Doctoral Dissertation Research: Mechanisms of Diffusion of State/Non-State Legal Agreements

该项目审查有助于法律从一个国家成功传播到另一个国家的因素。与其他传播研究不同的是，该项目侧重于起源于发展中国家的法律，并已传播到其他发展中国家，并已开始渗透到发达国家，生产分成合同（一种管理资源所有权的法律形式）现在挑战特许权和国家所有权制度作为某些自然资源所有权的主导模式。该项目提出，产品分成合同的成功在很大程度上归因于学习和模仿过程，而不是胁迫或竞争，国内政治在决定哪些国家被视为榜样方面发挥着关键作用。该项目将通过对1960年至2010年全球石油法律原始数据集的定量分析，以及对石油行业专家的访谈和来自行业出版物和美国政府文件的档案材料的定性分析来验证这一假设。该项目除了通过在会议上最终传播和出版物来增进对石油工业立法的了解外，还有望增进对如何在发展中国家成功地促进法律的创新的了解，并承认发展中国家作为新法律的制定者和推动者所作的贡献。它还将通过发布原始数据集为未来的研究做出贡献。

This project examines the factors contributing to the successful spread of laws from one country to another. Unlike other studies of diffusion, the project focuses on a law that originated in the developing world and has spread both to other developing countries and has begun to penetrate the developed world, The production sharing contract (a form of law governing ownership of resources) now challenges the concession and state ownership systems as the dominant model of ownership of certain natural resources. The project proposes that the success of the production sharing contract is attributable in large part to processes of learning and emulation, rather than coercion or competition, with domestic politics playing a crucial role in determining which countries are perceived as role models. The project will test this hypothesis by combining quantitative analysis of an original data set of global petroleum laws from 1960 to 2010 with qualitative analysis of interviews with petroleum industry experts and archival materials from industry publications and U.S. government documents. Apart from advancing knowledge about legislation in the petroleum industry through its eventual dissemination at conferences and through publication, the project promises to improve understanding about how to successfully promote legal innovations across developing countries as well as to recognize the contributions of developing countries as developers and promoters of new laws. It also will contribute to future research with the release of its original data set.