The Political Economy of Weak Treaties∗

In recent decades, democratic countries have signed hundreds of international environmental agreements (IEAs). Most of these are weak and do not include effective enforcement. To study this puzzle, we propose a positive theory of IEAs in which the political incumbents negotiate in the shadow of reelections. We show that incumbents are prone to negotiate treaties that are simultaneously overambitious and weak. The theory also provides a new perspective for understanding investments in green technologies, and predicts that countries are tempted to rely too much on technology instead of sanctions to make compliance credible. Preliminary evidence is consistent with our predictions. ∗For useful comments and discussions we thank Stephen Coate, Eleonora Patacchini, Torsten Persson, Ragnar Torvik, and seminar participants at Cornell, U. of Geneva, Harvard, Rice, Stanford GSB, the 2017 NICEP conference in Nottinham, the 2016 EEA meeting, and the 2016 Warwick political economy conference in Venice. We also thank Angela Cools, Torje Hegna and Esteban Mendez Chacon for outstanding research