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The literature on the institutionalization of international cooperation argues that states include dispute settlement procedures in their agreements to "tie the hands" of states. This paper reverses this thinking and shows that when a regime provides institutionalized dispute settlement, states sometimes seek to undo it. The settlement of maritime boundaries is a case in point. Governed by the Law of the Sea regime, which provides four institutional mechanisms for states to solve disputes, the vast majority of agreements specify bilateral negotiations as the only way to deal with future conflicts. The reason for this is that states pay attention to both the cost and flexibility of conflict resolutions mechanisms. We find that poorer states are more likely than wealthy states to specify bilateral negotiations, the cheapest and most flexible conflict resolution mechanism. Wealth differentials are also associated with greater demands for flexibility.

Outside options can induce bargaining asymmetries that influence the outcome of international negotiations. This article focuses, however, on the impact of a regime-provided inside option on the willingness to cooperate and the distributive outcomes reached. Using a new data set covering 417 maritime boundaries, that fall under the Law of the Sea framework, this article shows that the ability to find agreement is closely linked to the distributional outcomes that states are able to realize. Different potential gains from cooperation result in bargaining asymmetries that influence both the ability to settle a maritime boundary and the distributive outcome reached when cooperation succeeds. Our evidence shows that the opportunity to invest in long-term projects that require legal certainty, such as offshore oil, facilitates cooperation and is associated with smaller distributional adjustments.

How do states allocate joint fish stocks that straddle international boundaries? What factors determine who gets what during international negotiations between fishing states? These questions strike at the heart of the literature on international cooperation, and thus answering them will shed light not simply on international and transboundary fisheries management but also on the general challenges of international cooperation. This paper examines how domestic groups influence negotiators and thus the ultimate terms of international agreements. The research focuses on seven agreements spanning 20 years (signed by Norway and Iceland) for managing four shared fish stocks that straddle national and international waters. The main conclusion suggests that a state with a powerful domestic interest group usually gets a more favorable agreement when negotiating with a state with weaker domestic interest groups. (c) 2007 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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