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

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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.