Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T21:08:40.686Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Do Treaties Constrain or Screen? Selection Bias and Treaty Compliance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2005

JANA VON STEIN
JANA VON STEIN
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Much recent research has found that states generally comply with the treaties they sign. The implications of this finding, however, are unclear: do states comply because the legal commitment compels them to do so, or because of the conditions that led them to sign? Drawing from previous research in this Review on Article VIII of the IMF Treaty (Simmons 2000a), I examine the problem of selection bias in the study of treaty compliance. To understand how and whether international legal commitments affect state behavior, one must control for all sources of selection into the treaty—including those that are not directly observable. I develop a statistical method that controls for such sources of selection and find considerable evidence that the unobservable conditions that lead states to make the legal commitment to Article VIII have a notable impact on their propensity to engage in compliant behavior. The results suggest that the international legal commitment has little constraining power independent of the factors that lead states to sign.

Type
FORUM
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 99 , Issue 4 , November 2005 , pp. 611 - 622
Copyright
© 2005 by the American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Achen Christopher. 1986. The Statistical Analysis of Quasi-Experiments. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Beck Nathaniel, Jonathan Katz, and Richard Tucker. 1998. “Taking Time Seriously: Time-Series-Cross-Section Analysis with a Binary Dependent Variable.” American Journal of Political Science, 42 (October): 1260– 88.Google Scholar
Berinsky Adam. 1999. “The Two Faces of Public Opinion.” American Journal of Political Science 43 (October): 1209– 30.Google Scholar
Chayes Abram, and Antonia Handler Chayes. 1995. The New Sovereignty: Compliance with International Regulatory Agreements. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Downs George, David Rocke, and Peter Barsoom. 1996. “Is the Good News about Compliance Good News about Cooperation?” International Organization 50 (Summer): 379– 406.Google Scholar
Edwards Richard. 1985. International Monetary Collaboration. Dobbs Ferry, NY: Transnational Publishers.
Fearon James. 1997. “Signaling Foreign Policy Interests: Tying Hands versus Sinking Costs.” The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 41 (February): 68– 90.Google Scholar
Gold Joseph. 1988. Exchange Rates in International Law and Organization. Chicago: American Bar Association.
Heckman James. 1976. “The Common Structure of Statistical Models of Truncation, Sample Selection and Limited Dependent Variables and a Simple Estimator for Such Models.” Annals of Economic and Social Measurement 5 (4): 475– 92.Google Scholar
Heckman James. 1979. “Sample Selection Bias as a Specification Error.” Econometrica 47 (January): 153– 62.Google Scholar
International Monetary Fund. Archives S424: Transitional Arrangements, Articles VIII and XIV. Various years.
Koremenos Barbara, Charles Lipson, and Duncan Snidal. 2001. “The Rational Design of International Institutions.” International Organization 55 (Fall): 761– 99.Google Scholar
Lemke Douglas, and William Reed. 2001. “War and Rivalry among Great Powers.” American Journal of Political Science 45 (April): 457– 69.Google Scholar
Maddala G. S. 1983. Limited-Dependent and Qualitative Variables in Econometrics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Przeworski Adam, and Fernando Limongi. 1993. “Political Regimes and Economic Growth.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 7 (Summer): 51– 69.Google Scholar
Przeworski Adam, and James Vreeland. 2000. “The Effect of IMF Programs on Economic Growth.” Journal of Development Economics 62 (August): 385– 421.Google Scholar
Simmons Beth. 2000a. “International Law and State Behavior: Commitment and Compliance in International Monetary Affairs.” American Political Science Review 4 (December): 819– 35.Google Scholar
Simmons Beth. 2000b. “The Legalization of International Monetary Affairs.” International Organization 54 (Summer): 573– 602.Google Scholar
Tomz Michael, Jason Wittenberg, and Gary King. 2001. “Clarify: Software for Interpreting and Presenting Statistical Results.” http://gking.harvard.edu/clarify (June 27, 2003).
Tucker Richard. 1999. “BTSCS: A Binary Time-Series Cross-Section Data Analysis Utility.” http://www.vanderbilt.edu/rtucker/programs/btscs/. (June 27, 2003).
van de Ven Wynand, and Bernard van Praag. 1981. “The Demand for Deductibles in Private Health Insurance: a Probit Model with Sample Selection.” Journal of Econometrics 17 (November): 229– 52.Google Scholar
Vreeland James. 2002. “The Effect of IMF Programs on Labor.” World Development 30 (January): 121– 39.Google Scholar
Vreeland James. 2003. The IMF and Economic Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Young Oran. 1994. International Governance: Protecting the Environment in a Stateless Society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.