Still Looking for Audience Costs

A pair of recent studies, motivated largely by limitations in the research designs of previous projects, offers evidence the authors interpret as contradicting audience cost theory. Although we share the authors’ ambivalence about audience costs, we are not convinced by their evidence. What one seeks in looking for audience costs is evidence of a causal mechanism, not just of a causal effect. Historical case studies can be better suited to detecting causal mechanisms than quantitative methods, and these two studies claim to be examining causal mechanisms. Yet process tracing is much less effective in assessing audience costs than Trachtenberg and others believe. After outlining relevant problems, we encourage scholars to theorize about and test more carefully key micro-foundations of audience cost theory

The Role of Precedent at the European Court of Human Rights: A Network Analysis of Case Citations

While political scientists have become increasingly interested in the output of international courts, they have paid little attention to the manner by which these courts justify their decisions and develop legal norms. We address these issues through a network analysis of European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) citations. We argue that, like domestic review courts, the ECtHR uses its legal justifications at least in part to convince “lower” (domestic) courts of the legitimacy of its judgments. Several empirical observations are consistent with this view. First, country-specific factors do not determine the case-law on which the Court relies. Instead, it cites precedent based on the legal issues in the case. Second, the Court is more careful to embed judgments in its existing case law with respect to the more politically sensitive decisions. Third, the court embeds its judgments in case-law more when the respondent government is from a common law legal system where the courts traditionally rely more on similar justifications. In all, we conclude that the ECtHR by and large uses case law to justify its decisions in a way that is similar to domestic review courts. Finally, we highlight the utility of applying network analysis to further study the development of international legal norms

Clubs of Clubs : A Networks Approach to the Logic of Membership in Intergovernmental Organizations

Political scientists are paying increasing attention to the effect that shared membership in intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) has in international politics. A number of studies have examined the role that shared membership in IGOs has on dependent variables such as conflict, trade, interest convergence and the diffusion of human rights norms. More recently, scholars have turned their attention to explaining the variation that exists in the extent to which states join IGOs in the first place. In this paper we advance this literature by adopting a network theoretic perspective of IGO membership. Rather than considering the IGO network as simply a collection of ties between states, we consider the ways in which the IGO network can be conceptualized as a number of distinct communities that consist of states and IGOs. We posit that accounting for membership in these communities allows IR scholars adopt a more nuanced understanding of the causes and effects of IGO membership. Our argument is that, depending on the logic of IGO joining, we would expect these clubs of clubs or IGO communities to be defined on differing grounds. In the empirical part of the paper we use the network analytic tool of modularity maximization to detect the IGO communities in the global network for the period 1950-2000. We describe how the IGO communities have developed over time and test the extent to which factors such as development, geography, regime type, alliance ties, language, religion and colonial ties explain the IGO community structure

Inferring Mechanisms for Global Constitutional Progress

Constitutions help define domestic political orders, but are known to be influenced by two international mechanisms: one that reflects global temporal trends in legal development, and another that reflects international network dynamics such as shared colonial history. We introduce the provision space; the growing set of all legal provisions existing in the world's constitutions over time. Through this we uncover a third mechanism influencing constitutional change: hierarchical dependencies between legal provisions, under which the adoption of essential, fundamental provisions precedes more advanced provisions. This third mechanism appears to play an especially important role in the emergence of new political rights, and may therefore provide a useful roadmap for advocates of those rights. We further characterise each legal provision in terms of the strength of these mechanisms

International rules, national implementation : how domestic politics condition the effects of international legal commitments

How and when do commitments to international institutions affect the behavior of national governments? This dissertation provides substantive and methodological advances in answering this key question in international relations research. Chapter 1 addresses the selection effect problem in this literature, which threatens inferences we can make about the effects of treaty commitments. I argue that in order to address this problem, we first need to estimate the treaty commitment preferences of states. I develop a procedure designed to do so that combines ideal-point estimation and propensity- score matching and apply this procedure to test the effects of three human rights agreements. Chapter 2 analyzes the role of domestic courts in enforcing international commitments. I develop a theory that predicts when courts can be effective enforcers based on the costs of producing evidence and the legal standards of proof. I test this theory using the procedure developed in Chapter 1. Chapter 3 analyzes the role of domestic legislative veto players in enforcing international commitments. While much of the literature assumes veto players can make commitments more credible in all areas, I argue that in the human rights context their ability to do so depends on the extent to which leaders can effectively violate human rights without legislative approval and in secret. I test this theory using the procedure developed in Chapter 1. Finally, Chapter 4 returns to the estimates of treaty commitment preferences developed in Chapter 1. I analyze the treaty commitment preference space in order to better understand the key predictors of these preferences. I find that economic policy is the clearest and most consistent predictor of treaty commitment preferences, including with respect to non-economic treatie

Replication data for: The Informative Power of Treaty Commitment: Using the Spatial Model to Address Selection Effects

The effects of international institutions on state behavior make up a key research agenda in international relations scholarship. Because states self-select into treaties, we cannot infer that these commitments have causal effects unless we address this selection effect. I explain the significant limitations of the methods used thus far to overcome this problem and argue that a more effective approach must take into account states' treaty preferences. I describe a novel combination of ideal point estimation and propensity score matching that can estimate the probabilities of treaty commitment and use them to test hypotheses. I use this procedure to the test the effects of three key international human rights treaties. My results provide significant new findings regarding the effects of these important agreements

Replication data for: Legislative Veto Players and the Effects of International Human Rights Agreements

Do national legislatures constitute a mechanism by which commitments to international human rights treaties can be made credible? Treaty ratification can activate domestic mechanisms that make repression more costly, and the legislative opposition can enhance these mechanisms. Legislative veto players raise the cost of formalistic repressive strategies by declining to consent to legislation. Executives can still choose to rely on more costly, extralegal strategies, but these could result in severe penalties for the leader and require the leader to expend resources to hide. Especially in treaty member-states, legislatures can use other powers to also increase the cost of extralegal violations, which can further reduce repression. By using an empirical strategy that attempts to address the selection effects in treaty commitment decisions, I show that positive effects of human rights treaties increase when there are more legislative veto players