Legitimizing Dispute Settlement: International Legal Rulings as Domestic Political Cover

Todd L. Allee and Paul K. Huth

American Political Science Review, 2006, vol. 100, issue 2, 219-234

Abstract: We develop and test a general argument about the conditions under which state leaders are most likely to choose legal dispute resolution over bilateral negotiations as a means to settle international disputes. Our central claim is that leaders who anticipate significant domestic audience costs for the making of voluntary, negotiated concessions are likely to seek the “political cover” of an international legal ruling. In such cases, it will be easier for leaders to justify the making of concessions if they are mandated as part of a ruling by an international court or arbitration body. We test a series of domestic-level hypotheses using a dataset comprised of nearly 1,500 rounds of talks concerning disputed territorial claims. Our multivariate analyses indicate that state leaders opt for legal dispute resolution when they are highly accountable to domestic political opposition, as well as when the dispute is highly salient to domestic audiences.

Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:100:y:2006:i:02:p:219-234_06

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in American Political Science Review from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().