Do international reputational concerns constrain governments’ economic policy choices? We assess this question by analyzing emerging market decisions to tighten restrictions on capital outflows. While policymakers should be more likely to tighten restrictions to protect their economies as capital flow volatility (CFV) increases, investors view outflow controls as heterodox policies that violate investment

We explore how “international organizations” have been conceptualized and operationalized in the field of International Relations (IR), identify an important gap between the two, and demonstrate how this shapes our understanding of world politics. Traditionally, we show, IR has embraced a broad conception of international organizations (IOs) that appreciates variation in design. However, the literature

A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11558-021-09430-4

I revisit claims that the Cold War had no meaningful effect on civil war after 1990 by probing its empirical veracity. I argue and employ a Bartik-style difference-in-differences identification strategy to show that countries with greater political grievances during the Cold War were more likely to experience civil war after the Cold War. I provide evidence suggesting that changes in the credibility

Why do states’ human rights records converge with co-members in intergovernmental organizations (IGOs)? This study provides new insights on whether interactions in IGOs have the capacity to genuinely transform state preferences or whether norm diffusion is a consequence of instrumental processes. We leverage information about the timing of human rights alignment to disentangle intrinsic from instrumental

How and why do the policy areas covered in World Bank loan conditions change over time and across borrowers? We hypothesize that shifts in the Bank’s economic research and policy priorities influence Bank loan conditions, even after controlling for country characteristics and international political aspects. To test this claim we apply keyword-assisted topic models to the analysis of over 13,000 World

Most issue areas in world politics today are governed neither by individual institutions nor by regime complexes composed of formal interstate institutions. Rather, they are governed by “hybrid institutional complexes” (HICs) comprising heterogeneous interstate, infra-state, public–private and private transnational institutions, formal and informal. We develop the concept of the HIC as a novel descriptive

It is widely accepted that better-connected firms exercise more political influence. However, because both social ties and political influence are difficult to observe, it remains little understood how different types of ties affect different types of political action. We develop new theory that contrasts the effects of ties to other firms in the same industry (peer ties) with ties to elected officials

Over the past decade, an increasingly sophisticated literature has sought to capture the nature, sources, and consequences of a novel empirical phenomenon in world politics: the growing complexity of global governance. However, this literature has paid only limited attention to questions of measurement, which is a prerequisite for a more comprehensive understanding of global governance complexity across

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11558-021-09416-2

World Bank evaluations show that recipient performance varies substantially between different projects. Extant research has focused on country-level variables when explaining these variations. This article goes beyond country-level explanations and highlights the role of World Bank staff. We extend established arguments in the literature on compliance with the demands of International Organizations

Many observers worry that growing numbers of international institutions with overlapping functions undermine governance effectiveness via duplication, inconsistency and conflict. Such pessimistic assessments may undervalue the mechanisms available to states and other political agents to reduce conflictual overlap and enhance inter-institutional synergy. Drawing on historical data I examine how states

Governments frequently offer tax incentives to induce localized investments. This is puzzling because previous research finds tax incentives are rarely decisive factors in firms’ locational decision-making. Some argue incentives reflect hyper capital mobility, which strengthens multinational enterprises’ bargaining leverage vis-à-vis governments that wish to attract investment. Others emphasize the

von Borzyskowski and Vabulas’ Review of International Organizations 14(2):335-366 (2019) pioneering research explores why states withdraw from intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). Contrary to popular belief, the research finds that IGO withdrawal has little to do with increased nationalism and instead is largely driven by geopolitical reasons and democracy levels both within the state and organization

Why do states engage in settlements with victims of human rights violations? Although the friendly settlement procedure has been on the books at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights since 1992, states did not begin utilizing the procedure in earnest until nearly ten years later – why? I argue that state behavior – the choice to settle or litigate – at the Inter-American Commission is driven

While existing research has suggested that delegating foreign aid allocation decisions to a multilateral aid fund may incentivize recipient countries to invest in bureaucratic quality, our analysis links the fund’s decision rules to recipient-country investment by explicitly modeling the decision-making within multilateral aid funds. We find that majority rule induces stronger competition between recipients

Global governance complexes offer member states opportunities for “regime shifting”: playing off an institutional forum against another with the goal of improving one’s relative bargaining position. I probe the internal validity of this strategy. The model makes two contributions to the governance complex literature. Formally, first, the analysis goes beyond current “outside-option” models of regime

Trade law scholars have often argued that international institutions can serve a useful domestic political role by providing a constraint against domestic demands for protection. In this paper, I identify a new way in which such institutions and their particular features can be valuable to governments: namely, that they can provide useful information about domestic political groups. While governments

Scholars have long feared that regional economic specialization, fostered by freer trade, would make the European Union vulnerable to economic downturn. The most acute concerns have been over the adoption of the common currency: by adopting the euro, countries renounce their ability to meet an asymmetric shock with independent revaluations of their currencies. We systematically test the prediction

Previous research has explored various channels in the aid-growth relationship such as the real exchange rate, changes in manufacturing output, institutional capacity, and governance. This paper puts forward a new mechanism: human capital accumulation. International organizations financially support and/or directly collaborate with educational institutions to establish courses. The development sector

Does the International Monetary Fund (IMF) increase inequality? To answer this question, this article introduces a new empirical strategy for determining the effects of IMF programs that exploits the heterogeneous effect of IMF liquidity on loan allocation based on a difference-in-differences logic. The results show that IMF programs increase income inequality. An analysis of decile-specific income

In this paper we explore the factors that determine delegation of implementation in project aid. In particular, focusing on the importance of informational asymmetry between levels of government, we empirically assess whether this choice is influenced by the relative importance of the local information at the recipient country level. Moreover, we test whether this choice can in turn influence project

We examine the global ownership structure of firms in the context of the investment regime. Investment agreements extend valuable privileges to firms invested abroad. But, these privileges only apply to firms whose assets are owned in a country that has signed an agreement with their host market; firms lack protections under investment agreements for many of their target markets. We argue that, by

Foreign aid may act much like oil money in reducing voters’ willingness to demand accountability from their government, enabling corruption, clientelism, and repression. This is an important causal mechanism connecting public budgets to quality of governance. Yet other scholarship counters that aid is more beneficial than oil, either indirectly because of donor oversight or directly because aid is

The liberal international economic order has been facing high-profile legitimacy challenges in recent years. This article puts these challenges in historical context through a systematic analysis of rhetorical challenges towards both the order per se and specific global economic institutions. Drawing on Albert Hirschman’s classic typology of exit, voice and loyalty, we coded leaders’ speeches in the

This article identifies the existence of a previously unknown but important type of self-directed political behavior by International Organizations (IOs) that I term intervention. Intervention occurs when an IO secretariat acts with the intention of altering an anticipated decision at a partially-overlapping IO in a regime complex. Intervention is a distinct type of behavior by IOs that differs from

Scholars have long debated the relationship between foreign aid and international migration, with some arguing that foreign aid can deter emigrants and others contending that aid enables them. We contribute to this discussion by exploring whether negative aid shocks affect migration patterns. We theorize that these shocks, which occur when there are large and abrupt decreases in aid disbursement to

The link between security and economic exchange is widely recognized. But when and how much do geopolitical interests matter for economic cooperation? While existing work focuses on bilateral trade and aid, we examine how geopolitics shapes membership in multilateral economic organizations. We demonstrate that substantial discrimination occurs as states welcome or exclude states based on foreign policy

The title of the originally published version of this article, unfortunately, is incorrect.

This paper analyzes how patterns of international cooperation are affected if a group of states, led by a major power, pursues a strategy of “contested multilateralism” (CM). We conceptualize CM as a reaction to deadlock in institutional adjustment bargaining where CM lowers the gains actors can reap from cooperation in the short run. We demonstrate that, in the long run, CM nevertheless can have positive

Despite sharing attributes that scholars argue promote international cooperation, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have few formal international agreements with each other. Does this absence of formal agreements imply a cooperation failure? We argue that absolute monarchies frequently cooperate with each other but do so informally. At the domestic level, absolute

How do states improve their international status and prestige short of war? We argue that rejecting international assistance can boost a government’s image by making it appear self-sufficient and able to provide for its citizens, leading many states to decline foreign aid. However, potential recipients only do so when they have the ability to send a credible signal and when they value status highly

The political budget cycle (PBC) literature argues that governments expand deficits in election years. However, what happens when an economic downturn is expected? Will the government allow the deficit to expand even further, or will it resort to spending cuts and tax increases? When voters expect less than full automatic stabilization, our model shows that opportunistic government behavior leads to

Germany’s large current account surplus has been widely criticized, especially against the backdrop of the role of macroeconomic imbalances in the Eurozone crisis. We argue that Germany’s resistance to reduce its massive current account surplus through an expansionary policy at home is rooted in distributive struggles about the design of possible adjustment policies. To explore this argument, we leverage

How does the prospect of accession to an international union affect a non-member-state government’s incentives to implement political and economic liberalization reforms? To answer this question, we propose an informational mechanism of international union accession conditionality drawing on Bénabou and Tirole’s (The Review of Economic Studies, 70, 489–520, 2003) formalization of intrinsic and extrinsic

We exploit variations in access rules on the European Court of Justice to explore the effect of procedural inclusiveness on the agenda of international adjudicators. Using natural language processing methods, we analyze the entire universe of ECJ decisions up to 2015, mapping issue prevalence across time, procedure and litigant type. We find evidence that the more inclusive annulment and referral procedures

We study the political economy of allocation decisions within a major state investment bank. Our focus is the European Investment Bank (EIB) – “The Bank of the EU” – which is the largest multilateral lending (and borrowing) institution in the world. We study the behavior of about 500 national representatives at the EIB’s Board of Directors – the bank’s decisive body for loan approvals – and show that

In response to the euro area crisis, policymakers took a gradual, incremental approach to official lending, at first relying on the blueprint followed by the International Monetary Fund, then developing their own crisis resolution framework. We describe this process of institutional development, marked by a substantial divergence in the terms of official loans offered to. We use a unique dataset of

Alongside the promise of international cooperation lies a growing concern regarding the potential overreach of international organizations (IO). Scholars and policy-makers alike wonder how transnational actors can constrain IOs and ensure they are legitimate and accountable in our system of global governance. At the heart of this dilemma is the potential abuse or misuse of institutional power; yet

The handling of the 2008 financial crisis has reinforced the conviction that the European Union (EU) is undemocratic and that member states are forced to delegate overwhelming power to a supranational technocracy. However, European countries have engaged with this alleged power drift differently, with only a few member states demanding more parliamentary scrutiny of EU institutions. This article develops

International norms and rules are created in international negotiations. A comprehensive survey shows that the satisfaction with negotiation outcomes varies between delegates, states and International Organizations (IOs), which is important as it has potential ramifications for state compliance and the effectiveness of the international rules and norms. This paper investigates which role individual

Informal modes of cooperation are a central element of the complex institutional architecture of contemporary global governance. Collectively and individually, the contributions to this special issue broaden the emerging research on informal governance in world politics and provide novel empirical analyses based on unique data. In this introduction, we outline the research questions and puzzles that

The past and arguably the future of the European Union (EU) are characterized by Differentiated Integration (DI). Whereas a number of studies examine country variance in the realization of DI due to state-level characteristics, scholars have rarely addressed sector-specific differentiation. We select Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for such an analysis – the policy domain with the largest budget,

The European Union (EU) currently faces many challenges. The departure of the United Kingdom in early 2020 means that for the first time in its history, it lost rather than gained a member state. Several of its member states still struggle with the long-term consequences of the financial and economic crisis that started back in 2008. The economic impact of the Covid-19 crisis is likely to further strain

During the global financial crisis, the Federal Reserve issued billions of dollars in liquidity swap agreements with foreign central banks, serving as a global lender of last resorts. Most studies of this event have analyzed the distribution of these swap lines using materially rational frameworks, which is logical under normal lending conditions. However, this approach does not account for the extensive

In the coming century, average temperatures are predicted to increase by 2.5 to ten degrees Fahrenheit as a result of climate change. Yet citizens around the world vary in their perceptions of how serious the threat of rising temperatures is. I argue that variation in the perceived seriousness of climate change reflects the degree to which individuals internalize the welfare of others in society besides

Most research on private governance examines the design and negotiation of particular initiatives or their operation and effectiveness once established, with relatively little work on why firms join in the first place. We contribute to this literature by exploring firms’ willingness to participate in two recent, high-profile private initiatives established in the aftermath of the Rana Plaza disaster

Many international development organizations (IDOs) have officially mandated anti-corruption criteria for aid selectivity. Substantial debate remains over whether corruption deters aid and whether anti-corruption rules are effectively implemented. We argue that the extent to which both corruption and anti-corruption mandates factor into IDO allocation depends on the composition of the donors. Using

Foreign aid flows result from agreements reached between states that need resources and other states or international organizations that can provide those resources. Recent literature has argued that different international development organizations bargain with aid-receiving states in particular ways. Specifically, some authors argue that non-egalitarian international development organizations seek

This symposium presents a rich set of concepts, data, and testing of relationships regarding the apparent explosion of informal governance activities in world politics. The authors theorize and describe a wide variety of modes of informal governance. I summarize key contributions of this literature and suggest new paths for further research.

How international actors can bolster democracy in other countries is a core question of political science. An important part of the challenge is to ensure that elections are not only free and fair, but peaceful as well. Von Borzyskowski’s The Credibility Challenge: How Democracy Aid Influences Election Violence makes a major contribution to the literatures on election violence, and more broadly, international

The articles in this symposium were first presented at a conference hosted by the European Union Center and the Department of Political Science at Texas A&M University in the spring of 2017. The three papers represented in this collection study the underlying motivations for taxation in non-democracies (Hollenbach 2019), how regional inequality in endowments can inhibit central government taxation

This article introduces a new dataset on transnational public-private governance initiatives (TGIs) in world politics. TGIs are institutions in which states and/or intergovernmental organizations cooperate with business and civil society actors to govern transnational problems. Thus, they are a special type of transnational public-private partnership. TGIs have flourished since the late 1990s and,

Much research on foreign aid presents claims that apply to aid in general but tests these claims using data from one or a small number of donors. This makes it difficult to know if we have learned something about aid, or merely something about one donor. For example, the literature on project aid success has found that per capita GDP growth rates or Freedom House scores in recipient countries correlate

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

The global governance of development increasingly relies on multi-stakeholder partnerships between states, intergovernmental organizations, and non-governmental organizations. This article takes on two tasks. The first is to describe quantitatively the institutional evolution of the multilateral development system over the past century. The second is to juxtapose four rational-institutionalist explanations

In this paper we address how external factors shape government decisions to break or uphold contracts, specifically focusing on how economic shocks and support from multilateral financial institutions shape leader decisions to expropriate from investors. Contrary to conventional wisdom and much of the existing scholarship, we argue that governments are less likely to expropriate from investors during

Economic theory suggests that high voter turnout is not necessarily welfare maximizing. Low turnout elections, however, might be captured by interest groups. Using data from German local governments in the period 1993–2015, I empirically study the link between turnout and policy outcomes. Local public sector employment policy responds to plausibly exogenous turnout shocks in elections for the head