A considerable challenge for the creators of international environmental agreements is how to design mechanisms that deter defection without deterring participation. Relatively ``soft'' law often garners widespread participation, but it creates few concrete incentives for states to improve...

Several prominent human rights treaties seek to minimize violations during emergencies by authorizing states to “derogate”—that is, to suspend certain civil and political liberties—in response to crises. The drafters of these treaties envisioned that international restrictions on...

Cox & Drury broaden the democratic peace literature from the domain of militarized conflict to economic sanctions. Their analysis of economic sanctions data from 1978 through 2000 finds that democracies are more likely to enact sanctions but are less likely to do so against other democracies. In...

International human rights treaties have been ratified by many nation-states, including those ruled by repressive governments, raising hopes for better practices in many corners of the world. Evidence increasingly suggests, however, that human rights laws are most effective in stable or...

International human rights language has swept across the landscape of contemporary world politics in a trend that began in the 1970s, picked up speed after the Cold War's end, and quickened yet again in the latter half of the 1990s. Yet, while this human rights `talk' has fundamentally reshaped...