Though research suggests that international regimes that coordinate economic and security policy can alter state behavior, research examining the effect of human rights treaties on state behavior has found that these agreements do little to curb repressive practices. However, those studies neglect to account for the fact that several of the statelevel characteristics which are known to affect r...

The Conventions and US jurisprudence. Hawken and Kulick (2) dispute my assertion that in setting up legal nonmedical markets Washington and Colorado clearly contravene the conventions. I acknowledge my assertion was too strong, if it is read as implying that US courts would necessarily decide this way. Hawken and Kulick conclude that nations “with federal systems of government” are not bound by...

What actions can governments in developing countries take to make their economies more appealing to foreign investors? One increasingly prominent answer focuses on the effect of signing onto international economic agreements, showing that countries’ participation in investment and trade treaties is associated with greater inflow of FDI. Yet the nature of this empirical relationship remains uncl...

T landscape of the global economy is increasingly dotted with institutions that regulate investment and trade. The number of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and preferential trade agreements (PTAs) stand out in this regard, with nearly every country a member of at least one of these institutions, if not many. Yet, for all the scholarly attention paid to investment treaties and trade agreem...

The World Health Organization and the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs (Nobel Peace Prize 1995) have been involved in questions concerning chemical and biological arms since the early 1950s. This memoir reviews a number of milestones in the efforts of these organizations to achieve the elimination of these weapons through international treaties effectively monitored and enforced...