Why do sovereign governments make international legal commitments, and what effect does international law have on state behavior? Very little empirical research tries to answer these questions in a systematic way. This article examines patterns of commitment to and compliance with international monetary law. I consider the signal governments try to send by committing themselves through international legal commitments, and I argue that reputational concerns explain patterns of compliance. One of the most important findings is that governments commit to and comply with legal obligations if other countries in their region do so. Competitive market forces, rather than overt policy pressure from the International Monetary Fund, are the most likely “enforcement” mechanism. Legal commitment has an extremely positive effect on governments that have recently removed restrictive policies, which indicates a desire to reestablish a reputation for compliance.

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International Law and State Behavior: Commitment and Compliance in International Monetary Affairs

Scholars and observers of the international system often comment on the decreasing importance of international boundaries as a result of the growth of international economic and social exchanges, economic liberalization, and international regimes. They generally fail to note, however, that coercive territorial revisionism has markedly declined over the past half century—a phenomenon that indicates that in certain ways states attach greater importance to boundaries in our present era. In this article I first trace states' beliefs and practices concerning the use of force to alter boundaries from the birth of the Westphalian order in the seventeenth century through the end of World War II. I then focus on the increasing acceptance of the norm against coercive territorial revisionism since 1945. Finally, I analyze those instrumental and ideational factors that have influenced the strengthening of the norm among both Western and developing countries.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0020818301441294

The Territorial Integrity Norm: International Boundaries and the Use of Force

In a web-based study of 117,676 adults from 54 nations and all 50 US states, we investigated the relative prevalence of 24 different strengths of character. The most commonly-endorsed strengths in the USA were kindness, fairness, honesty, gratitude, and judgment, and the lesser strengths included prudence, modesty, and self-regulation. The profile of character strengths in the USA converged with profiles based on respondents from each of the other nations. Except for religiousness, comparisons within the US sample showed no differences as a function of state or geographical region. Our results may reveal something about universal human nature and/or the character requirements minimally needed for a viable society.

Character strengths in fifty-four nations and the fifty US states

Why did Western Europe create uniquely strong international institutions in the 1950s, setting the foundations for today's quasi-federal European Union? This article contests explanations of the European Economic Community (EEC) as a straightforward response to structural interdependence, or as an institutionally “path-dependent” variation on such a response. Only leadership based on certain ideas explains why Europeans created the EEC rather than pursuing cooperation within weaker institutions or standard diplomatic instruments. In France—the only major state that insisted on the “community” framework—divided preferences and issue-linkages created “multiple equilibria” that allowed leaders to mobilize support for several European strategies. The EEC strategy was selected over viable alternatives by leaders who stood out from their party, bureaucratic, sectoral, and regional allies in holding certain ideas about Europe. This demonstration of the major, distinct impact of ideas offers concrete support to the growing theoretical literature on ideas and norms.

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Showing Ideas as Causes: The Origins of the European Union

This book is a reassessment of the international monetary crises of the post-World War I period that led to the Great Depression of the 1930s. It also analyses the responses of the world economic powers to the Depression and how new monetary policies set the stage for the watershed post-World War II system established at Bretton Woods. It offers new theories of what effect the Great Depression had on the collapse of the world monetary system, and what effect the collapse had on deepening and prolonging the Depression, by exploring the link between global economic crisis and the the gold standard (the framework for international monetary affairs until 1931). The events described had a profound effect upon twentieth-century history: the Depression abetted the rise of Hitler and the demise of the gold standard is a historical cause of inflation.

International Monetary Cooperation Since Bretton Woods

Not Like Us: How Europeans have Loved, Hated, and Transformed American Culture since World War II

Acknowledgments List of abbreviations Introduction 1. The diplomatic heritage 2. The postwar years: independence compromised 3. L'annee terrible 4. Americanizing the French 5. Building an alliance 6. The Marshall plan 7. Military aid and French independence 8. The United States and French Indochina 9. France declares its independence Conclusion Bibliography Index.

The United States and the Making of Postwar France, 1945–1954

In this pioneering book, Irwin M. Wall unravels the intertwining threads of the protracted agony of France's war with Algeria, the American role in the fall of the Fourth Republic, the long shadow of Charles de Gaulle, and the decisive postwar power of the United States. At the heart of this study is an incisive analysis of how Washington helped bring de Gaulle to power and a penetrating revisionist account of his Algerian policy. Departing from widely held interpretations of the Algerian War, Wall approaches the conflict as an international diplomatic crisis whose outcome was primarily dependent on French relations with Washington, the NATO alliance, and the United Nations, rather than on military engagement. Wall makes extensive use of previously unexamined documents from the Department of State, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and heretofore secret files of the Archives of the French Army at Vincennes and the Colonial Ministry at Aix-en-Provence. He argues convincingly that de Gaulle always intended to keep Algeria French, in line with his goal to make France the center of a reorganized French union of autonomous but dependent African states and the heart of a Europe of cooperating states. Such a union, which the French called Eurafrica, would further France's chance to be an equal partner with Britain and the United States in a reordered 'Free World.' In recent years the Algerian War has reclaimed its place in popular memory in France. Its interpreters have continued to view the conflict as a national, internal drama and de Gaulle as the second-time savior who ended French participation in a ruinous colonial war. But by analyzing the conflict in terms of French foreign policy, Wall shows the pivotal role of the United States and counters certain political myths that portray de Gaulle as an emancipator of colonial people. Wall's interpretation of the Algerian conflict may well spark controversy and will open important new avenues of debate concerning postwar international affairs.

France, the United States, and the Algerian War

Cooperation among Democracies: The European Influence on U.S. Foreign Policy. By Thomas Risse-Kappen. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. x, 250 pp. $35.00, ISBN 0-691-03644-6.)

Irwin M. Wall

Papers

Not Like Us: How Europeans have Loved, Hated, and Transformed American Culture since World War II

The United States and the Making of Postwar France, 1945–1954

France, the United States, and the Algerian War

Cooperation among Democracies: The European Influence on U.S. Foreign Policy. By Thomas Risse-Kappen. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. x, 250 pp. $35.00, ISBN 0-691-03644-6.)

De Gaulle: The Rebel, 1890-1944 and De Gaulle: The Ruler, 1945-1970.