Delayed Ratification: The Domestic Fate of Bilateral Investment Treaties

Abstract

Some treaties are signed and then ratified quickly while others languish in legal limbo, unratified by one or more parties+ What explains this variation in the time between signature and ratification? The international relations literature has not taken the ratification stage seriously enough, despite its obvious importance from a legal and a political perspective+ We offer a systematic study of this question in the context of bilateral investment treaties+ We develop and test a set of theoretical propositions related to domestic-level constraints on the executive, the varying ability of governments to rationally anticipate ratification obstacles, and the bilateral relationship between treaty partners+ We generally find support for these propositions but report some surprising findings as well+ The article presents implications for investment agreements and treaty making more generally, and raises a number of issues for further study at the intersection of international politics and law+ Much of the most important and stable cooperation among states occurs through formal treaty making+ International treaties are negotiated and signed by leaders but must be ratified domestically to have binding force+ Notably, some treaties are signed and then ratified quickly while others languish, unratified by one or more parties+ What explains this variation in the time between signature at the international level and ratification at the domestic level? Why are some treaties signed but never ratified at all? By exploring the fate of agreements after leaders bring them home, we shed light on a key stage of international cooperation that has received relatively little attention in the international relations literature+ Ratification is important from both a legal and a political perspective+ As one law scholar notes, ratification implies consent and thus "transforms an international agreement from a piece of paper devoid of any legal force into law that

Can I stay a BIT longer? The effect of bilateral investment treaties on political survival

“…Finally, Model 5 investigates whether my results are driven by the determinants of BIT ratification as identified by Haftel and Thompson (2013). The coefficient on political constraints, as proxied by the Henisz (2000) veto player index, fails to reach statistical significance at conventional levels.…”

“…Several studies find that the number of veto players influences the timing of ratification (Haftel 2010;Baccini and Urpelainen 2013;Haftel and Thompson 2013). As such, I include Henisz (2002a)'s measure of veto players to account for this effect.…”

Promoting trade through private law: Explaining international legal harmonization

“…The primary model used is the Cox model, which has been widely applied in the study of treaty ratification (Neumayer 2009;Simmons and Danner 2010;Haftel and Thompson 2013;Marcoux and Urpelainen 2014). The results of the Cox model are reported as hazard ratios that express the proportionate impact of a given variable on the decision to ratify the convention.…”

“…Employing both means can be burdensome, as both entail the costs associated with entering international agreements: costs of negotiation as well as the subsequent costs of ratification, implementation, and adjustment (Perkins and Neumayer 2007;Haftel and Thompson 2013). Rational governments would thus choose between the two alternatives on the basis of their relative merits.…”

The non-ratification of bilateral investment treaties in Brazil: a story of conflict in a land of cooperation†

“…Whereas most of the work on BITs still revolves around their impact on FDI flows 1 and on the determinants of the government's decision to enter these treaties, 2 the recent literature has expanded to include topics such as the design of BIT clauses (Allee and Peinhardt, 2010;Blake, 2013), the backlash against these treaties (Allee and Peinhardt, 2011;Poulsen and Aisbett, 2013;Simmons, 2014) and BIT renegotiation (Haftel and Thompson, 2013).…”