Edward D. Mansfield

The number of international human rights institutions and countries participating in them has risen dramatically in recent decades, precipitating debates about why countries make such commitments and whether these commitments improve member's human rights behavior. These debates have centered on a small number of human rights treaties, with far less attention paid to the larger number of international organizations (IOs) that aim to promote human rights. The Element argues and then demonstrates that state decisions about joining these IOs depends on the institutional design of the organizations, specifically sovereignty costs for member states. These costs stem from the constraints that IOs impose and vary substantially. Emerging democracies are most likely to enter high sovereignty cost IOs. Furthermore, organizations that generate higher sovereignty costs tend to produce better human rights outcomes than those generating fewer sovereignty costs for all regimes. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

The number of international human rights institutions and countries participating in them has risen dramatically in recent decades, precipitating debates about why countries make such commitments and whether these commitments improve member's human rights behavior. These debates have centered on a small number of human rights treaties, with far less attention paid to the larger number of international organizations (IOs) that aim to promote human rights. The Element argues and then demonstrates that state decisions about joining these IOs depends on the institutional design of the organizations, specifically sovereignty costs for member states. These costs stem from the constraints that IOs impose and vary substantially. Emerging democracies are most likely to enter high sovereignty cost IOs. Furthermore, organizations that generate higher sovereignty costs tend to produce better human rights outcomes than those generating fewer sovereignty costs for all regimes. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1861.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1861.

Preferential trading arrangements (PTAs) play an increasingly prominent role in the global political economy, two notable examples being the European Union and the North American Free Trade Agreement. These agreements foster economic integration among member states by enhancing their access to one another's markets. Yet despite the importance of PTAs to international trade and world politics, until now little attention has been focused on why governments choose to join them and how governments design them. This book offers valuable new insights into the political economy of PTA formation. Many economists have argued that the roots of these agreements lie in the promise they hold for improving the welfare of member states. Others have posited that trade agreements are a response to global political conditions. Edward Mansfield and Helen Milner argue that domestic politics provide a crucial impetus to the decision by governments to enter trade pacts. Drawing on this argument, they explain why democracies are more likely to enter PTAs than nondemocratic regimes, and why as the number of veto players--interest groups with the power to block policy change--increases in a prospective member state, the likelihood of the state entering a trade agreement is reduced. The book provides a novel view of the political foundations of trade agreements.

This book presents the first attempt to model the relationships among the distribution of power, international trade, and war. Edward Mansfield dispels the widespread belief that a monotonic relationship exists between the distribution of power and patterns of both war and trade.