This article takes the challenges of global governance and legitimacy seriously and looks at new ways in which international organizations (IOs) have attempted to ‘govern’ without explicit legal or regulatory directives. Specifically, we explore the growth of global performance indicators as...

One of the mechanisms by which international law can shape domestic politics is through its effects on public opinion. However, a growing number of national leaders have begun to advocate policies that ignore or even deny international law constraints. This article investigates whether...

While border politics have become an increasingly salient component of high international politics, political scientists have made few attempts to systematically analyze variation in national border policy. To make analytic headway in this area, we develop the concept of “border orientation”...

International borders have become a growing concern for international security. Moreover, they appear to be associated with a growing set of international concerns arising from transnational nonstate violence and criminality. Because international relations theorists have been concerned...

The proliferation of Global Performance Indicators (GPIs), especially those that rate and rank states against one another, shapes decisions of states, investors, bureaucrats, and voters. This power has not been lost on the World Bank, which has marshaled the Ease of Doing Business (EDB) index to...

In recent decades, IGOs, NGOs, private firms and even states have begun to regularly package and distribute information on the relative performance of states. From the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Index to the Financial Action Task Force blacklist, Global Performance Indicators (GPIs) are...

Political scientists, sociologists, and economists have all sought to analyze the spread of economic and political liberalism across countries in recent decades. This article documents this diffusion of liberal policies and politics and proposes four distinct theories to explain how the prior...

The diffusion of markets and democracy around the world was a defining feature of the late twentieth century. Many social scientists view this economic and political liberalization as the product of independent choices by national governments. This book argues that policy and political changes...

The worldwide spread of economic and political liberalism was one of the defining features of the late twentieth century. Free-market oriented economic reforms – macroeconomic stabilization, liberalization of foreign economic policies, privatization, and deregulation – took root in many...

The worldwide spread of economic and political liberalism was the defining feature of the late twentieth century. Free-market-oriented economic reforms -- macroeconomic stabilization, liberalization of foreign economic policies, privatization, and deregulation -- took root in many parts of the...