International Law and State Behavior: Commitment and Compliance in International Monetary Affairs

By Beth A. Simmons. American Political Science Review, 2000

616 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Why do sovereign governments make international legal commitments, and what effect does international law have on state behavior? Very little empirical research tries to answer these questions in a systematic way. This article examines patterns of commitment to and compliance with international monetary law. I consider the signal governments try to send by committing themselves through international legal commitments, and I argue that reputational concerns explain patterns of compliance. One of the most important findings is that governments commit to and comply with legal obligations if other countries in their region do so. Competitive market forces, rather than overt policy pressure from the International Monetary Fund, are the most likely “enforcement” mechanism. Legal commitment has an extremely positive effect on governments that have recently removed restrictive policies, which indicates a desire to reestablish a reputation for compliance.

Subfields: Development, Sociology and Political Science, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7d74ebfe8fb9c9f4c4ea2c6856a973eefdb6b854

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Citations in the corpus

Contingent Credibility: The Impact of Investment Treaty Violations on Foreign Direct Investment (2011, background): “…perspective from international relations scholars, see Downs, Rocke, and Barsoom 1996+ 21+ Brown Weiss and Jacobson 2000+ 22+ Downs and Rocke 1995+ 23+ Simmons 2000+ In fact, compliance is essential to the credibility-based logic by which BITs should increase FDI, which makes the…”
Why Comply? The Domestic Constituency Mechanism (2005, background): “…compliance reflects the electoral leverage and the informational status of competing domestic constituencies+ To illustrate how the domestic 16+ Simmons 2000+ 17+ Martin 2000+ 18+ Dai 2002b+ constituency mechanism works empirically, I take another look at the LRTAP Convention+ Responding to…”
When BITs have some bite: The political-economic environment for bilateral investment treaties (2011, background): “Rather, they can have a real impact on investment incentives (Abbott and Snidal 2000; Simmons 2000 ).”
Ideology and Voter Preferences as Determinants of Financial Globalization (2007, background): “2) Emulation, Learning, and Competitive Pressures A standard hypothesis from the IR literature is that the experiences of neighbors influence nations (Simmons 2000), and we must allow for the possibility that capital account policies follow an emulative pattern.”
The International Law and Politics of Climate Change Ratification of the United Nations Framework Convention and the Kyoto Protocol (2008, background): “Annex 1 party equals 1 if a country was a party to Annex 1 of the FCCC in year t and 0 otherwise.”