The International Criminal Court, Sovereignty, and the United States: global power and the case for non-participation

At the heart of the debate over the International Criminal Court lies the amorphous notion of globalization. Calling into question the normative assumptions driving international humanitarian efforts, the evolving conception of the sovereign state, strategic interactions among countries and the ability of the international community to work multilaterally towards a common vision of justice, the debate spans a broad range of issues concerning global governance. The United States? rocky relationship with the International Criminal Court is a particularly revealing entry point. Is the United States? opposition simply an expression of unilateralist arrogance and refusal to concede to an increasingly important system of global governance that much of the international community accepts? In fact, American non-support runs much deeper. Both a strategic approach to United States? foreign policy objectives and an examination of the ideological incompatibilities between the United States? Constitution and participation in the Court reveal the centrality of sovereignty in the debate. In a strategic sense, it is not in the interest of the United States to concede judicial autonomy to the International Criminal Court. In an ideological sense, the tensions are seemingly irresolvable. Both point to why the United States has become a global hegemonic power and how this hegemony plays out. Further, both reveal just how deeply the International Criminal Court renegotiates state sovereignty by shifting the standards of international human rights law. This thesis proceeds in three stages. First, it explores the position the International Criminal Court occupies in relation to the established tradition of international and specifically human rights law. Second, it evaluates the argument against American participation in the Court examining the alleged dissonance with constitutional democracy and tangible threats the institution poses to US foreign-relations objectives. Finally, it places the debate in the context of larger theoretical questions concerning sovereignty. Does the Court create an upheaval in the global order of sovereign nations in general? Or, does this claim of universality thinly veil the United States? ultimately particular concerns about the maintenance of hegemony within a changing global order. This thesis ends by exploring the potential alternatives for creating better agreement between the most deeply held ideological concerns driving the United States? foreign policy and the changing demands of international political environment while questioning the efficacy of international criminal adjudication in achieving human rights goals

Preferential Trade Agreement Networks: Proliferation and Impact

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of preferential trade agreements (PTAs). Through these treaties, countries agree to reduce trade barriers and open their economies to one another. Besides facilitating cooperation between member countries, PTAs also create exclusions that may harm non-members. The scholarship on trade agreements has focused on two questions: (1) when do countries join PTAs? and (2) how do PTAs impact trade cooperation? There is little consensus on answers due, at least in part, to methodological obstacles. The indirect effects of PTAs---on non-member countries---are important parts of the puzzle of whether they increase trade cooperation. Using network analysis, this paper shows that PTAs proliferate especially between small countries and active trade partners. The apparent impact of these treaties on trade is positive, once sufficient time-spans are included. By explicitly modeling indirect effects in a network, this paper reduces measurement bias and generates more accurate estimates

Why Comply? Domestic Politics and the Effectiveness of International Courts

This dissertation asks: when do international courts promote cooperation among countries? I argue that international courts can successfully restore economic relations between disputing governments but their impact depends on domestic politics. When confronted with an adverse legal ruling from an international court, a defendant government must determine whether and when to comply. Governments are constrained by domestic institutional divisions and partisan conflict: "veto points." Countries with substantial divisions are less likely to comply because more political actors must coordinate to implement the ruling. As partisan divisions grow, government leaders are constrained by their domestic opposition and compliance becomes more difficult. The design of the international court contributes to this effect. Courts vary in their ability to sanction violations. When the court is designed to be flexible, imposing low costs for noncompliance, the impact of domestic politics is particularly pronounced. These arguments are tested with international trade disputes at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the European Court of Justice (ECJ). The first empirical chapter uses WTO disputes to examine the impact of domestic politics in the defendant country on compliance with adverse legal rulings. Adverse rulings require a defendant government to remove trade barriers so this chapter assesses compliance using trade flows. I build a novel data set on compliance using the method of synthetic case control and product-level time-series trade data. I infer the defendant complied if trade flows increased after the dispute, relative to estimated levels that would have occurred in the absence of the ruling. The estimates show compliance problems are both widespread and systematically linked to domestic politics. Domestic constraints---measured in terms of veto points---hinder compliance.The second empirical chapter tests my main argument on the European Court of Justice. I show that domestic political constraints in European Union countries also impact compliance with adverse legal rulings. I focus on infringement disputes over trade-related issues, instances in which European member states imposed illegal barriers to intra-European commerce. This chapter uses a hierarchical model that captures the multi-level structure of the data. By examining intra-European trade over time, I show that adverse rulings lead to a modest increase in trade but this tendency is conditional on domestic politics. Defendant governments with many veto players appear impervious to adverse rulings. The findings indicate that ECJ rulings can prompt governments to open their markets to more European commerce, but that domestic politics can obstruct this process. The third empirical chapter evaluates the effectiveness of international dispute settlement along a different dimension: the time to resolve a dispute. Because prolonged lawsuits can buy defendants time to ``cheat'' at the expense of plaintiffs and other members of the international institution, they can have deleterious effects on cooperation that are similar to noncompliance. This chapter demonstrates that WTO and ECJ lawsuits against defendants with many domestic veto points lasted longer on average, before the countries acquiesced. Moreover, the ill effect of veto players on dispute resolution has been stronger in the WTO than the ECJ. I argue that the design of the international court mediates the impact of domestic veto players on dispute duration. In sum, my dissertation shows that international courts can successfully promote economic cooperation between countries but their effectiveness hinges on domestic politics

Why Comply? Domestic Politics and the Effectiveness of International Courts

This dissertation asks: when do international courts promote cooperation among countries? I argue that international courts can successfully restore economic relations between disputing governments but their impact depends on domestic politics. When confronted with an adverse legal ruling from an international court, a defendant government must determine whether and when to comply. Governments are constrained by domestic institutional divisions and partisan conflict: "veto points." Countries with substantial divisions are less likely to comply because more political actors must coordinate to implement the ruling. As partisan divisions grow, government leaders are constrained by their domestic opposition and compliance becomes more difficult. The design of the international court contributes to this effect. Courts vary in their ability to sanction violations. When the court is designed to be flexible, imposing low costs for noncompliance, the impact of domestic politics is particularly pronounced. These arguments are tested with international trade disputes at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the European Court of Justice (ECJ). The first empirical chapter uses WTO disputes to examine the impact of domestic politics in the defendant country on compliance with adverse legal rulings. Adverse rulings require a defendant government to remove trade barriers so this chapter assesses compliance using trade flows. I build a novel data set on compliance using the method of synthetic case control and product-level time-series trade data. I infer the defendant complied if trade flows increased after the dispute, relative to estimated levels that would have occurred in the absence of the ruling. The estimates show compliance problems are both widespread and systematically linked to domestic politics. Domestic constraints---measured in terms of veto points---hinder compliance.The second empirical chapter tests my main argument on the European Court of Justice. I show that domestic political constraints in European Union countries also impact compliance with adverse legal rulings. I focus on infringement disputes over trade-related issues, instances in which European member states imposed illegal barriers to intra-European commerce. This chapter uses a hierarchical model that captures the multi-level structure of the data. By examining intra-European trade over time, I show that adverse rulings lead to a modest increase in trade but this tendency is conditional on domestic politics. Defendant governments with many veto players appear impervious to adverse rulings. The findings indicate that ECJ rulings can prompt governments to open their markets to more European commerce, but that domestic politics can obstruct this process. The third empirical chapter evaluates the effectiveness of international dispute settlement along a different dimension: the time to resolve a dispute. Because prolonged lawsuits can buy defendants time to ``cheat'' at the expense of plaintiffs and other members of the international institution, they can have deleterious effects on cooperation that are similar to noncompliance. This chapter demonstrates that WTO and ECJ lawsuits against defendants with many domestic veto points lasted longer on average, before the countries acquiesced. Moreover, the ill effect of veto players on dispute resolution has been stronger in the WTO than the ECJ. I argue that the design of the international court mediates the impact of domestic veto players on dispute duration. In sum, my dissertation shows that international courts can successfully promote economic cooperation between countries but their effectiveness hinges on domestic politics

Preferential Trade Agreement Networks: Proliferation and Impact

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of preferential trade agreements (PTAs). Through these treaties, countries agree to reduce trade barriers and open their economies to one another. Besides facilitating cooperation between member countries, PTAs also create exclusions that may harm non-members. The scholarship on trade agreements has focused on two questions: (1) when do countries join PTAs? and (2) how do PTAs impact trade cooperation? There is little consensus on answers due, at least in part, to methodological obstacles. The indirect effects of PTAs---on non-member countries---are important parts of the puzzle of whether they increase trade cooperation. Using network analysis, this paper shows that PTAs proliferate especially between small countries and active trade partners. The apparent impact of these treaties on trade is positive, once sufficient time-spans are included. By explicitly modeling indirect effects in a network, this paper reduces measurement bias and generates more accurate estimates