Compliance with International Law

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.