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是成功的，但特朗普总统2017年宣布让美国退出该协定，引发了人们对其他国家是否也会走回头路的担忧。这让一个根本性的、与事实背道而驰的问题暴露在聚光灯下：哥斯达黎加表示，其他国家的相同声明会引发类似的担忧吗？这个看似无害的问题突显了我们对国际合作的理解面临的重大挑战。当各国政府就是否加入《巴黎协定》等条约做出决定时，他们会考虑两件事：首先，他们具有前瞻性，并试图评估自己加入条约的可能性如何影响其他国家加入该协定的可能性。其次，各国政府在决定自己的行动之前，会回头看看哪些国家已经批准了一项条约。现有的统计方法忽略了这些达成具体协议的战略和关系背景；它们只考虑一个政府目前的选择，而不考虑它们自己的选择如何影响其他国家未来的行为(战略背景)，以及从历史批准中学到什么(关系背景)。因此，应具体说明和应用考虑到这些情况的实际复杂的统计方法。这个项目评估了两种先进的定量方法：战略估计(SE)和关系事件模型(REM)的相对优点，以调查国际协议制定，以更好地理解政府选择的性质。它将以气候变化为例，从实质上和统计上对SE和REM方法进行比较。该项目在国际气候政治中使用尖端的战略和关系统计方法，具有高度的时代性，并与政策制定者和智库密切相关，因为人们不断谈论有效地实现经济脱碳，并开发适用于包括贸易和人权在内的所有类型国际条约的方法。

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.