WAIT ‘TIL NEXT YEAR? THE POLITICS AND TIMING OF TREATY RATIFICATION BY ADAM C. IRISH DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2013 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee Professor Paul F. Diehl, Chair Assistant Professor Todd Allee, Director of Research, University of Maryland Professor Charlotte Ku Associate Professor Xinyuan Dai ABSTRACT States spend years and tremendous diplomatic capital negotiating treaties. Yet, despite the best efforts of skilled negotiators, some states wait for months, years, and even decades, to ratify the treaties they took part in negotiating. In this dissertation, I investigate the phenomenon of ratification delay and attempt to provide an explanation for why some states wait to ratify treaties while others do not. In order to build a theory of ratification timing, I recast the two-level game metaphor to account of the strategic behavior of state legislatures and constraints of the ratification process. I test this theory on an original dataset of state ratifications for a specific cluster of treaties: The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and its implementing treaties. My findings indicate that previous studies of ratification have overestimated the importance of the states leaders and underestimated the importance of legislators and the institutional ratification requirements. ii Acknowledgements As with all things in life that are worth doing, writing a dissertation is a team effort. I benefited from the support of many people along the way, and the debts I have accrued are many. So I begin with a blanket thank you to all the mentors, teachers, friends, and students that I have been fortunate enough to learn from and know in my post-collegiate life. Of this multitude, several individuals deserve singling out. First, I would like to thank the faculty members in the Department of Political Science for helping me cultivate the critical mind and skills needed to complete this dissertation. It is a wonderful thing when professors will leave their doors open to a persistent questioner like myself. To Brenda Stamm in the front office I offer special thanks. You made the logistics of my stay at Illinois a breeze. I also want to acknowledge the friends of mine who helped me from the first to the last. Nickolai Papa, Adam Holbrook, Andrea and Gordon Kent, and Chera Laforge. These wonderful people provided me with thoughtful critiques, shoulders to cry on, and most of all encouragement, always at the right time and without fail. I will miss you all, until our next conference! My very first mentor in the field of political science was Dr. Doug Lemke and he deserves a special mention. My interest in political science has its roots in a lecture he gave in the wake of September 11th, 2001. Doug’s penchant for building up a theory to its fullest only to throw in a “monkey wrench” at the last moment continues to inspire my own approach to scholarship. iii The committee I assembled to oversee my dissertation worked very hard and I could not ask for a better group. Dr. Charlotte Ku, my guru in all things legal, provided a wonderful bridge to the world of law. Her assistance in making this text accessible and interesting to legal scholars was invaluable. Charlotte is also a wonderful co-author and I look forward to a long scholarly friendship with her. Dr. Xinyuan Dai provided a loyal opposition and helped me to understand the formal theory approach to cooperation. Xinyuan is also a fantastic teacher. It was her challenging class on international cooperation and her well-reasoned questions that first sparked my interest in this topic and the research that followed. Dr. Paul Diehl served as my first co-chair and is the type of prolific scholar and thoughtful academic that every graduate student should aspire to become. First and foremost though, Paul is a teacher. His willingness to consider new ideas, experience in dealing with hardheaded students, and ability to disagree without being disagreeable made him the perfect mentor for a student like me. A scholar of politics and law, Paul was kind enough to show me first-hand how best to move between fields. In the end, his calm and consistent guidance motivated me to finish. Dr. Todd Allee served as my other co-chair. He and I have traveled a long road together. There are people you meet in life with whom you just click and Todd is one of those people for me. I thank Todd for the hours of his time I have stolen– though as a political economist he would want me to say, “invested.” Beyond supporting my scholarship with his own persistent questions, Todd showed me step-by-step how good research is done. Todd took a chance on me and believed in my approach to graduate school. I will count him as a life long friend. iv I save my last and largest thanks for my family. I thank my brother for understanding my long working silences and continuing to send me reminders of his love and support. I appreciated every message and I promise to get better at returning missed calls. My father took on the yeoman chore of proofing this text and he dragged me back from the abyss of repetitious jargon on several occasions. He is a remarkable man and his love of books, music, and learning continues to inspire me. Any errors, omissions, or poorly constructed sentences that remain are my fault alone. Finally, in the last year, whether over the phone or over cups of good strong coffee, my mother took on the daunting task of discussing my ideas and my findings with me. A natural teacher, she was particularly adept in deciphering whether I needed to talk or just to vent. Having her listen, question, and reassure made the whole research process a truly positive experience. This dissertation is dedicated to my family. They are my rock. v Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………………….1 Chapter 2: Review of the Literature………………………………………………………………………….17 Chapter 3: A Theory of Ratification Timing ………………………………………………………………43 Chapter 4: The History and Importance of the Law of the Sea ……………….…………………..76 Chapter 5: Research Plan and Descriptive Statistics …………………………………………….…100 Chapter 6: The International Story: Why States Waited to Ratify the Law of the Sea………………………………………………………140 Chapter 7: The Domestic Story: Why Democracies Waited to Ratify the Law of the Sea ……………………………………………176 Chapter 8: Conclusion and Future Research …………………………………………………………...195 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………………………………….204 Chapter 1 Introduction December 10th, 1982 – Montego Bay It was a sunny, balmy day in Jamaica. Diplomats from around the world were assembled to conclude negotiations on the single most important and expansive maritime treaty in history of international law: The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.1 Inside a massive convention hall the air was filled with a cacophony of voices. A sense of accomplishment was in the air. When the Law of the Sea opened for signature that afternoon it would end of nine long years of diplomatic conferences. After years of political wrangling and shuttling back and forth between New York and Geneva, the diplomats that endured this tireless marathon had reason to celebrate. They had succeeded. On their desks before them lay copies of the completed treaty text, three-hundred and twenty articles, nine annexes, detailed rules to govern the maritime behavior of states, of firms, of individuals, all there in black and white. The Law of the Sea would be a constitution for the oceans. It would partition the oceans by creating and allocating a 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) to every coastal state. The Law of the Sea would codify and clarify regulations, expectations, and prohibitions for nearly every type of maritime behavior, from piracy to innocent passage. Its effects would cover the broad swath of oceanic geography, from the seabed floor to the high seas. It would be among the first legal 1 Hereafter referred to as the Law of the Sea. 1 instruments to establish the legal principle “for the common heritage of mankind,” the fundamental mechanism by which developing states and future generations might stake legal claim to their part of the ocean’s bounty. Finally, the Law of the Sea would envelop states within a regime of rules and institutions to serve as a line of defense against the “land grab at sea” foretold by US President Lyndon Banes Johnson (Churchill and Lowe 1999, 15-16). The Law of the Sea’s comprehensive complexity would, in the end, be superseded only by the United Nations itself, the European Union, and World Trade Organization (Harrison 2011; Sebenius 1984). With the political storm clouds of national interests and the Cold War looming on the horizon, the very the process of negotiating the Law of the Sea was an accomplishment. The treaty text was negotiated using an active consensus- building (Buzan 1981). Consensus negotiating employs a single “negotiating text” and procedurally allows votes only after all efforts at structuring a consensus text have failed. Moreover, this model of bargaining requires two-thirds agreement of the states present and voting. In effect any substantive changes can be blocked by a minority of states (Sebenius 1984, 12-13). First pioneered in Jamaica, consensus negotiation is often standard protocol at most international conferences. Wielding this new bargaining tool, negotiators were empowered to hear from a diversity of state and non-state interests. Within working groups they were driven to fashion treaty language that included something in it for every state. In contrast, majority voting procedures of the past were rendered “increasingly useless for law making decisions because of the danger of powerful alienated minorities” (Buzan 1981, 326).