July 8, 2020
Alexandra Zeitz (European University Institute)
“Cascading Noncompliance: Explaining How International Cooperation Breaks Down”
(with Jonas B. Bunte (Texas at Dallas), Geoffrey Gertz (Brookings))
View the recording of the webinar here.
The published version is available here.
(2021) Cascading noncompliance: why the export credit regime is unraveling, Review of International Political Economy, DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1916776
Abstract
How do informal regimes break down? Though there is increasing interest in the failure and demise of international institutions, this research has mostly focused on formal institutions. We examine the process of regime breakdown in the context of informal regimes, outlining the specific process by which compliance collapses in response to an outside challenger. We argue that the emergence of such an outside challenger can kick off a dynamic process whereby the incentive to defect from the regime becomes contagious. Deviation from the regime subsequently spreads throughout the membership in a sequence we call cascading noncompliance. We empirically investigate this phenomenon in the context of the international regime on export finance, where China has become an important outsider placing competitive pressure on the regime. In line with our expectations, we demonstrate that the earliest defectors from the regime are those most exposed to Chinese trade competition. More importantly, we demonstrate that members’ subsequent divergence from the regime is driven by responses to those initial noncompliers from within the regime’s membership.