Strategic and Relational Models of International Climate Treaty-Making (AQM steer)

气候变化是最紧迫的社会挑战之一。尽管许多人认为《巴黎协定》取得了成功，但特朗普总统2017年宣布美国退出该协定，引发了人们对其他国家是否也会退缩的担忧。这就把一个基本的、反事实的问题放在了聚光灯下：哥斯达黎加说，其他任何国家的同样声明会引发类似的担忧吗？这个看似无害的问题突出表明了我们对国际合作的理解面临的一个重大挑战。各国政府在决定是否加入一项条约（如《巴黎协定》）时，会考虑两件事：第一，具有前瞻性，试图评估自己的条约参与如何影响其他国家加入该协定的可能性。第二，各国政府在决定自己的行动之前，会回顾过去，看看哪些国家已经批准了条约。现有的统计方法忽略了这些战略和关系背景，在这些背景下，具体的协议是制定的;它们只考虑政府当前的选择，而不考虑他们自己的选择如何影响其他国家的未来行为（战略背景），以及从历史批准中学到什么（关系背景）。因此，应具体规定和应用考虑到这些背景的实际复杂的统计方法。该项目评估了两种先进的定量方法的相对优点：战略估计（SE）和关系事件模型（REM），以调查国际协议的制定，以更好地了解政府选择的性质随着时间的推移。它将以气候变化为例，从实质上和统计上比较可持续能源和可持续能源方法。该项目使用国际气候政治中的尖端战略和相关统计方法，对于政策制定者和智库来说具有高度的话题性和相关性，因为持续谈论有效脱碳经济，并开发适用于所有类型的国际条约的方法，包括贸易和人权。

Climate change is one of the most pressing societal challenges. While many consider the Paris Agreement a success, President Trump's 2017 announcement to withdraw the US from the agreement has raised concerns about whether other states will also backtrack. This puts a fundamental, counterfactual question in the spotlight: Would the same announcement by any other country, Costa Rica say, have triggered similar worries?This seemingly innocuous question highlights a major challenge for our understanding of international cooperation. When governments make decisions about whether to join a treaty, such as the Paris Agreement, they consider two things: First, they are forward-looking and try to assess how their own treaty participation affects the likelihood of others to join the agreement. Second, governments look backwards to see which countries have already ratified a treaty before deciding on their own action.Existing statistical approaches ignore these strategic and relational contexts in which specific agreements are made; they only consider a government's current choice, independent of how their own choice affects future behaviour by others (strategic context) and what to learn from historic ratifications (relational context). Hence, realistically complex statistical methods that take these contexts into account should be specified and applied. This project assesses the relative merits of two advanced quantitative methods: Strategic Estimation (SE) and the Relational Event Model (REM) to investigate international agreement-making to better understand the nature of government choice over time. It will compare, both substantively and statistically, the SE and REM approaches, using climate change as an illustration. This project uses cutting-edge strategic and relational statistical approaches in international climate politics, is highly topical and relevant to policymakers and think-tanks given continued talk about effectively decarbonising economies, and develops methods that are applicable to all types of international treaties, including trade and human rights.