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Paul Poast and Johannes Urpelainen. 2018 . Organizing Democracy: How International Organizations Assist New Democracies (Chicago, IL:  University of Chicago Press)

When do authoritarian rulers educate: Trade competition and human capital investment in Non-Democracies Abstract This paper explains variations in education spending among non-democracies, focusing on policy interdependence by trade competition. Facing pressures from spending changes in competitor countries, rulers calculate the costs and benefits associated with increased education spending: education increases labor productivity; it also increases civil engagement and chances of democratization. Therefore, we expect that rulers in countries whose revenues depend less on a productive labor force and those with shorter time horizons are less likely to invest because of lower expected benefits; rulers with single-party regimes, authoritarian legislatures, and especially partisan authoritarian legislatures are more likely to invest because such institutions enable them to better survive the threats associated with increased human capital. We find empirical support for policy interdependence and the conditional effects of government revenue source, time horizon, and partisan legislatures.

Who opposes climate regulation? Business preferences for the European emission trading scheme Abstract When do firms oppose international climate policy? Existing work often assumes that firms disapprove of climate regulation due to the immediate costs of compliance. We claim that if policy is implemented gradually, private preferences for climate policy vary as a function of its progressive stringency. That is, supportive views may rise in the initial phase of the policy, while opposing views may emerge as the policy becomes more stringent. We also argue that emissions of individual companies, as well as emissions levels in their respective sectors, influence corporate positions on these two dimensions. We test our argument with new corporate survey data on the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS). We find that firms’ views on the performance of the EU ETS vary based on whether they concentrate on the policy’s current state or its future, more stringent development. Moreover, we find that individual firm and sectoral emissions correlate with support for the early-stage, more lenient version of the ETS, but that high-emission firms are more interested in disinvesting and relocating if the ETS becomes stricter. Our findings imply that both firm and sectoral organization can constrain environmental regulation, and that domestic compensation, especially at early stages, can have important effects on the continuity of climate policy.

Legalization and dispute settlement benefits: The case of the GATT/WTO Abstract This study investigates how the legalization of the GATT into the WTO affects the distribution of its dispute settlement benefits between developed and developing countries. Existing studies present two arguments to this question — the capacity argument emphasizing the importance of economic capacity for the use of the dispute settlement mechanism (DSM) and the legalization argument suggesting its participatory effects for developing countries. Statistical data about the use of the DSM under the GATT and the early WTO provide some support for the capacity argument, while those under the WTO of its whole period for the legalization argument. However, the capacity theory fails to explain the use of the DSM by developed and developing countries after about the year, 2000, while the legalization theory has so far lacked an adequate empirical support. The purpose of this study is to find out why the capacity theory fails to do so, and to provide more empirical support for the legalization theory. It finds that the respective impacts of economic capacity and socialization experiences on the use of the DSM under the GATT/WTO vary depending on the degree of its legalization: that is, under the less legalized GATT a member country’s economic capacity is important, while under the legalized WTO its previous experiences are so, for its use of the DSM. The legalization has definitely attenuated the impact of its economic capacity on the use of the DSM, while it has strengthened the impact of its previous experiences on it very positively in the first half period of the WTO, and positively in its second half period. These results may mean that the WTO has by now leveled the playing field of dispute settlement not only for its economically less capable members but also for its relatively less experienced ones.

Why national parliamentarians join international organizations Abstract It is customary to argue that international organizations (IOs) are very much dominated by national executives, with national parliaments wielding no or at best marginal influence. According to this accepted wisdom, there cannot be many reasons for national parliaments and their members to be active within IOs. However, we can observe a movement towards the parliamentarization of IOs, materialized in a growing number of parliamentary bodies with increasing competencies that accompany governmental actions and decisions. My paper wants to shed light on the underlying incentive for members of national parliaments (MPs) to engage in these international parliamentary assemblies (IPAs). Proceeding from the assumption that IPAs can enable parliamentarians to fulfil their representation and control function, I argue that (1) district level factors related to internationalization can explain why some MPs become members of IPAs, and (2) opposition parties can use the information generated in IPAs to control governmental activities in International Organizations. I test the claims with data of all parliamentarians of the recent legislative period of the German Bundestag and personal interviews with 10 IPA members. The results suggest that especially district incentives are positive predictors for membership in the different assemblies, whereas variance in membership can hardly be explained by party-level factors.

Taxing fragmented aid to improve aid efficiency Abstract We present a model with multiple donors-principals that provide funds to a unique recipient-agent. Each donor decides how to allocate his aid funds between a pooled and an unilateral project. Both the principals and the agent value the output produced with the pooled funds and the unilateral projects. However donors have a bias in favor of their own unilateral project, which leads them to over-invest in these projects. We propose a tax scheme on the unilateral projects, which acts as a protection measure against biased allocation by the principals. The optimal tax imposed on unilateral projects varies depending on the total amount of aid provided by the donor and on the productivity of his unilateral project. Such a mechanism fits into the current discussion on bilateral negotiations on aid funds tax exemptions.

When the targets are members and donors: Analyzing inter-governmental organizations’ human rights shaming Abstract Research on the factors and considerations which drive human rights shaming focuses on non-governmental organizations (NGO). This article analyzes an intergovernmental organization’s (IGO) shaming. The article reviews the factors associated with NGO human rights shaming. The article then considers the potential association between these factors and IGO shaming, and the differences between IGOs and NGOs in this context. The potential associations are tested empirically using newly compiled data on the UN’s convention against torture (CAT) committee’s concluding observations country reports, and various specifications and regression methods. The results indicate that voting with the U.S. in the United Nations’ General Assembly (UNGA) is significantly associated with getting a more positive review from the CAT committee and this result is robust in various specifications. Results also indicate that the UN CAT committee’s shaming is associated with media coverage of human rights issues in the reviewed country and with trade and FDI volumes. The article draws conclusions regarding the linkages between funding, information sources and membership structures on the one hand and shaming approaches on the other.

The KOF Globalisation Index – revisited Abstract We introduce the revised version of the KOF Globalisation Index, a composite index measuring globalization for every country in the world along the economic, social and political dimension. The original index was introduced by Dreher (Applied Economics, 38(10):1091–1110, 2006) and updated in Dreher et al. (2008). This second revision of the index distinguishes between de facto and de jure measures along the different dimensions of globalization. We also disentangle trade and financial globalization within the economic dimension of globalization and use time-varying weighting of the variables. The new index is based on 43 instead of 23 variables in the previous version. Following Dreher (Applied Economics, 38(10):1091–1110, 2006), we use the new index to examine the effect of globalization on economic growth. The results suggest that de facto and de jure globalization influence economic growth differently. Future research should use the new KOF Globalisation Index to re-examine other important consequences of globalization and why globalization was proceeding rapidly in some countries, such as South Korea, but less so in others. The KOF Globalisation Index can be downloaded from http://www.kof.ethz.ch/globalisation/.

Judicial economy and moving bars in international investment arbitration Abstract Historically, international investment law has centered on protecting foreign investors from direct expropriation, but much of modern law includes legal standards that allow investors to win compensation for other kinds of investor-state disputes. A prominent criticism among scholars and policy advocates is that modern legal protections allow investors to pursue increasing numbers of frivolous, low-merit cases. We contend that this claim overlooks the impact of judicial economy and changing legal standards: since foreign investors only need to prove a main legal violation to secure compensation, arbitrators can and do rule only on those standards that are most easily proven, in particular, contemporary legal protections. As a result, measures based on legal claims and rulings cannot provide definitive evidence of merit, and fears about trends in frivolous litigation under international investment law may be overstated.