The Continent of International Law

Abstract

This article introduces the Continent of International Law (COIL) research project on international agreement design. COIL stems from the conviction that the International Organization subfield's focus on the couple hundred international organizations with physical headquarters had to be broadened to include the tens of thousands extant international agreements, that is, international law. Each piece of international law can and should be studied as an institution. Together, this set of institutions, which truly is a “continent,” is theoretically very interesting and empirically very diversified. COIL's basic theoretical premise is that international agreement design and comparison across agreements begins by understanding the underlying cooperation problem(s) the agreements are trying to solve. COIL identifies 12 distinct and recurrent cooperation problems, which may occur alone or in combinations. The data collection features a random sample of international agreements conditional on the issue areas of economics, environment, human rights, and security. The first large-n, systematic operationalization of the cooperation problems underlying real international agreements is highlighted, and descriptive statistics are presented – some of which challenge conventional wisdom. For instance, enforcement problems (Prisoner's Dilemma-like situations) are important, but far from universal, with 30% of the agreements characterized by that underlying problem. The numerous and diverse COIL variables allow for a multi-dimensional operationalization of the difficult-to-measure concept of the “incomplete contract.” Hypotheses from contract theory are tested, confirming the appropriateness of the new measure, the weakness of measures based on number of pages, and most significant, the rationality and efficiency of the continent of international law.

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