Original version
International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics. 2020, 20 (3), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-020-09497-1
Abstract
Scholars commonly hypothesize that enhanced capacity—improved ability to do as agreed—increases states’ compliance with international agreements. In contrast, using a novel dataset that covers 31 states and three decades of cooperation, I find a negative effect of capacity on compliance. To help explain this seemingly counterintuitive finding, I offer a novel conjecture of the capacity–compliance relationship. In particular, I argue that the effect of capacity may vary substantially across states, because states’ intention to comply constitutes a crucial intervening variable. Among reluctant states pursuing policy goals that affect compliance negatively, high capacity may in fact cause noncompliance. I exemplify the conjecture through evidence from a high-capacity noncompliant state (Norway).