CAREER: Designing International Agreements: Theoretical Development, Data Collection, and Empirical Analysis

在过去的二十年里，关于国际合作的理论文献侧重于关于合作是否可能以及合作有多重要的重大问题。现在，这本文献必须解决更集中的问题，即合作机构如何运作，以及它们如何改变国家行为。此外，在国际关系中进行了50多年的现实主义和反现实主义激烈辩论(其中许多辩论都围绕着国际协定的价值和功能的问题)之后，没有人系统地收集关于国际协定重要方面的数据。因此，现在也是时候收集这些数据，用它们来对抗新旧理论。我的研究计划的第一个方面开发了一个理论框架，用一系列逻辑推导和经验可检验的假设来解释国际协议设计。该框架以理性选择的观点为基础，行为者有目的地设计协议和机构，以促进其共同利益。理论方面延续了韩国人和其他人已经确立的工作路线。第二个方面是收集关于从《联合国条约汇编》中抽取的大量国际协定的特点的数据。我侧重于四种类型的条款：灵活性条款，如计划中的重新谈判和例外条款，监测和遵守条款，协议范围(所涵盖的问题数量)，以及对其他国际协议的引用。这些维度是由现有文献中重要的(和有趣的)理论问题推动的。该数据表允许研究国际合作的研究人员测试他们的理论，其方式与研究国际冲突的军事化国际争端数据集使研究国际冲突的研究人员能够测试他们的想法的方式大体相同。一旦收集到数据，研究界就可以获得这些数据。因此，该项目是对国际关系研究基础设施的重要贡献。首席调查员已经绘制了一个成功的测试样本，证明了拟议项目的可行性。本样本揭示了不同问题领域协议条款的系统性差异。第三个方面是对收集到的数据进行统计分析。鉴于这是此类数据收集工作的第一次，这项基本的描述性工作代表着对文献的重要贡献。此外，与现有文献主要阐述国家如何与案例研究合作的理论相反，这些数据允许研究人员检验理论。该提案还包含大量的本科生和研究生教学部分。我希望有几个研究生在他们的论文中增加和使用这个数据集。我开设了关于研究设计的本科生和研究生课程，特别关注如何收集数据，这些数据可以用来检验来自正式理论的经验性预测。这些课程涵盖了这个问题的所有方面，特别侧重于将理论变量付诸实施的挑战。我还修改了现有的本科生研讨会课程，将重点放在从这个项目中产生的系统的实证分析上。我的研究议程包括理论发展、主要数据收集和理论的系统实证检验。到目前为止，加州大学洛杉矶分校和加州大学用于收集测试数据的资金还不足以让我继续进行这里提出的规模的项目。

For the past twenty years, the theoretical literature on international cooperation has focused on overarching questions about whether cooperation is possible and how important it is. Now, this literature must address more focused questions about how the institutions of cooperation work and how they change state behavior. Moreover, after over fifty years of intense realist-antirealist debate in international relations (much of which turns on the question of the value and function of international agreements), no one has systematically collected data on important dimensions of international agreements. Hence, it is also time to collect such data to use them to confront both old and new theories. The first aspect of my research program develops a theoretical framework that explains international agreement design in terms of a set of logically derived and empirically testable hypotheses. The framework is based on a rational choice perspective in which actors purposefully design agreement and institutions to advance their joint interests. The theoretical aspect continues the line of work already established by Koremenos and others. The second aspect consists of collecting data on the characteristics of a large sample of international agreements drawn from the United Nations Treaty Series. I focus on four types of provisions: flexibility provisions, such as planned renegotiations and escape clauses, monitoring and compliance provisions, agreement scope (the number of issues covered), and references to other international agreements. These dimensions are motivated by important (and interesting) theoretical questions in the existing literature. The datasheet allows reseachers who study international cooperation to test their theories in much the same way as the Correlates of War and Militarized International Disputes datasets enable researchers who study international conflict to test their ideas. The data are available to the research community once assembled. As such, the project represents an important contribution to the research infrastructure of international relations. The feasibility of the proposed project is demonstrated by a successful test sample already drawn by the principal investigator. This sample reveals systematic variation in agreement provisions across issue areas. The third aspect consists of statistical analyses of the collected data. Given that this is the first data collection effort of its kind, this basic descriptive work represents an important contribution to the literature. Furthermore, and in contrast to the existing literature, which mainly illustrates theories of how states cooperate with case studies., these data allow researchers to test theories. The proposal also contains a substantial undergraduate and graduate teaching component. I expect several graduate students to add to and use the datset in their dissertations. I develop both undergraduate and graduate courses on research design, with a particular focus on how to collect data that can be used to test empirically predictions from formal theory. These courses cover all aspects of the problem, with a special focus on the challenge of operationalizing theoretical variables. I also modify my existing undergraduate seminar course to focus on the systematic empirical analyses that emerge from this project. My research agenda includes theoretical development, major data collection, and systematic empirical testing of the theory. To date, funding from UCLA and from the University of California for the collection of the test data has been insufficient to allow me to pursue the project on the scale proposed here.