IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/intorg/v55y2001i04p971-991_44.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Institutional Features of the Prisoners of War Treaties

Author

Listed:
  • Morrow, James D.

Abstract

During the twentieth century states negotiated and ratified formal treaties on the treatment of prisoners of war (POWs). These treaties have created a system for the treatment of POWs with universal and detailed standards and decentralized enforcement. I explain the form of the POW system as a rational institutional response to four strategic problems the issue of POWs poses: monitoring under noise, individual as opposed to state violations, variation in preferred treatment of POWs, and raising a mass army. In response to these four problems, neutral parties help address the problem of monitoring the standards. The ratification process screens out some states that do not intend to live up to the standards. The two-level problem of state and individual violations is addressed by making states responsible for punishing the actions of their own soldiers. By protecting POWs, the treaties help states raise armies during wartime. The POW case supports many, but not all, of the Rational Design conjectures. In particular, it suggests other strategic logics to explain variation in the membership and centralization of international institutions.

Suggested Citation

  • Morrow, James D., 2001. "The Institutional Features of the Prisoners of War Treaties," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 55(4), pages 971-991, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:intorg:v:55:y:2001:i:04:p:971-991_44
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0020818301441592/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. James D. Morrow & Hyeran Jo, 2006. "Compliance with the Laws of War: Dataset and Coding Rules," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 23(1), pages 91-113, February.
    2. Jenna Bednar, 2006. "Is Full Compliance Possible?," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 18(3), pages 347-375, July.
    3. Todd L. Allee & Paul K. Huth, 2006. "The Pursuit of Legal Settlements to Territorial Disputes," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 23(4), pages 285-307, September.
    4. Terrence L. Chapman & Dan Reiter, 2004. "The United Nations Security Council and the Rally ’Round the Flag Effect," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 48(6), pages 886-909, December.

    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:55:y:2001:i:04:p:971-991_44. 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.