary as to who detects noncompliance and who brings it to light. For example, in the NPT regime, the treaty organization carries out both routine and special inspections. In contrast, human rights treaty organizations rarely go beyond collecting governmental self-reports. While these examples show the diversity in how much or how little treaty organizations do, the following examples illustrate the diversity in how involved other actors are in different treaty regimes. The rules of the GATT, and subsequently the WTO, are only enforced as a result of formal complaints filed by states. In many environmental regimes, in contrast, NGOs often detect noncompliance and bring it to light. In this chapter, I address the puzzle of monitoring arrangements: do international institutions by and large monitor states’ compliance with international agreements? If so, how? In particular, if anyone at all, who detects noncompliance and who brings it to


light? To the extent that monitoring occurs, what is the function of treaty organizations, states, and nonstate actors respectively in diverse treaty regimes? And, most importantly, what accounts for such variations? To account systematically for diverse monitoring arrangements, I start by specifying the underlying incentive structures in regimes across a range of issue areas. Although institutional outcomes are complex phenomena that implicate multiple theories, I am mainly concerned with the political economy of monitoring arrangements. From a primarily rationalist perspective, I assume that states are guided by their self-interests in designing international institutions. Facing resource constraints, they are concerned with efficiency (Snidal 1996). Thus critical questions present themselves: do states have interests in monitoring and how do they pursue cost-effective monitoring arrangements? I argue that states’ interests, as well as their resource constraints and subsequent efforts to overcome such constraints, lead them to design monitoring arrangements in predictable ways. In particular, two factors – (1) the common or divergent interests between victims of noncompliance and their states and (2) the presence or absence of these victims as low-cost monitors – provide a concrete handle with which to address the empirical diversity of monitoring arrangements. To assess states’ interests in monitoring, we need to know whether they have incentives to protect the potential victims of noncompliance. This will depend on who these victims are and whether their interests and the interests of their states are aligned. Additionally, because states simultaneously tackle multiple domestic and international tasks, they face resource constraints. To pursue cost-effective solutions, states may take advantage of other stakeholders who are able to detect noncompliance and willing to bring this information to light. The availability of victims of noncompliance as low-cost monitors thus interacts with states’ interests in shaping how states design monitoring arrangements. Along these two dimensions, costeffective monitoring solutions differ between regimes. As a result, the

m o n i t o r i n g a r r a n g e m e n t s 35

monitoring functions of treaty organizations, states, and nonstate actors differ between regimes. The next section spells out my theoretical approach, drawing from the bureaucratic control literature and more broadly new institutionalism. This is followed by an analysis of how underlying incentive structures shape monitoring arrangements. In the third section, I illustrate how this theory can shed light on diverse monitoring arrangements in substantively important treaty regimes. The fourth section concludes this chapter.

asymmetric information and solutions Information provision by international institutions lies at the foundation of neoliberal institutionalism. As Robert Keohane (1983, 1984) argues, international institutions create situations similar to the iterated PD through issue linkage and they facilitate cooperation as an equilibrium outcome through information provision. According to Duncan Snidal (1985a), regimes that address different problems may have different informational requirements (also see Stein 1983, Martin 1993, Morrow 1994). While regimes pertaining to coordination problems need only gather information on parties’ preferences, regimes solving PD problems require, in addition, information on compliance behavior. Alternatively, as James Fearon (1998) suggests, international cooperation involves first negotiation (as in a bargaining game) and then enforcement (as in a PD game). If international institutions provide information to facilitate cooperation, they need to provide information on parties’ preferences at the negotiation stage and information on compliance behavior at the enforcement stage. It is in fact a centerpiece of neoliberal institutionalism that international institutions provide compliance information to facilitate compliance with international agreements. Yet exactly how do international institutions provide compliance information? Why do arrangements to monitor compliance differ between regimes? And what accounts for the diverse organizational forms of information systems? Surprisingly, contemporary


IR scholarship provides no clear theoretical answers to these critical questions. To understand monitoring arrangements, this chapter builds on some insights from the bureaucratic control literature in the agency framework, and new institutionalism in general. To analyze specific monitoring arrangements, we need to focus, for a moment, on asymmetric information and the literature that directly addresses it. Once a party signs an agreement with all other parties, it may have incentives to shirk its responsibilities while benefiting from the contribution of others. Although other parties want to prevent noncompliance by this party, they do not have as much information on the party’s compliance behavior as the party itself does. The need for monitoring emerges from this problem of asymmetric information. Solutions to problems of asymmetric information are treated extensively in the agency literature (Kreps 1990b, Holmstrom ¨ 1979).1 The literature on political control of bureaucracy, in particular, explores how Congress controls bureaucratic agencies, despite its informational disadvantage. As Mathew McCubbins and Thomas Schwartz (1984) argue, Congress overcomes its informational disadvantage by externalizing monitoring costs to “fire alarms.” That is, instead of directly monitoring administrative agencies’ compliance with legislative goals, Congress enables individual citizens and organized interest groups to monitor administrative agencies. The more adversely affected interest groups are by agency decisions, the more motivated they become to monitor agencies and seek remedies from Congress.2 Furthermore, Congress adopts administrative procedures that facilitate such cost-effective solutions. These procedures make

1

2

For recent application of the principal–agent framework to international organizations, see Hawkins, Lake, Nielson, and Tierney (2006). Arthur Lupia and Mathew McCubbins (1994a, 1994b) address a credibility problem of fire alarms and explore ways in which Congress can influence the amount of useful information in the course of legislating administrative arrangements. For a larger framework of how people in general are informed by third parties, see Lupia and McCubbins (1998). Arguably, although verification is important, being suspected can often cause much damage and thus may already have deterrence effects.


it easier for the constituents to monitor agencies’ decisions and affect the costs to agencies of implementing policies that are opposed by these constituents (McCubbins, Noll, and Weingast 1987, 1989).3 Similarly, to the extent that they can detect noncompliance, potential victims of noncompliance provide a partial solution to the information problem in treaty regimes. One caveat is that the relationship between Congress and bureaucratic agencies differs from that between international institutions and signatory countries. Agencies are created, and their power delegated, by Congress. In contrast, international institutions are negotiated by participating countries, and thus they do not have as much leverage over participating countries as Congress has over agencies. This, however, is not to say that factions within Congress never allow agencies to evade sanctions, and that winning coalitions embodied by international institutions cannot successfully punish a noncomplying country. More importantly, direct sanctions are rarely the key mechanisms of enforcement in either arena (McCubbins, Noll, and Weingast 1987, 1989). The way in which Congress mitigates its informational disadvantage echoes a key proposition of new institutionalism: institutions define an organizational form regarding monitoring and information transmission (Milgrom, North, and Weingast 1990, Calvert 1994, Greif, Milgrom, and Weingast 1994).4 In the law merchant system, as analyzed by Milgrom, North, and Weingast (1990), a trader would know whether his trading partner had been honest or had cheated during or after a trade was conducted. But outsiders cannot readily observe what has transpired in a given bilateral trade. The law merchant thus serves as a repository and communicator of information. Although the basic logic of the law merchant system holds, information 3

4

It remains debatable, however, to what extent administrative procedures control agencies and to what extent Congress indeed stacks the deck. As Kathleen Bawn (1995) argues, Congress’s use of administrative procedures depends on technical uncertainty about the policy consequences and uncertainty about the political environment. For a study of organizational forms of trade liberalization, see Yarbrough and Yarbrough (1992).


systems at the international level are usually more complex.5 First, the effect of noncompliance by a state may not be experienced by another state with a reasonably short delay. Depending on the behavior that is regulated, the detection of noncompliance can be costly. Second, states are not unitary. Governments – the primary decisionmakers for international monitoring arrangements – may or may not represent the interests of those victimized by noncompliance. Accordingly, the channels through which noncompliance is brought to light can be more complicated. In the next section, I address directly how international institutions provide compliance information. I ask and answer the question of who detects noncompliance, who brings it to light, and why.

theory of monitoring arrangements To account for specific monitoring arrangements in different regimes, we need to examine the strategic environment in which they are devised and, accordingly, the incentives of states in designing international institutions. To provide a concrete handle for such an assessment, I propose two principal dimensions: (1) the interest alignment between victims of noncompliance and their states, and (2) the availability of these victims as low-cost monitors. The interaction of these dimensions leads to four different forms of monitoring, as summarized in table 3.1. Why these dimensions? How is each defined? How do they together account for the organizational forms of information systems? In the following, I elaborate on the rationale and define the two principal determinants respectively. After that, I discuss the resulting monitoring solutions.

5

For information provision by institutions at various aggregate levels, see Ostrom (1990), McKean (1992), Haas, Keohane, and Levy (1993), and Ostrom and Keohane (1994). For a cautious view on transferring propositions across levels of analysis, see Young (1994).


Table 3.1. Organizational forms of information systems Availability of victims as low-cost monitors Yes Monitoring by Yes

victims and states

No Monitoring by treaty organizations

Interest alignment between victims and states Monitoring by No

Monitoring by

victims and NGOs

NGOs

Interest alignment between victims of noncompliance and their states States are the primary decision-makers in establishing and reforming international institutions. Thus it is critical to know what they have to lose if noncompliance stays unnoticed. This will depend on the relationship between states and those injured by noncompliance. To assess this relationship, we need to ask two questions. First, who are the potential victims of noncompliance? The potential victims of one country’s noncompliance can be other states, as in most security regimes; nonstate actors in other states, as in trade regimes; or nonstate actors in that same country, as in most human rights regimes. Second, do states have incentives to protect victims of noncompliance? The answer is straightforward in two cases. When the victims of one country’s noncompliance are other states, as in security regimes, these other states are good agents for themselves. When the victims of one country’s noncompliance are domestic nonstate actors, as in human rights regimes, this state does not represent the victims’ interests. However, when the victims of one country’s noncompliance are nonstate actors in other states, the interest alignment is more complex. Indeed, these other states may or may not protect the victims. They have incentives to protect the victims unless such protection


Table 3.2. Interest alignment between victims and their states Who are victims of noncompliance? Other states Nonstate actors in other states Are victims

Yes

Aligned

in one’s own state

Aligned

protected by governments?

Nonstate actors

or No

not aligned

Not aligned

conflicts with more important subnational interests. For instance, in trade regimes such as the GATT/WTO, country A’s violation of trade laws such as anti-dumping rules may affect two sets of domestic interests in country B. It may hurt import-competing firms, while possibly benefiting consumers. For various reasons – including these domestic groups’ differential ability to influence policymaking – states tend to represent producers’ interests more than consumers’ interests. Similarly, in many environmental regimes, country A’s noncompliance with an international agreement may affect domestic interests in neighboring country B differently. While A’s pollution hurts the interests of the general public in country B, the government in country B may nevertheless refrain from taking issue with country A if doing so in turn leads country A to pursue polluting industries in country B. Governments thus have competing incentives: to protect their citizens from other countries’ noncompliance and to shelter their own industries from expensive compliance measures. Whose interests does the government take to heart? It depends, among many things, on the leverage that competing interests have on the government, a mechanism that I shall detail in chapter 4. For now, it suffices to say that when the victims of one country’s noncompliance are nonstate actors in other states, it is a variable whether these other states will be good agents of the victims of noncompliance. To the extent that victims of noncompliance are protected by their own states, I say that the interests of these victims and those of


their states are aligned.6 Thus, as shown in table 3.2, by considering who are victimized by noncompliance and whether states have incentives to protect the victims, I derive one determinant of monitoring arrangements. That is, are the interests of noncompliance victims and those of their governments aligned? In other words, are states good agents of those victimized by noncompliance?

The availability of noncompliance victims as low-cost monitors States’ interests alone do not determine the design of monitoring arrangements. Because states simultaneously tackle multiple domestic and international tasks, they face resource constraints. To pursue cost-effective solutions, states often recognize that there are other stakeholders in most regimes. To the extent that the potential victims of noncompliance can easily detect noncompliance, they suggest a relatively cheaper solution to the informational problem in treaty regimes. Accordingly, the existence of noncompliance victims as lowcost monitors partially shapes the choice of monitoring arrangements made by states concerned with efficiency. To assess the availability of noncompliance victims as low-cost monitors we need to answer two separate questions. First, is the effect of noncompliance apparent or latent? The easiest way to detect noncompliance is when its consequence is clearly felt or seen. For instance, victims of human rights abuses suffer directly. So do export firms from import constraints. However, when the consequence of noncompliance is latent, as in the cases of armament or ozone depletion, no obvious indicators alert potential victims and, thus, the detection of noncompliance is much more costly. Second, are those affected able to discern the source of

6

It is important to note that the interest alignment in my theory is between noncompliance victims and their own states. A different kind of alignment – cross-country interest alignment – is possible where, for instance, state A has incentives to protect victims of human rights abuses in country X. But that is not how the interest alignment in this study is defined. Empirically, such state interests are often derivatives of other more fundamental interests.


Table 3.3. Availability of noncompliance victims as low-cost monitors Effect of noncompliance Apparent Obvious Source of noncompliance

Ambiguous

Latent

Low-cost monitors available

Low-cost monitors

Low-cost monitors

lacking

lacking

noncompliance? Even when the effect of noncompliance is directly felt or seen, it is not always straightforward to pin down the source of noncompliance. For instance, in common pool resource situations such as fisheries, the depletion of commonly shared resources may be obvious, but whose action causes it is not transparent. While many environmental regimes face this difficulty, victims of noncompliance in human rights and trade regimes are often able to discern the source of noncompliance. To the extent that victims of noncompliance can detect both the effect and source of noncompliance, I say that they are available as low-cost monitors.7 Thus, as shown in table 3.3, by considering whether the source of noncompliance is obvious and whether the effect is transparent, I derive the other determinant of monitoring arrangements. That is, are victims of noncompliance available as low-cost monitors? In other words, are victims of noncompliance in a convenient position to detect noncompliance?

7

Note that the cost is defined as the extra effort by noncompliance victims in discovering whether they are being victimized and who is injuring them. A monitor is low-cost because he may directly experience noncompliance, not because his monitoring does not cost states anything. Therefore, one cannot infer from my definition of low-cost monitors that NGOs are generally low-cost monitors simply because, from the perspective of states, their monitoring costs nothing.


Resulting monitoring arrangements The above two principal determinants interact to shape the monitoring arrangements in treaty regimes. At one level, given the interest (non)alignment between victims of noncompliance and their states, whether victims are available as low-cost monitors determines who may detect noncompliance. At another level, given the (in)ability of victims to detect noncompliance, whether states have incentives to protect victims determines who may bring noncompliance information to light. It is important to note that the two stages of monitoring – detecting noncompliance and then bringing it to light – are generally associated with somewhat different levels of centralization.8 While victims can sometimes easily detect noncompliance, collecting the information and bringing it to light often requires some involvement by states and/or nongovernmental organizations.9 Such interactions between the two dimensions give rise to four types of cost-effective monitoring arrangements, as illustrated in table 3.1. I discuss the logic of such expectations below, while leaving to a later section the demonstration of how this simple theory sheds light on a wide range of substantively important treaty regimes. When interests are aligned between victims of noncompliance and their states, states desire a sound monitoring system. However, their willingness to contribute resources and delegate authority to treaty organizations depends on whether there are cheaper ways to do the job. If victims of noncompliance are not in a convenient position to detect noncompliance (the upper right-hand corner of table 3.1), then states have to either monitor each other themselves or contribute resources for treaty organizations to conduct centralized monitoring. My focus is on multilateral regimes that, as the number of participating countries increases, tend to call for monitoring by

8

9

Centralization refers to the degree to which monitoring tasks are carried out by treaty organizations. This is consistent with some lessons from the bureaucratic agency literature: while noncompliance is often detected by fire alarms, communication of this information is often assisted by police patrol.


treaty organizations on efficiency grounds. This leads to the most centralized information systems, where treaty organizations detect noncompliance and bring it to light. However, if victims of noncompliance can conveniently detect noncompliance (the upper left-hand corner of table 3.1), then they will take advantage of this informational advantage and feed the information to the right channel so that compliance can be enforced. Since the interests are aligned between victims of noncompliance and their governments, victims feed noncompliance information to their governments who help bring it to the international forum. Therefore, this incentive structure results in less-centralized information systems, where victims of noncompliance detect noncompliance and their governments bring it to light in treaty regimes. When interests are not aligned between victims of noncompliance and their states, states are unlikely to contribute to information systems. They are unlikely to incur costs to detect noncompliance or to help bring noncompliance to light. Instead, communication of noncompliance information has to largely depend on special interest groups and entrepreneurs, or more generally NGOs. On the one hand, the absence of states’ interests in information systems creates a vacuum for NGOs to fill. On the other hand, more subtly, the involvement of NGOs further reinforces the underinvestment by states in these monitoring arrangements. The end result is that these information systems are accordingly most decentralized. If victims of noncompliance can conveniently detect noncompliance (the lower lefthand corner of table 3.1), then the victims and NGOs monitor compliance jointly. Victims have information about noncompliance, but they may or may not be in a position to bring it to light. In the latter case, interested NGOs may fill the gap by collecting compliance information and bringing it to international regimes. However, if victims of noncompliance are not in any convenient position to detect noncompliance (the lower right-hand corner of table 3.1), NGOs are the primary monitors of noncompliance. Here, states are not interested in monitoring and victims of noncompliance are unable to cheaply detect


noncompliance. The only possible monitors are interested NGOs, who voluntarily incur the cost of detecting noncompliance and bring it to light. The interplay of the interest alignment between victims of noncompliance and their states, with the varying availability of these victims as low-cost monitors, thus defines the monitoring tasks of different actors in treaty regimes.

Obstacles to the emergence of monitoring The theory of monitoring arrangements developed above accounts for the varying organizational forms of monitoring arrangements – if monitoring occurs. Empirically, monitoring does not necessarily happen in every regime. In this section, I discuss some obstacles that may prevent monitoring arrangements from emerging. Clearly, on many issues, international regimes themselves do not emerge. But I shall focus on why monitoring arrangements do not materialize in cases where international regimes do emerge. International regimes may not emerge for many different reasons. States may not have any interest in the issue at hand. Even when states have a substantial interest, they may fail to negotiate an agreement acceptable to all pivotal players. Sometimes, states may give up efforts to establish regimes if they anticipate a lack of monitoring that would cripple any regime. Fearon’s (1998) discussion of US–Soviet arms control bargaining well illustrates this logic: when monitoring is thought infeasible, states may not take serious measures to establish any regime. Thus regimes may fail to emerge in any of the four strategic environments as I discussed above. Even where regimes are established, monitoring may not materialize for various reasons. For instance, states may not have any intrinsic interest in a given issue and thus only provide lip service for reasons of issue linkage or window-dressing. They may sign a declaration – say, on human rights protection – but do not delegate much authority or provide many resources to the resulting regime to enable any centralized monitoring. Under such circumstances,


whether or not monitoring materializes will depend on whether nonstate interests can fill the vacuum. Even when states care very much about monitoring and subsequent compliance, they might not successfully negotiate and implement centralized monitoring. Thus, no matter whether centralized or decentralized monitoring is expected, potential monitors may not carry out actual monitoring for a number of reasons. Chief among these reasons is the problem of collective action facing monitors. In the remainder of this section, I briefly discuss the degree to which collective action problems may impede monitoring and the ways in which they may be resolved. In contributing to the centralized monitoring bodies, states may face a collective action problem, which influences the amount of resources that treaty organizations can receive and thus how thorough centralized monitoring can be. One important way that collective action problems can be resolved in a centralized information system is the formation by some states of a privileged group, i.e. when some states have incentives to ensure an effective information system even if they have to bear the full cost.10 This presumes not only an asymmetry of demand for a centralized monitoring system among participating states, but also sufficient resources of the privileged group. For instance, states with substantially high shares of world investment may be not only willing but also able to bear the full cost to ensure that debtors use their fund responsibly. In this sense, power capabilities, in terms of resources, can influence monitoring arrangements by helping to resolve possibly severe collective action problems in centralized information systems. Collective action problems may also affect decentralized monitoring arrangements. Even when potential victims may easily detect noncompliance, they in turn face collective action problems in

10

For the notion of privileged group, see Olson (1965). For a refined version of it, see Hardin (1982). Applications of this notion in international relations are massive. For a classic example, see Olson and Zeckhauser (1966).


bringing that information to light, because frequently the cost in bringing noncompliance to light is concentrated while the benefit is diffused. For example, in the case of human rights violations, a particular victim who speaks out against human rights abuse may be targeted with more abuse. In the case of trade violations, as another example, a particular firm which incurs the cost of documenting foreign trade violations and of lobbying its government to take the case to the WTO may benefit the entire industry, including its competitors. There exist, however, some solutions to the collective action problems in decentralized monitoring arrangements. First, decentralized monitors count on the external provision of public goods by states, rather than internal provision. Collective action by a small fraction of a group – which is inadequate to provide the group’s good – might be sufficient to engage its government (Hardin 1982, 52). For instance, it does not require all firms from the same industry to lobby the government to take the industry’s case to the WTO. Second, collective action problems among decentralized monitors can often be resolved through the pursuit for private benefits. For instance, when the operation of regimes promises redress for victims of noncompliance, those victimized by noncompliance can get private benefits from mobilizing to monitor compliance. Third, even when it is purely collective, the good that decentralized monitors seek to achieve often has diverse attributes. Different potential monitors may value different attributes differently and, by sounding alarms and getting their voices heard, they may influence the provision of the good in a way they prefer.11 For example, the resolution of trade disputes may generally benefit an entire industry. But since firms within an industry usually have different product mixes, the specifics of a trade dispute settlement could benefit those who sound the alarms more than those who free-ride.12

11 12

For a discussion of asymmetry in the contents of goods, see Hardin (1982). For how carefully drawn tariffs may easily benefit cooperative firms more than freeriders, see Stigler (1974).


Among potential monitors, states want to protect their own citizens’ interests. Victims of noncompliance want to avoid being further victimized. What do NGOs want? Why are they able to resolve collective action problems? One important piece to this puzzle is that many NGOs make a living out of keeping track of governmental policies and their implementation. The level of their success partially determines the size of their membership, which is the main financial source for most NGOs. The publicity that NGOs get by detecting noncompliance and particularly by bringing it to light thus serves their own interests as well. Overall, collective action problems are ubiquitous and, when severe, may prevent potential monitors from monitoring. On the other hand, collective action problems do not necessarily prevent monitoring. This is consistent with the empirical observation that monitoring occurs even though not all victims sound alarms and not all NGOs attend to noncompliance of all kinds. There is always some shirking. Fortunately, however, it often does not require cooperation from all members to resolve collective action problems. Although collective action problems surely influence the effectiveness and sometimes even the very emergence of monitoring arrangements, the basic organizational forms of those monitoring arrangements that do emerge are shaped primarily by the interest alignment between victims of noncompliance and their states and by the availability of these victims as low-cost monitors.

empirical diversity of monitoring arrangements In this section I illustrate empirically how the above theory can shed light on the monitoring arrangements in treaty regimes. Two problems immediately present themselves. One problem is that monitoring arrangements are often not neatly stated in the relevant treaties. Thus more effort is required to look into how, in practice, compliance information is gathered. This difficulty is further compounded by the fact that until recently scholars have not paid much


attention to monitoring arrangements, and consequently the information on monitoring arrangements is at best scattered. These two sorts of limitations constrain the depth of my empirical cases. On the other hand, to illustrate the utility of a general theory, this empirical analysis must cover a wide range of examples. My strategy, therefore, is to pursue breadth rather than depth by discussing a series of regimes in such diverse issue areas as finance, trade, security, human rights, and the environment. To explain monitoring arrangements in each regime, I start with the basic indicators of my two independent variables. To assess the interest alignment between victims of noncompliance and their states, we need to know who is victimized by noncompliance. The level of interest alignment is high when the victims of a country’s noncompliance are other states and low when the victims are domestic citizens. When victims are nonstate actors in other countries, the level of interest alignment can be measured by the degree of political organization of these victims. To assess whether victims of noncompliance can cheaply detect noncompliance, we need to know what effect this noncompliance generates, who experiences it, and to whom the noncomplying behavior is transparent. Lowcost monitors are available when those injured by noncompliance directly experience its effect and readily observe its source. In examining the resulting monitoring arrangements in treaty regimes, I focus on who in practice detects noncompliance and who brings it to light. The empirical cases – the IMF, the NPT, the GATT/WTO, and various human rights and environmental regimes – display variations in the interest alignment between victims of noncompliance and their states and in the availability of these victims as low-cost monitors. As they vary along these dimensions, their monitoring arrangements fall into different scenarios, as displayed in table 3.4. Of course, since each of the two principal dimensions in my theory is more than dichotomous in the real world, not all monitoring arrangements fall neatly into the four corners. Furthermore, within


Table 3.4. Empirical examples of monitoring arrangements Availability of victims as low-cost monitors Yes

No

Yes Interest alignment

IMF, NPT GATT

between victims and states

Environment No Human rights

each of the aggregate categories – human rights and the environment – there are many individual treaty regimes. Each individual information system varies with its specific strategic environment and thus its location varies within its respective quadrant in table 3.4. The relative rather than absolute locations of these cases are more important. In the following four sections, I discuss cases in the four different quadrants of table 3.4.

Monitoring by treaty organizations Many treaty organizations merely “manage” information systems, which is often a nominal and elastic task. Only a few treaty organizations have the resources and authority to carry out the entire monitoring procedure, particularly detecting noncompliance and bringing it to light. Examples include the IMF and the NPT. In this section, I show that the monitoring arrangements in the IMF are centralized and I explain this by the lack of low-cost monitors, and the aligned interests between victims of noncompliance and their states. I proceed to demonstrate that the strategic environment in the NPT is similar to that in the IMF and subsequently illustrate the centralized monitoring in the NPT regime.


The IMF has a very strong treaty organization with one of the largest budgets. Its monitoring arrangements are also more centralized than in most other regimes. The IMF supervises the exchange-rate policies of member states through periodic reviews of national policies and routine consultation with each member. IMF staff study a member’s overall economic position, giving special emphasis to monetary and balance-of-payment elements. The member government cooperates by arranging staff visits to the member’s capital. IMF staff then review and revise their study before reporting at the meeting of the executive directors, where the discussion includes comments, criticism, and suggestions for policy changes. The information is usually not made public. This centralized information system is consistent with the incentive structure characterized by two facts. First, creditor governments, with their loan returns and profits on investment at stake, are themselves victims of noncompliance. They thus want to be informed about debtor governments’ compliance with negotiated agreements. One principal function of the IMF is to assist member countries that experience serious payment disequilibria. Through stand-by arrangements, the Fund can assure a member that it will be able to borrow foreign exchange during a specified period and up to a specified amount. Qualification for borrowing on favorable terms requires the fulfillment of certain performance criteria, which usually include the reduction of budget deficits, the elimination of subsidies, the freeing of prices, exchange-rate depreciation, and ceilings on total domestic credit expansion and on credit to the public sector (Nelson 1984). As such orthodox measures may intensify economic hardships and even political instability in the short term (Kahler 1990), a debtor government may not fully implement the programs as negotiated (Sachs 1989, Stone 2002). In these situations, the loan returns to creditors as well as profits from investment may be at risk and thus creditor governments have a strong incentive to be informed of debtor governments’ economic performance. Second, creditor governments, as potential victims of noncompliance, are not in a convenient position


to directly detect noncompliance. For instance, they do not experience the effect of domestic credit expansion, nor is it easy to trace the actual source of exchange-rate fluctuation. Meanwhile, although noncompliance by debtor governments may be conveniently observed by some domestic actors (e.g. banks or state-owned firms), these actors experience economic hardships from orthodox measures and thus do not have the incentives to expose noncompliance.13 Without voluntary monitors, creditor states have to rely on authoritative institutional instruments to detect noncompliance and bring it to light in the IMF regime. Centralized monitoring thus emerges as an efficient and feasible solution. The incentive structure in the NPT is similar to that of the IMF. First, like creditors and debtors, nuclear- and non-nuclear-weapon states each have something different to gain from the NPT regime. Nuclear-weapon states want to enjoy the security provided by a nuclear capability but do not want nuclear technology to fall into the wrong hands. By promising not to build nuclear arsenals, nonnuclear-weapon states are given valuable access to peaceful nuclear technology and the possibility of being active players in nuclear commerce. As potential victims of noncompliance, states have a stake in preventing other (particularly non-nuclear-weapon) countries from secretly developing nuclear arsenals. Second, as in the IMF, potential victims of noncompliance do not detect noncompliance cheaply. Unless a noncomplying country tests a nuclear weapon, the effect of noncompliance is usually not experienced. Meanwhile, although there may be domestic actors who have an interest in disclosing their governments’ nuclear activities, these activities are usually classified and kept very secret.14

13

14

Some domestic actors support compliance: for instance, the IMF tries to influence debtor governments to reduce military spending, but civilians interested in reducing military expenditure and the bureaucratic section competing for power against the military do not usually have information on military spending. Rather they need the data that the IMF gets. See Chayes and Chayes (1995). As Reiss (1995) has documented, South Africa’s nuclear activities – leading to the bomb and eventually to nuclear dismantlement – essentially stayed out of the public eye for twenty years.


Given states’ interest in compliance information and the lack of low-cost monitors, state parties delegate substantial resources and authority to the centralized monitoring managed by the IAEA. Under the safeguards system, state parties are required to establish and maintain a system of accounting for, and control of, all nuclear materials subject to safeguards. Besides collecting governmental reports, the IAEA conducts routine inspections on all safeguarded facilities every six months to ensure that they are not used for any military purposes. In addition, the NPT safeguards system also provides for special inspection in case of suspected noncompliance. Although detailed targets for inspection may vary, both types of investigation may include checking the consistency of reports with records; verifying the location, identity, quantity, and composition of all safeguarded nuclear materials; and investigating possible causes of materials unaccounted for, shipper/receiver differences, and uncertainties in records (International Atomic Energy Agency 1971). The cases of the IMF and the NPT demonstrate that, when victims of noncompliance are unavailable as low-cost monitors, the need for centralized monitoring increases. Meanwhile, states’ interest in a sound information system – the interest alignment between states and themselves as potential victims of noncompliance, in a trivial sense – determines their contribution to a costly centralized information system and thus the feasibility of such a system. In each case, the fact that a number of states form a privileged group helps resolve the collective action problem in establishing the centralized monitoring arrangements. However, it is primarily the combination of states’ interest in compliance information and the lack of low-cost monitors that accounts for the particular organizational form – monitoring by treaty organizations – which states collectively aim to achieve in the IMF and the NPT.

Monitoring by victims and states Few monitoring arrangements are as centralized as those in the IMF and the NPT. The GATT/WTO is one of the strongest treaty regimes, but its monitoring arrangements are comparatively decentralized.


Monitoring in the GATT/WTO is largely performed jointly by victims of noncompliance and their states, rather than by the treaty organization. In this section, I first demonstrate why the centralized arrangements – the Trade Policy Review Mechanism (TPRM) – are generally not used in practice to reveal noncompliance. I then show how the often-used dispute settlement procedure encourages the monitoring of noncompliance by states and private producers. I argue that this comparatively decentralized monitoring arrangement is consistent with a strategic environment that is characterized by the ability of private producers to detect noncompliance and the incentives of states to protect domestic producers from foreign trade violations.15 The TPRM is generally viewed as a mechanism to monitor the trade policies of participating countries (Mavroidis 1992). It is based on two reports: the Country Report is the primary source of information, on which the Secretariat relies in preparing the GATT/WTO Report. In practice, however, the TPRM has been used only a very limited number of times and has not produced accurate and complete information on compliance (Qureshi 1992). In fact, according to some practitioners, the TPRM was not meant to discover noncompliance in the first place, as “[t]he reviews do not attempt to evaluate specific measures of aspects of policy for their conformity with GATT rules” (Abbott 1993). Whether it was meant to or not, the TPRM does not effectively reveal noncompliance. Instead, detecting and reporting noncompliance is much more decentralized: the GATT/WTO system essentially leaves state parties to monitor each other. The dispute settlement

15

The level of interest alignment between victims of noncompliance and their states is naturally not as high in cases where victims are subnational actors as where victims are states themselves. Indeed, interests between a specific group of producers and those of their government are not always aligned. This, as I mentioned in the theory section, has to do with whether the government’s protection of such a group conflicts with other more important subnational interests, either other business sectors or more generally the consumers’. In practice, however, states often represent producers’ interests more than consumers. I will discuss the complications with interest alignment in more detail later in this section.


procedure established under the GATT has served for decades and remains an important instrument in the WTO. In this framework, only states can bring about complaints against other states and GATT/WTO rules are only enforced as a result of formal complaints from state parties. This relatively decentralized monitoring arrangement in the GATT/WTO is consistent with the strategic environment of international trade. When a country violates GATT/WTO rules, it is usually the private producers in trading-partner countries which are the direct victims. The private producers including export-oriented and importcompeting firms in trading-partner countries can typically detect both the effect and source of noncompliance when, for instance, they experience import restrictions by foreign governments or dumping by foreign firms. Potential victims of noncompliance, therefore, are in a convenient position to detect trade violations. Meanwhile, tradingpartner countries often have incentives to protect their industries from foreign trade violations, and thus tend to bring forward complaints by domestic industries against foreign trade practices to the GATT/WTO forum. Naturally, the incentives of governments to protect domestic industries sometimes depend on the extent to which such protection conflicts with other subnational interests. So the degree to which governments pursue the complaints and indeed bring them forward may vary. Overall, however, domestic industries are often able to get governments to push their interests, especially when they are effectively portrayed as the victims of foreign trade violations. Indeed, despite the imperfect alignment of interests, states tend to represent the interests of producers much more than consumers. As a result, private producers usually feed noncompliance information to their governments who then bring it to the GATT/WTO forum. In the GATT/WTO information system, therefore, the detection costs are largely borne by domestic business interests which are vulnerable to the trade practices of trading-partner countries. To the extent that domestic producers bring noncompliance to the attention of their governments, and these governments then file formal complaints to


the trade regime, the communication costs are largely borne by both the domestic business groups and their governments. Such a decentralized information system is necessarily a multistage process, where initial potential complaints greatly outnumber eventual formal complaints.16 When a firm experiences a loss in profit directly due to the practice of trading-partner countries, it may or may not report this to its government. That decision depends on how seriously the firm is hurt by trade violations and how costly it is to collect preliminary evidence of them, as well as how much its actions could influence the government and eventually the trade dispute settlement. Furthermore, when a government receives a complaint from domestic producers against trading-partner countries, it may or may not carry out investigations into the matter and bring it to the trade regime. That decision depends on the firm’s resources and access to the government, as well as the perceived benefits in addressing these complaints to the GATT/WTO forum. Through this multistage process, however, politically important cases of noncompliance are brought to light. Although many factors may influence how many and which instances of noncompliance are brought to light, the monitoring arrangement in the GATT/WTO is primarily shaped by two factors. First, states have incentives to protect domestic producers from trade violations by trading-partner countries. Second, export-oriented and import-competing firms are often in a convenient position to detect both the effect and source of noncompliance by trading-partner countries. The fact that victims of noncompliance can serve as low-cost monitors, along with a fairly high level of interest alignment between these victims and their states, leads to a particular form of decentralized monitoring: private producers detect noncompliance and their governments bring it to the GATT/WTO forum.

16

Sevilla (1996). For a sophisticated analysis of this process, see Allee (2003).


Monitoring by victims and NGOs In both types of regime discussed above, states participate in monitoring due to their incentives to protect victims of noncompliance, even though their specific role varies according to whether victims can cheaply detect noncompliance. In many other treaty regimes, however, states are much less involved in either detecting noncompliance or bringing it to light. In this section, I discuss one such type of regime. Applying the theory of monitoring arrangements to human rights regimes, I argue that the availability of human rights victims as low-cost monitors, and the nonalignment of interests between these victims and their states, give rise to monitoring by victims and NGOs. I then demonstrate empirically that monitoring by victims and NGOs is the most important component of monitoring arrangements in human rights regimes. To examine the basic incentive structure, we need to start with the nature of the problem that human rights regimes aim to resolve. States are the targets of human rights regulations, while it is citizens who are usually victims of noncompliance. Thus the interests of noncompliance victims and those of their states are often diametrically opposed. Meanwhile, the regulated behavior in human rights regimes is usually the treatment of persons, and thus the effect and source of noncompliance are experienced directly by the victims. Therefore, victims of human rights abuse are in a convenient position to detect noncompliance, even though it may often be costly for them to bring noncompliance to light. Accordingly, the biggest challenge to human rights monitoring lies not in the detection of noncompliance, but rather in the collection and communication of this information. Given the nonalignment of interests between victims of human rights abuses and their states, the task of collecting and communicating noncompliance information is primarily carried out by nonstate actors, generally human rights NGOs. Therefore, the two principal dimensions in my theory determine the basic form of monitoring arrangements in human rights regimes: the victims detect noncompliance and human


rights NGOs help collect noncompliance information and bring it to light.17 Empirically, states delegate little authority to human rights treaty organizations: self-reporting is the primary mode agreed upon by states in collecting compliance information. However, all the problems associated with self-reporting are intensified by noncomplying governments’ incentives to cover up their wrongdoings. Thus, selfreporting in human rights regimes is, in general, the least satisfactory among international treaty regimes. According to a survey by the UN Secretary-General in 1992, of the 164 parties to one or more of the major human rights conventions, nearly all were behind on at least one report and most on several.18 Besides the low responsiveness, states’ reports often do not by themselves truthfully or comprehensively reveal governments’ human rights policies and practices. The reliability of states’ reports depends partially on whether there are external checks by nonstate actors. Compared to other regimes, for instance, the record of reporting by countries participating in the International Labor Organization (ILO) is among the best.19 This reflects 17

18

19

It is possible that some states may have incentives to protect victims of human rights abuses in another country. Thus, two kinds of monitoring arrangements involving states may be possible. One possibility is monitoring by treaty organizations. A major hurdle here is that, for each state, voting for a treaty organization to monitor human rights policies in other countries is also voting for the same treaty organization to check on one’s own human rights practice. To the extent that states may care about the former less than they want to avoid the latter, the amount of authority and resources that states are willing to delegate to such treaty organizations may be limited. The other possibility is monitoring by some states of human rights practices in other states. The US, for instance, unilaterally does annual human rights reports on other nations. This, however, does not seem representative among countries. It is also interesting to note that, even in the case where the US monitors the human rights policies of other states, it is usually the potential victims in those countries and NGOs who represent their interests – inside those countries or outside – who first detect noncompliance and bring it to light. Even for the two principal treaties, the reporting record is not fully satisfactory. While 59 out of 113 parties were up to date with reporting obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 46 out of 116 parties were up to date under the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. See UN Secretary-General (1992) and Chayes and Chayes (1995). Over 80 percent of due reports have been turned in every year of the ILO’s existence, except during World War Two (Chayes and Chayes 1995, 157).


a significant feature of the ILO, in that its Conference Committee consists of government, worker, and employer representatives. Essentially, nonstate actors not only provide independent information to check states’ reports ex post, but the fact that the external check by nonstate actors is formally institutionalized serves to deter misrepresentation in states’ reports ex ante. Most human rights regimes rely much more on independent data generation by nonstate actors and much less on states’ reports. The UN human rights regime, for instance, is “virtually completely dependent on human rights data collected and presented by NGOs” (Kooijmans 1990, 16–17). Much of the data generation effort by NGOs is geared toward implementation reviews in human rights regimes. For instance, Japan’s first report to the UN Human Rights Committee in 1980 was found to be overly vague and general by the committee. Forty days before Japan turned in its second report in 1987, twelve Japanese NGOs obtained copies of the report and published counterreports (Gurowitz 1997). Most data generation by NGOs, however, is conducted independently outside the framework of implementation reviews, and is often not included in formal review meetings. For example, the scrutiny of human rights abuses in Nigeria was initiated by two Nigerian lawyers. In 1987 they founded the Civil Liberties Organization to represent common prisoners held without charge or trial for extended periods. This organization carried out basic fact-finding tasks. Its staff and volunteers visited sixty-five Nigerian prisons and the two lawyers published their comprehensive report (Chayes and Chayes 1995, 254). This report attracted a large amount of press attention and some international human rights groups were subsequently drawn to the Nigerian case and served as an effective link to the international human rights regime. For monitoring arrangements that depend on victims and NGOs, an effective channel of information from the country in question to human rights regimes is critical. A fluid information flow requires that domestic victims of human rights abuses and NGOs


collect and document human rights violations and then pass that information on to large international NGOs.20 However, victims of human rights abuses and some domestic NGOs may face a collective action problem. An individual decision by a potential monitor depends on the cost of reporting noncompliance weighed against the protection doing so could induce. Among many factors, this calculation depends on domestic political institutions and human rights practices. For countries with the most questionable human rights practices, networks among NGOs are critical, where domestic victims and NGOs may passively document human rights violations but count on international NGOs to actively bring this information to light. For countries where human rights are better respected, institutional instruments can prove useful. For instance, in the European human rights regime – which in many ways is a strong regime21 – its mechanism of individual petition stands out in utilizing and facilitating the information flow from victims of noncompliance to the regime (Heffernan 1997, 87–8).22 In sum, regardless of which cases of noncompliance are brought to light and which decentralized monitors face less of a collective action problem, human rights regimes rely most critically on the detection of noncompliance by victims and the communication of

20

21

22

Kathryn Sikkink (1993, 1996) has demonstrated the importance of information networks among human rights NGOs. For instance, human rights violations in Mexico were hidden from international scrutiny for a long time, until NGOs both inside and outside the country began to document abuses and together brought them to international attention. See also Dresser (1996). Downs, Rocke, and Barsoom (1996), for instance, make the point that the European regime is among those institutions that demand from states a deep level of cooperation. Arguably, one way that the strength of the European regime is translated into the effectiveness of the monitoring arrangements is via the institutionalized procedure of individual petition, which systematically utilizes and facilitates the information flow from low-cost monitors to treaty regimes. The European regime lends substantial support to the prediction of my theory: even in a resourceful regime such as the European human rights regime, it is the victims of human rights abuses who detect noncompliance and, with the enabling assistance of the treaty organization, bring that information to light. This point benefited from the comments of an anonymous reviewer.


noncompliance by NGOs. This is determined by the availability of noncompliance victims as low-cost monitors and the nonalignment of interests between these victims and their states.

Monitoring by NGOs As shown in table 3.1, when states are not interested in information systems and the victims of noncompliance are unable to conveniently detect noncompliance, interested and well-organized NGOs often fill the gap by undertaking the primary monitoring tasks. Empirically, environmental regimes have similar characteristics, although NGOs are often not the sole monitors. In this section, I argue that the lack of noncompliance victims as low-cost monitors and the partial interest alignment between these victims and their states give rise to monitoring by NGOs in environmental regimes. I then illustrate empirically that, even though treaty organizations perform some centralized monitoring functions in many environmental regimes, the detection and communication of noncompliance is primarily carried out by environmental NGOs. The basic incentive structure underlying most environmental regimes has two critical features. First, states have mixed interests in monitoring compliance, because many environmental problems are transboundary. That is, citizens in one country may suffer from environmental degradation caused by their own domestic industries as well as by industries in neighboring countries. Although a state has incentives to protect its own citizens from other countries’ pollution, it may be reluctant to commit to pollution reduction that might hurt its own business interests. Therefore, states’ interests and victims’ interests are only partially aligned. The extent to which a state is a good agent for victims of noncompliance within its own country varies according to the damage from others’ noncompliance and the cost of one’s own compliance. Second, victims of noncompliance are often unable to cheaply detect noncompliance, for two reasons. One is that the effect of noncompliance in many environmental regimes is latent: for instance, in the ozone case. Because the effect is not seen


or felt directly, ordinary victims are not alerted. The other reason is that, even when the effect of noncompliance is transparent, the source of noncompliance may be difficult to discern, as in the cases of over-fishing and transboundary pollution. In these cases, victims can only express concern, but it may be costly for them to pinpoint who is responsible. Although the lack of low-cost monitors points toward the need for centralized monitoring, treaty organizations rarely receive sufficient resources and authority to do this, for states often have limited interest in monitoring. Without the provision of centralized monitoring, well-organized and resourceful NGOs may seek to fill the vacuum, which in turn reinforces the underinvestment by states in any centralized monitoring. In such strategic contexts, therefore, we tend to see monitoring by NGOs, sometimes facilitated to a limited extent by treaty organizations. Not all environmental treaty organizations collect states’ reports on national policies.23 Among those who do, problems with non-reporting and incomplete reporting as well as mis-reporting are pervasive. This is illustrated by a survey by the US General Accounting Office: under seven environmental treaties, only thirteen out of fifty-seven parties (23 percent) filed any report in 1990. While some treaty organizations review compliance performance, these reviews are usually nothing more than collating and assembling national reports (Ausubel and Victor 1992, 20). For instance, under the Ozone Accords, the implementation committee’s authority and activities are limited to receiving, considering, and reporting on submissions made by participating countries to the Secretariat on noncompliance (Greene 1992). Except twice in its history, the Secretariat of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) has simply duplicated the national reports as submitted and circulated them at annual meetings without comment or analysis (Mitchell 1994a, 134). Even in the Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP)

23

Only three out of nine environmental regimes surveyed by Ausubel and Victor (1992) require formal reporting.


Convention, whose monitoring system stands out among environmental regimes (Sand 1990, 259), the compliance information reviewed by the treaty organization usually comes directly from governmental reports.24 Confronted with these difficulties in monitoring compliance in environmental regimes, some may suggest that environmental regimes copy the centralized inspection procedures of some arms control regimes. What is often neglected in this line of argument is the limited level of interest alignment between states and those injured by environmental noncompliance, along with the willingness and ability of NGOs to fill the vacuum of centralized monitoring. Indeed, while most environmental treaty organizations are understaffed and receive insufficient resources from states, some international NGOs have budgets larger than those of the secretariats in many environmental regimes.25 Although they are often unsystematic, these NGOs report suspected or alleged noncompliance directly to treaty organizations. Environmental NGOs monitor compliance in several different ways. Sometimes they help check reporting and assess performance. Under the LRTAP, for instance, NGOs checked for inconsistencies in governmental reports from Greece and the Soviet Union. In the Baltic Sea regime, NGOs such as the WWF have been nominated as lead parties to review existing national practices by compiling national reports and producing reports on implementation (Greene 1998, 183–4). At other times, NGOs generate compliance information independent of states’ reports. Under the Basel Convention, 24

25

These reports are usually not interpreted in any way and neither is there much effort to fill in missing information or to correct misleading information (Levy 1993). In recent years, however, the Cooperative Program for the Monitoring and Evaluation of the Long-Range Transmission of Air Pollutants in Europe (EMEP) has engaged in some expert estimates of emissions. See http://webdab.emep.int/. For example, in 1994, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) had an annual budget of nearly 57 million Swiss francs and a staff of more than 500. As another example, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is financially supported by over five million contributors (Lanchbery 1998, 65–6).


environmental NGOs provide reports on illegal hazardous waste traffic to the Secretariat (Chayes and Chayes 1995, 164–5). In the climate change regime, NGOs have drafted and circulated country-bycountry evaluations of policy implementation (Raustiala 1997b, 561). In the whaling regime, wildlife groups regularly check and report the comings and goings of whaling vessels to the International Whaling Commission (Mitchell 1998). Big international NGOs such as Greenpeace, the WWF, and Friends of the Earth (FOE) have collected and provided the secretariats of environmental regimes with “external and independent information regarding compliance and implementation problems” (Sachariew 1991, 34). Most often NGOs spot particular noncompliance incidences. For example, Greenpeace spotted Russia dumping hundreds of tons of low-level nuclear waste into the Sea of Japan, which violated a moratorium administered by the IMO (Sanger 1993). Similarly, Greenpeace provided the International Whaling Commission with detailed evidence against Chile of an illegal factory ship and against Spain for quota violations (Greenpeace Examiner 1981, 8). Greenpeace also exposed Japanese private whaling trade with Taiwan, which led to the shutdown of the Taiwanese industry (Greenpeace Examiner 1980, 4). Occasionally, NGOs serve as informal managers of monitoring arrangements. For example, under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) has been so involved that, for a considerable period, it performed secretariat services for the CITES (Chayes and Chayes 1995, 267). The Trade Records Analysis of Flora and Fauna in Commerce (TRAFFIC) has an extensive network of NGOs working at the domestic level and has been particularly instrumental in tracking wildlife trade. Compared to treaty organizations, which need to be comprehensive to avoid impartiality, NGOs are not restrained from singling out suspected noncomplying parties. In this sense, treaty organizations


and NGOs can be complementary in monitoring environmental compliance. The degree to which they are complementary, however, varies among environmental regimes. It depends on how much treaty organizations encourage and facilitate the monitoring by NGOs. It further depends on how skillfully NGOs utilize the instruments offered by treaty organizations. However active and capable, NGOs remain imperfect monitors. First of all, monitoring is intrinsically costly when the effect or source of noncompliance is not transparent. Second, NGOs usually do not check the compliance performance of all relevant parties in all cases. Instead of being comprehensive, noncompliance detection by NGOs is rather particularistic. Third, rather than providing exact accounts of compliance to treaty organizations, monitoring by NGOs often seems to be aimed directly at influencing relevant actors. For example, when Greenpeace spotted a Soviet whaling fleet and confronted it, the image of a Soviet whaler firing a harpoon into a sperm whale over the top of a Greenpeace inflatable boat was very successful in raising public consciousness. In these contexts, what matters is not so much how accurate and comprehensive the compliance information is, but rather how much political influence such information generates. Overall, compared to other monitoring arrangements, monitoring by NGOs is perhaps the least systematic. Although its effectiveness varies and is often limited, monitoring by NGOs is a common feature shared by many environmental regimes. This phenomenon is consistent with the basic incentive structure characterized by two facts. First, the interests of noncompliance victims and those of their states are often only partially aligned and thus states have only limited interest in monitoring compliance. Second, victims of noncompliance are often not in a convenient position to detect noncompliance, either because the effect of noncompliance is not experienced directly or because the source of noncompliance is difficult to pinpoint. As states delegate limited resources and authority to centralized monitoring, environmental NGOs take


up the slack to some extent by detecting noncompliance and bringing it to light at their own cost.

conclusion Do international institutions monitor states’ compliance with international agreements? If so, how? Furthermore, how do we explain the empirical diversity in monitoring arrangements across a wide range of treaty regimes? By conceptualizing the underlying incentive structures in treaty regimes, the theory presented in this chapter accounts for who detects noncompliance and who brings it to light. In particular, two principal factors – (1) the interest alignment between victims of noncompliance and their states and (2) the availability of these victims as low-cost monitors – interact to determine the monitoring tasks of treaty organizations, states, and nonstate actors. Consequently, monitoring arrangements vary across regimes. As the empirical analysis has shown, this simple theory sheds considerable light on monitoring arrangements in a wide range of substantively important treaty regimes concerning finance, trade, security, human rights, and the environment. Because this theory aims to provide a general framework to account for diverse monitoring arrangements across a wide range of issue areas, it does not attempt to include all possible relevant factors. However, some additional factors may merit further consideration. I conclude with a brief discussion of power, salience, and neutrality. First of all, power is rarely irrelevant for international outcomes. In the context of monitoring arrangements, power matters particularly when there is a need for centralized monitoring: resources and capabilities influence the extent to which states can overcome collective action problems in devising potentially costly centralized monitoring arrangements. One potential alternative hypothesis based on power, for instance, would argue that powerful states design strong institutions when they have a vested interest in upholding them. The underlying assumption is that power allows states to spend resources


on monitoring if they see it in their interests to do so. However, this requires an explanation that goes beyond the confines of power: how do states identify their interests in monitoring? One determinant in my theory addresses this important question: interest alignment between victims of noncompliance and their states helps explain, for instance, why countries may have an interest in monitoring the NPT and why they may not have as much interest in monitoring a fishing regime. Furthermore, my theory also explains additional dimensions in the variations of monitoring arrangements: when powerful states have interests in the regimes, why do nonstate actors perform much of the decentralized monitoring in the GATT/WTO and why does the treaty organization carry out centralized monitoring in the IMF? Likewise, when states have little interest in a regime, what determines whether individual victims or NGOs are the primary monitors? The other determinant in my theory, the availability of noncompliance victims as low-cost monitors, helps account for these kinds of variations. Overall, therefore, power leaves unanswered some of the key questions regarding monitoring variations that this study aims to address. Second, the salience of the issue and the perceived costliness of noncompliance are also important. Yet, rather than taking salience as a given, this study provides a way to assess the stakes that states hold in a particular issue by evaluating the interest alignment between victims of noncompliance and their states. Third, considerations of neutrality are relevant in centralized monitoring arrangements: centralized arrangements may seem more independent of the influence of some powerful states. It is, however, less clear how neutrality concerns influence decentralized monitoring arrangements where states or nonstate actors act as the primary monitors. Neutrality concerns may call for treaty organizations to verify information furnished by states and nonstate actors, yet neutrality by itself does not explain the source of compliance information. That, however, is the focus of this study.


Addressing the puzzle of whether and how international institutions monitor states’ compliance, this chapter has provided a theoretical account of diverse monitoring arrangements in a broad range of treaty regimes. In so doing, it has developed a framework to incorporate nonstate actors into the analysis of international institutions.

4

Compliance mechanisms

As chapter 3 has shown, the ability of international institutions to monitor states’ compliance varies. Perhaps more interesting is the fact that, even when international institutions provide compliance information, it is often not states that use the information to either reward or sanction other states. We are thus confronted with another puzzle: when international institutions do not seem to be enabling states to use carrots and sticks on each other at the international level, what drives states to comply with international commitments? This chapter investigates domestic sources of compliance. As reviewed in chapter 2, the analytical foundation of cooperation theory and regime theory has an enduring impact on the contemporary study of compliance. To answer the realist challenge, scholars of international institutions have sought to demonstrate the direct effect of international institutions on states’ behavior. As a result, these studies have not paid systematic attention to a critical piece of the compliance puzzle. That is, why do different countries participating in the same agreement achieve different levels of compliance? To answer such questions, we must bring domestic politics into the study of compliance and international institutions. I argue that problems that resemble a PD at the international level may present governments with an entirely different strategic environment domestically. Within a country, some actors gain while others may lose if the government does not comply with an international agreement. When those who are victimized by noncompliance have a crucial leverage over the government, compliance can be rational even if the country as a whole pays for it more than benefits from it.


I thus model a government’s compliance decision in the shadow of competing domestic constituencies. Two key observations inspire this conception. First of all, governments are to varying extents in agency relationships with their domestic constituents. That is, a government (as an agent) makes policy decisions on behalf of various domestic constituents (as principals). While the agent’s decision affects the welfare of the principals, the principals have the power to sanction the agent through various mechanisms. While a government makes compliance decisions that affect the welfare of domestic constituents, the latter can exercise a certain leverage to influence the government’s compliance decisions. They possess political leverage over governments because national leaders want to stay in office by making and implementing policies that have the support of their constituents. Secondly, a government is usually accountable to a variety of constituencies with competing claims. International financial agreements, for instance, affect capital and labor differently within a single country. Similarly, industries and environmental groups often take opposing stands on international environmental agreements. In such cases, interest groups which care about compliance decisions compete to get the government to devote relatively more time and effort to their interests at the expense of the interests of other groups. In order to maximize political support, the government must respond to different claims from competing constituents. The central task in this analysis is therefore to specify how competing constituencies influence a government’s compliance decisions. In agency relationships, the problem of moral hazard often presents itself: while the agent takes an action that affects the principals’ welfare, the principals may not observe the action directly (Holmstrom 1979, Grossman and Hart 1983). Rather than directly ¨ observing a government’s compliance efforts, constituents experience only their own well-being, which depends jointly on governmental action and a variety of exogenous probabilistic factors. Constituencies have varying abilities to infer the governmental action from the welfare they experience. The accuracy of their inference depends on

c o m p l i a n c e m e c h a n i s m s 71

how much information they have about the policy process and how many resources they invest in monitoring the government’s action. The informational status or the monitoring ability of constituents should thus affect their ability to shape the policymaker’s incentives, in a way quite distinct from the political clout originating from the size of constituencies. As this model shows, a government’s compliance is determined not only by the electoral leverage of domestic constituencies but also by how much information they have – their informational endowment. On the one hand, compliance decisions tend to be biased toward large interest groups which have a significant electoral influence. On the other hand, interestingly, compliance decisions can also be biased toward special interests, if these groups are much better informed about the policy process. This is because, facing an inference problem, the relatively better-informed group is more likely to base its approval of the government on the actual policy rather than exogenous disturbances in the policy process. Accordingly, the policymaker would lose more support by fooling the well-informed than by fooling the ill-informed. The European Acid Rain regime provides an important empirical illustration of the domestic constituency mechanism. Clearly, the regime addresses an international collective action problem. Accordingly, scholars have focused on the interactions between states and the regime’s effects in shaping those interactions. Such exclusive focus may, however, have concealed some alternative sources of compliance. In contrast, I investigate a domestic story. I demonstrate how the domestic constituency mechanism works in this case. Categorical data analysis and detailed case studies show that European countries’ compliance with the 1985 Sulfur Protocol reflects the electoral leverage and informational status of domestic constituencies. The chapter proceeds as follows. The next section develops a model of domestic compliance mechanisms and, in that framework, delineates specific channels of influence over national compliance. The second section investigates empirically how the domestic


constituency mechanism worked in the case of the LRTAP Convention. The third section concludes the chapter.

domestic constituency mechanism In this section, I develop a model in which a government makes a compliance decision in the shadow of competing domestic constituencies. I build on moral hazard models in political science, where voters’ retrospective voting gives the policymaker incentives to attend to voters’ interests (e.g. Ferejohn 1986, Lohmann 1998, Fearon 1999). Specifically, a chief policymaker decides how much to comply with an international agreement on behalf of two competing interest groups. While the policymaker’s decision affects the welfare of interest groups, it is up to the interest groups themselves to decide whether to keep the incumbent policymaker in power. In making the compliance decision, therefore, the policymaker must consider how it might affect each interest group’s voting decision. At the heart of this analysis is the question of how a government’s accountability to divergent domestic interests influences its compliance decision. Such accountability, however, is not limited to electoral accountability. Elections are not regularly held in all countries. Even when they are, elections may not be the crucial determinant of policymaking. Bureaucratic politics or legislative politics may matter more under certain circumstances. Even when elections are a crucial determinant, not all voters would care about the issue of interest to cast their votes. Although I develop and interpret the model in terms of electoral mechanisms for ease of exposition, the logic goes well beyond electoral accountability. The use of elections serves as a convenient switch; it turns on a government’s desire to generate public support in order to do well in elections or through other mechanisms of accountability. The use of votes is a shorthand for public support. For instance, votes in the model can be replaced by dollars, acquiescence, and so on, as a form of political support. In fact, so long as a government’s survival


or more generally its welfare is influenced by domestic groups, the latter may hold the former accountable to a varying extent. Domestic groups can induce a government’s accountability with financial contributions. They can do so with loyalty or moral support. They can do so by simply promising and delivering acquiescence. In democratic institutions, domestic groups can induce accountability through electoral support. However, domestic support is not limited to votes and domestic accountability is not limited to democratic institutions. In general, a government needs the support of domestic groups in various forms and thus attends to their interests in return. The model seeks to capture this broader concept of accountability, along with its influence over policymaking. I begin with the basic setup of the model, where I discuss the environment in which players interact and derive their preferences accordingly. I then analyze equilibrium decisions in two scenarios: one where the chief policymaker faces electoral pressure and the other where the chief policymaker does not face any pressure. Finally, I compare the two equilibrium decisions of compliance. With the compliance decision under no electoral pressure as a benchmark, I derive the central result about the effects of domestic constituencies on compliance through the electoral process. Appendix A contains the derivations of the formal results.

The setup of the model There are three players in this model: besides the national government or the chief policymaker, there are two distinctive groups of voters or interest groups. This of course does not mean that all voters can be categorized into two competing interest groups. Some voters may not care much about a particular issue to have any identifiable preference. What matters in this model, and what is relevant to a policymaker, are those constituents who have preferences on the given issue rather than those who are indifferent. One can reasonably


categorize those who care about the issue roughly into two competing groups.1 There are two periods in the model. I use subscript t ∈ {1, 2} to denote each of the two periods of the game. In the first period, the policymaker chooses a compliance policy, x ∈ X, in a unidimensional policy space X = R1 . Observing the policy outcome, each group i subsequently votes the incumbent policymaker either in or out. In the second period, the incumbent policymaker remains in power if he receives the majority of votes.2 In that case, to simplify the analysis, the policymaker can stay in office at most one more term and thus chooses a compliance level without the pressure of reelection. Then the game ends. If the incumbent policymaker loses the election, however, a new game with a new policymaker starts.3 The assumption that no policymaker can stay in office for more than two terms is not necessary for the central results in this model. The purpose of this simplifying assumption is to allow governmental action without electoral pressure to serve as a benchmark for governmental action with electoral pressure. Because I assume that most governments do care about staying in office, the central question that this model addresses is: when a government is motivated by reelection, and thus constituencies have leverage over whether the government stays in power, what influences the government’s choice of compliance policy? The decision of interest is the government’s compliance policy. Compliance is defined as the degree to which the explicit treaty provision is achieved by a participating country. Oftentimes, the question 1

2

3

Naturally, those who do not care about an issue can be subsequently persuaded by those who do. That possibility is captured by the changing size of the two interest groups. To capture the idea that voters in each group may possibly vote differently, one can interpret the probability that group i votes for the incumbent policymaker as the percentage of voters within that group that do so. As a common assumption in this sort of formal model, the competing candidate does not play any active role. The importance of the competing candidate lies in his/her availability, without which the voters’ leverage over the incumbent would be diminished.


about compliance is not whether to comply, but rather how much to comply. The target compliance level as a policy decision can thus range from no action at all to exceeding the requirement set in the treaty. To capture the empirical variation of compliance decisions, therefore, the compliance policy x in the model takes the form of a continuous variable ranging from noncompliance to overcompliance. A thoughtful reader would question treating the compliance stage independently of the negotiation stage and thus treating the content of the agreement exogenously, because it does not confront an important alternative hypothesis that compliance is due to shallow agreements which do not require states to do what they otherwise would not have done (Downs, Rocke, and Barsoom 1996).4 It is, of course, a simplification to treat the compliance stage as if it is independent of the negotiation stage. One fascinating line of work is to see precisely how the two stages interact. Nevertheless, it may be reasonable to treat the compliance stage as distinct and fairly self-contained under some circumstances. First, governments often conduct different strategic calculations when they comply with an international agreement than when they negotiate it. Frequently, a government only decides how many resources to allocate to the implementation of an agreement after it has already been signed by the current government or by its predecessor, sometimes years afterwards. Second, the cost that domestic groups must incur in complying with international agreements tends to become concrete at the compliance stage. This may initiate actions – and reactions, depending on the changing political salience of the issue – from previously involved and/or newly mobilized actors. Indeed, studies have found that participation by interest groups often rises when policymakers shift from negotiating commitments to complying with them (Victor, Raustiala, and Skolnikoff 1998). Third, the perceived shallowness of an agreement does not always predict a country’s compliance behavior. Why do

4

However, Gilligan (2004) argues that broad multilateral agreements are not necessarily shallow.


some countries fail to comply with an agreement they perceived shallow enough to sign? Why do others overcomply with an agreement that they claimed almost too deep to commit to? The domestic constituency mechanism I specify here helps shed light on these issues. Now that we have introduced key players and the sequence of events, it is time to have a closer look at the preferences and attributes of these players. Let us focus first on the two interest groups and then on the policymaker. The interest groups differ in their preferences regarding compliance. Each group i has an ideal point xi , for i ∈ {1, 2}. Each group i desires the policymaker to take a compliance policy x as close to its ideal point xi as possible. A simple function representing these preferences is the negative quadratic, −α i (x − xi )2 , where α i ∈ (0, 1) reflects the intensity of preferences. To mark the difference between the two groups, let group 1 prefer a low compliance level and group 2 a high compliance level. That is, x1 < x2 . The interest groups also differ in another aspect: their informational endowment. Domestic constituents do not perfectly observe a government’s compliance efforts. They do, however, experience their welfare, which depends partly on the government’s compliance efforts and partly on exogenous and probabilistic factors. In deciding whether to vote for the incumbent policymaker, both groups need to infer how much the welfare they experience is attributable to the government’s compliance policy versus some exogenous factors. For instance, voters usually do not observe the economic policy taken by the government, but they do subsequently experience how much money they have in their pockets. Similarly, domestic groups do not necessarily observe the environmental policy pursued by the government, but they do have a sense of how polluted the surrounding air is. However, assuming that voters and groups experience their own welfare does not mean that they know the precise effect of the policy in question, because their welfare is a function of more than the policy. Just as voters do not know precisely how and how much an economic policy contributes to their pocket book, whether domestic groups can infer


how and how much an environmental policy contributes to the air quality depends on how much they invest in monitoring the governmental policy. That is, the relative accuracy of their inference depends on how well each group understands the policy process. A natural way to capture the effect of their information endowment is to incorporate a group-specific exogenous shock in each group’s utility function. This group-specific exogenous shock, θ i , is a random variable drawn from a strictly unimodal and symmetric probability density function fi with mean zero. Thus, the closer θ i is to zero or the lower the variance of θ i , the better informed the interest group i, and thus the better able it is to infer the compliance decision made by the government. Accordingly, each interest group experiences a group-specific outcome of the government’s compliance policy. Formally, each group’s single-period utility function is Ui (x, θ i ) = −α i (x − xi )2 + θ i ,

i ∈ {1, 2}.

It is a function of the group’s preference as well as its informational endowment, in addition to the compliance policy chosen by the policymaker. The policymaker’s preference over the compliance decision is shaped by both his public spirit and his private interest. While the policymaker aims to increase aggregate welfare, he also desires to increase his chance of getting reelected. Thus, the policymaker’s utility function consists of two main components: Ugovt (x) =

2

Ui (x) + Pr(ω)δV,

∀i ∈ {1, 2}.

i=1

The first part,

2

i=1 Ui (x),

represents aggregate social welfare, where

Ui is the utility function of interest group i. The second part, Pr(ω)δV, represents the expected value of getting reelected, where Pr(ω) is the probability that the policymaker wins reelection, δ ∈ (0, 1) is the discount factor, and V > 0 is the benefit of being reelected. The assumption that the policymaker cares about aggregate social welfare ensures that any predictions that I make about the


policymaker’s shifting attention to those with more electoral leverage and better information stem from the electoral process rather than the policymaker’s preferences. However, this assumption is not necessary for the central result in this model. One can assume, alternatively, that the policymaker is either a partial rent-seeker or a pure rent-seeker.5 Because this modification affects the compliance decision with electoral pressure and without electoral pressure in identical ways, it does not alter the difference between the two compliance decisions. Accordingly, this modification does not affect the central result in this model about the effects of domestic constituencies through electoral accountability. The other assumption about the policymaker’s preference is that the policymaker values holding office and thus chooses policies to maximize his chance of staying in office. It implies that the policymaker is concerned with how voters evaluate his performance on a given policy. This assumption is crucial: if the policymaker does not value holding office and thus is indifferent to his chance of retaining it, he does not need to pay any attention to what voters want. Then the source of electoral accountability is eliminated. It is of course possible that a policymaker may maximize his chance of retaining office until he is reasonably sure that he has enough votes to win. In that case, electoral accountability reaches its height at the point when the policymaker feels secure. That point, however, is arguably difficult to reach in a competitive election and particularly with a risk-averse policymaker. The qualitative results in this model hold so long as the policymaker cares about gathering public support to some extent. Now that I have presented the model in detail, I shall move on to answer the central question in this model: how does a policymaker choose a compliance level and what influences this choice?

5

Important recent studies have explored rent-seeking behavior as a function of regime types. See, for instance, Persson, Tabellini, and Trebbi (2001) and Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003). In the current model, I do not assume different preferences for political leaders in different regimes. My purpose is to isolate the effect of electoral accountability from that of preferences.


Equilibrium analysis To trace how domestic constituencies influence the government’s compliance policy through the electoral process, I compare the government’s compliance decision in the first period under electoral pressure with that in the second period, when there is no longer any electoral pressure. To do so, I first derive the equilibrium decisions in the two scenarios respectively. Proposition 1 The following strategies constitute a Subgame Perfect Equilibrium: In the first period, the incumbent chooses a compliance level 2 α i (1 + λi φ i δV)xi ∗ xt=1 , (4.1) (ki∗ ) = i=1 2 i=1 α i (1 + λi φ i δV) and interest group i chooses the retrospective voting rule 1 if Ui ≥ ki∗ , where ki∗ + α i (x(ki∗ ) − xi )2 = 0 vi = 0 otherwise.

(4.2)

In the second period, the incumbent chooses a compliance level 2 α i xi ∗ xt=2 = i=1 . (4.3) 2 i=1 α i Throughout, φ i = fi (0), and λi =

∂Pr(ω) , ∂Pr(vi =1)

for i ∈ {1, 2}.

In the second period, the incumbent policymaker cannot be reelected. Without electoral pressure, the compliance level simply reflects the ideal points of the two groups and their preference intensity. In the first period, however, the policymaker can compete for reelection. Because the goal of this model is to understand the domestic sources of enforcement attributed to electoral accountability, I now focus on policymaking with electoral pressure in the first period. In choosing the compliance policy, the policymaker must consider how his decision in the first period affects the probability that he gets reelected in the second period. As shown in appendix A, the effect of the compliance policy on his chance of getting reelected can


be expressed in two terms. One term represents how the compliance level affects the probability that each interest group votes for the incumbent policymaker. The other term represents how the probability that each group votes for the incumbent policymaker affects the probability that the incumbent will win reelection. Whether a chosen compliance policy can induce a particular interest group to vote for the policymaker depends on the voting strategy of that group. At the end of the first period each interest group has to decide whether or not to reelect the incumbent policymaker. Because the groups do not directly observe the actual compliance policy, they assess how much the policymaker attends to their interests according to the welfare they experience. A group votes for the incumbent if and only if its first-period welfare is above a certain threshold.6 As shown in appendix A, a group chooses the optimal threshold to make a government’s chance of reelection depend as much as possible on how well the government attends to the group’s interests.7 A group’s choice of this threshold is shaped by the extent to which this group is able to infer the government’s action from its observed welfare. Intuitively, the better informed a group is, the more likely that its voting decision reflects the policymaker’s effort rather than the noisy outcome. Accordingly, to win the support of a better-informed group, the policymaker must attend to its interests in return.8

6

7

8

The voting strategy often takes the form of a cut rule. See, for instance, Ferejohn (1986) and Fiorina (1981). For how a cut rule is a delicate choice for voters, see Fearon (1999). Arguably, the interest groups and voters who use retrospective voting rules are not entirely rational, since it is not certain that their retrospective voting strategy serves their prospective interests. Nevertheless, if the voters seek to influence their future welfare with their votes and yet they are bounded by the amount of information they have and their ability to process the information, then a government’s retrospective performance provides voters with a proxy of how the government may serve their interests in the future. In this sense, therefore, a retrospective voting strategy has a prospective purpose. For an excellent discussion on this point, see Schultz (1998). The importance of the information status or the monitoring ability is consistent with earlier moral hazard models such as Ferejohn (1986), Lohmann (1998), and Fearon (1999). However, most authors focus on these traits of the electorate as a whole rather than on disaggregated interest groups, except, for instance, Lohmann (1998).


Besides the voting strategy of each group, the policymaker must also consider the extent to which the support of a particular group enhances his chance of getting reelected. That is, the policymaker must consider the electoral significance of each group. Empirically, the electoral significance or leverage of a group can be a number of things, depending on the specific electoral mechanism. It can be the number of voters in each group, or the amount of campaign contributions the group can generate, or the ability of the group to mobilize those with weaker preferences over a given issue, to name just a few. Anticipating the effect of his compliance decision on his chance of reelection, the incumbent policymaker decides on a compliance policy as in proposition 1. Again, φ i captures the informational status of each group and thus influences each group’s voting strategy. Furthermore, λi captures the electoral significance of each group and thus reflects how each group’s actual vote affects the election outcome. To examine how these group-specific factors influence the compliance policy, I turn to comparative statics.

Comparative statics To establish the effect of constituencies on the government’s compliance policy through the electoral process, I compare the compliance decision with electoral pressure in the first period to that without electoral pressure in the second period as a benchmark. Proposition 2 The compliance policy in the first period differs from that in the second period, if and only if two interest groups differ in the interactive effect of their electoral leverage and informational ∗ ∗ status, xt=1 (ki∗ ) = xt=2 ⇐⇒ λ1 φ 1 = λ2 φ 2 , ∀i ∈ {1, 2}.

Furthermore, the compliance policy under electoral pressure increases with the electoral leverage and the monitoring ability of the group that favors compliance,

∂ x∗ ∂λ2 t=1

> 0 and

∂ x∗ ∂φ 2 t=1

> 0; it

decreases with the electoral leverage and the monitoring ability of the group that opposes compliance,

∂ x∗ ∂λ1 t=1

< 0 and

∂ x∗ ∂φ 1 t=1

< 0.


So long as the two groups differ in their electoral leverage and informational status, the compliance level under electoral pressure in the first period deviates from that without electoral pressure in the second period. If one considers the deviation of the compliance level in the first period from that in the second period as a policy bias induced by electoral control, the direction as well as the magnitude of the policy bias is determined by the electoral leverage and the informational status of interest groups. Specifically, the equilibrium policy under electoral pressure favors the more electorally significant group. All else being equal, the more electorally significant the group that favors compliance, the higher the compliance level. Furthermore, the equilibrium policy in the first period also favors the better-informed group. All else being equal, the better informed the group that favors compliance – better able to monitor the government’s action – the higher the compliance level. It is important to note that the strength of each group originates not only from its electoral leverage, but also from its informational endowment. Here is an example of how these factors influence the compliance decision. Assume that one important indicator of a group’s electoral leverage is the size of the group. Now, suppose the group that prefers a high compliance level (for example, environmental groups and the interested public) is twice as large as the group that prefers a low compliance level (for example, industry groups). Then the policymaker will bias the compliance decision in favor of the larger group, if both groups have the same monitoring ability. Typically, however, special interests such as industry groups may be better informed, because their activities may be directly subject to regulations. If the smaller group is three times as information-rich as the larger group, then the policy bias turns to favor special interests. As the less-informed larger group improves its informational status, the policy bias toward the originally better-informed special interests decreases. Electoral control is therefore exercised through electoral leverage and the informational endowment of interest groups. The


importance of electoral leverage is intuitively straightforward, so long as one assumes a government cares about maximizing support. However, the way information works in this model is less intuitive. Besides considering which group controls more votes, an incumbent policymaker also considers what it takes for each group to vote him back into office. The voting strategy of each group depends on how well each group is informed about the policy process. Compared to the less well-informed group, the better-informed group is more likely to base its voting decision on the policy, since their inference of the policymaker’s compliance decision from their welfare is less disturbed by noise. In other words, the incumbent policymaker would lose more votes by fooling the well-informed than by fooling the ill-informed. While the direction of the policy bias is solely determined by the attributes of interest groups, the magnitude of the policy bias is influenced by two additional factors. That is, the stakes the incumbent perceives in getting reelected and his discount factor directly affect the compliance level under electoral control. First, the more the incumbent values the reelection benefits, the more the policy favors the electorally significant and the better-informed group. Second, the less the incumbent discounts the future, the more the policy favors the electorally significant and the better-informed group. The second point above deserves a brief comment. One way to interpret this result is that a government under immediate electoral pressure – with a low discount factor – responds more to the electoral control of domestic interests than a government that is more insulated. It is thus possible that, to the extent that democratic governments face more regular and frequent elections than nondemocratic governments, electoral accountability tends to shape the compliance decision in democratic states more than it does in nondemocratic states. This alone, however, does not mean that democratic states tend to comply with international agreements more than nondemocratic states do. This is because, although democratic institutions may intensify the effect of electoral control, the direction of electoral effect on the compliance level is determined by the attributes of competing


domestic interests such as their electoral leverage and informational endowment. This seems to accord well with the empirical finding in the literature that democracies do not comply uniformly with international commitments.

compliance with the 1985 sulfur protocol As the preceding analysis suggests, because governments are interested in retaining office, a country’s compliance effort responds to the demands of domestic constituencies. Specifically, compliance reflects the electoral leverage and the informational status of competing domestic constituencies. To illustrate how the domestic constituency mechanism works empirically, I take another look at the LRTAP Convention. Responding to acid rain that typically travels across borders, European countries collaborated within the framework of the LRTAP Convention. Since the establishment of the LRTAP Convention in 1979, there have been a series of substantive protocols requiring a specific number of pollutant emission reductions. I focus here on the 1985 Sulfur Protocol, which required signatory countries to reduce sulfur emissions by at least 30 percent by 1993, with 1980 as the base year. Because this protocol was the first substantive agreement in the framework of the LRTAP Convention and was the earliest to reach its deadline for implementation, it allows a sufficient time span to study the subsequent compliance with the protocol. Furthermore, the fact that more than twenty countries signed this protocol offers a variation in dependent and independent variables. In this section, I examine how domestic constituents affected national compliance with the 1985 Sulfur Protocol. I carry out the analysis in two different ways. I first conduct categorical data analysis with opinion survey data involving all signatory countries. To supplement the data analysis, I then examine some signatory countries in more depth. By combining quantitative and qualitative evidence, I hope to provide both a broad picture, and an in-depth look at how domestic compliance mechanisms work in this case.


A broad picture To provide a general pattern of national compliance mapped against politically relevant traits of domestic constituencies as suggested by the formal model, I first develop measures for the dependent and independent variables respectively and then trace how they relate to each other. A measure of the dependent variable is straightforward. As required by the 1985 Sulfur Protocol, each participating country should reduce sulfur emissions by at least 30 percent, with 1980 as the base year. Because compliance is defined as the degree to which the explicit treaty provision is achieved, the actual percentage reduction of sulfur emissions serves as the perfect measure of compliance in this case. Consistent with the definition of compliance as capturing outcomes ranging from noncompliance to overcompliance, the percentage reduction of sulfur emissions is a continuous variable capped at 100 percent.9 Regarding independent variables, a natural measure of the electoral leverage and the informational status of competing domestic constituencies in this case is what I call domestic environmental activism mobilized around the acid rain issue. First, this measure captures both the political clout and the informational status of domestic constituents, because it covers the following four specific dimensions: (1) public opinion regarding acid rain, (2) public consciousness of the environment, (3) the membership of environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and (4) the electoral strength of Green parties. Two of these dimensions – the size of environmental NGOs and potential votes for political parties that endorse environmental agendas – contribute to the electoral leverage of environmental activism. Two other dimensions – the public awareness of the environment in general and the acid rain problem in particular – reflect the

9

Consistent with the general conceptualization of compliance in the literature, the definition of compliance does not address the motivations behind the observed behavior (Fisher 1981, Mitchell 1994b, Raustiala and Slaughter 2002).


informational status of environmental activism.10 Second, this measure captures competing interests within a society in a parsimonious way. In each of the four dimensions, as mentioned above, it takes into consideration the opinion and organizational inclination of the entire spectrum of society, including pro-compliance elements as well as anti-compliance interests. For instance, the score that I derive regarding the perceived urgency of acid rain policies is based on the opinion of both those who favor such policies and those who oppose them. Similarly, the score that I derive regarding the likelihood of voting for political parties such as the Greens is based on the inclination of both the environmentally friendly and unfriendly groups. Thus the measure of domestic environmental activism takes into consideration the strength of both the pro-compliance force and the strength of the opposition to compliance. Overall, even though each indicator along each of these dimensions can be biased in its own way, together they provide a sense of how strong pro-compliance force is in comparison to anti-compliance sentiments, in terms of both political clout and informational endowment. I now construct an ordinal measure of domestic environmental activism. That is, I rank-order the signatory countries according to the level of environmental activism mobilized around the acid rain issue. I have six data sets, each of which provides useful information on at least some dimensions of domestic environmental activism in at least some countries under study here. These are Euro-barometer 25 (Rabier, Riffault, and Inglehart 1988), Euro-barometer 29 (Reif and Melich 1990), Euro-barometer 31A (Reif and Melich 1993), Euro-barometer 35 (Reif and Melich 1998),

10

Incorporating both electoral leverage and informational status into one independent variable is consistent with the theoretical expectation from the model. While the model captures the individual effect of electoral leverage and informational status respectively, it also captures the interactive effect of the two, allowing the strength in one dimension to compensate for the weakness in the other. Of course, with a fuller empirical model and more data points, one can measure these dimensions separately while taking into account their interactive effect.


Euro-barometer 43.1BIS (Reif and Marlier 1998), and the International Social Survey Program on Environment (International Social Survey Program 1996). Table 4.1 contains a list of relevant variables in each data set. With each data set I derive a ranking of the signatory countries covered in that data set, by the level of domestic environmental activism mobilized around the acid rain issue. This takes three steps. First, I rank-order the signatory countries along each of the four dimensions. Second, I sum up each country’s rankings along all dimensions to attain an aggregate score for that country. Third, I rank-order the signatory countries according to the aggregate score of each country. Thus a country that ranks consistently high along all dimensions tends to rank high in domestic environmental activism around the acid rain issue. Table B.1 and table B.2 in appendix B contain the ranking of relevant countries in each data set. The first four data sets, Euro-barometer 25, 29, 31A and 35, cover six signatory countries under investigation here. These six countries naturally form two groups, with Denmark, West Germany, and the Netherlands ranking consistently at the top and Belgium, Italy, and France ranking consistently at the bottom. The data set of the International Social Survey Program on Environment covers, in addition, Norway and several Eastern European countries. With Italy – from the second group in each of the first four data sets – as a reference point, Norway falls into the first group above Italy; East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Hungary form a third group below Italy.11 In addition, Euro-barometer 43 covers Sweden, Austria, and Finland. With all the signatory countries from the first four data sets as reference points, Sweden, Austria, and Finland – ranking above

11

There is additional support for this categorization. For instance, Kitschelt (1993) finds that the influence of Green and other left-libertarian parties is much more significant in Norway than in Italy. In Eastern European countries, according to Jancar-Webster (1993a), environmental movements sprang out of democratic movements and the priority they placed on the environment per se was unclear.


Table 4.1. Variables used to measure domestic environmental activism Variable #

Description

Euro-barometer 25 172

Public awareness of acid rain as damage to the environment

218

Public opinion over the environment in general

276 and 277 Membership in environmental NGOs 286

Voting intention for Green parties or other ecologist parties



221


Euro-barometer 31A 488

Public awareness of acid rain

503 and 504 How well informed people are about acid rain 323


656



Public awareness of acid rain

145 and 146 How well informed people are about acid rain 114

Public opinion over environmental protection in general

235


International Social Survey Program: Environment, 1993 46

Concern over industry pollution as main source of acid rain

13


60

Membership in environmental NGOs

Euro-barometer 43.1BIS 170


182


188

Membership in environmental NGOs


or between the Netherlands and West Germany – naturally belong to the first group.12 As a result, three groups present themselves, with domestic environmental activism around the acid rain issue ranging from high to low: (1) West Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Austria, Finland; (2) Belgium, Italy, France; and (3) East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary.13 This categorization of countries is consistent with secondary sources on environmental movements and the struggle against acid rain in Europe.14 What some secondary sources also show, but the analysis here based purely on survey data cannot demonstrate, is that West Germany, Sweden, and Norway – with particularly high political salience of the acid rain problem – stand out from the first category of countries (Levy 1993). Whether or not the category of countries with a high level of domestic environmental activism is further differentiated, the importance of domestic constituencies is clear. In table 4.2, with signatory countries categorized into three groups, the group of countries with the highest level of domestic environmental activism reduced their sulfur emissions by 72 percent on average by 1993, while the group of countries with the lowest level of domestic environmental activism reduced their sulfur emissions by only 26 percent.

12

13

14

Compared to the other five data sets, Euro-barometer 43 is not as perfect for this analysis, because it is the only one that was conducted after the Sulfur Protocol reached its implementation deadline. However, if using this data set carries with it any bias, it is a bias against my argument. Sweden, Austria, and Finland were among the most significantly traumatized by the acid rain problem, which was a more serious problem in the mid-1980s. If any data had been collected on these countries then, they would have more likely ranked even higher than other countries, not lower. For instance, in the late 1970s, the acidification problem was one of the most prominent environmental issues on the Swedish public agenda. Beginning in the early 1990s, political priorities shifted somewhat from environmental issues toward economic issues, when the country entered a recession with growing unemployment. Signatory countries to the 1985 Sulfur Protocol that are not covered by any of these data sets are inevitably left out of the analysis. This is largely consistent with Dalton (1994), who studied some of the signatory countries. Domestic environmental activism is treated less systematically in studies of international cooperation to combat acid rain, but see Sprinz (1992).


Table 4.2. Average level of sulfur emission reduction by domestic environmental activism mobilized over acid rain, with signatory countries categorized into three groups Environmental activism around acid rain W. Germany

Belgium

Bulgaria

Norway

Italy

Czechoslovakia

Sweden

France

E. Germany

Denmark

Hungary

Netherlands Austria Finland Average reduction Standard deviation

72%

56%

26%

8%

13%

28%

Source for emission reductions: Economic Commission for Europe (1995). Data on former Czechoslovakia, W. Germany and E. Germany are from Economic Commission for Europe (1993).

The positive correlation between sulfur emission reductions and domestic environmental activism around the acid rain issue persists when the signatory countries are categorized into four groups, as shown in table 4.3. Just as remarkably, the average reduction of sulfur emissions increases with domestic environmental activism mobilized around the acid rain issue. Consistent with the core hypotheses from the model, European countries’ compliance with the 1985 Sulfur Protocol reflected the electoral leverage and the informational endowment of domestic constituencies.

An in-depth look A closer look into a subset of signatory countries supports the aggregate finding that compliance with the 1985 Sulfur Protocol reflected


Table 4.3. Average level of sulfur emission reduction by domestic environmental activism mobilized over acid rain, with signatory countries categorized into four groups Environmental activism around acid rain W. Germany

Denmark

Belgium

Bulgaria

Norway

Netherlands

France

Czechoslovakia

Sweden

Austria

Italy

E. Germany

Finland

Hungary

Average reduction

75%

70%

56%

26%

6%

11%

13%

28%

Standard deviation

Source for emission reductions: Economic Commission for Europe (1995). Data on former Czechoslovakia, W. Germany and E. Germany are from Economic Commission for Europe (1993).

the electoral leverage and the informational status of domestic constituencies. I focus on Norway, West Germany, France, and the former Czechoslovakia. In presenting the evidence from each country, I identify competing domestic interests and examine both their electoral leverage and their informational conditions.

Norway Facing similar ecological and geographic vulnerability as Sweden, Norway joined Sweden early on to push for an international solution to the acid rain problem. However, compared to Sweden, the implementation of sulfur reduction policies in Norway was more contested. The treaty compliance process set in motion both procompliance activism and anti-compliance interests. The major opposition was the industrial sector. Initially it was not particularly interested in policies to control acidification, as Norwegian effort was mainly framed as getting central European countries


and Britain to reduce their sulfur emissions. As information regarding abatement costs unfolded and as industry came to realize that the LRTAP negotiations would have serious domestic consequences, the industrial sectors pushed the corresponding ministries to voice both reservations over sulfur reduction at home and opposition to further international targets (Laugen 2000, 120–4). Overcoming this opposition, however, was the growing strength of pro-compliance interests. Initially only the Norwegian Ministry of the Environment and the natural science community showed much interest in the acid rain issue (Laugen 2000, 120). In the mid-1980s, when societal groups that had previously been indifferent to environmental issues became sensitive to the acid rain problem, a new generation of environmental activists entered the stage.15 Environmental groups, old and new, conducted the important task of information gathering and dissemination. They not only compiled information on the severity of the acidification problem (Wetstone and Rosencranz 1983, 65), but they also monitored their governments’ environmental regulations for any implementation and enforcement deficits (Reitan 1997, 294). As such information spread through environmentalist networks and through media, public awareness and concern over environmental policies steadily increased. The upsurge of public environmental awareness further stimulated the greening of the political arena. According to opinion polls, the percentage of people who viewed the environment as the most important election issue rose from 1.3 percent in 1981, to 2.1 percent in 1985, and to 18.8 percent in 1989; the percentage of people who viewed the environment as the second most important election issue rose from 1 percent in 1985 to 11.6 percent in 1989 (Laugen 2000, 121). By another account, back in the mid-1970s, only 25 percent of the public rated environmental issues as the primary reason for party choice. In 1989 this percentage reached a record 37 percent (Reitan 1997, 305). The

15

Two important organizations are Nature and Youth (Natur og Ungdom) and Bellona. See Reitan (1997, 294).


ensuing green cleavage cut across traditional party lines, which resulted in the increasing institutionalization of green policies and an increased percentage of party programs devoted to ecological issues. These increases were most notable in the 1985–9 period, following the Sulfur Protocol (Reitan 1997, 305–6). Facing the increasing political salience of the acid rain issue, Norway continued to introduce measures to reduce sulfur contents in oil in 1985 and 1989. These costly measures are difficult to understand without considering the political salience of the acid rain issue. First of all, Norway had already met the minimum compliance requirements. Second, Norway’s own sulfur emissions contributed only about 5 percent of total sulfur dioxide fallout in Norway. Thus even the most costly measures would not dramatically reduce the ecological damage Norway suffered. Yet these measures made sense as the environment emerged as the single most important issue in the late 1980s (Laugen 2000, 121). West Germany Achieving an even greater percentage of sulfur reductions, West Germany experienced less domestic opposition in the compliance process while witnessing a high level of domestic environmental activism mobilized around the acid rain issue. The position of the West German government itself toward the LRTAP regime began to change upon the discovery of forest death in Germany in the early 1980s. This alarming information and the subsequent media coverage overwhelmingly alerted the public and even partially silenced the potential opposition to sulfur reduction policies. The industrial sector largely maintained a neutral position regarding sulfur reduction policies, partially because the three leading industries – fabricated metal products, wholesale and retail, and real estate and business – were neither among those highly vulnerable to exposure nor among those particularly hurt by abatement costs. The only sector that opposed the LRTAP process was the automobile industry, which was, however, somewhat compensated by tax


exemptions provided by the federal government (Sprinz and Wahl 2000, 154). The government’s effort to buy off any opposition and to adopt aggressive abatement measures was more than justified by the overwhelming surge in pro-compliance sentiments. In addition to environmental NGOs and Green parties, pro-compliance interests in Germany also included part of the industrial sector: industries producing abatement technologies and industries selling environmentally friendly products (Sprinz and Wahl 2000, 155). This was largely a result of intense media exposure and subsequent public sensitivity to environmentalism. The strength of pro-compliance interests, in terms of both informational conditions and electoral leverage, was significant in the 1980s. The increase of public environmental awareness was clearly shown in the German election surveys: 43 percent of voters viewed environmental protection as very important in 1972. This number increased to 69 percent in 1987 (Conradt and Dalton 1988). Coupled with the growing environmental awareness was the large number of citizen action groups concerned with environmental issues. By 1980, there were more than 130 supra-regional and more than 1,100 regional environmental groups (Boehmer-Christiansen and Skea 1991, 85). The grass-roots environmental organizations served a voluntary monitoring function over government implementation of desulfurization policies at different levels. These organizations further voiced the increasingly widespread public concern over the acid rain issue to increase its salience. Capitalizing on scientific reports and media coverage, environmental activists helped ensure that the acid rain issue was widely discussed and debated in Germany. Such information about the acid damage to German forests and the debate over policies to control acidification further mobilized public opinion and brought about widespread support for environmental policies. Meanwhile, with the increase in public environmental consciousness, air pollution became one of the central electoral issues


in the 1980s. This substantially facilitated the electoral success of the Greens. According to surveys in the late 1980s, the public viewed the Greens as the party best suited to solve environmental problems (Frankland 1995, 30). Indeed, the Green Party’s presence at the center of national politics facilitated the direct influence of environmentalists, as well as a somewhat “green” bureaucracy and “green” media (Boehmer-Christiansen and Skea 1991, 85–92). As a result, West Germany displayed a steady record of reducing sulfur emissions. In particular, it continued with serious sulfur reductions after the Sulfur Protocol was signed. By the time of German unification, West Germany had already reduced its sulfur emissions by more than 70 percent. France Unlike West Germany and Norway, which led the way in complying with the 1985 Sulfur Protocol, France, along with Belgium and Italy, displayed less impressive records of compliance. In France, sulfur reductions in the early 1980s were largely attributable to a switch of energy policy to a reliance on nuclear power. In the years after the 1985 Sulfur Protocol was signed, France barely undertook any further reductions. A look into its domestic dynamics helps illustrate why. When the 1985 Sulfur Protocol was being negotiated and signed, France viewed sulfur pollutants as originating from the heavy industry in Eastern Europe and did not consider itself vulnerable. The government’s low profile in the LRTAP process spurred little opposition from the industrial sectors. However, when the acid rain damage became associated with motor vehicle exhaust emissions, the French automobile industry led the opposition to domestic and international measures to reduce air pollution. Taking advantage of the lack of knowledge at the domestic level on the science of acid rain, the automobile industry questioned whether new measures or technologies were truly necessary and thus further contributed to the aura of skepticism over the acid rain issue (Skea and du Monteuil 2000, 245 and 249). Such skepticism presented a serious obstacle to both the


enforcement of existing abatement measures and the adoption of new measures. Facing such opposition, pro-compliance elements enjoyed neither informational nor electoral advantage. Regarding public awareness, the French public knew little about the acid rain problem and was by and large not concerned with it. This had to do with several factors. First, sulfur emissions resulted in increased vulnerability in only certain regions of France and not the whole country. Consequently, sulfur damage was not exposed extensively in the media. Second, although the scientific community gathered more information on the science of acid rain through international networks, that information did not achieve any significant degree of salience domestically, partially because of a lack of either an elite or a grass-roots element to employ it. Unlike Germany, where the Greens helped ensure the salience of the acid rain issue in national politics, and environmental NGOs helped monitor governmental policies at various levels, French Greens and environmentalists played a very limited role in information gathering and dissemination. Partially resulting from, and further worsening, the low level of public environmental awareness was the limited electoral leverage of pro-compliance interests. First of all, environmental NGOs in France were traditionally marginalized. In fact, a large percentage of the public perceived ecological policies as opposing national welfare, a perception that was further fueled by the alliance of the car industry and the Ministry of Industry.16 Indeed, membership of environmental NGOs was low and their image poor (Skea and du Monteuil 2000, 250). Furthermore, the Green movement was unable to alter the dominant class confrontation in electoral politics, as the two major Green

16

Even though the public gradually gained greater awareness of environmental issues, it was more attributable to the rise of Europe-wide ecological movements and much less to the acid rain issue in France or any other national or local environmental issues (Cole and Doherty 1995, 59).


parties failed to form a unified Green front (Cole and Doherty 1995, 56 and 60–3). Czechoslovakia

Unlike Norway and West Germany and also unlike

France, East European signatory countries including the former Czechoslovakia share among other things the following: they were among the most heavily polluted countries and yet such vulnerability did not translate into a high level of environmental activism around the acid rain issue. Accordingly, their compliance with the 1985 Sulfur Protocol was limited. In Czechoslovakia, the opposition to sulfur reduction policies came from the energy sector which traditionally relied on the combustion of fuel high in sulfur. As these industries were largely state-owned, local governments took the lead in opposing air pollution abatement proposals. They argued that governmental authorities at the federal level should place priority on economic goals (Adamova 1993, 53). Countering such opposition, pro-compliance interests were limited in both informational advantage and political clout. First, although most air pollution in Czechoslovakia stemmed from sulfur dioxide emissions, basic information on acid rain was limited until the late 1980s. This had to do with a number of factors. One was the limited scientific research into these matters. Another was the information control that some have termed “a state embargo on environmental data” (Adamova 1993, 43). A further compounding factor was the absence of a comprehensive system of NGOs gathering and disseminating environmental information. The informational situation only began to improve gradually in the 1990s. Second, the political clout of pro-compliance interests was rather complex. In some sense, environmental NGOs played a significant mobilizing role in the late 1980s, certainly more than many of their counterparts in other Eastern European countries. However, at the same time, their environmental appeal was limited. This was because environmental activism took


place under the umbrella of opposition to the totalitarian regime and thus it is unclear to what extent it was environmentally driven. It was also because, as in other Eastern European countries, economic concerns predominated in the public mind. The majority of the public saw seeking economic and social security as the most important goal (Adamova 1993, 44).17 Such preference ordering of the economy and the environment partially explains why the pro-compliance force became even weaker in the years following the transition from Communism to a multiparty system. Despite its improved ability to monitor government policies, along with welcome changes such as freedom of the press and of association, the environmental movement lost strength. The environmental concerns of the public were overshadowed by the much more pressing problem of economic survival. Jobs and social security were viewed by the public as much more important than the environment. The new government – including previous leaders of the environmental movement – had electoral obligations to fulfill their promises of both a democratic society and economic prosperity (Hardi 1994). Consistent with such weak support for sulfur reduction policies, Czechoslovakia was still quite some distance away from the minimum compliance requirement right up to the time of the separation of the two Republics. The purpose of the above empirical analysis – both quantitative and qualitative inquiries – has been to show how the domestic constituency mechanism worked empirically. I have therefore focused on the informational and electoral advantages of competing domestic interests. This, of course, is not to say that other factors do not have anything to do with sulfur emission reductions. However, the focus on domestic constituencies provides a key to understanding the political nature of the domestic enforcement of international agreements in this case.

17

Also see Jancar-Webster (1993b) for Eastern Europe in general.


conclusion This chapter has advanced a theory of domestic constituency mechanism. Because a government’s period in power is ultimately determined by domestic constituencies, its compliance policy is primarily responsive to competing domestic interests. Within such a conceptual framework of domestic accountability, I have identified specific channels of influence through which domestic constituencies can influence national compliance. In analytically distinctive ways, policymakers attend disproportionately not only to those with more political clout but also to those who are better informed. To demonstrate how the domestic constituency mechanism works empirically, I have shown that European countries’ compliance with the 1985 Sulfur Protocol reflected the electoral leverage and the informational status of competing domestic constituencies. A natural question arises: if compliance is a function of domestic constituencies, what is the role of international institutions? I address how international institutions work through the domestic constituency mechanism in the following chapter.

5

The power of weak international institutions

In chapter 4, I developed the domestic compliance mechanism and provided evidence that compliance reflects the electoral leverage and informational status of competing domestic constituencies. This finding, however, raises an important question: if compliance is a function of domestic constituencies, what is the role of international institutions? In particular, how do weak international institutions, limited in both monitoring and enforcement, influence states’ behavior? In this chapter, I investigate how international institutions play into the domestic game of enforcement to influence a state’s compliance with international agreements. As reviewed in chapter 2, questions concerning the effects of international institutions on sovereign behavior are central to the study of international relations. Early theories, particularly rationalist institutional theories, have focused primarily on the functions that international institutions perform directly for states (Martin and Simmons 1998). While the state-centric framework has been important for sorting out broad ways in which international institutions may alter patterns of interaction between states, it has neglected a range of indirect pathways through which international institutions may influence national policies (Haggard and Simmons 1987). As a consequence, we do not fully understand how weak international institutions – the majority of international institutions that lack the authority to directly enforce states’ compliance or the resources to directly enhance states’ capacity to comply – may influence states’ behavior. Scholars have responded to such a deficiency in several ways. First, some argue that weak international institutions such as nonbinding accords or binding treaties that lack enforcement provisions

t h e p ow e r o f w e a k i n t e r n at i o n a l i n s t i t u t i o n s 101

are inconsequential. In addition to classic realists who view virtually all international institutions as window dressing, modern IR theorists criticize international agreements that lack enforcement provisions as merely reflecting what states would have done on their own and thus do not alter states’ behavior (Downs, Rocke, and Barsoom 1996). Second, some constructivists suggest that, if the rationalist institutional theory cannot account for the utility of weak institutions, the effects of such institutions must instead be attributed to the transformative power of normative moral discourse. Of course, these norms do not automatically transform the identities of target states. Scholars have thus devoted careful attention to specifying the vehicles of such transformation.1 At the root of rationalist institutional theories, however, are two distinct characteristics. One is instrumental rationality and the other is the state-centric focus. Whereas realist critiques maintain both characteristics, the constructivist critiques tend to take issue with instrumental rationality. Arguably, however, earlier institutional theories failed to fully appreciate weak international institutions, not so much because they overemphasized rational enforcement, but rather because they neglected alternatives to international enforcement. In other words, it is the state-centric focus rather than the rationalist orientation that has led to the negligence of nonstate actors and domestic mechanisms as alternative sources of enforcement. This chapter addresses how weak international institutions may influence states’ behavior through domestic mechanisms. I relax the state-centric focus but largely maintain the rationalist perspective as in earlier institutional theories. I build on the domestic constituency mechanism and further specify how international institutions may influence states’ behavior through domestic mechanisms. As I have argued in chapter 4, where an international agreement has domestic consequences, domestic constituents may have an interest in states’

1

See, for examples, Sikkink (1993), Finnemore (1993), Risse-Kappen (1994), Klotz (1995), Keck and Sikkink (1998), Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink (1999), and Checkel (2001).


compliance with the agreement. These constituents may in turn influence the government’s compliance decision. In this chapter, I argue that international institutions may facilitate states’ behavior by empowering pro-compliance constituents. Specifically, they can increase the political leverage and improve the informational status of pro-compliance constituencies in specific ways. Furthermore, working through domestic mechanisms is particularly important for weak international institutions. To demonstrate empirically how weak international institutions influence states’ compliance through domestic constituencies, I first revisit the acid rain case. I show how the LRTAP Convention has empowered domestic environmental activists by providing them with specific relevant information and by legitimizing their demands. I then broaden the empirical analysis to trace how a weak international institution in a different issue area realized its potential power. By legal standards, the Helsinki Final Act in the CSCE was not even a formal treaty. Yet it had historical impact on the political changes in the former Soviet bloc. I seek to spell out the specific ways in which the Helsinki Final Act empowered domestic human rights activism. Besides providing human rights activists and the public with vital information, the Helsinki Final Act strengthened the leverage of human rights activists in specific ways: it legitimized human rights initiatives, enabled human rights activists to make strategic use of the Final Act, and suggested a focal point for various opposition movements. Furthermore, through follow-up meetings, the CSCE provided a forum for the continuing mobilization of human rights activism. In specifying how international institutions influence states’ behavior, I focus on what international institutions do for domestic constituencies rather than what they do directly for states. I stress the complementary relationship between domestic constituencies and international institutions. In other words, this indirect influence of international institutions on states’ behavior does not work unconditionally. The domestic constituency mechanism presupposes the existence of domestic interests to respond to international agreements.


The effect of international institutions through such domestic mechanisms is ultimately conditioned by the ability of domestic constituencies that these institutions help empower. Besides illustrating the specific ways in which international institutions empower domestic constituencies, the empirical analysis in this chapter also sheds light on the conditions necessary for such mechanisms. I discuss these implications in the concluding section. The chapter proceeds as follows. The first section presents my general argument on domestic constituencies and the power of weak international institutions. The next section revisits the LRTAP Convention and discusses how it played into domestic enforcement. The following section introduces the Helsinki Final Act in the CSCE and traces the specific ways in which it empowered domestic human rights activism. The last section concludes the chapter.

domestic constituencies and international institutions To study how international institutions impact on states’ behavior, one can examine the direct effects of international institutions on states as if they were individual people. Alternatively, one can examine the indirect effects of international institutions on states by looking into how international institutions affect domestic elements in each state. In this section, I argue that international institutions can empower domestic constituencies to enforce national compliance, and in this way even weak international institutions can have powerful effects on national policies.

Utilizing domestic constituencies Why is it important to incorporate domestic constituencies into the analysis of how international institutions work? Consider, for a moment, an environmental agreement between states to control air pollution. On the one hand, because transboundary air pollutants generate negative externality, states that suffer from imported pollutants may have incentives to enforce neighboring countries’ compliance


with the agreement. Such incentives may, accordingly, lead states to utilize institutional instruments to coerce or enhance compliance by all states. On the other hand, however, a country’s compliance with such an agreement also has domestic consequences. While mandating polluting industries to incur abatement costs, pollution reduction benefits the broader public. To the extent that the general public cares about the issue, they may try to influence their own government toward greater compliance with the international agreement.2 Thus international collaboration problems among states may present a government with a distinctively different strategic environment domestically. Domestic actors who benefit from a particular international agreement may have incentives to influence their government’s decision toward a higher level of compliance and thus become domestic sources of enforcement.3 They may further have a certain leverage over their government. This leverage may vary with different political institutions within which these actors operate. In democracies, domestic constituents can exercise their leverage over political leaders through regular elections. Public support is thus crucial for political leaders to stay in power. In authoritarian states the mechanisms through which domestic constituents can exercise their leverage are less institutionalized. Nevertheless, the support and confidence of constituents are often important to the survival of the leadership. Thus the logic of political accountability operates in diverse political regimes.

2

3

Such domestic interests do not ensure compliance, as illustrated in chapter 4. Some of the difficulties they face may be collective action problems: special interests often have an advantage in influencing governmental policy, particularly when the issue at hand is not widely salient. As information is disseminated to the public – perhaps as a result of public opinion campaigns by political entrepreneurs – the advantage of special interests may be partially eroded. The mechanisms specified in chapter 4 – the logic of leverage and that of information – help shed light on how the obstacle of collective action problems may at least in part be resolved. Regardless of whether domestic interests can ensure a high level of compliance, however, they present international institutions with a way to play into the domestic game. For a discussion of domestic sources and the consequences of legalization, see Kahler (2000).


Such domestic sources of enforcement present international institutions – aiming to facilitate national compliance – with opportunities to play into domestic enforcement. International institutions may seek to influence states’ behavior through domestic channels for several reasons. First, international institutions are frequently limited in resources and thus may not have extensive capacity to carry out monitoring and enforcement functions. Furthermore, they are often delegated with only limited autonomy and thus do not have the mandate to enforce states’ compliance. Thus it seems an efficient way for international institutions to utilize domestic channels to influence states’ compliance. Second, since a government’s hold on power is in various ways affected by domestic constituents and thus a government must in one way or another respond to domestic constituents, it is also effective for international institutions to influence a government’s compliance decision through domestic constituents. The conceptualization of a domestic constituency mechanism in chapter 4 thus suggests a theoretical rationale for why and how international institutions may influence states’ compliance indirectly. The fact that compliance decisions tend to reflect the electoral leverage and the informational status of domestic constituencies suggests indirect but incentive-compatible ways in which international institutions can influence national compliance. To explore how outside interested parties such as international institutions may use domestic pathways of influence, we need to have another look at those factors that are subject to deliberate manipulation in the model. As shown in the game model, two manipulable parameters determine the direction of policy bias. Indeed, international institutions can influence both parameters through specific features or activities. One parameter is the incremental change in the probability that the incumbent policymaker remains in power due to the change in the probability that an interest group supports the policymaker. This captures the political leverage of an interest group or the ability of an interest group to influence the government’s hold on power.


International institutions can strengthen the leverage of those who favor compliance. For instance, by writing compliance provisions into international agreements and by providing this information directly or indirectly to potential victims of noncompliance, international institutions may help increase the number of people who favor compliance. The other parameter is the variance of the density function of the exogenous shock. This captures the informational status of interest groups. While few international institutions are able to directly inspect states’ compliance, many can facilitate domestic constituencies in monitoring their governments. For instance, international institutions can publish information on compliance – however gathered, through state or nonstate channels – to make it easier for domestic groups and the interested public to infer states’ compliance. Therefore, international institutions can influence states’ compliance calculations through two specific channels: (1) strengthening the political leverage and (2) improving the informational status of pro-compliance constituencies. Frequently, domestic constituencies use the information made available by international institutions to mobilize support. Oftentimes, domestic constituencies employ international initiatives in debates for legitimation purposes. Thus, while domestic constituencies are the direct source of enforcement, international institutions may influence governments’ compliance decisions indirectly by empowering pro-compliance constituencies. In doing so, international institutions can facilitate a decentralized compliance system, where the enforcement source is not from some states over others, but rather from some domestic constituencies over their government. Furthermore, given the resource constraints that international institutions face, rational institutions have incentives to endorse low-cost enforcement mechanisms. It may be both effective and efficient for international institutions to facilitate domestic enforcement.


Weak international institutions Yet, when are such channels of influence through domestic constituents particularly feasible and important? While virtually all international institutions, including strong and well-endowed ones, may choose to utilize domestic constituencies, this mechanism is particularly crucial for weak international institutions that lack carrots and sticks. Empirically, many international agreements are not legally binding and many legally binding international institutions do not have the authority to directly enforce, or the resources to directly enhance, states’ compliance. To understand why the domestic constituency mechanism is particularly feasible and important for such weak institutions, we need to understand why such institutions are weak in the first place. While many factors may render an international institution incapable, weak international institutions tend to share something in common that makes them weak by design. One way to sort out their commonality is to look into these institutions to examine who benefits from compliance and how the beneficiaries are related to governments. Although all international agreements regulate states’ behavior directly or indirectly, the beneficiaries of compliance or the victims of noncompliance differ between regimes in different issue areas. Typically, potential victims of a country’s noncompliance can be other states, as in many security regimes; nonstate actors in other states, as in trade regimes; or nonstate actors in that same country, as in most human rights regimes. Because the beneficiaries of compliance are related to governments in different ways, states’ incentives differ with different international institutions. At one end of the spectrum, as in many security institutions, states have incentives to either enforce each other’s compliance or delegate considerable resources for a third party to carry out enforcement. Here we tend to see strong institutions in terms of resources and mandate. At the other end of the spectrum, as in human rights institutions, while it is the government’s behavior that


is being regulated, the beneficiaries of compliance are domestic actors. Here we tend to see nonbinding declarations and accords and institutions that are delegated limited authority and provided with meager resources.4 For the latter type of weak international institutions, the indirect channel of influence through domestic constituents is both feasible and important. It is feasible because the stakeholders with the most profound interest in compliance are domestic constituents who are victims of their own governments’ noncompliance. Thus, it is incentive-compatible for international institutions to work through these constituents, who have a genuine stake in the issue. This indirect channel of influence through domestic constituents is also important to both weak international institutions and domestic constituents. Since states do not have incentives to design strong international institutions,5 such institutions are given few instruments to influence states directly at the traditionally interstate level. Thus the channel through domestic constituencies is among the most important instruments available to such institutions. Meanwhile, because the interests of noncompliance victims are often not sincerely represented by their governments, pro-compliance domestic constituencies are often left with limited instruments to advance their interests. International institutions, even weak ones, can therefore be important to those potential victims who have little protection at home. Accordingly, both international institutions and 4

5

In the middle range of the spectrum lie regimes in trade and environmental institutions, where states represent to varying extents both the interests of noncompliance beneficiaries and those of noncompliance victims. The strength of these institutions seems to lie between the strong and the weak. To the extent that states allow the emergence of international human rights institutions, they are often trading this for other benefits. According to Klotz (1995), states are largely followers or bystanders when it comes to human rights. While Moravcsik (2000) acknowledges that most countries tend to avoid human rights regimes with effective means of enforcement and accept only unenforceable rules, he identifies an exception to this rule: the European human rights regime with effective enforcement. In that case, he argues, the new European democracies’ post-World War Two desire to lock in future governments largely explains the emergence of the strongest human rights regime in the world.


pro-compliance domestic constituencies have incentives to utilize each other. To the extent that they can do so, such weak institutions may nevertheless prove powerful in influencing states’ behavior. From this perspective, the power of weak international institutions – without the authority to directly enforce or the capacity to directly facilitate states’ compliance – lies in their ability to influence states’ behavior through domestic constituencies. Specifically, building on the domestic constituency mechanism, international institutions can increase the electoral leverage and improve the informational status of pro-compliance constituencies. In the remainder of this chapter, I investigate empirically how international institutions realized their potential power through these domestic channels of influence in two different issue areas.

the lrtap convention As I have shown in chapter 4, compliance by European countries with the 1985 Sulfur Protocol in the LRTAP Convention reflected the electoral leverage and informational status of competing domestic constituencies. In this section, I discuss how the LRTAP Convention has indirectly influenced states’ compliance with the 1985 Sulfur Protocol.6 I show that the LRTAP Convention has empowered domestic environmental activists by providing them with specific relevant information and by legitimizing their demands. In so doing, the LRTAP Convention has facilitated national compliance indirectly. Based on interviews with environmental NGOs and ministries of the environment, in addition to secondary sources, I summarize specific ways in which the LRTAP Convention empowered domestic environmental activism, as follows.

6

While the aggregate level of sulfur pollution has been declining since the early 1980s, most signatory countries of the 1985 Sulfur Protocol have reported much deeper reductions in sulfur emissions than nonsigners. On average, nonsigners and signers have made reductions of 17 percent and 50 percent respectively, with 1980 as the base year (Economic Commission for Europe 1993).


First, the LRTAP Convention facilitated research on acid damage and helped disseminate research findings.7 The accumulated research results and their dissemination are critical to mobilizing public concern over the acid rain problem. When the LRTAP Convention was signed in 1979, only the bureaucratic and scientific communities in Sweden and Norway were convinced of the transboundary damage of acid rain. Reluctant to make any explicit commitment, countries nonetheless agreed on the need to study the ecological damage of acid rain. The Working Group of Effects oversaw a series of research programs, each of which was operated by a leading country. For instance, Germany, Norway, and Sweden operated research programs on forests, fresh water, and materials respectively. It was not entirely coincidental that Germany conducted its first systematic forest survey in 1982, which demonstrated serious forest damage as a result of acid rain.8 Through institutional arrangements such as annual review meetings of the Executive Board, the LRTAP Convention further helped collect and disseminate information on acid damage. Such information contributed significantly to the perceived salience of the acid rain issue in many other countries (Enyedi, Gijswijt, and Rhode 1987, Wetstone and Rosencranz 1983, Levy 1993).9 Environmental activists used this information to mobilize public concern through publications and symbolic action.10 These activities illustrate how international institutions can strengthen the electoral leverage of pro-compliance constituents by increasing the number of people who care about the issue.

7

8

9

10

For the coordination by the LRTAP of national research programs and the effects of such coordination, see Levy (1993, 87–90). There was no official connection between the LRTAP Convention and the German forest survey. But some experts attribute the decision to conduct such a national survey partially to the influence of Nordic countries through the LRTAP Convention. Author’s interview with German forest survey experts at the Federal Research Center for Forestry and Forest Products. Author’s interviews with officials from the Austrian Federal Environmental Agency and the Hungarian Ministry of Environment. Author’s interviews with staff members at the Swedish NGOs Secretariat on Acid Rain and the World Wide Fund for Nature.


Second, the LRTAP Secretariat compiled information on emission trajectories and abatement strategies. This information enabled environmental activists to better understand the policy processes and thus made them better able to monitor governmental action. The LRTAP Secretariat coordinated the Cooperative Program for Monitoring and Evaluation of the Long-range Transmission of Air Pollutants in Europe (EMEP). Its main objective was to provide “information on the deposition and concentration of air pollutants, as well as the quantity and significance of the long-range transmission of pollutants and fluxes across boundaries” (Economic Commission for Europe 1991). In addition, governments were required to report on policies taken in accordance with the Sulfur Protocol. Through the annual review meetings, the LRTAP Secretariat published compilations of abatement strategies. The abatement strategies adopted by one country were frequently cited by environmental activists in other countries when demanding stricter environmental policies.11 It was more difficult for governments to neglect the better-informed environmental activists and the general public. These activities illustrate how international institutions can improve the informational status of pro-compliance constituencies. Third, what was important for the above two channels to be effective was that the LRTAP Convention facilitated the involvement of environmental activists in the compliance process. The review meetings of the LRTAP Convention were open to environmental NGOs. For example, Greenpeace and the World Wide Fund for Nature were regular participants at such meetings. This was instrumental to environmental activism in three ways. First, environmental NGOs could get all the documents released by the Convention.12 Thus the Convention provided environmental activists, particularly those from countries with information controls, access to information that they might not receive otherwise. Second, because NGOs sometimes had

11 12

Author’s interview with staff at the World Wide Fund for Nature. Author’s interview with staff from the LRTAP Secretariat.


information about a particular country that the LRTAP Secretariat did not necessarily know, they were usually given the chance to present their knowledge and opinion at meetings.13 These opportunities often provided environmental NGOs with an additional forum to appeal to public opinion and helped them to increase their influence over their governments. Third, environmental activists from different countries used such meetings to share information and strategies, and in fact build networks with each other as well as with the environmental branches of government. Such a broad network of likeminded people was important in strengthening environmental forces (Sand 1991, Haas 1989, Young 1989b). Finally, the LRTAP Convention helped legitimize the environmental demands of pro-compliance advocates. The signing of the Convention and the Sulfur Protocol helped establish expectations regarding environmental policies and their implementation. To some extent, it functioned as a benchmark for correct governmental behavior. This was particularly important in those countries where environmental activists lacked domestic instruments. For instance, shortly after Czechoslovakia ratified the Sulfur Protocol, some 300 people in North Bohemia protested against the government authorities regarding the inadequate system of controlling air pollution. For the first time, environmental protesters were not punished. Instead, government representatives promised to take appropriate action (Jancar-Webster 1993a). Even for countries where substantial measures have been taken to reduce sulfur emissions, the fact that another more demanding sulfur protocol was already in the making under the LRTAP Convention lent support to environmental demands to actually go well beyond the minimum level of compliance. In Norway and Sweden, the way that environmental activists resorted to the Convention was particularly interesting. Pro-compliance activists in these countries argued that, “now that we finally got other countries to sign up on the Convention

13

Author’s interview with staff from the LRTAP Secretariat.


and the Protocol, we need to set an example with deeper reductions.”14 Essentially, domestic environmental activists used the LRTAP Convention in various ways to defend the legitimacy of their demands, thus adding international support to domestic pro-environmental constituencies. Overall, rather than enabling states to use carrots or sticks toward each other, the LRTAP Convention empowered domestic environmental activism, which directly affected governments’ compliance calculations. The LRTAP Convention, however, is not the only environmental agreement that worked through domestic mechanisms. In fact, many environmental agreements share elements of such compliance dynamics. Furthermore, as the next section will show, such mechanisms are at work in issue areas beyond the environment.

the csce and the helsinki final act As I have argued, the domestic constituency mechanism suggests that international institutions can play into the domestic game by empowering pro-compliance constituencies. International institutions can increase the electoral leverage and improve the informational status of pro-compliance constituents. While the previous section investigated specific ways in which the LRTAP Convention employed these channels of influence, this section complements that analysis by investigating how international institutions worked in similar ways in another issue area. I focus on the Helsinki Final Act in the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). The Helsinki Final Act was an international accord concluded at the Helsinki Summit of the CSCE in 1975. It involved the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as major European countries and Canada. By legal standards, the Final Act was not a formal treaty. Yet the human rights provisions in the Final Act helped mobilize

14

Author’s interview with staff at the Swedish NGOs Secretariat on Acid Rain.


unprecedented social movement and opposition. As Daniel Thomas (2001) demonstrates, the Helsinki effect contributed significantly to the historical demise of Communism in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. While the significance of the Helsinki Accords in the downfall of Communism is debated,15 my focus is on a prior question: how and in what specific ways did the Helsinki Final Act and the CSCE empower domestic human rights activism? To the extent that domestic activism influences states’ behavior, answers to this question will shed light on how international institutions may influence sovereign behavior indirectly through domestic mechanisms. I choose to study the case of the Helsinki Final Act in a similar way as I chose to study the LRTAP Convention. Both cases could be perceived as lending support to the conventional argument that international institutions work by influencing states directly. In the LRTAP case, the existence of the monitoring program was argued by some as evidence that international institutions monitor states’ compliance with treaties and thereby facilitate the reciprocity mechanism. In the case of the Helsinki Final Act, subsequent changes in the Soviet bloc coupled with the pressure of the West could be understood as reflecting the direct effect of international institutions on states’ compliance behavior. This, however, is not the whole story. In

15

David Forsythe (2000) argues that it is difficult to establish the exact contribution of the Helsinki Accords and the CSCE to the downfall of Communism. He cites John Maresca (1985) as saying, “it is impossible to establish what resulted from Helsinki and what was simply the result of history moving on.” Stefan Lehne (1991) attributes the downfall of Communism primarily to internal problems within the Soviet bloc and only secondarily to the Helsinki process. William Korey (1993) emphasizes the contribution of the US Congress and Jewish interest groups in pressuring Communist rulers. Sandra Gubin (1995) shows how international and domestic politics in the West pressured the Soviet leaders in the spirit of carrots and sticks. Although it was a very important factor, Thomas (2001) demonstrates that Western pressure was not a cause but a result of social mobilization and transnational networking in the East. Jeri Laber’s (2002) recent memoir seems to confirm this view, in that the activities of the Moscow Helsinki Group did not attract the attention of the West until the arrests of some founding members of the group in 1977. Furthermore, the US Helsinki Watch group was not established until 1979, in part to respond to the call of the Moscow Helsinki group for Helsinki groups to be established in all signatory countries (Laber 2002, 95–9).


both cases, I argue that international institutions influenced states’ compliance by empowering domestic activism. As I have shown in the previous section, rather than carrots and sticks being used at the international level, the LRTAP Convention worked through domestic mechanisms. In this section, I investigate how the Helsinki Final Act influenced states’ behavior indirectly by empowering domestic human rights activism. The case of the Helsinki Final Act also illustrates the general utility of the domestic constituency mechanism, and particularly the way in which international institutions play into such mechanisms. The game model in chapter 4, though interpreted in terms of electoral accountability, captures the broader conception of domestic accountability. Because the political support that governments desire is not limited to votes, domestic groups can influence a government’s welfare in more ways than through elections. In most political regimes with or without meaningful elections, there is a certain degree of domestic accountability. This logic enables the impact of domestic activism through the channels of information and political leverage. This section delineates how the Helsinki Final Act enhanced the leverage and improved the information of domestic human rights activists. Below I will first provide some brief background information about the CSCE and the Helsinki Final Act. I then focus on specific ways in which the Final Act empowered human rights activists to enforce compliance with its human rights provisions.

The background The CSCE was a high-water mark in the detente between East and ´ West. It has been the subject of voluminous literature. I limit my introduction below to key events leading up to the Final Act.16

16

For a recent and detailed review of the background and the negotiation process preceding the signing of the Helsinki Final Act, see chapters 1 and 2 in Thomas (2001). The background information reported here draws largely upon Maresca (1985) and Lehne (1991), among others.


In 1972, US President Richard Nixon picked up Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev’s desire for a European security conference.17 Major West European countries joined the efforts, in order not to be left out of the detente with the USSR (Maresca 1985, Lehne 1991). In negotiating ´ the final agreement, major participating states aimed to get different things out of the conference. The USSR and Eastern Europe sought multilateral confirmation of the geopolitical status quo.18 Within the West, Americans viewed the CSCE as a concession to the Soviets in order to obtain their cooperation in achieving global objectives.19 In contrast, West European governments viewed the conference more significantly as a potential forum for obtaining assurance of a liberalization of East European regimes and for a lowering of the barriers between East and West (Lehne 1991, 2). While West European countries insisted on including human rights in the agreement, they had a hard time coordinating with the United States on what kind of human rights standard the West should demand from the Soviets on paper and in practice. After many policy reversals and adjustments on all sides, thirtyfive heads of state signed an agreement in Helsinki on August 1, 1975.20 Because the superpowers each had their own reservations

17

18

19

20

It is not entirely clear when the Soviet concept of a European security conference emerged. Maresca (1985) and Lehne (1991) note that important communications on this idea between the Warsaw Pact and NATO seemed to begin in 1969. According to Harold Russell (1976), who served as Assistant Legal Adviser for European Affairs in the Department of State, the Soviet Union first proposed a European security conference and treaty at the Berlin meeting of foreign ministers held on February 10, 1954. Thomas (2001) seems to confirm Russell’s (1976) account. Specifically, the Soviets had three objectives: to legitimize the geopolitical changes resulting from World War Two, and thus the Soviet Union’s position in Europe; to advance toward the creation of a pan-European forum, where the USSR would dominate and the American role on the continent would weaken; and to promote a general relaxation of West European attitudes toward the East and possibly to give a fresh impetus to East–West economic cooperation and thus spur the economic development of the Soviet Union and its allies (Maresca 1985, Lehne 1991). The US obtained the Quadripartite Agreement on Berlin and started negotiations on the Mutual Balanced Force Reductions (Maresca 1985, 44–5). They were from Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Cyprus, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Finland, France, the German Democratic Republic, the Federal Republic


about this agreement, they adopted the form of “a final act” to record the results of an international meeting without giving them a legally binding status.21 The contents of the Helsinki Final Act were grouped into three baskets.22 Human rights was treated first in basket I on “Questions Relating to Security in Europe” and then in basket III on “Cooperation in Humanitarian and Other Fields.” In basket I, participating countries endorsed human rights as a principle, along with such principles as sovereignty, the inviolability of frontiers, and nonintervention in others’ internal affairs. Principle VII in basket I is titled “Respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief.” Signatory countries pledged to “promote and encourage the effective exercise of civil, political, economic, social, cultural and other rights and freedoms.” They affirmed the right of national minorities to equality and the right of the individual to know and act upon his rights. In basket III, human rights were then treated as a more practical matter in four sections on human contacts, information, cooperation and exchanges in the field of culture, and cooperation and exchanges in the field of education. The section on human contacts makes clear the promise of participating states “to facilitate freer movement and contacts, individually and collectively, whether privately or officially, among persons, institutions and organizations of the participating States, and to contribute to the solution of the humanitarian problems that arise in that connexion.” The section on

21 22

of Germany, Greece, the Holy See, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and Yugoslavia. See the Helsinki Final Act. It is available online at the website of the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which is a successor to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, http://www.osce.org/documents/ html/pdftohtml/4044 en.pdf.html. For the legal implications of such nonbinding agreements, see Schachter (1977). The following discussion is based on the Helsinki Final Act.


information included commitments concerning the dissemination of information, the development of cooperation in this field, and the improvement of the working conditions of journalists. These provisions seemed to be directed at loosening the information monopoly of Soviet and East European governments, regarding both the information received by their population and the information about developments in the respective countries. Wanting different things out of the conference, major parties interpreted the compromise embodied in the Final Act differently. US policymakers downplayed the conference as nothing more than a gesture. The Soviets interpreted the Final Act primarily as a confirmation of existing European frontiers. Even though they compromised on the human rights provisions, given the low level of political interest in the West, the Soviets anticipated that these provisions would soon be forgotten. However, subsequent events unfolded differently from the way the Soviet government expected. In fact, the Helsinki Final Act and the related CSCE framework played a highly salient role in the Soviet bloc. How did such a weak international accord without any enforcement provisions generate so much historical impact? I address the important question of “how” in order to shed light on the specific ways in which international institutions can influence states’ behavior indirectly through domestic constituents.

Working through domestic human rights activism Human rights provisions in the Final Act turned out to be more significant than expected, particularly in empowering human rights activism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. After the Helsinki Summit in 1975, human rights movements entered into a new era. Many civic associations were formed to monitor compliance with the humanitarian provisions or to promote respect for human rights in the Helsinki spirit. In this section, I examine how and in what specific ways the Helsinki Final Act contributed to mobilizing and strengthening human rights activism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.


To understand the causal effect of the Helsinki Final Act, we need to trace the process by which it can be linked to particular behavior or events that matter politically. I draw evidence from the memoirs of human rights activists and government officials, government documents, and media reports, in addition to scholarly works on the CSCE and the Helsinki Final Act. I look for not only how aspects of the Final Act are linked to aspects of domestic human rights activism but also how references to the Final Act entered directly into the decisionmaking process of human rights activists and indirectly into that of governments. I suggest that the Helsinki Final Act improved the information of domestic human rights activists and strengthened their leverage over Communist governments. Besides providing human rights activists and the public with vital information, the Helsinki Final Act strengthened the leverage of human rights activists in specific ways: it legitimized human rights initiatives, enabled them to make strategic use of the Final Act, and suggested a focal point for various opposition movements. Furthermore, through follow-up meetings, the CSCE provided a forum for the continuing mobilization of human rights activism. Legitimizing human rights initiatives

By formally compiling gov-

ernments’ signatures on humanitarian provisions, the Helsinki Final Act made legitimate what in some countries could be viewed as provocation. It enabled human rights activists to catch their government out when they became entangled in their own rhetoric. This legitimizing effect originates from a number of sources. One source is the yard-stick effect. Endorsed by all countries in Europe, the Helsinki Final Act provided a new reference point for human rights practices. Evidence of worse treatment of citizens in one country, against the background of better treatment of citizens in other countries, challenged the competence and legitimacy of the government. Another source of legitimacy is the moral principle that a responsible mature individual should keep his/her promises.


As Zden˘ek Mlynaˇ ´ r (a former Communist Party secretary during the Prague Spring) put it, “we only want the holders of power to abide by what they themselves have solemnly promised and signed” (Kusin 1979, 49). A third source of legitimacy is state autonomy or sovereignty, an extension of which means that the government’s words should count. Just as a state wants its citizens to abide by its rules, the government’s signature on an international agreement should be observed. In a letter to the Czechoslovak Prime Minister on October 1, 1975, Jiˇrı´ Hajek (former Foreign Minister during the ´ Prague Spring) wrote, “[t]he Czechoslovak president’s signature under the Helsinki Final Act and the Czechoslovak government’s statement of 8 August 1975 that it would consistently comply with the undertakings deriving from that document, mean that all agencies accounting to this government have been obligated” to ensure that nobody is punished for adhering to these principles (Listy, 2/1976, as cited in Kusin 1978, 295–6). Indeed, the Helsinki Accords and particularly the Communist regimes’ commitment to them on paper were frequently referred to in the subsequent struggle for freedom of association and freedom of expression. In the few years after the Helsinki Final Act, open civic associations in the Soviet Union became the backbone of the human rights movement, as well as the national and religious movements working in cooperation with it.23 As Rubenstein (1980) documents, within a year of the Final Act in May 1976, Yury Orlov announced the creation of a group to promote compliance with the Helsinki Accords in the USSR. It became known as the Moscow Helsinki Watch group. The group used Soviet propaganda to justify the importance of the Helsinki Final Act. As Orlov made clear in the group’s opening statement, the group would hold the Soviet government to its word and would work in the framework that the government itself had erected

23

See, in particular, Alexeyeva (1985) and Rubenstein (1980).


(Rubenstein 1980, 222). The group announced that it would accept information from citizens on violations of the humanitarian articles, compile documents, and familiarize the public with their contents (Alexeyeva 1985, 338). Alexeyeva (1985) further documents that many other groups came into existence. They included the Christian Committee for the Defense of the Rights of Religious Believers, the Working Commission to Investigate the Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes, the Initiative Group for the Defense of the Rights of Invalids in the USSR, the Free Trade Union, the Free Interprofessional Association of Workers, the Right to Emigrate, and Election 79 (Alexeyeva 1985, 347–50). Helsinki groups were also established in Ukraine, Lithuania, and Armenia (Alexeyeva 1985, 336–7). The Helsinki Final Act also inspired the creation of human rights organizations in East European countries.24 According to Skilling, Charter 77 was founded in Czechoslovakia in January 1977 and declared itself devoted to protecting fundamental human rights – rights accorded to all by international documents including the Helsinki Final Act (Skilling 1981, 13). Within six months, the number of signatories had risen from 243 to 750 (Kusin 1978, 305; Skilling 1989, 44). In the following year, the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Persecuted (VONS) was formed and later became affiliated with the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) and added to its name a subtitle, the Czechoslovak League for Human Rights (Skilling 1989, 44). Similarly, Thomas documents the establishment of human rights organizations in Poland in the few years after the Helsinki Final Act. One such organization was the Committee for the Defense of Workers (KOR), which later became the Committee for Social Defense (Thomas 1999, 216). According to one of its leading members Adam Michnik (1990), the KOR presented a challenge to the Communist regime saying, “You signed the Helsinki Declaration on Human Rights, and we want to and will make practical use of

24

See, for instance, Skilling (1981, 1989) on Czechoslovakia and Thomas (1999, 2001) on Poland.


your signature. Here it is: here is our Workers’ Defense Committee” (Michnik 1990, 242, as cited in Thomas 1999, 216). Another organization was the Movement for the Defense of Human and Civil Rights (ROPCiO), which was largely devoted to monitoring compliance with the human rights provisions in the Helsinki Final Act (Thomas 1999, 216). Even more significantly, Poland witnessed the birth of its first unofficial trade union, followed by many other independent industrial and farmers’ organizations. Similarly, human rights activists frequently resorted to the Helsinki Accords in demanding freedom of speech. They argued that the Helsinki Final Act guaranteed freedom of speech (Lipski 1985, 104). Most of the aforementioned social organizations actively maintained publications, to disseminate information and generate independent public opinion. The Working Commission on Psychiatry in the USSR prepared twenty-four voluminous informational bulletins, issued at least once every two months until the early 1980s (Alexeyeva 1985, 347). In addition to publications by these civil associations, many samizdat periodicals appeared in Moscow from the mid-1970s onward.25 In Czechoslovakia, according to Skilling (1989), Charter 77 issued a total of some 340 documents during its first decade. On every anniversary of the 1968 Soviet intervention, the Charter released a statement condemning the use of armed force and calling for the withdrawal of Soviet forces in view of the Soviet approval of the Helsinki Final Act. Closely associated with

25

Samizdat refers to unofficial or illegal publications produced or circulated in the Soviet period. Memory (Pamyat) collected and published historical testimony. Quest (Poiski) offered a nonpartisan forum for different views and ideas. Sum (Summa) contained papers about and annotations of samizdat works, journals, collections, and corresponding Western publications. Among the editors and authors of the literary anthology Metropol were both unknown and famous samizdat writers, as well as well-known authors who had published officially. Metropol was thus a massive unofficial exercise in creative freedom and the circumvention of censorship by professional writers. In the second half of the 1970s, major samizdat works were no longer limited to Moscow. Samizdat periodicals which were published in Leningrad included Hours (Chasy), 37, Art Archives, Women, and Russia. For details on samizdat in the USSR in the late 1970s, see Alexeyeva (1985, 352–5).


Charter 77, the bulletin Information on Charter 77 was issued monthly without interruption from 1978 to the late 1980s. It contained Charter documents and VONS communiques, ´ other Charter materials, as well as individual protests and letters, information notes, reports from Poland and other countries, and lists of recent samizdat. VONS issued some 700 communiques ´ from 1979 to 1987, all of which contained reports on persecution or prosecution (Skilling 1989, 43–7). In Poland, according to Lipski (1985), KOR’s Communique´ was published approximately once a month, where reprisals against workers and all independent social initiatives were reported. One publication of the Intervention Bureau within KOR, for instance, was the Document of Lawlessness, which describes the murders, assaults, and severe beatings committed and then covered up by the police and the Security Service (Lipski 1985, 173). The Polish Helsinki Committee also distributed comprehensive annual reports and special studies. The Committee of Social Resistance established in 1981 even had its own publishing house (Skilling 1989, 212–4). The movement of free expression was well reflected in the increasing number of press and publishing houses in Poland (Lipski 1985, 305). Besides fighting for freedom of expression in terms of publication, human rights activists also defended freedom of expression in terms of protests. As documented by Alexeyeva (1985), the scale of human rights protests in the Soviet Union got larger after the Helsinki Final Act. There were more petition signers from outside Moscow, where it was much more dangerous to make public statements (Alexeyeva 1985, 345–6). The first demonstration for human rights in Leningrad took place on December 5, 1976, and subsequently human rights demonstrations became annual occurrences there just as they were in Moscow (Alexeyeva 1985, 355–61). In Poland, workers increasingly resorted to strikes to protest against the repression of other workers and other human rights abuses. Several thousand strikes took place in July and August of 1980 (Lipski 1985, 417– 23).


Enabling strategic use of the Final Act By codifying states’ human rights commitments, the Helsinki Final Act offered human rights victims and activists an additional instrument in their demand for the protection of human rights. In fact, it enabled human rights activists to make strategic use of it in advancing their common interests as well as special interests. As a compromise among states with alternative goals, the Final Act endorsed many and sometimes conflicting principles. This presented both a challenge and an opportunity for human rights activists to use the Final Act. It was a challenge because, while groups such as the Moscow Helsinki group singled out the humanitarian provisions in the Helsinki Final Act, Communist authorities in the Soviet Union and across Eastern Europe emphasized what they sought to achieve in the Helsinki Summit.26 At the same time, it was a tremendous opportunity because, although both Communist regimes and their oppositions tried to take advantage of the Helsinki Final Act, its value to human rights movements was much greater than to the regimes. This was because the governments had enjoyed a monopoly of political control while the oppositions had been desperately in need of additional instruments. Gradually recognizing the great potential of the Helsinki Accords, human rights activists vigorously resorted to the humanitarian provisions in the Helsinki Final Act to promote general awareness of and respect for social and political rights. In order to utilize the Helsinki Final Act to advance their interests, different human rights groups in different countries adopted different specific goals. In the Soviet Union, human rights activists

26

For example, the Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko stressed “nonintervention in internal affairs” (Dobrynin 1995, 346), Czechoslovak Premier Gustav Husak (1986) highlighted the principle of “peaceful coexistence of states with different social systems,” and Leonid Brezhnev (1977) emphasized “the inviolability of the existing frontiers.” For a detailed account of how human rights movements and Communist authorities competed to frame the Helsinki Final Act to their own advantage, see chapter 3 in Thomas (2001).


demanded specific rights based on the humanitarian provisions in the Final Act. For instance, they established civil associations to defend the rights of religious believers and to protest the use of psychiatry for political purposes (Alexeyeva 1985, 127). In the Republics, human rights activists resorted to the Final Act to address issues of nationality and religion. The Ukrainian Helsinki group, which had declared as its goal the implementation of the humanitarian provisions of the Final Act, focused on the right of equality on the basis of nationality (Alexeyeva 1985, 51–2). The Lithuanian Catholic Committee for the Defense of the Rights of Religious Believers appealed to the CSCE for religious freedom and the rights of believers (Alexeyeva 1985, 76). Aiming to resolve the nationality problem of Armenians, the Armenian Helsinki Watch group demanded the use of the Armenian language in all spheres of life in Armenia (Alexeyeva 1985, 127). Outside the Soviet Union, victims of persecution and human rights activists also quickly recognized the utility of human rights components in the Helsinki Final Act. In Czechoslovakia, shortly after the Final Act, disaffected intellectuals and former Communist officials during the Prague Spring referred to it in their demand to lift the repressive policy of normalization and to reconsider the aborted Prague Spring reform (Thomas 1999, 222). On November 8, 1975, three leading Communist veterans27 and victims of the purges after the Prague Spring proposed to the Federal Assembly that, in the light of Helsinki, the Federal Assembly should open talks with the USSR on the removal of Soviet troops (Kusin 1978, 295). In Poland, opposition groups used the Helsinki Accords to justify their protest against revising the Constitution to include “unshakable and fraternal bonds with the Soviet Union” and “the leading role of the party” (Rupnik 1979, 78–9). Later on, the humanitarian provisions in the Helsinki Final Act were used to justify an independent trade union.

27

ˇ The three petitioners were Frantiˇsek Kriegel, Gertruda Sekaninovaa, ´ Cakrotov ´ and Frantiˇsek Vodslonˇ (Kusin 1978, 295).


Suggesting a focal point While the Helsinki Final Act allowed different human rights groups to utilize its provisions to advance their own interests, it also provided social movements with a focal point,28 whereby different movements within a country and across countries united or formed alliances under the banner of human rights. Such a focal point shaped the coalition of opposition movements in at least two ways. First, under Helsinki a common ideological basis was formed: signatory countries of the Helsinki Final Act should simply observe the humanitarian provisions. Second, the Helsinki Final Act also influenced the common strategy of nonviolence. The Final Act brought out the relevance of the forgotten articles on citizens’ rights in most constitutions in Communist countries. The Final Act therefore gave dissidents a sense that the law was on their side and they could fight within the framework of their constitutions. By resorting to humanitarian provisions in the Helsinki Accords, most opposition movements became human rights movements in terms of their demands and their methods. In the Soviet Union, as documented by Alexeyeva (1985), humanitarian provisions in the Final Act provided common ground for various movements and further facilitated the unification of these movements.29 After the Helsinki Final Act, activists in Moscow and elsewhere formed separate but loosely connected Helsinki groups. Many such groups shared information and also issued some documents jointly (Alexeyeva 1985, 345–6). The unifying effect of the Helsinki Final Act and the subsequent human rights movement was reflected in the activities of religious organizations. Groups such as the Christian Committee for the Defense of the Rights of Religious Believers worked closely with the 28

29

On the point that international agreements provide a focal point in bargaining among relevant actors, see Garrett and Weingast (1993). Some scholars have suggested that, indeed, the Helsinki Accords provided a focal point stimulating the formation of Helsinki groups throughout Eastern Europe. See, for instance, Buergenthal (1992), as cited in Moravcsik (1995). The following brief account of various dissenting movements in the USSR draws upon Alexeyeva (1985, 201–64).


Helsinki groups. Through these groups, human rights groups of Baptists, Pentecostalists, and Adventists got in touch with the Christian Committee. For the first time, Russian Orthodox and Catholics made joint statements, under the unifying theme of human rights protection (Alexeyeva 1985, 345–6). This unifying effect of the Helsinki Final Act was also reflected in the growing national movements. In Ukraine, Lithuania, Georgia, and Armenia, activists followed the model of the Moscow Helsinki group to establish similar groups in the national movements. Like the Moscow Helsinki group, they used the humanitarian provisions of the Helsinki Final Act as a guide to their activities. Furthermore, human rights groups also took up the cause of national movements to a varying extent. For example, the Meskhi had appealed for decades to governments at various levels for the right to return to their homeland, Meskhetia, which is in the south of Georgia bordering Turkey. In 1976, the Initiative Group for Defense of Human Rights in Georgia reacted to their problem of nationality. The Georgia-oriented Meskhi turned to the Moscow Helsinki group, which then devoted a special document to this matter and charged the Soviet government with violating its obligations to national minorities as stated in the Final Act.30 In Poland, reference to Helsinki and human rights was central to the platforms of opposition across the ideological spectrum. As discussed in Thomas (1999), both KOR, which was based in leftist and social-democratic circles, and ROPCiO, which was based in nationalist and center-right circles, used the human rights banner to build alliances with workers. The independent national Committee of Polish Socialists urged the struggle for the rights guaranteed by the Polish government in the Helsinki Final Act (Thomas 1999, 217–18).

30

US Congress, Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Documents of Helsinki Dissent from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, 1978, as cited in Alexeyeva (1985).


The human rights activism mobilized by the Helsinki Accords also facilitated the emergence of an anti-Communist social movement. In particular it helped cement the broad alliance upon which the independent self-governing trade union Solidarity was based (Thomas 2001). This was a significant contribution to the rise of Solidarity, as a broad alliance had failed to emerge when students and intellectuals protested against censorship in 1968 and when workers protested against price increases in 1970 (Kubik 1994, 153). When KOR issued a public appeal in November 1976 calling on citizens to demand that cases of lawbreaking committed by the government should be publicized, the public response demonstrated cohesion between broad social circles: university professors, students, prominent cultural figures, workers, engineers, and Catholic priests (Lipski 1985, 105–6). Among the leaders of the subsequent strikes that led up to the formation of Solidarity, many were workers and intellectuals from human rights organizations such as KOR and ROPCiO.31 According to Lech Walesa (1987), the human rights movement after Helsinki contributed significantly to the drive for a workers’ organization to defend workers’ rights. In Czechoslovakia, making human rights a focal point also shaped the programs of opposition movements. First, such a focal point enabled those who endorsed the Prague Spring reform to revive their opposition to the authoritarian regime with a legitimized cover. Second, human rights principles were often the chief justification for protests. For instance, after an underground rock band was arrested in 1976, subsequent protesters labeled the arrest as governmental intervention “limiting and invalidating civil rights and freedoms, especially freedom of artistic creation, scientific research, and freedom of expression” (Skilling 1981, 13). Third, human rights principles also served to help form alliances between independent activities among the young and the religious with human rights organizations such

31

For a detailed account, see chapters 6 and 7 in Kubik (1994).


as Charter 77. When the regime launched an attack against popular music for young people in 1983, Charter 77 publicly warned that denying young people their favorite music would nourish latent social tensions. Meanwhile, to protect their religious rights, some pastors, priests, and theological students, as well as Catholic and Protestant laymen, took an active part in Charter 77, which issued a number of documents on religious persecution (Skilling 1989, 81–5). The significance of the focus on human rights was also reflected in the way human rights organizations worked. Charter 77 drew its legitimacy from the Helsinki Final Act as well as the two United Nations Covenants. The Charter stated that all citizens as well as the government bore responsibilities for the observance of human rights provisions legally enshrined in international agreements (Kusin 1979, 52). Across countries, civic associations inspired by the human rights provisions sought to achieve cooperation with fellow activists and establish solidarity across borders.32 To human rights activists in Eastern Europe, Andrei Sakharov – the eminent Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident, and human rights activist – was a symbol of the Russian struggle for human rights. KOR drew inspiration from Sakharov. A representative from KOR even met with him in Moscow in 1979, to exchange information and share strategies on the defense of human rights in the Soviet Union and Poland. KOR was subsequently able to publish occasional information from Russian human rights activists. As Sakharov was increasingly repressed, Charter 77 voiced strong protests against the Soviet Union. There were strong ties among human rights activists in Soviet satellite states. Human rights activists from Poland and Czechoslovakia demonstrated solidarity in various ways. First, representatives from KOR and Charter 77 managed to meet to exchange information on their activities and to issue joint statements. Second, activists

32

The following discussion of solidarity between human rights activists across borders draws on Lipski (1985, 278–85) and Skilling (1989, 58–60).


frequently issued appeals across borders to protest against the repression of activists in neighboring countries. For instance, on the tenth anniversary of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, almost all the uncensored press in Poland was devoted to this issue. Third, activists also tried to institutionalize some of their activities across borders. For instance, in 1981, a Polish–Czechoslovak Solidarity group was formed. In 1984, a joint statement expressing Czechoslovak– Polish unity was signed by leaders of Charter 77, former KOR, and Solidarity. Nineteen Hungarian dissidents later also endorsed the statement. The alliance widened until 1988 when 438 democratically minded citizens from the USSR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, and Yugoslavia signed a joint appeal to the CSCE conference in Vienna. They expressed common concern about the harassment and persecution of conscientious objectors by Communist regimes (Tismaneanu 1990, 20). The Helsinki Final Act later also served as a unifying theme for peace movements and human rights movements. In November 1986, independent activists from the USSR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany, and Yugoslavia signed a joint memorandum entitled Giving Real Life to the Helsinki Accords (Tismaneanu 1990, 13). There were subsequently numerous seminars on the relationship between peace and human rights, organized by peace and human rights activists across borders, and the Final Act was the most frequent reference in the international coordination of dissident actions (Tismaneanu 1990, 14–18). Providing information Information is important to human rights movements in countries where the state monopolizes information channels. This was well understood by dissidents across the Soviet bloc, who devoted much energy to samizdat writing and dissemination in order to create an independent public opinion. These publications such as the Chronicle of Current Events reported violations of human rights in the USSR and general facts relating to the implementation of human rights, along with human rights statements. They


helped disseminate human rights ideas and facilitated the influence of human rights movements (Alexeyeva 1985, 285). The importance of information dissemination through samizdat was also clearly understood by the Communist authorities. As the Chronicle of Current Events increasingly reported political sentences by the courts and the confinement of human rights activists in psychiatric hospitals, the authorities’ attack on the human rights movement was primarily targeted at samizdat. In this context, the Helsinki Final Act had informational effects. To disseminate the contents of the Final Act, signatory countries were required to publish it in their newspapers. Reports on human rights practices from subsequent review meetings also found their way back to domestic societies. At least three types of information helped human rights activism in exerting its impact on Communist governments. First, the Helsinki Final Act codified what states agreed upon, including concrete commitments states made regarding human rights practices. The humanitarian provisions served as an eye opener to citizens in countries where the state monopolized information and ideology. “Soviet citizens, reading the text of the Final Act in the papers, were stunned by the humanitarian articles; it was the first time they had heard of any kind of international obligations in the human rights field of their government” (Alexeyeva 1985, 336). In Poland, workers were encouraged to learn that international accords signed by their government actually guaranteed the right to free association and specifically to form independent trade unions (Thomas 1999, 217). Second, and perhaps more importantly, the Helsinki Final Act provided information on a legitimate criterion against which human rights practices should be evaluated. It provided a reference point. In Yury Orlov’s view, for instance, the rights of citizens enumerated in the humanitarian articles were to be treated as minimal international standards for countries that had signed the Helsinki Accords (Alexeyeva 1985, 338).


Third, information on actual human rights practices – particularly against the reference point set by the Helsinki Accords – was important for forming independent public opinion. Although this information was generated primarily by human rights activists, the CSCE helped facilitate such information in a number of ways. The review meetings on compliance with the Helsinki Final Act provided a forum for such information to be compiled and further disseminated in a mixture of state and societal channels. Furthermore, the formal codification of human rights commitments in the Final Act made it legitimate for Western governments and societies to facilitate the dissemination of such information, primarily through channels such as samizdat-tamizdat.33 Finally, the Final Act made it relevant and legitimate for citizens to monitor states’ compliance with its provisions and thus offered some, although an often thin, shield of protection for monitoring human rights practices and disseminating such information. During the late 1970s more than a hundred Moscow Helsinki group documents were added to human rights samizdat (Alexeyeva 1985, 352–3). Frequently, rather than publication, information dissemination took the form of argumentation and comments to justify what was right in terms of both principles and strategies. Facilitating activists’ influence through review meetings

In addition

to international agreements, international organizations – whether they are designed to enforce or manage states’ compliance with these agreements – are important. Along with the Helsinki Accords, the CSCE empowered human rights activism through both channels of information and political leverage. Specifically, the CSCE review meetings facilitated the influence of human rights activists in three distinctive ways. First, follow-up review meetings broadened the channels of information dissemination, particularly information on compliance

33

Tamizdat refers to the publication by Soviet writers of their works in the West. Without official permission, publication in the West was illegal.


with the Helsinki Final Act. As with most human rights policies and practices, the direct monitors were those whose rights were violated and their spokesmen. Although human rights activists usually published their reports of human rights abuses domestically through samizdat, the review meetings provided them with additional channels to influence international as well as domestic public opinion. The compliance information sent to the conferences often went back to the originating countries, either through samizdat or foreign broadcasting, often with added legitimacy. The Moscow Helsinki group systematically took advantage of these review meetings. After having prepared twenty-six documents for the Belgrade conference from October 1977 to March 1978, it prepared 138 documents for the Madrid conference from November 1980 to September 1983 (Alexeyeva 1985, 344–6). Many other associations in the Soviet Union also appealed to the Madrid conference, including Lithuanian Catholic believers, Jewish refuseniks, Pentecostalists, and Seventh-Day Adventists (Alexeyeva 1985). The Polish Helsinki Commission also sought to take advantage of these review meetings. Describing problems in the implementation of basic rights in Poland, its Madrid Report was published by an independent publishing house and was delivered to every delegation at the Madrid conference (Lipski 1985, 435–6). Similarly, Czech and Slovak writers presented a book entitled A Besieged Culture to all delegates at the CSCE Cultural Forum in Budapest in 1985. The book documented the Czechoslovak government’s assault on “the very roots of Czech and Slovak spiritual life” (Skilling 1989, 57). This information, which was used by Western delegates, placed Czechoslovakia’s delegates on the defensive on questions such as censorship and related issues (Skilling 1989, 57). A year later, Charter 77 addressed a letter to the CSCE Experts Meeting on Human Contacts in Bern, informing delegates of various Czechoslovak measures which hindered such contacts (Skilling 1989, 57). Second, besides enabling human rights activists to reach a wider audience, review meetings renewed the legitimacy of human rights


activists as monitors and information disseminators. They further provided human rights activists with opportunities to build international alliances. In this way, they lent a certain protection to these activists. As the preparatory talks for the Belgrade conference opened in June 1977, KOR issued numerous statements declaring that the human rights provisions in the Helsinki Final Act were not being respected in Poland, and defended its legitimacy in disseminating information to the public in the context of the CSCE review meetings (Lipski 1985, 166–7). During the Budapest Cultural Forum in 1985, a parallel forum was organized by the independent International Helsinki Federation. It brought together leading intellectuals from East and West to debate on reforms in Eastern Europe (Laber 2002, 241–4). At the CSCE Experts Meeting on Human Contacts in Bern a year later, private groups and organizations were actively engaged. They represented a broad range of concerns including Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union, Helsinki monitoring groups, religious freedom, etc. The events organized by these groups attracted considerable public attention (Lehne 1991, 32). Third, regular and somewhat institutionalized review meetings give renewed relevance to compliance with the Helsinki commitments. For instance, Charter 77 seized the opportunity of each CSCE conference to appeal to signatory countries, and most importantly its own government, for the implementation of the humanitarian provisions of the Helsinki Final Act. When the Madrid conference opened in 1980, Charter 77 renewed its appeals to the Czechoslovak government to honor its obligations under the Helsinki Accords and to take the necessary legal measures to bring the country’s laws into harmony with its commitments under international agreements (Skilling 1989, 55–6). Before the Experts Meeting on Human Rights in Ottawa in 1985, Charter 77 issued a long document calling again for legislative reforms in Czechoslovakia to bring the legal codes into harmony with international commitments (Skilling 1989, 56). Again, prior to the CSCE Cultural Forum in Budapest in 1985, Charter spokesmen –


joined by distinguished writers – issued a letter to the Czechoslovak government and other delegates reminding them of the systematic suppression of culture since the Soviet invasion (Skilling 1989, 56). As human rights movements developed, subsequent review meetings targeted the most urgent protection of the most relevant rights. At the Madrid conference, for instance, the repressive measures against Helsinki monitoring groups, the denial of religious freedom, the increased barriers against the flow of information and the reduction of emigration from the Soviet Union were criticized in great detail. The concluding document expanded on the Helsinki Final Act in the areas of human rights, trade union rights, religious liberty, freer circulation of information, and, under much disguise, the right of persons and groups to monitor the implementation of CSCE commitments (Lehne 1991, 19–22). The review meetings thus provided human rights activists with a forum for the continued mobilization. This proved significant (or consequential) as the activists deliberately took advantage of each of the CSCE conferences to influence public opinion domestically and internationally. In the above specific ways, the Helsinki Final Act and the CSCE facilitated the mobilization of human rights activism in the Soviet bloc. Thus human rights activists directly, and the Helsinki Final Act indirectly, reshaped the strategic calculations of authoritarian governments. Naturally, human rights activism was not translated, in a linear fashion, into the compliance decisions of authoritarian governments. Indeed, states’ responses were marked alternately by concessions to and oppression of human rights activists, until necessary conditions were created for positive changes to last. In the words of Charter 77, lasting changes were conceivable only if the necessary conditions were created. These conditions included “a transformation in the hearts and minds of people, in their morality, their relation to society, their civic postures,” that is, their social consciousness (Skilling 1989, 97–8). Post-Helsinki human rights activism helped


prepare for lasting changes.34 The Helsinki Final Act and the CSCE contributed to this process by facilitating domestic human rights activism.

conclusion This chapter has highlighted the indirect pathways through which international institutions influence states’ behavior. Because international agreements have domestic consequences and a government must respond to domestic interests to a varying extent, domestic victims of noncompliance and their advocates provide potential sources of domestic enforcement. To the extent that international institutions can utilize and further empower domestic constituents, they can influence states’ compliance indirectly. Through domestic constituencies, even weak international institutions that typically lack authority or capacity to directly enforce or manage states’ compliance may nevertheless influence sovereign behavior. Building on the domestic constituency mechanism as advanced in chapter 4, I have suggested that international institutions can play into the domestic game by strengthening the political leverage and improving the informational ability of domestic constituencies. I have traced empirically the specific ways in which the LRTAP Convention and the Helsinki Final Act empowered domestic environmental and human rights activism. By tracing indirect pathways through which international institutions can influence sovereign behavior, this study sheds light on how many international institutions – weak institutions that are nonbinding, or that are binding but lack enforcement capacities – may influence states’ behavior by empowering domestic constituencies. While these cases demonstrate a serious potential for international institutions to influence national policies through domestic constituencies, this mechanism does not work unconditionally.

34

Indeed, for efforts to demonstrate the enduring impact of the Helsinki norms, see Thomas (2001).


The preceding empirical investigations have important implications regarding these conditions, which I shall discuss below. First, under what conditions can international institutions work through domestic constituencies? While virtually all international institutions may influence states’ behavior through domestic constituencies, not all realize such potential. This domestic constituency mechanism presupposes the existence of domestic interests, which have incentives to respond to and utilize international institutions.35 In the case of the LRTAP Convention, environmental movements in many signatory countries preceded the Sulfur Protocol, and to some extent the LRTAP Convention itself. Rather than creating environmental activism, the LRTAP Convention lent environmental activists additional instruments such as information, legitimation, and additional fora for mobilization. Similarly, in the case of the Helsinki Final Act, human rights movements existed throughout the Soviet bloc in different forms with different focuses before the Helsinki Summit.36 Without creating dissent or dissidents, the Helsinki Final Act simply turned human rights victims and activists within the Soviet bloc into stakeholders and realized its potential power through the human rights activism that it helped empower. In contrast to the Helsinki Accords, earlier UN human rights accords had not played into domestic politics, in part because domestic human rights activism had not reached a significant level to react to and further utilize these accords.

35

36

For example, in demonstrating how European human rights institutions functioned by shaming and coopting domestic lawmakers, Moravcsik (1995) identifies the existence of civil society and domestic legal institutions as a prerequisite. As documented by Alexeyeva (1985), shortly after a renewed crackdown on remaining dissidents by the Communist regimes in 1972–3, human rights movements resurfaced. In the Soviet Union, human rights activists publicly demanded the release of samizdat writer and Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the day after his arrest in February 1974. The Chronicle of Current Events, which started publication in 1968 and stopped in 1972, reappeared in May 1974. The Initiative Group for the Defense of Human Rights in the USSR also reemerged (Alexeyeva 1985, 328–9). In Czechoslovakia after the Prague Spring, ex-politicians, writers, and artists never completely let go of the cause of free speech and protest. For details of dissident movements in Czechoslovakia after the Prague Spring, see Kusin (1978).


Second, under what conditions may international institutions influence states’ behavior effectively through such domestic channels? Even when international institutions play into domestic mechanisms of compliance, the effect of international institutions on states’ policies depends on the relative strength of domestic pro-compliance constituencies. In other words, the effect of international institutions through domestic mechanisms of compliance is translated into policy by domestic constituencies. Although both German and French environmental activists resorted to the LRTAP Convention in domestic environmental mobilization, the former translated the impact of the Convention into policy more effectively than the latter. In the case of the Helsinki Final Act, similarly, such cross-country difference also existed between, for instance, Poland and Czechoslovakia on the one hand and Bulgaria and Romania on the other.37 However, even when domestic constituencies failed to translate the impact of international institutions effectively into policy, it does not necessarily mean that international institutions are irrelevant. Although stronger pro-compliance activism can translate the impact of international institutions more effectively into policy, it is to the weaker procompliance activism that additional instruments from international institutions are particularly valuable. For instance, the informational function of international institutions is particularly important for pro-compliance activists in countries where states monopolize information. This is the case even if pro-compliance activism in these countries cannot yet generate substantial influence on states. In my account, thus, international institutions are facilitators rather than creators or the sole determinant of domestic procompliance activism. This account represents the middle ground: on the one hand, international institutions do not have unconditional or uniform effect; on the other hand, even weak international institutions can influence states’ policies, albeit indirectly. Their effect

37

For a detailed analysis, see Thomas (2001).


depends on the existence and strength of domestic pro-compliance constituencies that these institutions help empower. While domestic constituencies are the direct sources of enforcement, international institutions – along with other factors38 – may contribute to strengthening pro-compliance constituencies and thereby shift the domestic power balance. 38

For factors that are conducive to human rights movements, see Donnelly (1989).

6

Conclusion

The central question in this book is, how do international institutions influence sovereign behavior? Rather than how international institutions influence states’ compliance directly by enabling states to use carrots and sticks against each other, this book investigates how they do so indirectly through victims of noncompliance and domestic mechanisms. Although there is a growing interest in such indirect channels of influence by international institutions, scholars have not always thought theoretically and analytically about them. This book seeks to achieve greater theoretical clarity by specifying (1) how international institutions utilize victims of noncompliance in monitoring, (2) how states’ compliance decisions respond to domestic constituencies, and (3) how international institutions facilitate states’ compliance through domestic mechanisms. In so doing, it develops a theoretical framework to bring nonstate actors and domestic politics into the study of international institutions. This chapter seeks to accomplish three tasks. First, I summarize key findings on how international institutions influence national policies. Second, I discuss the theoretical implications of this for the study of international relations. Third, I further explore policy implications for global governance.

nonstate actors, domestic politics, and international institutions This book argues that international institutions can influence states’ compliance with international agreements through victims of noncompliance and domestic mechanisms. It advances this argument by resolving three related puzzles on international institutions. First, do international institutions by and large monitor states’ compliance

c o n c l u s i o n 141

with treaties, and if so, how? Second, when international institutions do not have independent monitoring capabilities and consequently may also lack the ability to enforce compliance, what drives states’ compliance with international commitments? Third, although limited in both monitoring and enforcement, how do weak international institutions influence states’ compliance? On the first question about monitoring arrangements, except in a few large and strong international treaty regimes, treaty organizations rarely perform the function of information provision completely by themselves. In fact, a host of nonstate actors often participate in monitoring states’ compliance to a varying extent. I have argued that states design monitoring arrangements for international institutions to take advantage of noncompliance victims as low-cost monitors. Mapping strategic environments onto monitoring arrangements, I have sought to account for who detects noncompliance and who brings it to light. In particular, two factors – (1) the availability of victims of noncompliance as low-cost monitors, and (2) the interest alignment between these victims and their states – largely shape the organizational forms of monitoring arrangements. This simple theory sheds light on a wide range of substantively important treaty regimes in such diverse issue areas as money, trade, security, human rights, and the environment. The empirical cases that I have examined – the IMF, the NPT regime, the GATT/WTO, and various human rights and environmental regimes – display variations in the availability of noncompliance victims as low-cost monitors and the interest alignment between these victims and their states. As the empirical cases vary along these two dimensions, the level of centralization in monitoring arrangements varies, subscribing varying tasks to treaty organizations, states, and nonstate actors. On the second question about compliance mechanisms, problems that resemble a PD game at the international level may present governments with an entirely different strategic environment domestically. Within a country, some actors gain while others may lose if


the government does not comply with an international agreement. I have thus modeled a government’s compliance decision in the shadow of competing domestic constituencies. While the government makes a compliance decision on behalf of domestic constituents, the latter may have a certain leverage over the government. I have shown formally that a government’s compliance decision is determined not only by the political leverage of domestic constituencies but also by their informational endowment. To demonstrate how this domestic constituency mechanism works empirically, I have studied European countries’ compliance with the LRTAP Convention. I have conducted categorical data analysis involving participating countries as well as in-depth examination of some signatory countries. Both the quantitative and qualitative findings are consistent with the central finding in the model: European countries’ compliance with the 1985 Sulfur Protocol reflected the electoral leverage and informational status of domestic constituencies. On the third question about the effects of weak international institutions, although those international institutions that lack carrots and sticks are typically viewed as weak, alternative channels of influence may nevertheless give power to the weak. To the extent that weak international institutions can work effectively through these alternative channels, they may nevertheless have powerful effects on states. To specify these indirect channels of influence, I have located the analysis of institutional effects in the domestic context, where international institutions may influence a state’s behavior by altering the strategic environment that a government faces domestically. Drawing from the model of domestic constituency mechanism, international institutions may alter the domestic environment by increasing the political leverage and improving the informational status of pro-compliance constituents. To demonstrate how weak international institutions may influence states’ behavior through domestic constituencies, I have investigated cases in two issue areas. In tracing the domestic effects of the LRTAP Convention and the Helsinki Final Act, my goal has been to spell out the specific ways in which international


institutions empower domestic constituents through information and leverage mechanisms. By resolving these critical puzzles, this book has developed a theoretical framework to bring nonstate actors and domestic politics into the study of international institutions. Accordingly, it suggests important implications for the study of international relations.

implications for ir theory This book contributes to international relations theory in several ways. First, it highlights the need to think about international institutions theoretically and analytically. International institutions are increasingly important in a globalizing world. New institutions are being established, while many existing ones are being reformed. The fact that international institutions are diverse and numerous, however, does not reduce the utility of general theorizing. To the contrary, it increases the need for a coherent theory appropriate for guiding empirical research. The literature on the effects of international institutions has provided valuable clues on how international institutions may work through complex transnational and domestic channels.1 As the list of plausible channels of influence gets longer, however, insufficient attention is paid to specifying why and how each causal mechanism works and how different mechanisms interact. This book contributes to this empirically rich strand of literature with a needed theoretical framework. In a primarily rationalist framework, it specifies how international institutions utilize victims of noncompliance in monitoring states’ compliance and how they empower domestic constituencies in enforcing it.

1

Important works include Haas, Keohane, and Levy (1993), Mitchell (1994a), Victor, Raustiala, and Skolnikoff (1998), Weiss and Jacobson (1998), Young (1999), Underdal and Hanf (2000), Helm and Sprinz (2000), Simmons (2000), Miles, Underdal, Andresen, Wettestad, Skjaerseth, and Carlin (2002), Fortna (2003), and Underdal and Young (2004).


In developing a general theoretical framework, this book seeks to capture common structures underlying a broad range of international institutions in diverse issue areas. I highlight some key strategic problems states face both internationally and domestically, as well as the tradeoffs that these problems create. The way that states resolve these tradeoffs – involving nonstate actors and domestic politics – explains national policies and international arrangements to a significant extent. Thus, whether states have incentives to protect victims of noncompliance and whether states can employ nonstate monitors shapes how international institutions monitor states’ compliance in diverse issue areas. Similarly, regardless of the specific issues involved, competing domestic interests have a varying leverage over governments. The resulting domestic accountability influences policymaking in crucial ways and shapes how international institutions may influence national policies. However essential, these mechanisms are not the only ones. Future work needs to layer in additional contextual variables to generate more refined predictions in specific cases. To that end, the theoretical framework in this book provides a sound basis. Second, this book relaxes the unitary actor assumption and asserts that nonstate actors and domestic mechanisms are crucial for understanding how international institutions work. It is debatable whether states are losing primacy with the rising influence of nonstate actors (e.g. Mathews 1997, Krasner 2001). Yet states do respond to nonstate actors and take into consideration their interests and political attributes. The mechanisms of such responses deserve careful attention, because they in turn shape national policies and international outcomes. In the past two decades, the rationalist literature on international institutions has rigorously addressed monitoring and enforcement in an international game.2 However, it has not systematically

2

For the analytical foundation of this literature, see Keohane (1984), which was followed by a productive and influential literature, as reviewed in chapter 2. Recent


theorized alternative mechanisms involving nonstate actors and domestic mechanisms. Sharing a rationalist orientation but departing from the state-centric focus in the literature, this book explains how international institutions may facilitate international cooperation through nonstate actors and domestic mechanisms. In so doing, this book not only uncovers previously underappreciated causal mechanisms but also suggests ways to better understand previously recognized pathways. This book uncovers alternative ways in which international institutions provide information on states’ compliance. Instead of directly inspecting states’ compliance with international agreements, international institutions often take advantage of other stakeholders. Specifically, they enable and facilitate victims of noncompliance to monitor states’ compliance. Such decentralized monitoring arrangements suggest very different implications – from those based on centralized monitoring arrangements – on how to improve institutional effectiveness. This book also uncovers alternative sources of states’ compliance and accordingly specifies indirect pathways of influence by international institutions. States’ compliance decisions are not determined exclusively by international factors. Oftentimes, they are shaped more fundamentally by domestic considerations. The domestic constituency mechanism that I identify further suggests that international institutions can facilitate states’ compliance effectively and efficiently by enhancing the political leverage and improving the informational capacity of domestic constituencies. Again, these indirect pathways of influence suggest different policy implications on how to evaluate and strengthen international institutions. By uncovering important yet previously underspecified causal mechanisms, this book broadens the ways in which international

contributions include Martin (1992a), Morrow (1994), Downs, Rocke, and Barsoom (1996), Fearon (1998), Drezner (2000), McGillivray and Smith (2000), Simmons (2000), and Koremenos, Lipson, and Snidal (2001).


institutions may influence national policies. International institutions work in different ways. Sometimes they directly apply carrots and sticks to states. More often they enable states to use carrots or sticks on each other. I have examined how international institutions utilize victims of noncompliance in monitoring and further empower domestic constituencies in enforcement. This book thus casts doubt over the claims that international institutions are useless because they lack coercive power or that institutions can be effective only when they have carrots or sticks. It might be tempting to ask how much these indirect channels of influence, in contrast to traditional mechanisms based on the unitary actor assumption, explain institutional effects. It is reasonable to contrast these two classes of mechanisms, if the direct and indirect channels of influence are mutually exclusive. More often, however, these two sets of mechanisms work in complementary and interactive ways. Under those circumstances, it might be rather difficult, and potentially misleading even if possible, to gauge the relative significance of each set of causal mechanisms at explaining institutional effects. Although it is hard to pinpoint the relative significance of these mechanisms, one fact highlights the importance of indirect mechanisms. That is, indirect mechanisms often substantiate the logic of “direct” mechanisms. In many cases, nonstate actors and domestic dynamics condition the direct effect of international institutions. To substantiate this point, let us take membership conditionality as an example. The European Union has used EU membership to induce policy change in Eastern European countries. It is often a reasonable simplification that international institutions reward with membership and punish by withdrawal of membership, and such rewards and punishments directly influence a government’s policy. However, membership conditionality does not work with all countries at all times. In part this has to do with the fact that rewards and punishments by international institutions are often internalized by competing domestic interests to a varying extent. Their effects on


national policies are thus mediated by domestic interest competition. In an excellent study of EU membership conditionality, Judith Kelley (2004) highlights domestic conditions for such direct channels of influence. Despite broad-based opposition to EU-supported laws in Latvia and Estonia, membership conditionality influenced national policies because opposition groups had much to lose from failing to join the EU. In contrast, even though the opposition to EU-supported laws was not massive during the time of the Meciar government in Slovakia, membership conditionality did not produce a preferred policy outcome, because it failed to erode domestic opposition of a rather small and extremist group with no stake in EU membership. Thus, although membership conditionality may alter states’ cost and benefit calculations, these mechanisms are less direct than we might think. Whether and how these mechanisms influence national policies depends on how these elements are internalized by competing domestic interests, and how they are politicized to mobilize competing interests. Such examples illustrate the significance of nonstate actors and domestic politics in understanding the seemingly direct effects of international institutions. In general, indirect channels of influence are important for weak or strong international institutions. They may work in the absence or presence of direct mechanisms. Third, this book maintains that, with the unitary actor assumption relaxed, rationalism is more useful than previously credited in accounting for the effects of international institutions. A rationalist theory that incorporates nonstate actors and domestic mechanisms provides a coherent framework, where we can identify a fuller range of institutional effects and take seriously many constructivist claims in the process. The past decade has witnessed impressive progress in the study of international institutions. From diverse methodological and ontological perspectives, scholars have tried to broaden the ways in which international institutions matter. Many scholars recognize that the earlier rationalist institutional literature – e.g. cooperation theory and regime theory – does not adequately account for the full range of


utilities of international institutions. Constructivists have often led the move away from the rationalist literature. They emphasize ideas, the logic of appropriateness, endogeneity of preferences, and so on. These developments may have left an impression that the enriched understanding of international institutions has been achieved entirely by abandoning rationality. Such an impression is misguided, however. Parallel to the constructivist effort to challenge the rationalist ontology was the effort among both the constructivists and the rationalists to relax the assumption of states as unitary actors. While Jeffrey Checkel (1998) criticized the earlier constructivists for failing to provide a theory of agency and domestic mechanisms, there has been a resurgence of attention from the rationalists to domestic sources of foreign policy. Although it is useful to broaden ontological orientations, relaxing the state-centric assumption in both approaches has made an equal if not greater contribution to the better understanding of international institutions. This book shows that, even without altering the rationalist orientation, relaxing the unitary actor assumption substantially enriches our understanding. In light of this work, the earlier rationalist literature fails to appreciate alternatives to interstate channels of influence, not because it emphasizes enforcement, but because it neglects alternatives to international enforcement. In other words, the failure of earlier institutional theories lies not necessarily in its rationalist orientation, but in its unitary actor assumption, which resulted in the negligence of nonstate actors and domestic mechanisms. This book incorporates nonstate actors and domestic mechanisms in a rationalist framework. It specifies how international institutions impact states’ rational self-interests by employing victims of noncompliance and empowering domestic constituents. To emphasize the usefulness of a rationalist framework is not to deny the profound contribution of the constructivist thinking. In fact, the recent constructivist efforts – e.g. to relax the state-centric focus and to bring in agency – complement and reinforce similar efforts


among the rationalists. This study further suggests room where the two approaches can enhance each other. Despite the common perception to the contrary, rationalist motivations are not confined to material interests. The mobilization of environmental activism, for instance, need not be for the sole purpose of generating financial contributions. It may be and often is to persuade the broader public. The desire of society – materialistic or idealistic – is consequential for governmental policymaking. Thus, some constructivist contributions on how domestic actors use international norms to mobilize public pressure on their governments fit well into a rationalist framework like the one developed in this book. While the constructivist works may bring nuances into the detailed processes of domestic mobilization, a rationalist theory incorporating nonstate actors and domestic mechanisms helps provide a rationale for how such mobilization impacts policy decisions. This book thus suggests a way of synthesizing rationalism and constructivism in a coherent and analytically tractable framework.

policy implications The ideas presented in this book also have important policy implications for global governance. First, this book offers fresh insights on how to make international institutions more effective. As international institutions grow in number, practitioners and scholars alike are concerned with how to make them more effective. Frequently, recommendations about how to make a specific regime effective are prescribed by identifying successful institutional features in other regimes. For example, it has been suggested that environmental regimes should copy centralized monitoring procedures such as those in the NPT regime or the Chemical Weapons Convention. This book suggests that such prescriptions are problematic because they do not consider whether states’ interests allow such centralized procedures, and whether such procedures are efficient or cost-effective. This book argues that centralized monitoring or enforcement is not a solution


for all regimes or even most regimes. This is because many treaty organizations face resource constraints and, meanwhile, nonstate stakeholders often exist to detect noncompliance and/or enforce compliance domestically. In such circumstances, international institutions can utilize and further empower these constituents without costly centralization. Second, the findings in this book have implications for the debate between the managerial school which emphasizes capacity building and rule interpretation and the enforcement school which stresses coercive sanctions (Chayes and Chayes 1995, Downs, Rocke, and Barsoom 1996).3 This book recognizes enforcement as a powerful logic, but it highlights the domestic source of enforcement. Interestingly, the role of international institutions in facilitating domestic enforcement is very different practically from their role in international enforcement. In fact, the way in which international institutions facilitate domestic enforcement, e.g. by empowering procompliance constituencies, parallels some policy implications offered by the managerial school, such as capacity building. Third, this book provides a theoretical rationale for why even “weak” institutions and “soft” laws can impact national policies. While all international institutions can potentially work through nonstate actors and domestic mechanisms, this channel is particularly important for weak international institutions. The findings in this book support arguments for the benefits of informal agreements and soft law (e.g. Lipson 1991, Abbott and Snidal 2000, Weiss 1997, Falkner, Treib, Hartlapp, and Leiber 2005, Ku and Diehl 2006). The causal mechanism emphasized here is neither their ability to allow rule-binding treaty parties to authoritatively resolve ambiguities in agreements (Shelton 2000), nor their provision of a crucial framework for conversation in which states may alter their understanding of their own identity (Toope 2000). Rather, the power of weak institutions and

3

Also see Tallbert (2002), who explores the complementary nature of the two approaches.


soft law lies in its potential ability to empower domestic constituent, who directly impact a government’s rational self-interests. Fourth, recognizing the diversity of international institutions and particularly how weak international institutions may work in fundamentally different ways from more powerful ones, this study suggests caution about greater legalization: a move toward hard law (Goldstein, Kahler, Keohane, and Slaughter 2001). Some scholars have pointed out that legalization may induce a backlash (Goldstein and Martin 2000, Alter 2000), while others have challenged the expectation that a greater degree of legalization leads to a higher level of compliance (Lutz and Sikkink 2000). This study further suggests that, to the extent that greater legalization deters participation, it may diminish potential indirect effects that weaker institutions and softer laws can have on states. From a policy perspective, gradual progress enabled by weak institutions through nonstate actors and domestic mechanisms may move us further along than a giant leap by strong institutions that sovereign states do not want to create. Delineating how international institutions influence states’ behavior by employing nonstate actors and through domestic mechanisms, this book should encourage future work on these and other indirect channels of influence. The implications so far should help policymakers in utilizing incentive-compatible instruments in costeffective ways.

Appendix A Formal solutions

This appendix contains formal solutions to the game model developed in chapter 4. Proposition 1 Proof. The game is solved by backwards induction. We will first solve the policymaker’s choice of the compliance level in the second period. We then focus on the first period, where the policymaker’s compliance decision and the interest groups’ voting rules are interactive. In the second period, because the incumbent policymaker can no longer compete for reelection, Pr(ω) = 0. max Ugovt (x) = max x

x

2

(−α i (x − xi )2 + θ i ), i ∈ {1, 2}.

(A.1)

i=1

2 −2α i (x − xi ) = 0. The second-order The first-order condition is i=1 2 condition is i=1 −2α i < 0. Thus the policymaker’s choice of the com∗ pliance level is xt=2 =

2 αi x i i=1 , 2 i=1 α i

as solved in equation (4.3).

In the first period, however, the incentive structure is different: the policymaker aims to maximize both the aggregate welfare and his chance of getting reelected. Because the policymaker can compete for reelection, Pr(ω) = 0. max Ugovt (x) = max x

x

2

(−α i (x−xi )2 + θ i ) + Pr(ω)δV, i ∈ {1, 2}.

i=1

(A.2)

f o r m a l s o l u t i o n s 153

The first-order condition is given by 2

−2α i (x − xi ) +

i=1

∂Pr(ω) δV = 0. ∂x

To solve for x, we need to figure out

∂Pr(ω) , ∂x

(A.3) i.e. how the incumbent’s

choice of the compliance level changes his chance of reelection, given the electorate’s voting strategies. Let v i be the voting strategy of group i. Since the interest groups do not directly observe the actual compliance level, they assess – in deciding how to vote – how much the incumbent has attended to their interests according to the first-period welfare they observe. Thus, for i ∈ {1, 2}, vi =

1

if Ui ≥ ki

0

otherwise.

How does interest group i decide on the optimal threshold ki∗ ? Interest group i chooses the optimal ki∗ to maximize the sensitivity of the incumbent’s chance of reelection to how much the incumbent attends to its own interests. If we let F i (.) be the cumulative density function of θ i , the probability that group i votes for the incumbent policymaker is Pr(v i = 1) = Pr(Ui ≥ ki ) = Pr(−α i (x − xi )2 + θ i ≥ ki ) = 1 − F i (ki + α i (x − xi )2 ).

(A.4)

How precisely do the voting strategies of interest groups affect the government’s choice of the compliance level? Applying the generalized chain rule, 2 ∂Pr(ω) ∂Pr(ω) ∂Pr(v i = 1) = . ∂x ∂Pr(v i = 1) ∂x i=1

Thus the impact of the compliance level on the probability that the incumbent policymaker wins reelection is expressed in terms of (1) the effect of the compliance level on the probability that each

154 a p p e n d i x a

interest group votes for the incumbent policymaker and (2) the effect of the probability that each group votes for the incumbent policymaker on the probability that the incumbent wins reelection. Letting

∂Pr(ω) ∂Pr(v i =1)

= λ i , which represents the electoral leverage of

group i, and applying equation (A.4), 2 ∂Pr(ω) −2λ i α i (x − xi ) f i (ki + α i (x − xi )2 ). = ∂x i=1

Now that we have figured out

∂Pr(ω) , ∂x

(A.5)

the first-order condition

defined by equation (A.3) becomes −

2

2α i (x − xi ) −

i=1

2

2λ i α i (x − xi ) f i (ki + α i (x − xi )2 )δV = 0.

i=1

(A.6) Provisionally assuming that the second-order condition is also satisfied, equation (A.6) implicitly defines the policymaker’s best response as a function of ki , i ∈ {1, 2}. I now proceed to find out the optimal threshold ki∗ and the best response x ∗ (ki∗ ) in the following three steps. Step 1 Rearranging the terms of the first-order condition as expressed in equation (A.6), for group 1, f1 (k1 + α 1 (x − x1 )2 ) α 2 x − x2 1 − =− λ1 δV λ1 α 1 δV x − x1 λ2 α 2 x − x 2 − f2 (k2 + α 2 (x − x2 )2 ). λ1 α 1 x − x 1

(A.7)

It is straightforward to verify that the right-hand side of equation (A.7) is decreasing in x, ∂ the right-hand side of equation (A.7) ∂x α2 λ2 α 2 (x2 − x1 ) f2 (k2 + α 2 (x − x2 )2 ) x2 − x1 =− − λ1 α 1 δV (x − x1 )2 λ1 α 1 (x − x1 )2 2 λ2 α 2 2α 2 (x − x2 ) f2 (k2 + α 2 (x − x2 )2 ) − λ1 α 1 x − x1 0 (A.10) since x1 < x < x2 and f1 (k1 + α 1 (x − x1 )2 ) ≥ 0. Regarding f1 (k1 + α 1 (x − x1 )2 ) ≥ 0, it is satisfied at k1∗ because, as expressed in step 1, group 1 chooses k1∗ such that k1∗ + α 1 (x(k1∗ ) − x1 )2 = 0 and thus f1 (0) = 0. Thus, x is biggest when the left-hand side of equation (A.9) is at the maximum. So, group 2 – which prefers a high compliance level – chooses a unique cut rule k2∗ so as to maximize the left-hand side. Again, the assumption that f2 (·) is strictly unimodal and symmetric with mean zero implies that f2 (·) reaches its maximum at f2 (0).

156 a p p e n d i x a

Thus, to induce the highest possible compliance level, group 2 chooses k2∗ such that k2∗ + α 2 (x(k2∗ ) − x2 )2 = 0, and thus f2 (0) = 0. Since k2∗ is chosen such that k2∗ + α 2 (x(k2∗ ) − x2 )2 = 0 and thus f2 (0) = 0, the condition pending for verification from step 1, f2 (k2 + α 2 (x − x2 )2 ) ≥ 0, is therefore satisfied at k2∗ . Therefore, interest group i chooses the optimal cut rule ki∗ such that ki∗ + α i (x(ki∗ ) − xi )2 = 0, for i ∈ {1, 2}, as given in equation (4.2). Step 3 With the optimal strategies ki∗ such that ki∗ + α i (x(ki∗ ) − xi )2 = 0, i ∈ {1, 2}, equation (A.6), which implicitly defines the policymaker’s best response x ∗ , becomes −

2

α i (x ∗ − xi ) −

2

i=1

λ i α i (x ∗ − xi ) f i (0)δV = 0.

i=1

Since f i is strictly unimodal and symmetric with mean zero, the value of f i (0) decreases with the variance of the density function f i . That is, the better informed group i is, the higher the f i (0) value. This term expresses how well informed group i is. Letting f i (0) = φ i , we solve directly for the incumbent policymaker’s best response, ∗ (ki∗ ) = xt=1

2 α i (1+λ i φ i δV)x i i=1 , 2 i=1 α i (1+λ i φ i δV)

as given in equation (4.1).

It remains to check that the second-order condition is indeed satisfied at x ∗ and ki∗ . Carrying on from equation (A.6), the necessary second-order condition is −

2 i=1

−

2

αi −

2

λ i α i δV f i (ki + α i (x − xi )2 )

i=1

2λ i α i 2 δV(x − xi )2 f i (ki + α i (x − xi )2 ) < 0.

(A.11)

i=1

This is true since ki∗ + α i (x ∗ (ki∗ ) − xi )2 = 0, f i (0) > 0, and f i (0) = 0, ∀i ∈ {1, 2}.

Proposition 2 Proof. We now check what makes the second-period compliance pol∗ ∗ icy differ from that in the first period. Given xt=1 (ki∗ ) and xt=2 as in

f o r m a l s o l u t i o n s 157

proposition 1, ∀i ∈ {1, 2}, α 1 x1 + α 2 x2 α 1 (1 + λ1 φ 1 δV)x1 + α 2 (1 + λ2 φ 2 δV)x2 = α 1 (1 + λ1 φ 1 δV) + α 2 (1 + λ2 φ 2 δV) α1 + α2 ⇐⇒ α 1 α 2 δV(x2 − x1 )(λ2 φ 2 − λ1 φ 1 ) = 0

∗ ∗ xt=1 (ki∗ ) = xt=2 ⇐⇒

⇐⇒ λ2 φ 2 = λ1 φ 1 , because α i > 0, δ > 0, V > 0, and x2 > x1 . ∗ ∗ Thus, xt=1 (ki∗ ) = xt=2 ⇐⇒ λ1 φ 1 = λ2 φ 2 , as provided in proposition 2.

Furthermore, it is straightforward to verify the following comparative statics: ∂ ∗ ∂ α 1 (1 + λ1 φ 1 δV)x1 + α 2 (1 + λ2 φ 2 δV)x2 x = ∂λ2 t=1 ∂λ2 α 1 (1 + λ1 φ 1 δV) + α 2 (1 + λ2 φ 2 δV) −(x2 − x1 )(1 + λ1 φ 1 δV) = −α 2 φ 2 δVα 1 2 (α 1 + α 1 λ1 φ 1 δV + α 2 + α 2 λ2 φ 2 δV) > 0. (A.12) ∂ ∗ ∂ α 1 (1 + λ1 φ 1 δV)x1 + α 2 (1 + λ2 φ 2 δV)x2 xt=1 = ∂φ 2 ∂φ 2 α 1 (1 + λ1 φ 1 δV) + α 2 (1 + λ2 φ 2 δV) −(x2 − x1 )(1 + λ1 φ 1 δV) = −α 2 λ2 δVα 1 2 (α 1 + α 1 λ1 φ 1 δV + α 2 + α 2 λ2 φ 2 δV) > 0. (A.13) ∂ α 1 (1 + λ1 φ 1 δV)x1 + α 2 (1 + λ2 φ 2 δV)x2 ∂ ∗ x = ∂λ1 t=1 ∂λ1 α 1 (1 + λ1 φ 1 δV) + α 2 (1 + λ2 φ 2 δV) −(x2 − x1 )(1 + λ2 φ 2 δV) = α 1 φ 1 δVα 2 2 (α 1 + α 1 λ1 φ 1 δV + α 2 + α 2 λ2 φ 2 δV) < 0. (A.14) ∂ ∗ ∂ α 1 (1 + λ1 φ 1 δV)x1 + α 2 (1 + λ2 φ 2 δV)x2 x = ∂φ 1 t=1 ∂φ 1 α 1 (1 + λ1 φ 1 δV) + α 2 (1 + λ2 φ 2 δV) −(x2 − x1 )(1 + λ2 φ 2 δV) = α 1 λ1 δVα 2 2 (α 1 + α 1 λ1 φ 1 δV + α 2 + α 2 λ2 φ 2 δV) < 0. (A.15)

Appendix B Ranking of signatory countries in LRTAP

This appendix presents more detail on the rank ordering of participating countries in the LRTAP regime as developed in chapter 4. It is based on various dimensions of domestic environmental activism using a number of data sets.

r a n k i n g o f s i g n at o ry c o u n t r i e s i n l r t a p 159

Table B.1. Ranking countries by domestic environmental activism over acid rain, with Euro-barometer 25, 29, 31A, and 35 Acid rain

Environ. NGOs

Euro–B25

v172

v218

Denmark

2

1

1

4

8

W. Germany

3

3

5

1

12

2

Netherlands

1

5

2

5.5

13.5

3

Belgium

4

6

3

2

15

4

Italy

6

2

4

5.5

17.5

5

France

5

4

6

3

18

6

v181

v221

Euro–B29

Greens Score Ranking

v276v277 v286 1

Denmark

1

1

2

1

W. Germany

4

2

6

2

Netherlands

2

5

7

3

Belgium

3

6

9

5

Italy

6

3

9

5

France

5

4

9

5

Euro–B31A

v488v503v504 v323

v656

Denmark

2

3

1

6

1

W. Germany

2

2

3

7

2

Netherlands

2

1

6

9

3

Belgium

4

4

2

10

4

Italy

5.5

5

5

15.5

5

France

5.5

6

4

15.5

5

Euro–B35

v127v145v146 v114

v235

Denmark

1

1

6

8

2

W. Germany

2.5

3

3

8.5

3

Netherlands

2.5

2

2

6.5

1

Belgium

4

4

4

12

4

Italy

5.5

5

5

15.5

6

France

5.5

6

1

12.5

5

160 a p p e n d i x b

Table B.2. Ranking countries by domestic environmental activism over acid rain, with ISSP Environment and Euro-barometer 43 Acid rain Environ. NGOs Greens Score Ranking v46

v13

v60

W. Germany

1

2

2

5

1

Netherlands

6

3

1

10

2

Norway

7

1

3

11

3

Italy

3

6

4

13

4

Czechoslovakia

5

4

5

14

5

E. Germany

2

7

6

15

6

Bulgaria

4

5

8

17

7

Hungary

8

8

7

23

8

Euro–B43

v170

v182

v188

Sweden

2

2

3

7

1

Denmark

6

1

2

9

2.5

Netherlands

4

4

1

9

2.5

Finland

1

3

6

10

4

Austria

3

7

4

14

5

W. Germany

5

5

5

15

6

Italy

8

6

8

22

7

Belgium

7

9

7

23

8

France

9

8

9

26

9

ISSP Env

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Index

Abbott, Kenneth, 16, 23, 150 Abbott, Roderick, 54 accountability, 72, 78, 83, 99, 104, 115 Adamova, Eva, 97, 98 Adler, Emanuel, 18, 25 Alesina, Alberto, 27 Alexeyeva, Ludmilla, 120–23, 125–7, 131–3, 137 Allee, Todd, 56 Allison, Graham, 27 Alter, Karen, 29, 151 Andresen, Steinar, 143 Ausubel, Jesse, 62 Avery, William, 28 Axelrod, Robert, 17 Baltic Sea regime, 63 Barrett, Scott, 19, 25 Barsoom, Peter, 19, 20, 23, 60, 75, 101, 145, 150 Basel Convention, 63 Bates, Robert, 11 Bawn, Kathleen, 37 Bayard, Thomas, 20 Bayne, Nicholas, 29 Bernauer, Thomas, 25 Boehmer-Christiansen, Sonja, 94, 95 Breitmeier, Helmut, 25 Brezhnev, Leonid, 124 Brown, Jonathan, 25 Broz, Lawrence, 28 Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce, 10, 28, 78 Buergenthal, Thomas, 126 Bull, Hedley, 17 Busch, Marc, 28 Calvert, Randall, 37 Carlin, Elaine, 143 Chayes, Abram, 13, 19, 20, 23, 29, 52, 58, 59, 64, 150 Chayes, Antonia Handler, 13, 19, 20, 23, 29, 52, 58, 59, 64, 150 Checkel, Jeffrey, 18, 29, 101, 148

Choucri, Nazli, 25 climate change regime, 64 Cole, Alistair, 96, 97 collective action problem, 1, 2, 7, 19, 33, 46, 48, 53, 60 compliance and domestic mechanisms, see dmestic constituency 6 definition of, 14, 15, 74, 75 Conca, Ken, 25 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), 8, 113, 115, 116 and human rights activism, 102, 119, 125, 130, 132–5 Conradt, David, 94 constructivist approach, 11, 17–19, 31, 101, 147, 148 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), 64 Conybeare, John, 17 Cortell, Andrew, 29 Cottarelli, Carlo, 27 Cowhey, Peter, 27 Dai, Xinyuan, 28 Dalton, Russell, 89, 94 Davis, James, 29 DeSombre, Elizabeth, 25 Diehl, Paul, 13, 18, 150 Dobrynin, Anatoly, 124 Doherty, Brian, 96, 97 domestic constituency competing, 6, 70, 72, 76, 86, 91 informational capacity of, 6, 71, 76, 77, 80–2, 85, 90, 91 leverage of, 6, 71, 81, 82, 85, 90, 91 Donnelly, Jack, 17, 139 Downs, George, 19–21, 23, 28, 60, 75, 101, 145, 150 Dresser, Denise, 60 Drezner, Daniel, 17, 19, 25, 26, 29, 145

184 i n d e x

du Monteuil, Caroline, 95, 96 Duffield, John, 29 Economy, Elizabeth, 25 Eichengreen, Barry, 27 Elliott, Kimberly, 20 Elster, Jon, 10, 11 English, William, 20 environmental activism, 85–7, 89, 90, 93, 97, 158 Enyedi, Gyorgy, 110 ¨ European human rights regime, 60 Evans, Peter, 28 Falkner, Gerda, 150 Fearon, James, 11, 17–20, 28, 30, 35, 45, 72, 80, 145 Ferejohn, John, 10, 72, 80 Finger, Matthias, 25 Finnemore, Martha, 11, 18, 25, 29, 101 Fiorina, Morris, 80 Fisher, Roger, 13, 14, 85 Forsythe, David, 114 Fortna, Virginia Page, 143 Fox, L. David, 25 Franck, Thomas, 18 Frankland, Gene, 95 Frieden, Jeffrey, 27 Friman, Richard, 28 game theory, 19, 35, 73, 79, 81, 152 Garrett, Geoffrey, 126 Gartzke, Erik, 28 Gaubatz, Kurt, 27 Gehring, Thomas, 25 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), see Wrld Trade Organization (WTO) 4 Gijswijt, August, 110 Gilligan, Michael, 75 Glaser, Charles, 16, 18, 23 Gleditsch, Kristian, 28 Goetz, Anne Marie, 25 Goldstein, Judith, 11, 13, 18, 29, 151 Gourevitch, Peter, 27 Gowa, Joanne, 10, 17, 28 Green, Donald, 11 Green, Edward, 22 Greene, Owen, 62, 63 Greenpeace, 64, 65, 111

Greif, Avner, 11, 16, 37 Grieco, Joseph, 16, 18 Grossman, Sanford, 70 Gruber, Lloyd, 13, 16, 18, 20 Gubin, Sandra, 114 Gurowitz, Amy, 59 Haas, Peter, 16, 25, 29, 30, 38, 112, 143 Haggard, Stephan, 24, 29, 100 Hanf, Kenneth, 25, 143 Hardi, Peter, 98 Hardin, Russell, 11, 46, 47 Hart, Oliver, 70 Hartlapp, Miriam, 150 Hasenclever, Andreas, 18 Heffernan, Liz, 60 Helm, Carsten, 143 Helsinki Final Act, 8, 113–15, 117 and human rights activism, 102, 118–32, 134, 135, 137, 138 Henkin, Louis, 13 Holmstrom, Bengt, 36, 70 ¨ Hug, Simon, 28 Husak, Gustav, 124 Iida, Keisuke, 28 Ikenberry, G. John, 20, 27 information asymmetric, 35, 36 provision of, 1, 2, 4, 23, 33, 35, 111, 130–2 interest alignment, 4, 34, 38, 39, 41, 43–5, 49, 50, 55–7, 61, 65 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), 53 international institutions and domestic constituency, 3, 7, 102, 103, 105–9, 138 definition of, 15, 16 direct vs indirect effects of, 144–7 effectiveness of, 149, 150 International Labor Organization (ILO), 58 international law, 17, 150, 151 International Maritime Organization (IMO), 62, 64 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 27, 50–3 Jacobson, Harold, 13, 14, 25, 28–30, 143 Jancar-Webster, Barbara, 87, 98, 112

i n d e x 185

Jensen, Nathan, 28 Jervis, Robert, 17 Johnson, James, 11 Jones, Michael, 20, 21 Kahler, Miles, 10, 11, 13, 18, 51, 104, 151 Kaplan, Jeffrey, 13 Katzenstein, Peter, 18, 27, 29 Keck, Margaret, 18, 25, 29, 101 Kelley, Judith, 29, 147 Keohane, Robert, 1, 11, 13, 14, 16–21, 24, 25, 29, 30, 33, 35, 38, 143, 144, 151 Kitschelt, Herbert, 87 Klotz, Audie, 18, 29, 101, 108 Knopf, Jeffery, 27, 28 Konig, Thomas, 28 ¨ Kooijmans, Pieter, 59 Koremenos, Barbara, 19, 23, 145 Korey, William, 114 Krasner, Stephen, 1, 11, 17, 18, 20, 25, 144 Kratochwil, Fridrich, 15, 18 Kreps, David, 21, 22, 36 Ku, Charlotte, 18, 150 Kubik, Jan, 128 Kusin, Vladimir, 120, 125, 129, 137 Laber, Jeri, 114, 134 Lake, David, 10, 36 Lanchbery, John, 63 Laugen, Torunn, 92, 93 Leeds, B. Ashley, 28 Legro, Jeffery, 18 Lehman, Howard, 28 Lehne, Stefan, 114–16, 134, 135 Leiber, Simone, 150 Leone, Alfredo, 27 Levi, Margaret, 11 Levy, Marc, 16, 18, 25, 30, 38, 63, 89, 110, 143 Lidskog, Rolf, 26 Lipski, Jan Jozef, 122, 123, 128, 129, 133, 134 Lipson, Charles, 17, 19, 23, 28, 145, 150 Lohmann, Susanne, 72, 80 Long Range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP) Convention, 1, 7, 8, 23, 62, 63, 84, 114, 158 and environmental activism, 102, 109–13, 137, 138 low-cost monitors, 4, 34, 38, 41–5, 49, 50, 56, 57, 61, 65, 66

Luterbacher, Urs, 25 Lutz, Ellen, 151 Mansfield, Edward, 27, 28 Maresca, John, 114–16 Martin, Lisa, 10, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20, 27, 28, 35, 100, 145, 151 Mathews, Jessica, 144 Mattli, Walter, 29 Mavroidis, Petros, 54 Mayer, Frederick, 28 Mayer, Peter, 18 McCoy, Jennifer, 28 McCubbins, Mathew, 36, 37 McGillivray, Fiona, 17, 19, 145 McGinnis, Michael, 28 McKean, Margaret, 38 Mearsheimer, John, 16, 19 Mertha, Andrew, 28 Michnik, Adam, 121 Miles, Edward, 143 Milgrom, Paul, 22, 37 Milner, Helen, 10, 19, 24, 27, 28 Mitchell, Ronald, 13, 14, 17, 20, 25, 62, 64, 85, 143 Mo, Jongryn, 28 Moravcsik, Andrew, 20, 25, 27–9, 108, 126, 137 Morgenthau, Hans, 16 Morrow, James, 10, 17, 19, 28, 35, 78, 145 Nelson, Joan, 51 Neoliberal Institutionalism, 4, 9, 14, 17–19, 23, 31, 33, 35 Neorealism, 16, 18 Neumayer, Erik, 28 New Institutionalism, 15, 35–7 Noll, Roger, 37 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), 4, 33, 50, 52, 53 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), 4, 33, 44, 57, 59, 61–5 North, Douglas, 15, 37 Nye, Joseph, 24 O’Brien, Robert, 25 Olson, Mancur, 46 Ostrom, Elinor, 25, 38 Oye, Kenneth, 1, 17 Ozone Accords, 62

186 i n d e x

Paarlberg, Robert, 28 Pahre, Robert, 28 Papayoanou, Paul, 28 Patterson, Lee Ann, 28 Perotti, Roberto, 27 Persson, Torsten, 78 Pevehouse, Jon, 29 Porter, Robert, 22 Powell, Robert, 10, 17 Price, Richard, 18 Princen, Thomas, 25 Prisoners’ Dilemma (PD), 5, 21, 33, 35, 69 Putnam, Robert, 28, 29 Qureshi, Asif, 54 rationalist approach, 7, 9, 10, 14, 18–21, 24, 31, 34, 100, 101, 144, 147, 148 Raustiala, Kal, 15, 23, 25, 27, 28, 64, 75, 85, 143 reciprocity, 1, 17, 20–2, 33, 114 Reinhardt, Eric, 28 Reinicke, Wolfgang, 25 Reiss, Mitchell, 52 Reitan, Marit, 92, 93 Reiter, Dan, 28 reputation, 17, 20–3, 33 Rhode, Barbara, 110 Risse, Thomas, 18, 26, 101 Rittberger, Volker, 18 Roberts, John, 22 Rocke, David, 19, 20, 23, 28, 60, 75, 101, 145, 150 Rogowski, Ronald, 27 Ropp, Stephen, 101 Rosenau, James, 27 Rosencranz, Armin, 92, 110 Rosendorff, B. Peter, 27, 28 Rosenthal, Jean-Laurent, 11 Rubenstein, Joshua, 120, 121 Ruggie, John, 15, 18 Rupnik, Jacques, 125 Russell, Harold, 116 Russett, Bruce, 28 Sachariew, Kamen, 64 Sachs, Jeffrey, 51 Sand, Peter, 63, 112 Sanger, David, 64 Satori, Anne, 20

Schachter, Oscar, 117 Schimmelfennig, Frank, 18 Scholte, Jan Aart, 25 Schoppa, Leonard, 28 Schreurs, Miranda, 25 Schultz, Kenneth, 28, 80 Schwartz, Thomas, 36 Sevilla, Christina, 56 Shanks, Cheryl, 13 Shapiro, Ian, 11 Shelton, Dinah, 150 Sikkink, Kathryn, 11, 18, 25, 29, 60, 101, 151 Simmons, Beth, 13–15, 19, 20, 24, 27–9, 100, 143, 145 Siverson, Randolph, 28, 78 Skea, Jim, 94–6 Skilling, Gordon, 121–3, 128, 129, 133–5 Skjaerseth, Jon Birger, 143 Skolnikoff, Eugene, 15, 25, 27, 75, 143 Slaughter, Anne-Marie, 13, 15, 27, 29, 85, 151 Smith, Alastair, 17, 19, 27, 28, 78, 145 Snidal, Duncan, 10, 16–19, 23, 34, 35, 145, 150 Snyder, Jack, 27 Sprinz, Detlef, 25, 89, 94, 143 Stam, Allan, 28 state-centric focus, 9, 14, 19, 23, 24, 31, 100, 101, 145, 148 Stein, Arthur, 17, 20, 35 Stigler, George, 47 Stokke, Olav Schram, 25 Stone, Randall, 51 Strange, Susan, 16 Sulfur Protocol of 1985, 7, 71, 84, 85, 90, 95, 97, 99 Sundqvist, Goran, 26 Tabellini, Guido, 78 Tallbert, Jonas, 150 Taylor, Michael, 17 Thomas, Daniel, 18, 114–16, 121, 122, 124, 125, 127, 128, 131, 136, 138 Tismaneanu, Vladimir, 130 Toope, Stephen, 150 Trade Policy Review Mechanism (TPRM), 54 Trebbi, Francesco, 78 Treib, Oliver, 150 two-level games, 28

i n d e x 187

Underdal, Arild, 25, 143 United Nations (UN) human rights regime, 59 Vaahtoranta, Tapani, 25 Verdier, Daniel, 28 Victor, David, 15, 25, 27, 28, 62, 75, 143 Vidas, Davor, 25 Wagner, R. Harrison, 17 Wahl, Andreas, 94 Walesa, Lech, 128 Walter, Barbara, 13 Waltz, Kenneth, 16, 18 Wapner, Paul, 25 Weingast, Barry, 11, 28, 37, 126

Weiss, Edith Brown, 13, 14, 25, 29, 30, 143, 150 Wendt, Alexander, 11, 18 Wetstone, Gregory, 92, 110 Wettestad, Jørgen, 25, 143 whaling regime, 64 Williams, John, 28 Williams, Marc, 25 Wilson, Robert, 22 World Trade Organization, 4, 33, 40, 47, 53–6 Young, Oran, 13–15, 17, 18, 25, 26, 30, 38, 112, 143 Zamora, Daniel, 18 Zeckhauser, Richard, 46 Zurn, Michael, 18, 25 ¨

International Institutions and National Policies

International coordination of national stabilization policies

The California Republic: Institutions, Statesmanship, and Policies

Water Institutions: Policies, Performance and Prospects

International Organization: Theories and Institutions

Reviews of National Policies for Education: Chile’s International Scholarship Programme

Monetary Theory: National and International

Adjusting to Europe: The Impact of the European Union on National Institutions and Policies

Handbook of Disaster and Emergency Policies and Institutions

Global Positioning System: Assessing National Policies

Implementing Sustainable Urban Travel Policies, National Reviews

Reforming urban land policies and institutions in developing countries

The Reform of International Institutions

US and Cross-National Policies, Practices, and Preparation

International Institutions and Socialization in Europe (International Organization)

The World Bank: Structure and Policies (Global Economic Institutions)

International Cultural Policies and Power (International Political Economy)

International Economic Law and National Autonomy

Personal Identity, National Identity and International Relations

Knowledge Intensive Business Services: Organizational Forms And National Institutions

International Organizations before National Courts

Reviews Of National Policies For Education By Country: Bulgaria: Science, Research And Technology (Reviews of National Policies for Education)

International Institutions and the Political Economy of Integration (Integrating National Economies)

International Trade and Climate Change Policies (Trade and Environment Series)

International Migration and Sending Countries: Perceptions, Policies and Transnational Relations

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