IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/intorg/v47y1993i02p175-205_02.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On compliance

Author

Listed:
  • Chayes, Abram
  • Chayes, Antonia Handler

Abstract

A new dialogue is beginning between students of international law and international relations scholars concerning compliance with international agreements. This article advances some basic propositions to frame that dialogue. First, it proposes that the level of compliance with international agreements in general is inherently unverifiable by empirical procedures. That nations generally comply with their international agreements, on the one hand, or that they violate them whenever it is in their interest to do so, on the other, are not statements of fact or even hypotheses to be tested. Instead, they are competing heuristic assumptions. Some reasons why the background assumption of a propensity to comply is plausible and useful are given. Second, compliance problems very often do not reflect a deliberate decision to violate an international undertaking on the basis of a calculation of advantage. The article proposes a variety of other reasons why states may deviate from treaty obligations and why in many circumstances those reasons are properly accepted by others as justifying apparent departures from treaty norms. Third, the treaty regime as a whole need not and should not be held to a standard of strict compliance but to a level of overall compliance that is "acceptable" in the light of the interests and concerns the treaty is designed to safeguard. How the acceptable level is determined and adjusted is considered.

Suggested Citation

  • Chayes, Abram & Chayes, Antonia Handler, 1993. "On compliance," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 47(2), pages 175-205, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:intorg:v:47:y:1993:i:02:p:175-205_02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0020818300027910/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Carsten Hefeker & Michael Neugart, 2016. "Policy deviations, uncertainty, and the European Court of Justice," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 42(3), pages 547-567, December.
    2. Antje Wiener, 2016. "Contested Norms in Inter-National Encounters: The ‘Turbot War’ as a Prelude to Fairer Fisheries Governance," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 4(3), pages 20-36.
    3. Carmona, Salvador & Donoso, Rafael & Walker, Stephen P., 2010. "Accounting and international relations: Britain, Spain and the Asiento treaty," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 252-273, February.
    4. Alter, Karen J., 2004. "Agents of trustees? International courts in their political context," TranState Working Papers 8, University of Bremen, Collaborative Research Center 597: Transformations of the State.
    5. Barbara Koremenos, 2013. "What’s left out and why? Informal provisions in formal international law," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 8(2), pages 137-162, June.
    6. Rossi, Enzo, 2017. "Superseding Dublin: The European asylum system as a non-cooperative game," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 50-59.
    7. Finus, Michael & Tjotta, Sigve, 2003. "The Oslo Protocol on sulfur reduction: the great leap forward?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(9-10), pages 2031-2048, September.
    8. Lee, Jiwon & Wittgenstein, Teresa, 2017. "Weak vs. Strong Ties: Explaining Early Settlement in WTO Disputes," ILE Working Paper Series 7, University of Hamburg, Institute of Law and Economics.
    9. Jon Hovi & Tora Skodvin, 2017. "Why the United States Supports International Enforcement for Some Treaties but not for Others," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(2), pages 79-92.
    10. Hartlapp, Miriam, 2005. "Two Variations on a Theme: Different Logics of Implementation Management in the EU and the ILO," European Integration online Papers (EIoP), European Community Studies Association Austria (ECSA-A), vol. 9, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:intorg:v:47:y:1993:i:02:p:175-205_02. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/ino .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.