Suchergebnisse

For the first time in history, international monetary relations were institutionalized after World War II as a set of legal obligations. The Articles of Agreement that formed the International Monetary Fund contain international legal obligations of the rules of good conduct for IMF members. Members were required to maintain a par value for their currency (until 1977), to use a single unified exchange-rate system, and to keep their current account free from restrictions. In this article I explore why governments committed themselves to these rules and the conditions under which they complied with their commitments. The evidence suggests that governments tended to make and keep commitments if other countries in their region did so as well. Governments also complied with their international legal commitments if the regime placed a high value on the rule of law domestically. One inference is that reputational concerns have a lot to do with international legal commitments and compliance. Countries that have invested in a strong reputation for protecting property rights are more reluctant to see it jeopardized by international law violations. Violation is more likely, however, in the face of widespread noncompliance, suggesting that compliance behavior should be understood in its regional context.

Africa's new constitutions have arisen from a dynamic of relative globalization in an era of Western preeminence. Thus, they are both barometers and instruments of international policy. The method of constitutional ecology can be used to measure the impact of international policy by examining the degree to which human rights have been firmly entrenched in Africa's new constitutions. It is also possible to measure the relative extent to which the international viewpoint has been taken into account in the internal order. As "barometers", the instrumentality of Africa's new constitutions is in relation to their being templates of the international legal order. Hence the principle of constitutionality (or "constitutional bases") of official diplomacy.