Political leaders are ultimately responsible for their country?s foreign policy, but our understanding of how executive turnover affects the likelihood of international treaty ratification remains limited. For contributing to this debate, I define leader change as the replacement of the executive leader by a new one who relies on different social groups for support. Focusing then on those cases where new leaders can assume office only from predecessors who plausibly supported treaty ratification, I expect that ? in light of the predecessor?s support for an agreement and the change in the domestic support base ? leadership turnover makes ratification less likely. The empirical implication is tested with quantitative methods using data on multilateral treaties of the post-Cold War era. The main findings and a series of additional analyses provide strong and robust evidence for the theoretical argument. This research sheds new light on the determinants of multilateral cooperation as well as the role of government leaders in international affairs and foreign-policy decision-making.

中文翻译：

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国际条约批准和领导人更替

政治领导人最终要对其国家的外交政策负责，但我们对行政人员更替如何影响国际条约批准可能性的理解仍然有限。为了促成这场辩论，我将领导变革定义为依靠不同社会群体支持的新领导取代执行领导。然后关注那些新领导人只能从看似支持条约批准的前任那里上任的情况，我预计？鉴于前任对协议的支持以及国内支持基础的变化？领导层更替降低了批准的可能性。利用冷战后时期多边条约的数据，用定量方法检验了实证意义。主要发现和一系列附加分析为理论论证提供了强有力的证据。这项研究揭示了多边合作的决定因素以及政府领导人在国际事务和外交政策决策中的作用。