George W. Downs

Is the good news about compliance good news about cooperation

Recent research on compliance in international regulatory regimes has argued (1) that compliance is generally quite good; (2) that this high level of compliance has been achieved with little attention to enforcement; (3) that those compliance problems that do exist are best addressed as management rather than enforcement problems; and (4) that the management rather than the enforcement approach holds the key to the evolution of future regulatory cooperation in the international system. While the descriptive findings above are largely correct, the policy inferences are dangerously contaminated by endogeneity and selection problems. A high rate of compliance is often the result of states formulating treaties that require them to do little more than they would do in the absence of a treaty. In those cases where noncompliance does occur and where the effects of selection are attenuated, both self-interest and enforcement play significant roles.

Managing the Evolution of Multilateralism

One of the most prominent characteristics of multilateral organizations is that they do not “spring forth full blown”; they grow. Although this is well known, relatively few attempts have been made to explain it at a general level or to explore its implications. In this paper we show why states that desire to create a multilateral organization or agreement might be attracted to a strategy that involves admitting potential members sequentially based on their preferences. Such a “sequential construction” strategy can generate an unusual kind of structure-induced equilibrium that dramatically mitigates the breadth-depth trade-off and increases the level of cooperation a multilateral is able to attain. We evaluate these claims with data drawn from the history of the European Union and twenty environmental multilaterals.

Reputation, Compliance, and International Law

Increasingly skeptical about the efficiency and effectiveness of formal multilateral enforcement mechanisms, a growing number of international relations theorists and international lawyers have begun to argue that states’ reputational concerns are actually the principal mechanism for maintaining a high level of treaty compliance. This essay argues that there are a number of empirical and theoretical reasons for believing that the actual effects of reputation are both weaker and more complicated than the standard view of reputation suggests. While states have reason to revise their estimates of a state’s reputation following a defection or pattern of defections, they have reason to do so only in connection with those agreements that they believe are (1) affected by the same or similar sources of fluctuating compliance costs and (2) valued the same or less by the defecting state. Among the implications of this is that all but the newest states maintain multiple reputations.

Intervention and Democracy

Recent events have raised questions about the extent to which military intervention promotes democracy and the degree to which this depends on the nature of the intervener. We argue that traction on these issues is best obtained by focusing on the policies of the target state that have the greatest implications for the political survival of the intervening states leader and the kind of governmental institutions in the target state that are most likely to produce them. This perspective generally—although not always—predicts that third-party military intervention in civil wars, other intra- or interstate disputes and wars will lead to little if any improvement, and all too often erosion in the trajectory of democratic development. Three hypotheses on the impact of third-party intervention by democracies, autocracies, and the United Nations are then tested and strongly supported against a counterfactual expectation of what the democratic trajectory would have been in the absence of intervention. We benefited greatly from the wise counsel of Feryal Cherif, Michael Gilligan, Shanker Satyanath, and Alastair Smith, each of whom read or discussed in depth earlier versions of this study. Patrick Regan was also extremely helpful in providing data and guidance in the use of the data on interventions that he has made available. The study was significantly improved by the insightful advice of the anonymous reviewers (we wish we could thank them by name) and by Lisa Martins able and thoughtful guidance. Authors often complain about referees; we have nothing but praise for the contributions they made. Of course, we alone are responsible for any errors and for all remaining shortcomings in this investigation.

Arms Races and Cooperation

States interested in reducing the level of arms competition with a rival can employ a variety of strategies designed to promote cooperation. We examine the ability of three important strategies—unilateral action, tacit bargaining, and negotiation—to reduce the intensity of arms races motivated by different patterns of preferences and complicated by different sources of uncertainty. The latter include strategic misrepresentation, imperfect intelligence, problems of interpretation, and problems of control. Examples are drawn from 19th- and 20th-century arms races that did not result in war.

Are Robust Estimators Really Necessary

Although there is substantial literature on robust estimation, most scientists continue to employ traditional methods. They remain skeptical about the practical benefit of employing robust techniques and doubt the realism of the long-tailed error distributions commonly employed by their proponents in Monte Carlo studies. In this article a method of comparing the performance of estimators of location is developed and applied to a series of historical data sets in the physical sciences and to a collection of modern analytical-chemistry data sets. Both sets of results suggest that either severely trimmed means or modern robust estimators are required for optimal efficiency.

Tacit bargaining and arms control

Astate bargains tacitly with another state when it attempts to manipulate the latters policy choices through its behavior rather than by relying on formal or informal diplomatic exchanges. The process is tacit because actions rather than rhetoric constitute the critical medium of communication; it is bargaining and not coercion because the actions are aimed at influencing an outcome that can only be achieved through some measure of joint, voluntary behavior. Obviously, states rarely rely on either purely tacit or purely formal negotiation. However, the theory of tacit bargaining does not become totally inapplicable when there is verbal or written communication between the principals. It simply becomes increasingly relevant as states rely more on actions than on conventional negotiation. Examples of tacit bargaining are plentiful in international relations: a retaliatory tariff is announced in response to trade barriers; a state at war refrains from using chemical weapons or from bombing nonmilitary targets in the hope that its opponent will behave similarly; an austerity program is implemented by a financially troubled government in order to convince foreign banks that they should continue to extend credit.

Theories of budgetary decisionmaking and revenue decline

The responses of municipal governments to declining real revenue are used to conduct a critical test of three theories of budgetary decisionmaking. Contrary to the expectations generated by the bureaucratic process theory, there is little evidence of the application of any budget cutting algorithm based on stable account priorities. Contrary to the expectations generated by the interest group politics model, there is equally little evidence of across-the-board cuts. The results are, however, broadly consistent with what we have termed the managerial theory which emphasizes the relative “controllability” of expenditure categories, transient decisionmaker preferences, and the stochastic impact of short-term expenditure solutions. The difficulties associated with the conduct of critical tests in this area are also discussed.

Estimating the variances of robust estimators of location: influence curve, jackknife and bootstrap

For an estimator of locations to be useful for inferential purposes, a reliable method of estimating its variance is needed. In this paper, three methods of variance estimation are compared for ten location estimaters across a variety of parent distributions both symmetric and skew. Recommendations are made for different situations based on the bias of the variance estimater as well as the efficiency of the location estimater.

Theorizing about public expenditure decision-making: (as) if wishes were horses ...

There have been several attempts to compare different approaches to modelling public expenditure decision-making. This paper is an extended comment on one such attempt: Fred Thompson and Richard Williams, “A Horse Race Around a Möbius Strip: A Review and a Test of Utility Maximizing and Organizational-Process Models of Public Expenditure Decisions.” In a commentary mode, we: (a) examine why tests of the sort that Thompson and Williams offer are neither definitive in choosing between models nor very useful in improving models; (b) outline a more meaningful test procedure; and (c) offer a somewhat more critical view than Thompson and Williams of the utility-maximizing approach to modelling public expenditure decisions.