The Economic Leverage of International Organizations in Interstate Disputes

Addressing a long-standing debate in international relations scholarship, this study shows that international governmental organizations (IGOs) with high economic leverage over their member states, such as some development banks, substantially lower the risk that political disputes experience the use of military force. Empirical tests covering cases of disputatious claims and international crises since 1946 make use of a new classification of IGOs that have economic leverage and use it toward increasing states’ cost of using force in disputes. When pairs of states are subject to the economic leverage of IGOs, they are substantially less likely to use force. For the understanding and practice of interstate dispute resolution and international conflict more generally, the study suggests a specific linkage between institutionalized economic interdependence and conflict escalation.     

International Public Goods and Agency Problems in Treaty Organizations

This paper analyzes the extent to which international public goods and agency problems are present in international organizations. A noncooperative model of the funding choices of donor countries and the subsequent policy choices of an international agency is used to develop hypotheses about the behavior of ideal and problematic international agencies. The analysis suggests that international agencies are likely to be underfunded and undermonitored relative to that which maximizes the joint interest of signatory countries. The funding and policy implications of the model are tested using data from the Global Environment Facility (GEF). The statistical results suggest that (i) treaty obligations affect behavior of Annex 1 and non-Annex 1 countries, (ii) GEF’s allocation of grants generally advances the international environmental agenda, and (iii) significant free-riding and agency problems exist in GEF as it is presently organized. Overall, the empirical results suggest that treaty organizations may be relatively effective, if not perfect, instruments of international public policy.      

Regional International Organizations and Individual Immigration Attitudes: Results from Finite Mixture Models

When are individuals more likely to support immigration? We suggest here that regional international organizations (IOs; for example, the European Union) publicly release reports about the scale and benefits of immigration to member states in the region in which these IOs operate. We argue that unlike individuals who are uninformed about immigration, informed individuals who have more knowledge of the main regional IO in which their country participates will be more likely to employ immigration reports released by their regional IO to construct their immigration attitudes. They will also perceive that these reports are credible. The credibility of these reports helps individuals with more knowledge about their region’s main IO to view immigrants favorably, which translates to support for immigration. We test our prediction by developing a finite mixture model that statistically accounts for the econometric challenges that emerge when uninformed individuals “save face” by disproportionately opting for the middle “status quo” category in ordinal survey response variables of immigration support. Results from the finite mixture model corroborate our prediction and are more reliable than estimates from a standard ordered probit model.     

Global Energy Governance: Trade,Infrastructure, and the Diffusion of International Organizations

Why do states choose to join and form international governmental organizations (IGOs) that regulate energy policy? In this article we make three specific contributions to the literature on international cooperation and diffusion. First, we show that countries form and join energy IGOs in response to memberships previously gained by direct competitors among oil and gas producers and consumers. Moreover, we demonstrate that energy IGOs diffuse among countries that share oil and gas pipelines. Finally, we provide evidence that the institutional design of established energy IGOs impacts the development of their membership network. To test these hypotheses, we rely on original data on oil and gas pipelines and the design of energy IGOs as well as on a newly compiled dataset that includes 152 countries and covers 38 years (1970–2007). We employ both network analysis and spatial econometrics.     

The Dynamics of Enlargement in International Organizations

Most international organizations (IOs) expand their membership over the course of their lifespan. Although these enlargements tend to be heralded as normatively positive — for the IOs themselves, for the new members, and for cooperative outcomes more generally — expansions can also lead to conflicts in the organization. What conditions lead to enlargement rounds that reshape an organization in unexpected ways? We argue that, depending upon the diversity of the initial group of countries, members may vote to admit new entrants that can tilt organizational decision-making in unexpected directions. We anticipate fewer enlargements with lesser impact on the character of the organization among organizations that have either a smaller range of founding members or a relatively even initial dispersion. We develop an agent-based model that accounts for the complex decision-making environment and social dynamics that typify IO accession processes. The model helps us explain how the nature of decision-making in organizations can shift following enlargement, likely changing the organization’s output and goals.     

发达国家的非营利组织能力建设

在发达国家,非营利组织能力建设是一项广为接受的活动,它主要是指在各种支持组织的帮助下非营利组织提升组织能力的活动,而兴起根源在于福利国家变革背景下非营利组织的发展困境、市场化的负面影响、"志愿失灵"与治理危机以及新自由主义话语的兴起等综合作用的结果。发达国家的非营利组织能力建设活动取得了一定的积极成效,但也面临着一些问题。在我国,社会组织能力建设要与制度建设的实践相结合。     

How International Reputation Matters: Revisiting Alliance Violations in Context

We investigate the role of international reputation in alliance politics by developing a signaling theory linking past alliance violations with the formation of future alliance commitments. In our theory, past violations Are useful signals of future alliance reliability conditional on whether they effectively separate reliable from unreliable alliance partners. It follows that states evaluating potential alliance partners will interpret past violations in their context when deciding to enter a new alliance, attaching less weight to violations in “harder times,” when many states are defaulting on their alliance commitments together, and more weight to violations in “easier times,” when fewer states are defaulting on their alliances. We test our theory and find that states are empirically more likely to form new alliances with states that violated in harder times compared to states that violated in easier times. The results have important implications for how scholars understand and estimate the impact of international reputation.     

20世纪上半叶国际性难民组织与难民保护考察

1950年的联合国难民署、1951年的《难民公约》及1967年修订的《难民地位公约议定书》从制度与法律上对难民进行保护,是当今国际难民保护机制的核心角色。它是在两次世界大战前后成立的国际性难民组织的难民保护实践基础上建立和发展起来的。实际上,当今国际难民保护机制与早期难民组织提供难民保护面临的困境大体相似。本文通过考察20世纪上半叶成立的4个国际性的难民组织在难民保护上所起到的作用,并试图分析其局限性,以期为我们考察当今国际难民保护机制的持久性与它延续的可能性提供历史的与国际关系的分析视角。     

Regime and Power in International Terror Crises: Strong Democracies Fight Back Hard

This study explores regime, power, and violence in international terror crises (ITCs). It examines terror strikes and retaliations against the terror groups and their hosts. The exploration tests two hypotheses: first, democracies, like other states, retaliate, even at the risk of escalation; and second, strong democracies fight back with massive violence as do authoritarian regimes. Historical narratives of ITCs from 1934 to 2006 show that strong democracies were the most common targets of terror. Like authoritarian states, they responded to terror, but were the most violent retaliators, followed by weaker states, democratic or not. So the democratic constraints affect weaker states more than stronger ones. These trends draw attention to the destabilizing nature of international terror and its challenge to the peaceful resolution of international disputes.     

When Honor Trumps Basic Needs: The Role of Honor in Deadly Disputes within Israel's Arab Community

This article draws on the existing literature, interviews, and case study analysis to highlight the primacy of honor needs above health and safety needs in the context of honor killings and blood feuds among Israel's Arab community, including Muslims, Christians, and Druze. Assuming that individuals in conflict situations will generally act to satisfy more basic needs before they act to satisfy less basic needs, this article examines conflict contexts in which disputants perceive their honor to be a higher priority than their health and safety, and consequently, they tend to act accordingly to satisfy their perceived honor needs first, often ignoring obvious health and safety‐related needs. Such insights could have important implications for scholars and dispute resolution practitioners studying and working within these conflict contexts.     

Equality and Inequality in the WTO Dispute Settlement (DS) System: Analysis of the GATT/WTO Dispute Data

This article explores the distributive aspects of the dispute settlement mechanism (DSM) of the World Trade Organization WTO. Even though the strictly binding dispute settlement (DS) system can operate in an unbiased way and thereby minimize power disparity among disputants, in general, the content of law on which the whole DS system is based is favorable to developed countries in the system. This study of the WTO DSM demonstrates that (1) the procedural/substantive dispute outcomes of the WTO are not significantly affected by power disparity between disputants (thus, enhancing the principles of “equality before the law” and “protecting the weak”), but that (2) the strict substantive provisions and the newly included provisions of the WTO agreements are advantageous to developed countries and disadvantageous to developing countries (thus, increased inequality in the content of the law). In order to understand the distributive consequences of the legal DSM, we need to combine an analysis of the operation of the legal body with an examination of the content of the law.