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Abstract: Abstract Global health emergencies present opportunities for countries to enhance their soft power by demonstrating generosity and technological capabilities. Although China’s initial association with the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak had a detrimental impact on its international reputation, the country endeavored to rebuild it by visibly distributing vaccines and medical supplies. By countering U.S. vaccine nationalism, China positioned itself as an alternative provider of public goods in the Global South. The COVID-19 crisis provides a unique opportunity to examine how aid translates into reputation, particularly when donors are facing reputational damage. This article assesses the impact of alternative goods provision on China’s reputation using original individual-level panel data collected from six Latin American countries between 2020 and 2021, employing a difference-in-differences research design. By positing the existence of absolute and relative reputational effects, we observe that Chinese vaccines improve public opinion of China and elevate its reputation in comparison to the United States. These findings are substantiated through a survey experiment, which demonstrates that when individuals receive information about China’s provision of medical supplies, it enhances China’s reputation relative to the United States. PubDate: 2023-09-21
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating. A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: Abstract International agreements are often understood to help governments make credible commitments to future policy by limiting their ability to renege on their promises. Renegotiations of agreements are accordingly viewed as a threat to cooperation, since renegotiations call past commitments into question. But we know little about the frequency or nature of treaty renegotiations. When are international agreements renegotiated, and what effect does renegotiation have on international cooperation' Do most renegotiations indeed aim to backtrack on past commitments' Using the topical context of the trade regime, I collect new data on international treaty revisions, covering 310 preferential trade agreements signed since the year 2000. Around a quarter of these agreements have been amended in some form, and the supermajority of amendments result not in scaled back agreements, but in deeper commitments. Survival analysis shows that ‘like-minded’ countries with a shared language and similar voting patterns at the UN General Assembly are most likely to revise their commitments. In contrast, I do not find evidence to support the view of PTA revisions as ‘backsliding’ on past commitments. The effects of revisions on trade cooperation support the more cooperative view of revisions. An error-correction model shows revisions are associated with a long-run increase in export volumes. Renegotiations are not breakdowns in international relations, but opportunities for governments to renew their commitment to cooperation. PubDate: 2023-08-09
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Abstract: Abstract Recent decades have seen an intensification of international organizations’ (IOs) attempts to justify their authority. The existing research suggests that IO representatives have scaled up self-legitimation to defend their organizations’ legitimacy in light of public criticism. In contrast, this article demonstrates that IOs intensify self-legitimation to mobilize additional support from relevant audiences when their authority increases. We argue that self-legitimation aims primarily to achieve proactive legitimacy expansion instead of reactive legitimacy protection. We develop this argument in three steps. First, we draw on organizational sociology and management studies to theorize the connection between self-legitimation and an organization’s life stages. Second, we introduce a novel dataset on the self-legitimation of 28 regional IOs between 1980 and 2019 and show that the intensity of self-legitimation evolves in phases. Third, we provide a multivariate statistical analysis and a brief vignette on the African Union, both of which indicate that IOs that shift from unanimity or consensus to majority voting tend to intensify self-legitimation. PubDate: 2023-07-24
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Abstract: Abstract Creating intergovernmental environmental clubs is a prominent policy proposal for addressing global environmental problems. According to their proponents, environmental clubs provide an incentive to join them and accept their environmental obligations by generating exclusive “club goods” for their members. Yet, the existing literature considers environmental clubs as a theoretical idea that still has to be put into practice. This article asks whether, in fact, the numerous international environmental agreements (IEAs) containing trade-related provisions provide club goods to their parties. It does so by investigating the effects of these provisions on trade flows among parties compared to flows with non-parties. We introduce an original dataset on 48 types of trade provisions in 2,097 IEAs that we make available with the publication of this article. Based on this new data and a panel of worldwide bilateral trade flows, we find evidence that existing IEAs and their trade-liberalizing content are associated with increased trade among their parties relative to trade with non-parties. We conclude from this finding that systems of IEAs provide club goods to their parties. Uncovering the existence of environmental clubs has significant methodological and policy implications. It is an important first step for future research on the actual effectiveness of clubs in attracting participation and raising environmental standards. PubDate: 2023-07-13 DOI: 10.1007/s11558-023-09495-3
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Abstract: Abstract Motivated by the lack of sub-national empirical evidence on the relationship between aid and institutional development, this study explores the local effects of World Bank aid on perceived institutional quality in African aid receiving countries. We combine geo-referenced data on the subnational allocation of World Bank aid projects to Africa over the 1995–2014 period with geo-coded survey data for 73,640 respondents across 12 Sub-Saharan African countries. The empirical results, which are robust across a wide range of specifications as well as to using alternative identification strategies, suggest a positive impact of World Bank aid on citizens’ expressed willingness to abide by key formal institutions. This applies for overall World Bank aid, but as may be expected, the estimated effects are more pronounced when restricting our attention to projects focusing on institution building. Notably, the observed effects concern finalized projects, not projects still under implementation, highlighting that institutional change is a slow process. PubDate: 2023-07-01 DOI: 10.1007/s11558-022-09478-w
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Abstract: Abstract How can we measure and explain the precision of international organizations’ (IOs) founding treaties' We define precision by its negative – imprecision – as indeterminate language that intentionally leaves a wide margin of interpretation for actors after agreements enter into force. Compiling a “dictionary of imprecision” from almost 500 scholarly contributions and leveraging insight from linguists that a single vague word renders the whole sentence vague, we introduce a dictionary-based measure of imprecision (DIMI) that is replicable, applicable to all written documents, and yields a continuous measure bound between zero and one. To demonstrate that DIMI usefully complements existing approaches and advances the study of (im-)precision, we apply it to a sample of 76 IOs. Our descriptive results show high face validity and closely track previous characterizations of these IOs. Finally, we explore patterns in the data, expecting that imprecision in IO treaties increases with the number of states, power asymmetries, and the delegation of authority, while it decreases with the pooling of authority. In a sample of major IOs, we find robust empirical support for the power asymmetries and delegation propositions. Overall, DIMI provides exciting new avenues to study precision in International Relations and beyond. PubDate: 2023-07-01 DOI: 10.1007/s11558-022-09476-y
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Abstract: Abstract States struggle to establish multilateral cooperation on migration – yet they include more and more migration provisions in preferential trade agreements (PTAs). This article sheds light on this phenomenon by introducing the Migration Provisions in Preferential Trade Agreements (MITA) dataset. Covering 797 agreements signed between 1960 and 2020, this dataset offers a fine-grained coding of three types of migration provisions: those that facilitate the international mobility of service providers and labor migrants, protect migrant rights, and control unauthorized migration. Against the backdrop of limping multilateralism, we examine PTAs’ migration policy content with regard to two key cooperation dilemmas: conflicts of interest within developed countries and between them and developing countries. Facilitating business and labor mobility might be a possible way around the first dilemma, commonly referred to as the ‘liberal paradox': the tension between economic demands for openness and political calls for closure. Nevertheless, this facilitation is largely limited to highly skilled migrants and agreements between developed economies. Provisions for migration control tend to be included in agreements between developed and developing countries, which signals that states use issue-linkages to address the second dilemma, i.e. interest asymmetries. Finally, provisions for migrant rights stand out because they do not deepen over time. Our findings suggest that while PTAs have become an increasingly common venue for migration governance, the issue-linkage between trade and migration cooperation perpetuates entrenched divisions in the international system. The MITA dataset will allow researchers and policymakers to track the evolution of the trade-migration nexus and systematically investigate the motives for and effects of various migration provisions in PTAs. PubDate: 2023-07-01 DOI: 10.1007/s11558-023-09493-5
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Abstract: Abstract The ‘internet’—familiar shorthand for information and communication technologies (ICT)—is built on a physical infrastructure owned by a variety of state and private actors, foreign and domestic, with multiple interests. It has not only driven change on a global scale; its spread also had a profound impact on the social sciences. However, our understanding of how its architecture, and especially its owners, influence its political and economic impact is still in its infancy. This paper presents the Telecommunications Ownership and Control (TOSCO) dataset on ownership of internet service providers (ISPs) that allows to recognize the internet as strategically built and used by governments and corporations. Along with a thorough discussion of the conceptualization and operationalization of ownership as a variable, the TOSCO dataset enables comparative large-N analysis of the determinants and effects of varying ownership structures and identities in the transforming context of 49 African countries, 2000–2019. We demonstrate its usefulness with descriptive statistics and regression analyses using replication data from research on the internet’s democratizing and corruption-reducing effects. In allowing for a more realistic account, TOSCO supports scholars and practitioners concerned with the determinants and effects of internet service provision, use and control in Africa and beyond. PubDate: 2023-07-01 DOI: 10.1007/s11558-022-09483-z
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Abstract: Abstract This paper aims to answer a general question: whether an international organization (IO) is able to shape public opinion in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the pandemic took hold in early 2020, countries across the globe have switched gear from prevention to vaccination. Most had to not only secure a sufficient supply of vaccines, but also to curb vaccine hesitancy among their populations. Can endorsement by an international organization like the World Health Organization (WHO) enhance a vaccine’s acceptability' Based on a survey experiment conducted in Taiwan, our study leverages the special relationship between China and Taiwan to show that WHO endorsement can induce acceptance of Chinese vaccines among Taiwanese people. However, the effect is found to be contextual in the sense that it only works when people’s trust in the WHO is higher than their trust in the vaccine’s country of origin. Our study not only contributes to the literature of IO legitimacy by empirically showing IOs’ causal effects on public opinion, but also sheds light on how a vaccine’s credibility can be enhanced to promote vaccination uptake. PubDate: 2023-07-01 DOI: 10.1007/s11558-022-09481-1
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Abstract: Abstract What determines states’ ability to influence the contents of international institutions' Extant scholarship on international economic negotiations highlights the importance of political and economic capacity in negotiations. In this article, we argue that another structural source of negotiating power has been overlooked: bureaucratic capacity. Building on in-depth interviews with a large sample of international economic negotiators, we develop a theory of how differences in bureaucratic capacity can give states advantages in bilateral negotiations. We test our theory on a dataset of bilateral investment treaties. To measure preference attainment, we combine a unique repository of states’ public negotiating mandates called model treaties and the texts of finalized investment treaties to compute the verbatim distances between states’ stated preferences and the treaties they negotiate. We then show that states with greater bureaucratic capacity than their counterparts tend to achieve higher preference attainment in investment treaty negotiations. Our results have important implications for scholarship on international negotiations and for policy-makers engaged in investment policy reform. PubDate: 2023-07-01 DOI: 10.1007/s11558-022-09475-z
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Abstract: Abstract The drivers of public support for international organizations (IOs) are multifaceted and contested. Focusing on the US, we argue that citizens weigh elite cues about the financial burden associated with funding IOs and the influence over IOs that such funding yields. Moreover, we identify political ideology as a powerful moderator – theorizing that conservatives should respond more positively to cues about US influence and more negatively to cues about financial costs than liberals. We find support for the core theory, but also counterintuitively find that the negative effect of the cost treatment manifests primarily amongst liberals as opposed to conservatives. A second, pre-registered experiment reveals that conservatives support increasing funding to IOs to secure US influence, and may even support increasing taxes to do so, especially when cued by a co-partisan. By contrast, liberals who learn that funding provides influence prefer to cut funding to IOs, even when cued by a co-partisan. PubDate: 2023-07-01 DOI: 10.1007/s11558-022-09479-9
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Abstract: Abstract How does quantifying and ranking national performance influence state behavior' Cross-national assessments in education, such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) promoted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), have become increasingly prominent in recent years. However, cross-national assessments are politically contentious, and their impact remains underexplored. We argue that assessment participation has a meaningful, positive impact on education outcomes and evaluate three hypotheses related to elite, domestic, and transnational mechanisms. Our mixed-method approach draws on a panel dataset covering all cross-national assessments and all countries as well as an original survey of education officials directly responsible for planning and implementation in 46 countries. We find that assessment participation increases net secondary enrollment rates even after accounting for potential self-selection. The magnitude of this increase is large: on a global basis, it is equivalent to improved access to higher education for 27–32 million students annually. The empirical evidence suggests elite-level mechanisms are primarily responsible for these findings. PubDate: 2023-06-20 DOI: 10.1007/s11558-023-09494-4
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Abstract: Abstract There is a growing recognition that international organizations (IOs) formulate and adopt policy in a wide range of areas. IOs have emerged as key venues for states seeking joint solutions to contemporary challenges such as climate change or COVID-19, and to establish frameworks to bolster trade, development, security, and more. In this capacity, IOs produce both extraordinary and routine policy output with a multitude of purposes, ranging from policies of historic significance like admitting new members to the more mundane tasks of administering IO staff. This article introduces the Intergovernmental Policy Output Dataset (IPOD), which covers close to 37,000 individual policy acts of 13 multi-issue IOs in the 1980–2015 period. The dataset fills a gap in the growing body of literature on the comparative study of IOs, providing researchers with a fine-grained perspective on the structure of IO policy output and data for comparisons across time, policy areas, and organizations. This article describes the construction and coverage of the dataset and identifies key temporal and cross-sectional patterns revealed by the data. In a concise illustration of the dataset’s utility, we apply models of punctuated equilibria in a comparative study of the relationship between institutional features and broad policy agenda dynamics. Overall, the Intergovernmental Policy Output Dataset offers a unique resource for researchers to analyze IO policy output in a granular manner and to explore questions of responsiveness, performance, and legitimacy of IOs. PubDate: 2023-06-06 DOI: 10.1007/s11558-023-09492-6
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Abstract: Abstract This article introduces a novel database that measures governments’ compliance with national constitutions. It combines information on de jure constitutional rules with data on their de facto implementation. The individual compliance indicators can be grouped into four categories that we aggregate into an overall indicator of constitutional compliance: property rights and the rule of law, political rights, civil rights, and basic human rights. The database covers 175 countries over the period 1900 to 2020 and can be used by researchers interested in studying the determinants or the effects of (non)compliance with constitutions. Our investigation of the stylized facts of constitutional compliance reveals a long-term increase in compliance, which occurred primarily around the year 1990. The Americas experienced the steepest increase in compliance, but also Africa and Europe improved particularly at the end of the Cold War. Democracies – particularly those with parliamentary and mixed systems – show more constitutional compliance than nondemocracies, among which military dictatorships perform the worst. Constitutional design also matters: Constitutions that allow for the dismissal of the head of state or government for violating constitutional rules are being complied with more. PubDate: 2023-05-25 DOI: 10.1007/s11558-023-09491-7
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