Signed but Not Ratified: Limits to U.S. Participation in International Environmental Agreements

Why does the United States sign environmental treaties but not ratify them? U.S. presidents have negotiated and signed several environmental treaties that ultimately could not obtain Senate ratification. This article considers two alternative explanations. First, presidents may face divided government and upcoming elections; elections can increase uncertainty regarding ratification, because they upset majorities and change congressional preferences on issues. Such factors may have caused “involuntary” defection from international environmental cooperation. Second, compensation and compromise on enabling legislation could satisfy enough senators and their constituents to allow the legislation's passage. Failure to secure ratification may be a result of the president's overestimating the potential for negotiating a policy package capable of creating sufficient support to obtain Senate ratification. I compare domestic constraints on U.S. participation in three international environmental negotiations—climate change, biodiversity, and chemicals—to assess the alternative explanations. The cases exemplify how domestic institutions affect international environmental cooperation.     

International Institutions and Compliance with Agreements

The ultimate litmus test of compliance theories occurs in situations where states' interests are directly opposed, such as competing interstate claims over territory, maritime areas, and cross-border rivers. This article considers the extent to which the involvement of international institutions in the settlement of contentious issues between states bolsters compliance with agreements that are struck. Institutions may influence the prospects for compliance actively and passively . Active institutional involvement in the conflict management process increases the chances for compliance with agreements, particularly for binding institutional activities, relative to the active involvement of noninstitutional third parties. More passively, joint membership in peace-promoting institutions enhances the likelihood that states will comply with peaceful agreements to resolve contentious issues. Empirical analyses demonstrate the relevance of international institutions for resolving contentious interstate issues both actively and passively, although the results suggest that institutions are more effective conflict managers when they choose binding settlement techniques .     

International Constraints and Domestic Choices: Economic Convergence and Exchange Rate Policy in France and Italy

As tensions in the European Monetary System demonstrate, international capital flows can have a decisive influence on countries' economic policies. The external constraint of high international capital mobility led the countries of Western Europe in the 1980s to attempt to stabilize their exchange rates and converge toward low levels of inflation. Yet this process was not uniform: French governments pursued a rigorous anti-inflationary policy of high interest rates and a strengthening currency, while Italian governments had difficulty controlling inflation and maintaining the lira in the European Monetary System. This difference is best explained by comparing political institutions and policymaking processes in the two countries. Particular attention is given to political leaders' access to economic policy tools and their capacity to design and implement long-term goals.     

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.     

Assessing the Effectiveness of International Environmental Agreements: The Case of the 1985 Helsinki Protocol

The last few decades have been marked by the emergence of a number of environmental protection regimes in the international arena. We know little about the effectiveness of these regimes, however, largely because such evaluations face the formidable obstacles of a scarcity of time series data on environmental quality, a complex mix of nonpolicy factors that affect environmental quality, and the fact that participation in nearly all international environmental agreements is voluntary, which means that policy effectiveness must be estimated from self-selected samples. In this article we assess the effects of the 1985 Helsinki Protocol for reducing sulfur dioxide emissions in Europe, paying particularly close attention to the obstacles noted above. We find that while nations ratifying the Helsinki Protocol have experienced significant emission reductions, the protocol itself has had no discernible effect on emissions. We end the article by discussing the implication of these results for the effectiveness of international environmental regimes in general .     

国际、国内政府电子化服务研究进展

以现代信息通信技术(ICT)在政府事务中的应用为主要表现形式的电子政务活动正在全球范围内快速发展,提供高质量的政府电子化服务是电子政务发展的关键所在。分析了政府电子化服务的一般性问题,讨论了国际上对政府电子化服务研究的主要进展,探讨了国内对政府电子化服务的研究状况,最后提出了值得关注的研究领域。     

International social security agreements: the U.S. experience

International social security agreements are advantageous both for persons who are working now and for those whose working careers are over. For current workers, the agreements eliminate the dual contributions they might otherwise be paying to the social security systems of both the United States and another country. They also favorably affect the profitability and competitive position of American companies with foreign operations by reducing their cost of doing business. For persons who have worked both in the United States and abroad, and who are now retired, disabled, or deceased, the agreements often result in the payment of benefits to which the worker or the worker's family members would not otherwise have become entitled. Credit for social security coverage the worker earned in the United States and the other country can be combined, if necessary, to meet eligibility requirements, and partial benefits can be paid by one or both countries. Because international social security agreements benefit both workers and employers, the agreements program is supported by organized labor and the international business community. Since the first agreement was signed 15 years ago, every Presidential administration has endorsed the program. In view of this support, and the fact that the agreements enhance the image of the United States as a socially progressive member of the international community, it is expected that totalization agreements will be concluded with additional countries in the future.