Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis article explores the effects of international adjudication on individual-level attitudes in territorial disputes. In particular, we investigate the micro-foundations for the argument that international court rulings provide political cover for governments settling disputes through unpopular territorial concessions. In an online survey conducted for this project, 494 Indian respondents were confronted with a fictitious foreign policy scenario. A randomized experiment embedded in the survey provides four major findings. First, international adjudication makes citizens more willing to support concessions in border disputes. Second, international courts influence the perceived fairness of comprosmise solutions. Third, legal conflict management mediates the emotional fallout of territorial concessions. Finally, we do not find any evidence for the claim that international adjudication reduces individual-level concerns over commitment problems. By focusing on individual-level data, this article provides an important contribution to the literature on international conflict management.

AbstractThis paper analyzes public attitudes about the International Court of Justice (ICJ). We explore two questions: (1) Why are some people in favor of submitting their country's disputes to the ICJ while others are opposed? (2) How can we explain variations in public support for compliance with a costly ICJ ruling? We argue that individual-level attitudes about both issues are driven by different psychological dynamics. While we expect that cost–benefit calculations and cosmopolitan social identity will affect attitudes in both contexts, people's views on compliance should also be shaped by their level of social dominance orientation (SDO). Our statistical analysis is based on original survey data, collected in Belize in April 2019. We obtain three main findings. First, people's ex ante beliefs about the costs of an ICJ ruling have tangible effects on attitudes toward ICJ adjudication. As predicted, higher expected costs lead to decreased support for adjudication. Second, cosmopolitanism is positively associated with support for adjudication, but it has no effect on attitudes about compliance with international court rulings. Third, high-SDO respondents are less likely to favor the implementation of a costly ICJ verdict. However, SDO only reduces support for compliance in individuals with narrow social identity attachments.

This research note evaluates the claim that referenda can serve as useful commitment devices in international negotiations. More specifically, we relied on individual-level survey data to test the claim that governments can successfully "tie their hands" to policy choices by calling referenda on political issues. Our empirical analysis relied on original survey data collected in April 2019 in Belize. In so doing, we took advantage of an unusual political event. On 8 May (shortly after our survey), Belizean citizens participated in a countrywide plebiscite. During this vote, they decided to send their country's territorial dispute with Guatemala for adjudication to the International Court of Justice. From a research perspective, this event allowed us to assess the effect of disregarded referendum results in a highly salient political environment. Our experimental analysis suggested that individuals do reprimand their governments for failing to implement a majority vote (a) even if this choice precipitates a person's favored substantive outcome, and (b) irrespective of an individual's preferred party.