Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T20:30:54.308Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Constitutional pluralism or constitutional unity? An empirical study of international commitment (1945–2007)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2010

KAROLINA MILEWICZ ,
ANDRÉ BÄCHTIGER  and
ARNE NOTHDURFT
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article asks whether international law is moving towards a more unified constitutional order or whether differentiated types of constitutional processes are emerging. We study the sequencing and ratification pace of 32 ‘quasi-constitutional’ international agreements containing procedural guidelines for inter-state relations and fundamental human rights provisions for individuals drawn up between 1945 and 2007. We do so in a comparative and quantitative fashion applying sophisticated statistical tools, namely event history techniques combined with counting processes. On the basis of our multi-treaty framework, the findings do not lend support to a unified and quick process of global constitutionalisation. Rather, they provide evidence for the idea of a ‘multi-speed globe’ of differentiated constitutionalisation. We also make a first attempt to study antecedents to global constitutionalisation. Our findings show that processes of global constitutionalisation vary across regime types and world regions (while there is no effect for new and old states).

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , April 2010 , pp. 305 - 336
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Joseph H.H. Weiler and Marlene Wind (eds), European Constitutionalism Beyond the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

2 Mathias Albert, ‘Complex Governance and Morality in World Society’, Global Society, 13 (1999), pp. 77–93.

3 Note that we use the terms ‘constitutionalisation’ and ‘global constitutionalisation’ synonymously.

4 Jean L. Cohen, ‘Whose Sovereignty? Empire Versus International Law’, Ethics & International Affairs, 18 (2004), p. 3.

5 Ibid., p. 7, p. 17.

6 See Deborah Z. Cass, The Constitutionalization of the World Trade Organization. Legitimacy, Democracy, and Community in the International Trading System (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Robert Howse and Kalypso Nicolaidis, ‘Enhancing WTO Legitimacy: Constitutionalization or Global Subsidiarity?’, Governance: An International Journal of Policy and Administration, 16 (2003), pp. 73–94; Hannes L. Schloemann and Stefan Ohlhoff, ‘“Constitutionalization” and Dispute Settlement in the WTO: National Security as an Issue of Competence’, American Journal of International Law, 93 (1999), pp. 424–51.

7 Examples are Jay Goodliffe and Darren G. Hawkins, ‘Explaining Commitment: States and the Convention against Torture’, Journal of Politics, 68 (2006), pp. 358–71; Emilie M. Hafner-Burton and Kiyoteru Tsutsui, ‘Human Rights in a Globalizing World: The Paradox of Empty Promises’, American Journal of Sociology, 110 (2005), pp. 1373–411; Oona A. Hathaway, ‘Why Do Countries Commit to Human Rights Treaties?’ Journal of Conflict Resolution, 51 (2007), pp. 588–621; Eric Neumayer, ‘Death Penalty Abolition and the Ratification of the Second Optional Protocol’, International Journal of Human Rights, 12 (2008), pp. 3–21; Beth Simmons, ‘International Law and State Behavior: Commitment and Compliance in International Monetary Affairs’, American Political Science Review, 94 (2000), pp. 819–36; James R. Vreeland, ‘Political Institutions and Human Rights: Why Dictatorships Enter into the UN Convention Against Torture’, International Organization, 62 (2008), pp. 65–101; Christine M. Wotipka and Franzisco O. Ramirez, ‘World society and human rights: an event history analysis of the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women’, in Beth Simmons, Frank Dobbin and Geoffrey Garrett (eds), The Global Diffusion of Markets and Democracy (London: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 303–43.

8 Lee-Jen Wei, Danyu Y. Lin and Lisa A. Weissfeld, ‘Regression Analysis of Multivariate Incomplete Failure Time Data by Modeling Marginal Distributions’, Journal of the American Statistical Association, 84 (1989), pp. 1065–73.

9 Peter A. Hall and David Soskiece, Varieties of Capitalism, The Institutional Foundation of Comparative Advantage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 17.

10 Ernst Haas, The Uniting of Europe: Political, Social, and Economic Forces, 1950–1957 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1958).

11 The term constitution is far from having a clear definition; see Giovanni Sartori, ‘Constitutionalism: A Preliminary Discussion’, American Political Science Review, 56 (1962), pp. 853–64. However, most scholars would consider the issue of written versus unwritten constitutions (writtenness), flexible versus rigid constitutions (rigidity with regard to constitutional amendments), constitutional revolution (constitutional big-bang) versus evolution, the concept of the ‘rule of law’ and the hierarchy of law to be the fundamental formal features of a constitution. See Ruth Gavison, ‘What Belongs in a Constitution?’, Constitutional Political Economy, 13 (2002), pp. 89–105; Arend Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy. Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999); Anne Peters, ‘Compensatory Constitutionalism: The Function and Potential of Fundamental International Norms and Structures’, Leiden Journal of International Law, 19 (2006), pp. 579–610.

12 Peters, ‘Compensatory Constitutionalism’, p. 581, p. 585.

13 The principle of the ‘rule of law’, in a strict national context, means the control and limit of political power, including a scheme of checks and balances through the separation of powers. See Lon L. Fuller, The Morality of Law (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), pp. 33–94; Herbert L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961); José María Maravall and Adam Przeworski (eds), Democracy and the Rule of Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); András Sajó, Limiting Government. An Introduction to Constitutionalism (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999), pp. 205–6.

14 The rough equivalent used in Europe is known in German as Rechtsstaat or in French as état de droit.

15 Sajó, Limiting Government, p. 205.

16 Hart, Concept of Law; Maravall and Przeworski, Democracy; Fuller, Morality of Law, pp. 33–94.

17 John H. Jackson, Sovereignty, the WTO and Changing Fundamentals of International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 45; Henry J. Steiner and Philip Alston, International Human Rights in Context. Law, Politics, Morals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 990.

18 Martti Koskenniemi, ‘Constitutionalism as Mindset: Reflections on Kantian Themes about International Law and Globalization’, Theoretical Inquiries in Law, 8 (2007), pp. 9–36.

19 Weiler and Wind, European Constitutionalism, p. 3.

20 See Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann, Constitutional Functions and Constitutional Problems of International Economic Law (Fribourg: University of Fribourg Press, 1991); Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann, ‘Human Rights, Constitutionalism and the World Trade Organization: Challenges for World Trade Organization Jurisprudence and Civil Society’, Leiden Journal of International Law, 19 (2006), p. 641; Richard Bellamy, ‘The Political Form of the Constitution: the Separation of Powers, Rights and Representative Democracy’, in Richard Bellamy and Dario Castiglione (eds), Constitutionalism in Transformation (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996), p. 43.

21 Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann, ‘Multilevel Trade Governance in the WTO Requires Multilevel Constitutionalism’, in Christian Joerges and Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann (eds), Constitutionalism, Multilevel Trade Governance and Social Regulation (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2006), p. 6, p. 9; Bellamy, ‘Political Form’, p. 43. There is a rough parallel to the perception of constitutionalism as an ‘essentially liberal legalistic conception’, which is ‘a formal framework of rights’, on the one hand, and a ‘political and republican understanding of constitutionalism’ that acknowledges the historically embedded role of politics, as the ‘art of balancing, reducing and managing conflicts’, on the other hand; see Richard Bellamy and Dario Castiglione, ‘Introduction: Constitutions and Politics’, Political Studies, 44 (1996), p. 414; also Bellamy, ‘Political Form’, p. 24.

22 Hersh Lauterpacht, International Law and Human Rights (London: Stevens, 1950), pp. 60–7.

23 Joseph H.H. Weiler, The Constitution of Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 223.

24 Peters, ‘Compensatory Constitutionalism’, p. 582.

25 See Bruce Ackerman, ‘Constitutional Politics/Constitutional Law’, The Yale Law Journal, 99 (1989), pp. 453–547. In a recent contribution, Slaughter and Burke-White have denoted the fight against terror to be a ‘international constitutional moment’. They argued that the global events following 11 September 2001 have galvanised the international system to action in a short period of time, which consequently gave rise to new rules transforming international norms on the prohibition of the use of force. Anne-Marie Slaughter and William Burke-White, ‘The International Constitutional Moment’, Harvard International Law Journal, 43 (2002), pp. 1–21. More prominent constitutional moments having far-reaching effects on the development of the international legal order were the Second World War or the breaching of the Berlin Wall.

26 Cf. Bellamy and Castiglione, ‘Introduction’, pp. 413–6; Andreas Fischer-Lescano, ‘Redefining Sovereignty via International Constitutional Moments?’, in Michael Bothe, Mary E. O'Connell and Natalino Ronzitti (eds), Redefining Sovereignty: The Use of Force after the Cold War (Ardsley: Transnational Publishers, 2005), pp. 335–64; Koskenniemi, ‘Constitutionalism as Mindset’.

27 Kenneth W. Abbott, Robert O. Keohane, Andrew Moravcsik, Anne-Marie Slaughter and Duncan Snidal, ‘The Concept of Legalization’, International Organization, 54 (2000), pp. 401–19.

28 Ibid.

29 Martha Finnemore and Stephen J. Toope, ‘Alternatives to “Legalization”: Richer Views of Law and Politics’, International Organization, 55 (2001), pp. 743–58.

30 Antje Wiener, ‘Editorial: Evolving Norms of Constitutionalism’, European Law Journal, 9 (2003), pp. 1–13.

31 Peters, ‘Compensatory Constitutionalism’; Erika de Wet, ‘The Emergence of International and Regional Value Systems as a Manifestation of the Emerging International Constitutional Order’, Leiden Journal of International Law, 19 (2006), pp. 611–32; Bardo Fassbender, ‘The UN Charter as Constitution of the International Community’, Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, 36 (1998), pp. 529–619; Bardo Fassbender, UN Security Council Reform and the Right of Veto: A Constitutional Perspective (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 1998).

32 Fassbender, ‘UN Charter’, pp. 567–8; Fassbender, A Constitutional Perspective; Pierre-Marie Dupuy, ‘The Constitutional Dimension of the Charter of the UN Revisited’, Max Planck Yearbook of UN Law, 1 (1997), pp. 1–33; Ronald St. J. Macdonald, ‘The Charter of the UN in Constitutional Perspective’, The Australian Yearbook of International Law, 20 (1999), pp. 205–31.

33 International Law Commission, ‘Fragmentation of International Law: Difficulties Arising from the Diversification and Expansion of International Law’, Report of the Study Group of the International Law Commission, finalised by Martti Koskenniemi, 13 April 2006 (UN-Doc. A/CN.4/L.682).

34 Neil Walker, ‘The Idea of Constitutional Pluralism’, Modern Law Review, 65 (2002), pp. 339–40.

35 Nico Krisch, ‘The Pluralism of Global Administrative Law’, European Journal of International Law, 17 (2006), pp. 248–9.

36 Gunther Teubner, ‘Societal Constitutionalism: Alternatives to State-centred Constitutional Theory?’, in Christian Joerges, Inger-Johanne Sand and Gunther Teubner (eds), Transnational Governance and Constitutionalism (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2004), p. 8.

37 Walker, ‘Constitutional Pluralism’, p. 317; see also Gunther Teubner, ‘Global Bukowina: Legal Pluralism in the World Society’, in Gunther Teubner (ed.), Global Law Without a State (Dartmouth: Aldershot, 1997), pp. 3–28.

38 International Law Commission, ‘Fragmentation of International Law’, p. 245.

39 Steve Charnovitz, ‘Nongovernmental Organizations and International Law’, American Journal of International Law, 100 (2006), pp. 359–61; Mathias Albert, Lothar Brock and Klaus-Dieter Wolf (eds), Civilizing World Society. Society and Community beyond the State (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000); John W. Meyer, John Boli, George M. Thomas and Francisco O. Ramirez, ‘World Society and the Nation-State’, American Journal of Sociology, 103 (1997), pp. 144–81.

40 Cohen, ‘Whose Sovereignty?’, p. 13, p. 24.

41 Berthold Rittberger and Frank Schimmelfennig, ‘Explaining the Constitutionalization of the European Union’, Journal of European Public Policy, 13 (2006), pp. 1148–67; Alec Stone Sweet, Governing with Judges: Constitutional Politics in Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). See also Michael Kaeding, ‘Determinants of Transposition Delay in the European Union’, Journal of Public Policy, 26 (2006), pp. 229–53; Michael Zürn and Christian Joerges (eds), Law and Governance in Postnational Europe. Compliance Beyond the Nation-State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

42 Stone Sweet, Governing with Judges.

43 Rittberger and Schimmelfennig, ‘Explaining Constitutionalization’.

44 International human rights are considered an offshoot of human rights that were originally codified at the national level. Marshall conceptualises human rights in the national context by the notion of citizenship. He distinguished between civil, political and social citizenship. Thomas H. Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950). A description of the nation-based development of human rights is presented in Christian Tomuschat, Human Rights between Idealism and Realism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

45 Karel Vasak, ‘A 30-year struggle’, The UNESCO courier, 29 (1977).

46 Political rights emerged in history of national development for the supplementation of civil rights, since civil rights are bound to remain empty promises for those who lack even the economic means to make use of these fundamental civil rights. In a way, political rights are closely linked to the principle of the ‘rule of law’. They serve as guarantor that the ‘rule of law’ will not systematically be turned to the advantage of certain groups over others. Ralf Dahrendorf, ‘Citizenship and Beyond: The Social Dynamics of an Idea’, Social Research, 41 (1974), pp. 680–1.

47 Jack Donnelly, The Concept of Human Rights (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985); Daniel Kaufmann, ‘Human Rights and Governance: The Empirical Challenge’, in Philip Alston and Mary Robinson (eds), Human Rights and Development: Towards Mutual Reinforcement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 352–402.

48 In the following we refer to these formal and procedural provisions as formal rights or rules, and the (international) ‘rule of law’ principle.

49 Jackson, Sovereignty, p. 45; Steiner and Alston, International Human Rights, p. 990.

50 Donnelly, Concept of Human Rights; Cécile Fabre, ‘Constitutionalising Social Rights’, Journal of Political Philosophy, 6 (1998), p. 265; Kaufmann, ‘Human Rights’; Tomuschat, Human Rights, p. 24.

51 See Claude Barfield, Free Trade, Sovereignty, Democracy: The Future of the World Trade Organization (Washington D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 2001); Tom Bottomore, ‘Citizenship and Social Class, Forty Years On’, in Thomas H. Marshall and Tom Bottomore (eds), Citizenship and Social Class (Chicago: Pluto Press, 1992); Ernst-Urich Petersmann, ‘From ‘Negative’ to ‘Positive’ Integration in the WTO: Time for ‘Mainstreaming Human Rights’ into WTO law?’, Common Market Law Review, 37 (2000), pp. 1363–82.

52 See Fabre, ‘Constitutionalising Social Rights’, p. 263; Tomuschat, Human Rights, pp. 24, 50–2.

53 Isaiah Berlin, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’, in Isaiah Berlin and Henry Hardy (eds), Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002 (original 1958)), pp. 166–81. ‘Negative’ and ‘positive’ rights should be not confused with ‘claim’ rights (‘rights’ in a strict sense)’ and ‘liberty’ rights (liberty). Both liberty and claim rights can take on ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ features. Claim rights impose a duty or obligation for a party (person, government). Liberty rights, by contrast, are associated with a freedom of duty. A positive claim right is the duty of one party to do something for another party, and a negative claim right is the duty of one party to refrain from doing something to another party. The freedom to do something is a positive liberty right, the freedom to refrain from doing something is a negative liberty right. John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (New York: Clarendon Press, 1980).

54 Donnelly, Concept of Human Rights.

55 Note that issue of priority among types of human rights is however subject to controversy; see Charles Fried, Right and Wrong (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), p. 178; Ruth Gavison, ‘On the Relationship Between Civil and Political Rights, and Social and Economic Rights’, in Jean-Marc Coicaude, Michael W. Doyle and Anne-Marie Gardner (eds), The Globalization of Human Rights (Tokyo: UN Universtiy Press, 2002), p. 36. Bedau and Cranston argue that due to the essential negative character of the first-generation rights, traditional civil and political rights deserve priority over social and economic rights. Hugo Adam Bedau, ‘Human Rights and Foreign Assistance Programs’, in Peter G. Brown and Douglas MacLean (eds), Human Rights and US Foreign Policy (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1979), pp. 29–44; Maurice Cranston, What are Human Rights? (New York: Basic Books, 1964). Shue, on the other hand, maintains that the distinction between negative and positive rights bears no moral significance. He argues that all human rights have both negative and positive components. Henry Shue, ‘Rights in the Light of Duties’, in Peter G. Brown and Douglas MacLean (eds), Human Rights and US Foreign Policy (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1979), pp. 65–81; Henry Shue, Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and US Foreign Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980).

56 Evans, Malcolm D. (ed.), International Law Documents (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 129–30.

57 Cf. Art.2(1)(b), Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties of 1969.

58 Note that the number of international agreements in force, and newly added each year is incredibly large, and by far exceeds the 32 selected agreements; Jackson, Sovereignty, p. 42. The choice of treaties presented serves the sole aim of covering the most important agreements containing some constitutional characteristics.

59 The terms convention, charter and covenant embrace all formal international agreements, in the same way as the term ‘treaty’ does. They are normally open for participation by the international community as a whole and are negotiated under the auspices of an international organisation. Thus, in character they are rather formal and universal covering a relatively broad range of areas. Protocols and amendments, in contrast, generally refer to agreements less formal than those entitled treaty, convention or covenant. UN, United Nations Treaty Collection. Treaty Handbook, (2006), available at: {http://treaties.un.org/doc/source/publications/THB/English.pdf}.

60 To name but a few examples, the Charter of the UN, core human rights treaties with amendments and optional protocols, the Geneva Conventions (1949), the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, the Convention on the Law of the Sea and fundamental international labour standard conventions are incorporated. Due to the time-frame of the study (1945–2007), the Forced Labour Convention No.29 of 1930 is not incorporated into the analysis. We also include the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (1947) and the Agreement Establishing the WTO since they point to economic rights like the right to trade, market access and the protection of civil liberties and properties as an enlarged concept of civil rights.

61 International Law Commission, ‘Fragmentation of International Law’, pp. 166–7.

62 In order to demonstrate the assignment of weights to international agreements embodied in several legal instruments consider the following examples. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) has two additional instrument – the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (OP-ICCPR) and the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty (IIOP-ICCPR). To assure that this international agreement providing for the guarantee of civil and political rights does not exceed the maximum weighting of 6, the ICCPR as a major document is assigned the value 4 and the two protocols each the standard value of 1. Rights of the child are embodied in 4 legal instruments: one major document – the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and three minor documents – the Amendment to article 43(2) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (A-CRC), the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict (OP-CRC) and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography (IIOP-CRC). The major document is assigned the weighting 3 the three minor documents the value 1 each. Except from the Convention no. 105 concerning the Abolition of Forced Labour which is assigned the full weight of 6, the remaining six fundamental ILO conventions represent three categories of labour-related rights: freedom of association (Convention no. 87 and no. 98), child labour (Convention no. 138 and no. 182) and discrimination (Convention no. 100 and no. 111). All are weighted with the value 3, since two each represent a particular labour principle. Note that an exception is made with regard to the weighting of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties between States and International Organizations or between International Organizations (VCIO). The VCIO is embodied in a single instrument and is the only international agreement selected which is not yet in force. Considering this convention of being thus of secondary importance, it is only assigned the value 3 instead of 6.

63 Janet M. Box-Steffensmeier and Bradford S. Jones, ‘Time is of the Essence: Event History Models in Political Science’, American Journal of Political Science, 41 (1997), p. 1414.

64 John P. Klein and Melvin L. Moeschberger, Survival Analysis. Techniques for Censored and Truncated Data (New York: Springer-Verlag, 2003), pp. 63–4, pp. 72–3; Mara Tableman and Jong Sung Kim, Survival Analysis Using S. Analysis of Time-to-Event Data (London: Chapman & Hall, 2004), p. 17.

65 Fixed right-censoring applies to all countries which have not yet ratified a particular international agreement (at termination of the analysis). Cases in point for random right-censoring are Czechoslovakia (state termination in 1992), the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (terminated in 1991), the German Democratic Republic (1990), Zanzibar (1964) or South Yemen (1989). At the treaty-level of analysis random right-censoring affects only the GATT, which was adopted in 1947 and expired before the end of the study in 1994. Left-truncation is determined by a delayed entry time. Delayed entry times apply for instance to follow-up countries of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union or countries which gained independence during the process of de-colonialisation.

66 Terry M. Therneau and Patricia M. Grambsch, Modeling Survival Data: Extending the Cox Model (New York: Springer-Verlag, 2000), pp. 169–229.

67 In the language of event history analysis, each country is potentially ‘at risk’ to ratify 32 international agreements; it is repeatedly ‘at risk’ of ratifying an international agreement.

68 Per K. Andersen and Richard D. Gill, ‘Cox's Regression Model for Counting Processes: A Large Sample Study’, Annals of Statistics, 10 (1982), pp. 1100–20.

69 See n.8 above; see also Janet M. Box-Steffensmeier and Christopher Zorn, ‘Duration Models for Repeated Events’, Journal of Politics, 64 (2002), pp. 1069–94; Therneau and Grambsch, Modeling Survival Data, pp. 185–9; pp. 227–29.

70 The data for a subject is presented as multiple rows or ‘observations’, each of which applies to an interval of observation [start, stop].

71 Janet M. Box-Steffensmeier and Bradford S. Jones, Event History Modeling. A Guide for Social Scientists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 158.

72 Box-Steffensmeier and Zorn, ‘Duration Models’, p. 1074; Therneau and Grambsch, Modeling Survival Data, pp. 186–7.

73 Our estimations were computed in R project version 2.6.2 with survival R package version 2.34-1. R Development Core Team, R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, 2008, available at: {http://www.r-project.org}. Thomas Lumley, Survival version 2.34-1 R package, S original by Terry M. Therneau, ported by Thomas Lumley, 2008, available at: {http://www.r-project.org}.

74 See Klein and Moeschberger, Survival Analysis; Tableman and Kim, Survival Analysis; Therneau and Grambsch, Modeling Survival Data.

75 A detailed and formal description of these measures is presented in the appendix.

76 Results are presented for weighted values. As an alternative, we also examined ratification for non-weighted international agreements. The results are qualitatively similar.

77 Several other classification of international agreements into distinct issue-areas have been accomplished in the analysis. Here, we only present findings on the most important ‘quasi-constitutional’ distinctions.

78 Note that a ‘quasi-constitutional’ divide into five constitutional subcategories – formal, civil, political, economic and social – has been tested. Overlapping confidence intervals indicate that this 5-group stratification is not statistically significant.

79 See for instance Wade M. Cole, ‘Sovereignty Relinquished? Explaining Commitment to the International Human Rights Covenants, 1966–1999’, American Sociological Review, 70 (2005), pp. 472–95; Andrew Moravcsik, ‘The Origins of Human Rights Regimes: Democratic Delegation in Postwar Europe’, International Organization, 54 (2000), pp. 217–52; Neumayer, ‘Death Penalty Abolition and the Ratification of the Second Optional Protocol’.

80 See also Hathaway, ‘Why Do Countries Commit to Human Rights Treaties?’.

81 Marshall, Monty. G. and Keith Jaggers, Polity IV project. Political Regime Characteristics, and Transitions, 1800–2002, Dataset Users' Manual (College Park, MD: Center for International Development and Conflict Management, University of Maryland. 2002).

82 David L. Epstein et al., ‘Democratic Transitions’, American Journal of Political Science, 50 (2006), pp. 551–69.

83 As an alternative to the distinction of treaties according to the two generations, we also examined the effect of polity regimes in the context of the full sample of the 32 ‘quasi-constitutional’ agreements. The results underline that democracies have a higher ratification pace than autocracies.

84 Oona A. Hathaway, The Cost of Commitment', Stanford Law Review, 55 (2003), pp. 1821–62; Moravcsik, ‘The Origins of Human Rights Regimes: Democratic Delegation in Postwar Europe’.

85 Oona A. Hathaway, ‘Between Power and Principle: A Political Theory of International Law’, University of Chicago Law Review, 71 (2005), pp. 469–536; Hathaway, ‘Why Do Countries Commit to Human Rights Treaties?’.

86 Corresponding data has been taken from and verified by several sources: Birgit Albrecht et al., Der Fischer Weltalmanach Staatenlexikon: Alle Staaten der Welt auf einen Blick (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2006); Central Intelligence Agency, The World Factbook (Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 2007); Redaktion Weltalmanach (ed.), Der Fischer Weltalmanach 2008: Zahlen Daten Fakten (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2008). Furthermore, we have cross-checked these sources with the Correlates of War Project, State System Membership List, v2008.1, 2008, available at: {http://correlatesofwar.org}.

87 Martha Finnemore, National Interests in International Society (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996).

88 Beth Simmons, ‘International Law and State Behavior: Commitment and Compliance in International Monetary Affairs’, American Political Science Review, 94 (2000), pp. 819–36. For a similar application see also Goodliffe and Hawkins, ‘Explaining Commitment: States and the Convention against Torture’.

89 See Axel Hadenius and Jan Teorell, ‘Assessing Alternative Indices of Democracy’, Political Concepts-Committee on Concepts and Methods Working Paper Series, 6 (2005).

90 Robert Kagan, The Return of History and the End of Dreams (New York: Knopf, 2008).

91 For ‘multi-speed Europe’ and ‘variable-geometry Europe’ see for example, Alberto Alesina and Vittorio Grilli, ‘On the Feasibility of a One-speed or Multispeed European Monetary Union’, Economics & Politics, 5 (1993), pp. 145–65; Paul R. Krugman, Geography and Trade (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991); Alexander C-G. Stubb, ‘A Categorization of Differentiated Integration’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 34 (1996), pp. 283–95.

92 See n.7 above.

93 Klein and Moeschberger, Survival Analysis, p. 22; Tableman and Kim, Survival Analysis, p. 5.

94 Klein and Moeschberger, Survival Analysis, p. 22.

95 Tableman and Kim, Survival Analysis, p. 5.

96 C can either assume a fixed censor time at the termination of the study in 2007 or a random censor time for the termination of a state or an international agreement.

97 Ibid., p. 13.

98 Ibid., p. 205.

99 The major advantage of this non-parametric method is its fit, which can handle any distribution. However, it is much more difficult to report on non-parametric estimates, and results must be shown in a figures or tables. Philip Hougaard, Analysis of Multivariate Survival Data (New York: Springer-Verlag, 2000), p. 69.

100 Hougaard, Analysis of Multivariate, p. 71; Klein and Moeschberger, Survival Analysis, pp. 99–100; Tableman and Kim, Survival Analysis, pp. 27–30, p. 34, p. 205; Therneau and Grambsch, Modeling Survival Data, pp. 13–17.

101 Klein and Moeschberger, Survival Analysis, p. 118; Tableman and Kim, Survival Analysis, p. 7.

102 Hougaard, Analysis of Multivariate, p. 71; Klein and Moeschberger, Survival Analysis, p. 119.

103 Hougaard, Analysis of Multivariate, p. 1; Tableman and Kim, Survival Analysis, pp. 34–5.

104 Tableman and Kim, Survival Analysis, pp. 37–8.

105 Ibid., p. 207.

106 Hougaard, Analysis of Multivariate, p. 71; Klein and Moeschberger, Survival Analysis, p. 120; Tableman and Kim, Survival Analysis, p. 33, p. 36.

107 Tableman and Kim, Survival Analysis, p. 207; Therneau and Grambsch, Modeling Survival Data, p. 16.