Conclusions

Summary of findings: how did the theories fare? The principal aim of this work has been the quest for the strongest explanation of international law compliance from among the existing theories. This has been done across a variety of issue-areas and a range of cases during the period from 1990 to 2008. Using a variety of measures, we have found that most theories of law compliance can explain important developments in world affairs. For example, it was clear that the theory of political liberalism did the best job of explaining compliance with the protective provisions of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women – so long as culture was not taken into account. On the other hand, knowing a state’s culture – particularly with respect to adherence to Islam – can also explain compliance with CEDAW. A country’s managerial capacity explained much of its degree of compliance with anti-trafficking norms as well as limited consumption of ozone-depleting chemicals as provided for under the Montreal Protocol. A country’s reputation, as measured in terms of its international credit-worthiness, explained its policies on fighting terror and maintaining high standards of aircraft safety. And finally, legitimacy theory explained anti-terror policy. There are sound theoretical reasons why each of these statistical patterns was observed. What is perhaps most surprising is that more of them did not occur. It was surprising that anti-piracy, anti-slavery, and ship safety rules seemed to defy explanation – at least in the aggregate. Further, it was surprising that in most cases only one theory emerged as the most promising explanation – but it was very difficult to predict which theory would emerge when moving from one issue-area to the next. Why does a country’s administrative capacity explain compliance with the Montreal Protocol, but not with airline safety? Why does a country’s level of democratization explain compliance with CEDAW, but not with anti-terror measures? The lack of answers pointed to a need to adopt another research method. The likely explanation for these puzzling patterns lies in the possibility that causation involves subtle and dynamic processes which our statistics could not capture adequately. The solution was to undertake a series of country studies – holding

constant the issue-areas and the time-frame. We selected the cases along three dimensions: wealth, democracy, and globalization. We also took geography and culture into account where feasible. In this chapter we will review the findings from the case studies and relate them to the findings from Chapter 5. Table 10.1 revisits the cases and their characteristics. Table 10.2 repeats the assessment of theories as presented at the close of each country study. We judge the utility of a theory on a three-point scale; a theory is judged to explain “little,” “some,” or “much” of the outcomes and processes. Table 10.2 shows that some theories performed better across the board than others. Later we will see whether this is contingent on issue-area. It is worth keeping in mind the country characteristics as presented in Table 10.1 as we consider Table 10.2. The first observation is that, as could have been expected from the crossnational statistical findings, no one theory provides a strong explanation across cases and across issue-areas. Each theory fails to explain outcomes. Conversely, no theory is entirely useless, as each one provides a strong explanation of at least a few outcomes. Cultural theory, for example, offers a compelling explanation for human rights law compliance in many of the cases, while the legitimacy school and reputational theory explain outcomes in the area of market regulation. Overall, however, the rationalist approach makes a reasonable starting point for any explanation of international law compliance across countries and across issue-areas. Out of sixty-seven total cells with results (excluding maritime policy for most of the landlocked countries), it explains “much” of the outcome in more than half (thirty-seven) and explains “some” of the results in a quarter of the possible cases (eighteen). This is a key finding that could not have been determined without the case studies since it is very difficult to test this theory through cross-national statistical analysis. Understanding a regime’s interests – both at home and abroad – requires situational knowledge that is not easily quantified or generalized. As we have seen, however, other theoretical approaches can help us better understand a government’s interests – particularly with respect to the place of reputation and the need to maintain power at home. Rationalism by itself – as is generally acknowledged by the theory’s proponents – offers a template rather than a forecast. More will be said about this below.