Research Article
The Politics of Common Knowledge: Ideas and Institutional Change in Wage Bargaining
- Pepper D. Culpepper
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- 09 January 2008, pp. 1-33
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Domestic economic institutions change through processes of conflict and bargaining. Why do the strongest groups in such conflicts ever change their minds about the acceptability of institutional arrangements they once opposed? Drawing on the cases of Ireland in 1986–87 and Italy in 1989–93, this article demonstrates how the process of common knowledge creation between employers and unions changed the course of negotiations over national wage bargaining institutions. Common knowledge creation happens when existing institutions are in crisis. The institutional experimentation that follows such crises, characterized by deep uncertainty, places a premium on persuasive argument. The ideas most likely to serve as the basis for newly common knowledge will have analytical and distributive appeal to both unions and employers, and they must be ratified in public agreements, which I call common knowledge events. Common knowledge events establish new social facts, which can change the payoffs associated with different institutional outcomes. This can lead even powerful actors to accept institutions they had previously opposed.
The author thanks Marius Busemeyer, Mary Louise Culpepper, Keith Darden, Orfeo Fioretos, Archon Fung, Peter Hall, Andrew Martin, Cathie Jo Martin, Victoria Murillo, Kathleen Thelen, and Gunnar Trumbull, along with three anonymous reviewers and the editors of IO, for comments and conversations that improved this article. Ben Ansell and Vikram Siddarth provided valuable research assistance. Financial support from the John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University is gratefully acknowledged. Any remaining errors are my own.
Autocratic Audience Costs: Regime Type and Signaling Resolve
- Jessica L. Weeks
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- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 09 January 2008, pp. 35-64
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Scholars of international relations usually argue that democracies are better able to signal their foreign policy intentions than nondemocracies, in part because democracies have an advantage in generating audience costs that make backing down in international crises costly to the leader. This article argues that the conventional hypothesis underestimates the extent to which nondemocratic leaders can be held accountable domestically, allowing them to generate audience costs. First, I identify three factors contributing to audience costs: whether domestic political groups can and will coordinate to punish the leader; whether the audience views backing down negatively; and whether outsiders can observe the possibility of domestic sanctions for backing down. The logic predicts that democracies should have no audience costs advantage over autocracies when elites can solve their coordination dilemma, and the possibility of coordination is observable to foreign decision makers. Empirical tests show that democracies do not in fact have a significant signaling advantage over most autocracies. This finding has important implications for understanding the relationship between regime type and international relations.
I am grateful to Emanuel Adler, Eduardo Bruera, Dara Kay Cohen, Luke Condra, James Fearon, Miriam Golden, Steve Haber, Alex Kuo, Bethany Lacina, David Laitin, Yotam Margalit, Lisa Martin, Kenneth McElwain, Victor Menaldo, Louis Pauly, Maggie Peters, Scott Sagan, Kenneth Schultz, Jake Shapiro, Michael Tomz, three anonymous reviewers, and participants in various Stanford University courses and workshops for their helpful comments. Replication files can be downloaded at 〈www.stanford.edu/∼jweeks/research〉.
Political Institutions and Human Rights: Why Dictatorships Enter into the United Nations Convention Against Torture
- James Raymond Vreeland
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- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 09 January 2008, pp. 65-101
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This article addresses a puzzle: dictatorships that practice torture are more likely to accede to the UN Convention Against Torture (CAT) than dictatorships that do not practice torture. I argue the reason has to do with the logic of torture. Torture is more likely to occur where power is shared. In one-party or no-party dictatorships, few individuals defect against the regime. Consequently, less torture occurs. But dictatorships are protorture regimes; they have little interest in making gestures against torture, such as signing the CAT. There is more torture where power is shared, such as where dictatorships allow multiple political parties. Alternative political points of view are endorsed, but some individuals go too far. More acts of defection against the regime occur, and torture rates are higher. Because political parties exert some power, however, they pressure the regime to make concessions. One small concession is acceding to the CAT.
For detailed suggestions, I thank Rodwan Abouharb, Emanuel Adler, Lawrence Broz, José Cheibub, David Cingranelli, Jennifer Gandhi, Geoff Garrett, Valerie Frey, Stephan Haggard, Oona Hathaway, Darren Hawkins, Stathis Kalyvas, Judith Kelley, Paul Lagunes, Jeffrey Lewis, Ellen Lust-Okar, Nikolay Marinov, Lisa Martin, Covadonga Meseguer, Layna Mosley, Louis Pauly, Daniel Posner, Kal Raustiala, Dan Reiter, Darius Rejali, Ronald Rogowski, Peter Rosendorff, Mike Tomz, Jana Von Stein, Christine Wotipka, and especially the two anonymous reviewers. I am also grateful for comments from participants at the Kellogg Institute International Political Economy Seminar at Notre Dame; the UCLA International Institute Global Fellows Seminar; the University of Southern California Center for International Studies Workshop; the UCSD Project on International Affairs Seminar; and the Emory University Globalization, Institutions, and Conflict Seminar. For support, I thank the UCLA International Institute, the ETH Zurich, and the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras.
Building Transnational Civil Liberties: Transgovernmental Entrepreneurs and the European Data Privacy Directive
- Abraham L. Newman
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- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 09 January 2008, pp. 103-130
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Democratic nations have long struggled to set the proper balance between individual freedom and government control. The rise of digital communications networks, market integration, and international terrorism has transformed many national civil liberties issues into important international debates. The European Union was among the first jurisdictions to manage these new transnational civil liberties with the adoption of a data privacy directive in 1995. The directive substantially expanded privacy protection within Europe and had far-reaching consequences internationally. While international relations scholars have paid considerable attention to the global ramifications of these rules, research has not yet explained the origins of the European data privacy directive. Given the resistance from the European Commission, powerful member states, and industry to their introduction, the adoption of supranational rules presents a striking empirical puzzle. This article conducts a structured evaluation of conventional approaches to European integration—liberal intergovernmentalism and neofunctionalism—against the historical record and uncovers an alternative driver: transgovernmental actors. These transgovernmental actors are endowed with power resources—expertise, delegated political authority, and network ties—that they employ to promote their regional policy goals. This article uses the historical narrative of the data privacy directive to explain the origins of a critical piece of international civil liberties legislation and to advance a theoretical discussion about the role of transgovernmental actors as policy entrepreneurs within the multilevel structure of the European Union.
An earlier version of this article was presented at the 99th Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, 28–31 August 2003. I would like to thank David Bach, Tim Büthe, Burkard Eberlein, Pat Egan, Henry Farrell, Orfeo Fioretos, Jane Gingrich, Virginia Haufler, Jonah Levy, Kate McNamara, Sophie Meunier, Craig Pollack, Mark Pollack, Elliot Posner, Kathryn Sikkink, Wolfgang Streeck, Steve Weber, Nick Ziegler, and John Zysman for extensive comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript. Funding for this research was provided by the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne, Germany.
Bargaining Power at Europe's Intergovernmental Conferences: Testing Institutional and Intergovernmental Theories
- Jonathan B. Slapin
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- 09 January 2008, pp. 131-162
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This article examines how European Union member states make choices about political institutions at intergovernmental conferences, the grand negotiations where many key institutional changes are made. Using data on member-state preferences from the intergovernmental conference leading to the Treaty of Amsterdam, I test competing bargaining theories, institutionalism, and intergovernmentalism, and present strong evidence that institutionalism better captures negotiations compared to intergovernmentalism. I present a formal model to discern between these competing theories of bargaining power, derive a statistical model directly from this formal model, and then use data from the European Union's Treaty of Amsterdam to test these theories and corresponding power sources. Veto power associated with institutional models better explains intergovernmental conference outcomes compared to power from size and economic might, often associated with intergovernmental analyses.
I would like to thank Kathy Bawn, Julia Gray, Tim Groseclose, James Honaker, Joe Jupille, Thomas König, Jeff Lewis, Sven-Oliver Proksch, George Tsebelis, and the participants in UCLA's graduate student formal theory and statistical methods workshops for their insightful comments on various drafts of this article. I am also grateful for the comments from several anonymous reviewers and the editors at International Organization. An earlier version of this article was presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, April 2006. Data and replication material are available at 〈http://faculty.unlv.edu/jslapin〉.
Economic Interests and Public Support for American Global Activism
- Benjamin O. Fordham
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- 09 January 2008, pp. 163-182
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This research note evaluates the effect of economic interests on public support for American global activism. Those who were relatively well-positioned to benefit economically from the American-backed postwar international order, mainly those with better access to human and financial capital, or who hailed from relatively export-oriented parts of the country, should be more likely to support it. An analysis of American National Election Study data on support for isolationism between 1956 and 2000 supports this line of argument. Individual self-interest is probably the most important pathway through which the international economy has influenced public opinion. However, the aggregate effects of exports and imports on respondents' home states have also made a difference. The effects of these economic interests are substantively large and fairly consistent over time.
A previous version of this work was presented to the 2006 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. I would like to thank Michael A. Bailey, Larry Bartels, Matthew Baum, Adam Berinsky, and Kenneth Schultz for their comments. Any remaining errors and omissions are solely the responsibility of the author.
Correction
Erratum
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- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 09 January 2008, p. 189
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In “Voting for Change: Calculation, Community, and Euro Referendums” by Joseph Jupille and David Leblang (International Organization 61:4) there is an error in the legend for Figure 1 on page 765. The legend is reversed. The more variable trend line that is identified as Denmark should be Sweden. The opposite holds for the flatter line.