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Human rights treaties have mixed success records for improving member states' human rights behavior. Yet the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) has been successful for improving women's rights. However, few CEDAW analyses account for the influence of reservations on state compliance with the treaty. This study develops a theoretical approach drawn from the opposability (vs. permissibility) school of reservations in international law. We argue that states ratifying CEDAW with reservations are less likely to see improvements in women's rights than states ratifying CEDAW without reservations. We also show that states with worse women's rights place reservations on core articles most central to the treaty's success, while states with better women's rights place reservations on procedural or non-core articles. Ordered logit, regression, and Heckman selection models of state-year data from 1981 to 2019 show that reservations in CEDAW are detrimental to the success of the institution.

Understanding the connections between environmental change, migration, and conflict is urgent as natural disasters increase in frequency and intensity. Countries that experience natural disasters face greater risks for intrastate conflicts, especially for rapid-onset disasters. Migration is one response to these environmental changes. Existing literature suggests that environmental migration can cause violent conflict as migrants lose livelihoods, move to new areas, or compete over scarce resources. However, the path through which migration leads to conflict—and the policy responses that either fuel conflict or promote stability—is not well understood. Some countries develop adequate proactive (e.g., infrastructure) and reactive post-disaster (e.g., reconstruction) policies to mitigate grievances and conflict risks from forced migration. Other countries fail to respond adequately to disasters, opening the door for insurgent groups to garner support. We argue that we must analyze government policies related to relocation programs, restrictions on movement, and post-disaster reconstruction to identify trigger situations where disasters and migration are most likely to produce violence.

AbstractUnderstanding the connections between environmental change, migration, and conflict is urgent as natural disasters increase in frequency and intensity. Countries that experience natural disasters face greater risks for intrastate conflicts, especially for rapid-onset disasters. Migration is one response to these environmental changes. Existing literature suggests that environmental migration can cause violent conflict as migrants lose livelihoods, move to new areas, or compete over scarce resources. However, the path through which migration leads to conflict—and the policy responses that either fuel conflict or promote stability—is not well understood. Some countries develop adequate proactive (e.g., infrastructure) and reactive post-disaster (e.g., reconstruction) policies to mitigate grievances and conflict risks from forced migration. Other countries fail to respond adequately to disasters, opening the door for insurgent groups to garner support. We argue that we must analyze government policies related to relocation programs, restrictions on movement, and post-disaster reconstruction to identify trigger situations where disasters and migration are most likely to produce violence.

This study examines the effect of energy resources on the chances for militarized conflict, water related conflict and cooperation events, and cooperative river treaties between pairs of states on shared international river basins. We examine trade-offs that riparian states can make between energy resources such as oil or natural gas and fresh water resources. Integrating upstream and downstream states' geographical position in a river basin with energy resource information, we examine four related scenarios of states sharing rivers: (1) Joint energy where both upstream and downstream countries have energy resources, (2) Downstream energy where only the downstream state has energy resources, (3) Upstream energy where only an upstream country has energy resources, and (4) No energy. Theoretically, we argue that Downstream energy dyads are most likely to find cooperative solutions to conflicts over shared river resources because downstream states can offer oil and natural gas side payments to upstream states in exchange for greater water supplies. Empirical analyses of dyadic data in shared river basin dyads from 1945 to 2001 provide strong support for the theory. Riparian cooperation through river treaties and diplomacy is best achieved in Downstream energy dyads, where the downstream states have energy resources that can be traded for water resources with upstream states. Militarized conflict and water related conflict events are most likely in Joint energy dyads. Case illustrations from the Aral Sea and Ganges river basins are used to demonstrate the theoretical arguments.

We examine the design features of treaties governing international rivers and empirically test their effectiveness in managing water disputes. We expect peaceful conflict management to be more successful and militarized conflict to be less likely in dyadic river claims when riparians share membership in treaties with mechanisms for river basin organizations, information exchange, monitoring, enforcement, and conflict resolution. To test our expectation we analyze a set of diplomatic disagreements over cross-border rivers coded by the Issue Correlates of War project. We combine this database with treaty content data from the Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database. Empirical analyses suggest that information exchange and enforcement provisions in river treaties are most effective for preventing militarization of river claims and increase the chances that negotiations over river claims successfully resolve the issues at stake. Enforcement provisions also promote third-party dispute settlement attempts and increase the likelihood of compliance with agreements reached. States that share membership in river basin organizations are more likely to experience militarized disputes and less likely to be amenable to third-party dispute settlement. However, the latter states are more likely to reach agreements in peaceful negotiations over their river claims. These findings demonstrate that institutional design influences riparian states' ability to address water disputes.

This study evaluates the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and interstate conflict, focusing on four prominent causal mechanisms: the declining benefits of territorial conquest, increasing preference similarity, increasing opportunity costs of violence, and improved information signaling. Empirical analyses show that new territorial issues are less likely to arise as global levels of FDI increase, although monadic and bilateral FDI flows have no effect on states' decisions to start new issue claims. Higher bilateral FDI flows between two disputants significantly reduce the chances for escalation to high levels of violence over issues and improve the chances for peaceful management. Increasing global levels of FDI also reduce the chances for severe militarized conflicts. Opportunity costs are an important mechanism linking FDI and states' conflict management practices, as the pacifying effect of bilateral and monadic FDI on militarized conflict becomes stronger in dyads with a history of militarization over the issues at stake.

This study identifies three methodological issues that affect inferences drawn in studies of presidential decisions to use force: aggregation, truncation, & dynamics. We suggest that a dichotomous measure of uses of force introduces aggregation bias, while the decision to examine only major uses of force introduces truncation bias. In addition, we argue that the presence of rivalry creates temporal dependence or dynamics in the use of force series. We reexamine the empirical findings reported in a seminal study of US presidents' use of force during the Cold War (Ostrom & Job 1986). Our findings demonstrate the importance of these three methodological issues. Results of a Poisson Autoregressive (PAR) model show dynamics in the use of force series. Contrary to Ostrom & Job, we find that international variables have a larger substantive effect on the president's decision to use force than political variables like approval & domestic variables like economic performance. 3 Tables, 1 Figure, 27 References. Adapted from the source document.

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