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Preferences are crucial to the analysis of many key questions regarding international institutions. This article analyzes the key predictors of states' preferences over universal treaties. It does so by using a spatial-modeling approach that conceptualizes a treaty commitment preference space that includes agreements across multiple policy areas. I analyze the treaty commitment preference space in order to better understand the key dimensions of these preferences. I find that economics, and particularly trade, is the clearest and most consistent predictor of treaty commitment preferences, including with respect to many treaties in noneconomic policy areas.

Do national legislatures constitute a mechanism by which commitments to international human rights treaties can be made credible? Treaty ratification can activate domestic mechanisms that make repression more costly, and the legislative opposition can enhance these mechanisms. Legislative veto players raise the cost of formalistic repressive strategies by declining to consent to legislation. Executives can still choose to rely on more costly, extralegal strategies, but these could result in severe penalties for the leader and require the leader to expend resources to hide. Especially in treaty member‐states, legislatures can use other powers to also increase the cost of extralegal violations, which can further reduce repression. By using an empirical strategy that attempts to address the selection effects in treaty commitment decisions, I show that positive effects of human rights treaties increase when there are more legislative veto players.

AbstractIndependent domestic courts play important roles in enforcing international human rights agreements, thereby providing a mechanism by which international institutions can affect government policy. Yet this enforcement power is constrained not only by independence but also by the courts' ability to overcome information problems. Domestic courts' enforcement power depends on information in two ways: the costs of producing legally admissible evidence of abuses and the applicable legal standards of proof. When countries ratify international agreements, judicial enforcement can improve government practices when evidence-production costs and standards of proof are low, but not otherwise. With respect to personal integrity rights violations, evidence is especially difficult to obtain, and standards of proof are high, meaning that the courts will not be able to constrain government practices. By contrast, evidence-production costs and standards of proof are lower for other civil rights violations, so courts will be able to prosecute offenders and bring governments into line with their international commitments. Consistent with this theory, I find that commitments to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) have significantly improved governments' respect for the freedoms of speech, association, assembly, and religion. With respect to personal integrity rights, however, I find that commitments to the ICCPR have not improved government practices.

The effects of international institutions on state behavior make up a key research agenda in international‐relations scholarship. Because states self‐select into treaties, we cannot infer that these commitments have causal effects unless we address this selection effect. I explain the significant limitations of the methods used thus far to overcome this problem and argue that a more effective approach must take into account states' treaty preferences. I describe a novel combination of ideal‐point estimation and propensity‐score matching that can estimate the probabilities of treaty commitment and use them to test hypotheses. I use this procedure to test the effects of three key international human‐rights treaties. My results provide significant new findings regarding the effects of these important agreements. I show that the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women has significantly improved respect for women's rights, but that the Convention against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights have not had significant effects on human rights.

How and when do commitments to international institutions affect the behavior of national governments? This dissertation provides substantive and methodological advances in answering this key question in international relations research. Chapter 1 addresses the selection effect problem in this literature, which threatens inferences we can make about the effects of treaty commitments. I argue that in order to address this problem, we first need to estimate the treaty commitment preferences of states. I develop a procedure designed to do so that combines ideal-point estimation and propensity- score matching and apply this procedure to test the effects of three human rights agreements. Chapter 2 analyzes the role of domestic courts in enforcing international commitments. I develop a theory that predicts when courts can be effective enforcers based on the costs of producing evidence and the legal standards of proof. I test this theory using the procedure developed in Chapter 1. Chapter 3 analyzes the role of domestic legislative veto players in enforcing international commitments. While much of the literature assumes veto players can make commitments more credible in all areas, I argue that in the human rights context their ability to do so depends on the extent to which leaders can effectively violate human rights without legislative approval and in secret. I test this theory using the procedure developed in Chapter 1. Finally, Chapter 4 returns to the estimates of treaty commitment preferences developed in Chapter 1. I analyze the treaty commitment preference space in order to better understand the key predictors of these preferences. I find that economic policy is the clearest and most consistent predictor of treaty commitment preferences, including with respect to non-economic treaties