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

在过去的20年里，国际合作的理论文献一直集中在合作是否可能以及合作有多重要的首要问题上。 现在，这些文献必须解决更集中的问题，即合作制度如何运作，以及它们如何改变国家行为。 此外，经过50多年来国际关系中现实主义与反现实主义的激烈辩论（其中大部分是关于国际协定的价值和功能的问题），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了。我的研究计划的第一个方面开发了一个理论框架，解释国际协议设计的一组逻辑推导和经验检验的假设。 该框架基于理性选择的观点，即行为体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Koremenos和其他人已经建立的工作路线。第二个方面是从《联合国条约汇编》中收集大量国际协定的特点数据。 我着重于四类条款：灵活性条款，如计划中的重新谈判和免责条款，监测和遵守条款，协议范围（涵盖的问题数量），以及对其他国际协议的引用。 这些方面的动机是重要的（和有趣的）理论问题，在现有的文献。该数据集允许研究国际合作的研究人员测试他们的理论，就像战争和军事化国际争端数据集的相关性使研究国际冲突的研究人员能够测试他们的想法一样。 这些数据一经收集，即可提供给研究界。 因此，该项目是对国际关系研究基础设施的重要贡献。 拟议项目的可行性已由主要研究者成功抽取的测试样本证明。 这一样本揭示了各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。 鉴于这是第一次收集此类数据，这种基本的描述性工作是对文献的重要贡献。 此外，与现有的文献相比，现有的文献主要说明国家如何与案例研究合作的理论，这些数据使研究人员能够检验理论。该提案还包括一个实质性的本科和研究生教学组成部分。 我希望有几个研究生能在他们的论文中添加和使用这个数据集。 我开发本科和研究生课程的研究设计，特别关注如何收集数据，可用于测试从正式理论的经验预测。 这些课程涵盖了问题的各个方面，特别关注理论变量的可操作性挑战。 我还修改了我现有的本科研讨课程，专注于从这个项目中出现的系统的实证分析。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。 迄今为止，来自UCLA和加州大学的用于收集测试数据的资金不足以让我按照这里提出的规模进行项目。

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.