International Courts and the Performance of International Agreements: A General Theory with Evidence from the European Union

Clifford J. Carrubba · Matthew J. Gabel

oct 2014 · Cambridge University Press

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Nations often turn to international courts to help with overcoming collective-action problems associated with international relations. However, these courts generally cannot enforce their rulings, which begs the question: how effective are international courts? This book proposes a general theory of international courts that assumes a court has no direct power over national governments. Member states are free to ignore both the international agreement and the rulings by the court created to enforce that agreement. The theory demonstrates that such a court can, in fact, facilitate cooperation with international law, but only within important political constraints. The authors examine the theoretical argument in the context of the European Union. Using an original data set of rulings by the European Court of Justice, they find that the disposition of court rulings and government compliance with those rulings comport with the theory's predictions.

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Clifford J. Carrubba is a Professor of Political Science, Chair of the Political Science Department, and Professor of Law, by courtesy, at Emory University, Atlanta. He also founded and is currently serving as the Director of the Institute for Quantitative Theory and Methods at Emory University. Carrubba has published in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, International Organizations, Political Analysis, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Comparative Political Studies, and the Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization.

Matthew J. Gabel is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Washington University, St Louis, where he also serves as the associate chair of the department. In 2010, he was a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellow. He is the author of Interests and Integration (1998) and has written articles for American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, Legislative Studies Quarterly, the Journal of Common Market Studies, and Comparative Political Studies. Gabel is a founding associate editor of European Union Politics.