INR 2002 Exam 4 Chapter Summaries Chapter 11 International law and norms bind states and other agents in their relations with each other International law is created through custom and treaties and is characterized by varying degrees of obligation precision and delegation Following international law can provide states with benefits by facilitating international cooperation Law facilitates cooperation by setting standards of behavior helping to verify compliance with precise rules lowering the costs of decision making and by managing disputes These aspects can make international self enforcing in the sense that states have self interested reasons for complying with the law Norms are standards of behavior defined in terms of rights and obligations There are three types constitutive procedural and regulative Norms are created and institutionalized when their standards of behavior are seem as morally right and appropriate by a sufficiently large fraction of the relevant population Successful efforts to create new norms typically occur when individuals or groups known as norm entrepreneurs such as transnational advocacy networks TANs press governments to adopt them The norm life cycle consists of three stages 1 norm entrepreneurs work to convince others to embrace their beliefs 2 once the norm has been adopted by a critical mass of actors a norm cascade occurs in which the norm is adopted by nearly all states and other actors and 3 the norm is internalized Norms influence action in two ways The first is to persuade an actor to redefine its interests so that they are consistent with the norm The second is TANs monitor state compliance with international norms naming and shaming those that violate the norm States can acquire information about compliance with international laws and norms in three ways self reporting directly monitoring the actions of other states and relying in part on the monitoring of trustworthy third parties such as TANs TANs have strong incentives to monitor closely compliance with the norms that they support and to convey information about compliance or violation to other states that have the power to punish violators or to reward those who comply Chapter 12 Summary The norm of universal human rights replaced the core belief of noninterference in state sovereignty and states took diplomatic and coercive action to support rights promotion The global implementation of human rights is limited due to conflicting interests the lack of substantive sanctions against offenders and a weak yet strengthening international regime to alter state behavior The UDHR identifies three types or generations of rights political participation and civil liberties social and economic rights and community identity and national solidarity Human rights can be thought of as a global public good But states resist efforts by outside to constrain how they rule their society or how they respond to perceived threats Newly democratized states may view international agreements as a means of committing future leaders to political reform States may commit to human rights treaties in response to inducements from established democracies Some states may ratify agreements only to give the appearance of good global citizenship or to qualify for other benefits such as trade treaties The fundamental obstacle to a greater enforcement of human rights commits comes from the relatively high cost and diffuse benefits of imposing costs on violators and the strong temptation of incumbents to violate basic rights in a bid to maintain power Nonetheless some states do pay the cost of enforcing human rights law Domestic pressure especially by a citizenry well informed of the target country can spur democratic governments to action Four current developments offer promise in reinforcing international human rights First the constitutions of some countries allow for individual petition to supranational institutions when the individual cannot find redress within the country Second some judicial systems have embraced the concept of universal jurisdiction where foreigners can be tried for crimes committed abroad against nationals Third the International Criminal Court ICC established in 1998 can try individuals for war crimes and threats to international peace and stability Finally TANs have taken advantage of the plethora of trade treaties to attach human rights provisions Chapter 13 Chapter Summary The degree of collective action problems among and within states influences the amount of international environmental cooperation The role of international institutions is often limited to providing policy and monitoring information With weak international authority for global environmental issues states have a strong incentive to free ride on the environmental protection efforts of others Smaller groups of states with repeated and broad interactions are more likely to find agreement especially on regional issues Within countries those who gain from environmental degradation often enjoy advantages in political organization over larger groups that pay the costs Externalities are costs or benefits that accrue to a third party as a result of an economic transaction between two actors Those who benefit from negative externalities have an incentive to lobby for legislation that externalizes some of their costs Markets face difficulty providing public goods and some form of authority is often needed to counter free riding Nonexcludability and nonrival use give incentives for free riding Common property goods require some form of cooperation to prevent overuse International cooperation to prevent overuse of common property resources or to prevent free riding on public goods faces more actors greater divergence of interests and institutions with weaker authority The smaller the number of resources users the more likely the cooperation to prevent free riding or overuse Frequent interaction can create trust and allow effective sanctioning Public goods can be bundled with private goods to generate incentive to contribute to collective welfare Finally a subgroup of actors a privileged group may limit its use or make contributions on behalf of a larger community One axis of interaction in the climate regime is between the Northern countries with responsibility for pollution and vulnerability to climate change and the Southern countries with opposite interests and little capacity Progress on stabilizing greenhouse gasses has been
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