The major technical obstacle to the signing of nuclear test ban treaties is the issue of verifying compliance. Since the banning of atmospheric and oceanic testing (Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963) pushed testing underground, seismic monitoring has been one of the most important technologies available for monitoring compliance with test ban treaties. The goal of these treaties is to progressive...

I appreciate Alexis Palmer and colleagues’ empirical research on the eff ects of ratifi cation of human rights treaties on population health (June 6, p 1987). Despite their conclusion that ratifi cation has no benefi ts on health, issues surrounding the eff ect of human rights norms within treaties are complex and might not be fully captured through an analysis of correlations between ratifi ca...

prospective studies of the potential health consequences of trade and investment treaties, such as the trans-pacific partnership, are critical. these studies can make visible to trade policy-makers the potential negative impacts associated to such treaties and can influence the outcomes of such negotiations. however, few researchers have examined retrospectively the consequences of trade agreem...

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 overambi...