Annals of The American Academy of Political and Social Science, Mar 1, 2017
Regulation is typically conceived as a two-party relationship between a rule-maker or regulator (... more Regulation is typically conceived as a two-party relationship between a rule-maker or regulator (R) and a rule-taker or target (T). We set out an agenda for the study of regulation as a three- (or more) party relationship, with intermediaries (I) at the center of the analysis. Intermediaries play major and varied roles in regulation, from providing expertise and feedback to facilitating implementation, from monitoring the behavior of regulatory targets to building communities of assurance and trust. After developing the basic regulator-intermediary-target (RIT) model, we discuss important extensions and variations of the model. We then discuss the varieties of regulatory capture that may appear where intermediaries are involved.
Nesting, Overlap and Parallelism: Governance Schemes for International Production Standards Ken A... more Nesting, Overlap and Parallelism: Governance Schemes for International Production Standards Ken Abbott and Duncan Snidal Memo for Alter-Meunier Princeton Nesting Conference February 2006 Some of our current research concerns the development of governance ...
Analysts have had a long fascination with moments of significant change and discontinuity in poli... more Analysts have had a long fascination with moments of significant change and discontinuity in political relations. Studies of “exogenous shocks,” “critical junctures,” “historical events,” “policy windows,” and “punctuated equilibria” have occupied a prominent place in qualitative assessments of policy and institutional change. Yet, despite analysts’ interest, these turning points remain poorly understood. Leading theoretical treatments are overwhelmingly descriptive, offering little in the way of explanatory capacity. Introducing the concept of Temporal Focal Points, my thesis provides a temporal extension to Thomas C. Schelling’s focal point hypothesis. Temporal Focal Points—definite, exceptional phases along the temporal continuum—precipitate a convergence of expectations among actors in time that heightens the likelihood of agreement. Convergent expectations are a crucial means of overcoming temporal coordination problems among actors. By facilitating a spike in analytical activi...
New international agreements often recycle language from previous agreements, using boilerplate s... more New international agreements often recycle language from previous agreements, using boilerplate solutions alongside customized provisions. The presence of boilerplate in international agreements has important implications for understanding how international rules are made. The determinants behind boilerplate in international agreements have not previously been systematically evaluated. Using original data from a sample of 348 preferential trade agreements (PTAs) adopted between 1989 and 2009, we combine novel text analysis measures with Latent Order Logistic (LOLOG) graph network techniques to assess the determinants behind boilerplate in labor and environmental provisions commonly found in PTAs. Our results indicate that whereas boilerplate can be used for both efficiency and distributive purposes, international boilerplate is used primarily for efficiency gains and power-distribution considerations are not systematically important.
Most governance is indirect, carried out through intermediaries. Principal–agent theory views ind... more Most governance is indirect, carried out through intermediaries. Principal–agent theory views indirect governance primarily as a problem of information: the agent has an informational advantage over the principal, which it can exploit to evade principal control. But indirect governance creates a more fundamental problem of power. Competent intermediaries with needed expertise, credibility, legitimacy, and/or operational capacity are inherently difficult to control because the policy benefits they can create (or the trouble they can cause) give them leverage. Conversely, tight governor control constrains intermediaries. The governor thus faces a dilemma: emphasizing control limits intermediary competence and risks policy failure; emphasizing intermediary competence risks control failure. This “governor's dilemma” helps to explain puzzling features of indirect governance: why it is not limited to principal–agent delegation but takes multiple forms; why governors choose forms that ...
The study of informal international institutions has advanced considerably over the past decade. ... more The study of informal international institutions has advanced considerably over the past decade. Much of this work, including our own, has approached this phenomenon from the perspective of rationalist institutionalism. Yet, existing work has also been criticized from several conceptual, theoretical, and empirical angles. The recent special issue of International Politics on the “cascading dynamics” of informality by Cooper et al. (Int Politics, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1057/s41311-022-00399-4) offers an important example of such critiques. It builds on earlier work in the field, advancing our understanding of a number of processes and institutions, but also partly casts itself as a reaction to the approach we have adopted. We argue that key aspects of this critique are misguided and that Cooper et al. exaggerate the differences that divide us. Our aim in this article is to respond to their criticisms, clarify the key research issues at stake, emphasize the complementarities among a...
Annals of The American Academy of Political and Social Science, Mar 1, 2017
Regulation is typically conceived as a two-party relationship between a rule-maker or regulator (... more Regulation is typically conceived as a two-party relationship between a rule-maker or regulator (R) and a rule-taker or target (T). We set out an agenda for the study of regulation as a three- (or more) party relationship, with intermediaries (I) at the center of the analysis. Intermediaries play major and varied roles in regulation, from providing expertise and feedback to facilitating implementation, from monitoring the behavior of regulatory targets to building communities of assurance and trust. After developing the basic regulator-intermediary-target (RIT) model, we discuss important extensions and variations of the model. We then discuss the varieties of regulatory capture that may appear where intermediaries are involved.
Nesting, Overlap and Parallelism: Governance Schemes for International Production Standards Ken A... more Nesting, Overlap and Parallelism: Governance Schemes for International Production Standards Ken Abbott and Duncan Snidal Memo for Alter-Meunier Princeton Nesting Conference February 2006 Some of our current research concerns the development of governance ...
Analysts have had a long fascination with moments of significant change and discontinuity in poli... more Analysts have had a long fascination with moments of significant change and discontinuity in political relations. Studies of “exogenous shocks,” “critical junctures,” “historical events,” “policy windows,” and “punctuated equilibria” have occupied a prominent place in qualitative assessments of policy and institutional change. Yet, despite analysts’ interest, these turning points remain poorly understood. Leading theoretical treatments are overwhelmingly descriptive, offering little in the way of explanatory capacity. Introducing the concept of Temporal Focal Points, my thesis provides a temporal extension to Thomas C. Schelling’s focal point hypothesis. Temporal Focal Points—definite, exceptional phases along the temporal continuum—precipitate a convergence of expectations among actors in time that heightens the likelihood of agreement. Convergent expectations are a crucial means of overcoming temporal coordination problems among actors. By facilitating a spike in analytical activi...
New international agreements often recycle language from previous agreements, using boilerplate s... more New international agreements often recycle language from previous agreements, using boilerplate solutions alongside customized provisions. The presence of boilerplate in international agreements has important implications for understanding how international rules are made. The determinants behind boilerplate in international agreements have not previously been systematically evaluated. Using original data from a sample of 348 preferential trade agreements (PTAs) adopted between 1989 and 2009, we combine novel text analysis measures with Latent Order Logistic (LOLOG) graph network techniques to assess the determinants behind boilerplate in labor and environmental provisions commonly found in PTAs. Our results indicate that whereas boilerplate can be used for both efficiency and distributive purposes, international boilerplate is used primarily for efficiency gains and power-distribution considerations are not systematically important.
Most governance is indirect, carried out through intermediaries. Principal–agent theory views ind... more Most governance is indirect, carried out through intermediaries. Principal–agent theory views indirect governance primarily as a problem of information: the agent has an informational advantage over the principal, which it can exploit to evade principal control. But indirect governance creates a more fundamental problem of power. Competent intermediaries with needed expertise, credibility, legitimacy, and/or operational capacity are inherently difficult to control because the policy benefits they can create (or the trouble they can cause) give them leverage. Conversely, tight governor control constrains intermediaries. The governor thus faces a dilemma: emphasizing control limits intermediary competence and risks policy failure; emphasizing intermediary competence risks control failure. This “governor's dilemma” helps to explain puzzling features of indirect governance: why it is not limited to principal–agent delegation but takes multiple forms; why governors choose forms that ...
The study of informal international institutions has advanced considerably over the past decade. ... more The study of informal international institutions has advanced considerably over the past decade. Much of this work, including our own, has approached this phenomenon from the perspective of rationalist institutionalism. Yet, existing work has also been criticized from several conceptual, theoretical, and empirical angles. The recent special issue of International Politics on the “cascading dynamics” of informality by Cooper et al. (Int Politics, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1057/s41311-022-00399-4) offers an important example of such critiques. It builds on earlier work in the field, advancing our understanding of a number of processes and institutions, but also partly casts itself as a reaction to the approach we have adopted. We argue that key aspects of this critique are misguided and that Cooper et al. exaggerate the differences that divide us. Our aim in this article is to respond to their criticisms, clarify the key research issues at stake, emphasize the complementarities among a...
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Papers by Duncan Snidal