The Existence of Courts and Parliaments in Regional Organizations: A Case of Democratic Control?

Abstract

Why do states design regional organizations with courts and parliaments? Is it indeed the case that states establish them because they expect these organs to exert some kind of democratic control over executives? Undoubtedly, this is an important question given that politicians and political scientists alike regularly lament the lack of democratic control of many international organizations. We tackle this question empirically. Based on an original data set of 72 regional organizations and by using simple logistic and ordinal logistic regression analyses, this article tests for the association between domestic regime type and the existence of regional courts and parliaments. These organs were selected because they are associated with dimensions of democracy, namely constitutionality and inclusiveness. The most consistent correlates of the existence of each of these institutional bodies and the aggregate of them are functional ones: policy scope, trade-related variables, and conflict-related variables. There is no significant association between any measure of democracy and the existence of these institutions. These results are discussed the context of debates about the democratic deficit of international and regional organizations and the question of whether democratic standards are applicable to regional organizations.

Can the Rational Design of International Institutions Solve Cooperation Problems? Insights from a Systematic Literature Review

“…Studies support secondary or, ultimately, mixed sources of informatio COIL project led by Koremenos and the Issue Correlates of War (ICOW) led Pevehouse research team were observed to be significantly recurrent. On the othe other researchers offer novel dataset contributions [64,80,86,89,90]. These cases ill the way in which the examined discipline was built.…”

“…As they are deeply rooted in economics, these econometric models were certainly not accidentally used in the examined rationalist empirical works. Both logistic regression and ordinary least squares (OLS) methods were the second most frequently used methods in the examined literature [63,77,80,86,87]. Third, a chi-square test and a cross-tabulation analysis were each performed once each [79,83].…”

“…Additionally, this research points out that Hooghe and Marks [63] (p. 311) partially argue in support of Koremenos, Lipson, and Snidal's [2] proposition since SCOPE, a dependent institutional feature, is identified as a driving factor of authority. Similarly, Jetschke and Münch [80] state that functionalist mechanisms are more consistent than domestic regimes in terms of conducting delegation procedures by which parliaments and courts are created. In other words, these mechanisms are initially created to monitor the compliance of member states, and eventually they may become institutions of democratic control.…”