Why do States Comply?

Question 1

Compliance

Answer 1

Optimistic view
-States want to comply
-Defection is due to market failure
-Enforcement is unnecessary

Skeptic view
-States prefer to cheat
-Compliance is high when it’s easy
-Enforcement is a necessary condition for cooperation

Question 2

Managerial School
(Optimistic View)

Answer 2

1. Compliance is generally good
2. High level of compliance achieved with little attention to enforcement
3. Compliance problems best addressed as management rather than enforcement problems

Cause of non-compliance
-Treaties are ambiguous and indeterminate
-States have limitations
-Exogenous social and economic shocks

Question 3

Managerial School and Enforcement

Answer 3

-Punishment is too costly
-Sanctions are successful only with weak states
-Retaliations jeopardize future cooperation

Instead:
-Increase transparency –> reduce ambiguity
-Provide assistance –> improve state capacity
-Design dispute settlement procedures to improve mutual consultation and persuasion –> Helpful during crisis

Question 4

Endogeneity and Selection Bias

Answer 4

-States agree on contracts that demand only modest departures from original plans
-Argument: compliance is successful without enforcement if cooperation depth is low
-States sign treaties that they were likely to comply with anyway

Question 5

Game Theory Approach
(Pessimistic View)

Answer 5

1. Cooperation is a prisoner’s dilemma
2. States must resort to punishment for defection
3. The punishment must hurt the transgressor at least as much as the state would gain from defection so that states don’t defect

Question 6

Reputation

Answer 6

-Given sufficiently long-term view, states will comply with international law because
benefits of cooperation > costs of compliance
-But states must actually lose benefits of cooperation if they fail to comply

1. Cheaters develop bad reputation
2. States exclude cheaters from future cooperation
3. Future cost of boycott leads states to comply in the present
4. Reputation increases cost of cheating
5. Reputation as credible commitment –> self-enforcing agreements

Question 7

Reputation and Debt

Answer 7

-Investors can’t know if a government will honour its debts
-But investor’s beliefs are formed from past behaviour
-Represents a country’s reputation
-Reputation leads to differences in credit terms

Counter argument
-Reputation for what
-Who’s reputation

Question 8

Audience Cost

Answer 8

-Leaders are sanctioned by voters if they don’t follow through with electoral promises
-Citizens think less of leaders who back down than those who don’t even commit
-Prospect of losing domestic support, discourages leaders from making empty threats