Non-compliance by design: Moribund hard law in international institutions

Christopher Marcoux () and Johannes Urpelainen ()

The Review of International Organizations, 2013, vol. 8, issue 2, 163-191

Abstract: States often create international institutions that impose legally binding rules on member states, and then do not even attempt to enforce these rules. Why? In this article, we present a game-theoretic model of moribund hard law in international institutions. We show that if some states face domestic pressure to negotiate a hard law treaty, their incentive to insist on hard law in the negotiations is maximized when less enthusiastic states expect that the hard law will probably not be enforced. Domestic proponents of hard law reward states for negotiating a hard law treaty, while states that oppose hard law can accept it because they expect no enforcement. As a form of informal governance, moribund hard law allows non-compliance by design. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

Keywords: Informal governance; Hard law; Soft law; Treaty design; International bargaining; Game theory; Environmental agreements; F53; F55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11558-012-9157-6

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