IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/poleco/v63y2020ics0176268020300392.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The institutions of international treaty organizations as evidence for social contract theory

Author

Listed:
  • Congleton, Roger D.

Abstract

Treaty organizations are formed via voluntary contracts among national governments that address policy issues of mutual concern. As such, treaty organizations provide evidence about the kinds of institutions that might be adopted via social contract. This paper develops a theory of the design of treaty organizations and examines the domains of authority and decision-making procedures of 22 treaty organizations to determine if any general traits are in evidence. It turns out that most treaty organizations rely upon unanimity or supermajorities for their major decisions and usually have quite narrow (bounded) policy domains.

Suggested Citation

  • Congleton, Roger D., 2020. "The institutions of international treaty organizations as evidence for social contract theory," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:poleco:v:63:y:2020:i:c:s0176268020300392
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2020.101891
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0176268020300392
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2020.101891?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sandler,Todd & Hartley,Keith, 1999. "The Political Economy of NATO," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521630931.
    2. Anders Gustafsson, 2019. "Busy doing nothing: why politicians implement inefficient policies," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 30(3), pages 282-299, September.
    3. Philip Straffin, 1977. "Homogeneity, independence, and power indices," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 30(1), pages 107-118, June.
    4. John W McArthur & Krista Rasmussen, 2019. "An Assessment of Grant‐based Multilateral Funding Flows from 2014 to 2016," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 10(2), pages 238-249, May.
    5. Roger D. Congleton, 2018. "Intellectual foundations of public choice, the forest from the trees," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 175(3), pages 229-244, June.
    6. Congleton, Roger D, 1992. "Political Institutions and Pollution Control," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 74(3), pages 412-421, August.
    7. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65, pages 135-135.
    8. Roger D. Congleton, 2019. "Fiscal Bargaining and the Implicit Fiscal Constitutions of Liberal Democracies: A Public Choice Perspective," Public Policy Review, Policy Research Institute, Ministry of Finance Japan, vol. 15(2), pages 175-198, December.
    9. James Buchanan, 1990. "The domain of constitutional economics," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 1-18, December.
    10. Bernard Steunenberg & Dieter Schmidtchen & Christian Koboldt, 1999. "Strategic Power in the European Union," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 11(3), pages 339-366, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zhuo Wenjun, 2023. "Circulation Expectations, Farmer Trust, and Farmers’ Contract Choice Behavior," Land, MDPI, vol. 12(8), pages 1-15, August.
    2. Roger D. Congleton, 2020. "Ethics and good governance," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 184(3), pages 379-398, September.
    3. Evgeny V. Balatsky & Natalia A. Ekimova, 2022. "Social Contract Phenomenon: Evolution of Concepts and Modern Interpretations," Journal of Applied Economic Research, Graduate School of Economics and Management, Ural Federal University, vol. 21(3), pages 604-636.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Serguei Kaniovski, 2008. "The exact bias of the Banzhaf measure of power when votes are neither equiprobable nor independent," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 31(2), pages 281-300, August.
    2. Joungseok Park, 2016. "Rational Skeptics: On the Strategic Communication of Scientific Data," Working Papers 16-19, Department of Economics, Appalachian State University.
    3. Stavins, Robert, 2004. "Introduction to the Political Economy of Environmental Regulations," RFF Working Paper Series dp-04-12, Resources for the Future.
    4. Kyungjin Yoo & Seth Blumsack, 2018. "Can capacity markets be designed by democracy?," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 53(2), pages 127-151, April.
    5. Widgrén, Mika, 2008. "The Impact of Council Voting Rules on EU Decision-Making," Discussion Papers 1162, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
    6. Wallace E. Oates & Paul R. Portney & Wallace E. Oates & Paul R. Portney, 2004. "The Political Economy of Environmental Policy," Chapters, in: Environmental Policy and Fiscal Federalism, chapter 1, pages 3-30, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    7. Mika Widgren, 2003. "Power in the Design of Constitutional Rules," European Economy Group Working Papers 23, European Economy Group.
    8. Darcy W E Allen, 2020. "When Entrepreneurs Meet:The Collective Governance of New Ideas," World Scientific Books, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., number q0269, January.
    9. Joseph Michael Newhard, 2016. "An Interest Group Theory of Public Goods Provision: Reassessing the Relative Efficiency of the Market and the State," Journal of Private Enterprise, The Association of Private Enterprise Education, vol. 31(Winter 20), pages 21-41.
    10. Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard, 2018. "Public choice and political science: a view from Europe," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 175(3), pages 245-257, June.
    11. Stefan Napel & Mika Widgrén, 2005. "The Possibility of a Preference-Based Power Index," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 17(3), pages 377-387, July.
    12. T. Durant, 2011. "Making executive politics mutually productive and fair," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 22(2), pages 141-172, June.
    13. Mika WidgrÚn & Stefan Napel, 2002. "The Power of a Spatially Inferior Player," Homo Oeconomicus, Institute of SocioEconomics, vol. 19, pages 327-343.
    14. Congleton, Roger D., 1995. "Return to Rio: Agency problems and the political economy of environmental treaties," Discussion Papers, Series II 261, University of Konstanz, Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 178 "Internationalization of the Economy".
    15. Alain Marciano, 2007. "Value and exchange in law and economics: Buchanan versus posner," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 20(2), pages 187-200, September.
    16. Mavisakalyan, Astghik & Tarverdi, Yashar & Weber, Clas, 2018. "Talking in the present, caring for the future: Language and environment," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(4), pages 1370-1387.
    17. Stefano Benati & Giuseppe Vittucci Marzetti, 2013. "Probabilistic spatial power indexes," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 40(2), pages 391-410, February.
    18. Gebhard Kirchgässner, 2014. "The role of homo oeconomicus in the political economy of James Buchanan," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 25(1), pages 2-17, March.
    19. Badinger, Harald & Mühlböck, Monika & Nindl, Elisabeth & Reuter, Wolf Heinrich, 2014. "Theoretical vs. empirical power indices: Do preferences matter?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 158-176.
    20. Sascha Kurz, 2014. "Measuring Voting Power in Convex Policy Spaces," Economies, MDPI, vol. 2(1), pages 1-33, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Social contracts; Treaty organizations; Treaties; Trust; Unanimity; Bounded policy domains;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H1 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government
    • H7 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations
    • F5 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:poleco:v:63:y:2020:i:c:s0176268020300392. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505544 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.