Compliance with International Law
| Date | 01 June 2006 |
| Author | Adam Thayne,Kendall W. Stiles |
| DOI | 10.1177/0010836706063660 |
| Published date | 01 June 2006 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Compliance with International Law
International Law on Terrorism at the
United Nations
KENDALL W. STILES
AND ADAM THAYNE
ABSTRACT
Are certain countries more likely to comply with international law than
others? History has provided an interesting test of several competing
theories of international rule compliance in the form of the UN
Security Council’s Resolution 1373 to combat international terrorism.
We apply a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods to test the
salience of various national characteristics — domestic political culture,
national interests, regionalism, dependency, power, international
alliance patterns, past patterns of compliance. In the end, while all the
factors seem to have a bearing on the outcome, regionalism and past
patterns of compliance emerge as particularly significant.
Keywords: compliance; international law;terrorism; United Nations
Introduction
In the days and weeks following the 11 September attacks on New York and
Washington, DC, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution
1373, mandating that all members of the UN adopt strict new regulations to
combat terrorism. The UNSC created a special committee-of-the-whole,
named the Counter-Terrorism Committee, to supervise the submission of
detailed progress reports which it scrutinizes and critiques. These critiques
in turn shape the content of second, third and even fourth drafts of national
plans with the implicit understanding that failure on the part of UN mem-
bers to comply with the project would result in serious consequences of an
undefined nature.
Unlike most UN resolutions, Resolution 1373 has a legislative character
— an act that was developed by an executive committee and which states
must implement, whether they voted in favor or not.This contrasts sharply
with the consensual approach to law-making which often results in weak or
shallow rules that require little change or address only trivial matters
(Downs et al., 1996).The rules are extremely precise and monitoring is easy
Cooperation and Conflict: Journal of the Nordic International Studies Association
Vol.41(2): 153–176. Copyright ©2006 NISA www.ps.au.dk/NISA
Sage Publications www.sagepublications.com
0010-8367. DOI: 10.1177/0010836706063660
and unavoidable, thus solving the problem of measuring compliance often
cited in other studies (Chayes and Chayes, 1995;Weiss, 1999; Williamson,
2003). As we will see, it is possible to infer from the comments of the CTC
on preliminary drafts of the reports a virtual ‘score card’ of compliance
that is amenable to quantification. And finally, because the rule is univer-
sal in scope, it is possible to compare compliance rates across regions and
regime types.
Because the 1373/CTC regime is uniquely precise, authoritative, immedi-
ate and uniform, the case provides an important opportunity not only to
better understand the operation of the Security Council under emergency
conditions and progress in the war on terror, but it also permits us to test a
few propositions found in the literature on rule compliance.Specifically, this
case allows us to isolate which characteristics of countries matter most with
respect to compliance.This question has been just one of several in the rule-
compliance literature which focuses mostly on the political context, sub-
stance and enforcement mechanisms of rules (Franck, 1990; Jacobson and
Weiss, 1995; Downs et al., 1996; Raustiala, 2000; Hafner-Burton, 2005).
However, we believe it is important to better understand whether, given
these dimensions, it is possible to detect patterns in rule-compliance on a
country-by-country basis.
In this study,we apply multiple methods of analysis to test the major the-
ories of which national characteristics affect rule compliance, in addition to
providing a first cut on which countries are complying best with CTC mea-
sures.We do this through a multivariate regression analysis of variables that
are derived from competing theories. Ultimately, we call for a composite
approach that considers several key factors together as the most promising
general model to explain international law compliance.
Theories of Law Compliance
Although many theories exist that explain general patterns of rule compli-
ance in terms of the features of the rule,the substance of the issue, the struc-
tural characteristics of the international system and so forth, for our
purposes we are interested only in theories of compliance that focus on
state-level variables. In other words: what is it about some countries that
seems to make them more compliant?
The factors these theories consider can be classified into three broad cat-
egories: theories about the foreign policy goals of states, theories about
power and vulnerability,and theories about democracy and rule of law. The
first category of theories assumes that states generally behave in a manner
that leaders perceive to be in the best interests of the nation and best
ensure their own survival (Krasner, 1999). Even the most skeptical con-
structivist agrees that policy flows from a general perception of the interests
of the state, with interests defined in a particular historical and normative
context. The simplest version of this theory holds that states will generally
do what they’ve been doing already.As put by Jacobson and Weiss:
154 COOPERATION AND CONFLICT 41(2)
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