ERF 26th Annual Conference
Agree to Disagree? Making sense of Vagueness in International Environmental Agreements
No.
ERF26_253
Publisher
ERF
Date
June, 2020
Topic
H7. State and Local Government
F5. International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy
Q5. Environmental Economics
This paper explains vagueness in IEAs by the heterogeneity in institutional capacities of the negotiating countries. Using a game-theoretic model, where information regarding institutional capacities of potential participants is asymmetric, this paper makes several important contributions: (i) it contributes to a more realistic modeling of the treaty formation, (ii) it endogenizes the number of participants as well as their characteristics and (iii) it identifies the determinants of the optimal level of ambiguity in designing an IEA. It is shown that an increased level of precision in the agreement is likely to increase participation when the distribution of institutional capacities of negotiating countries is skewed to the right or quite skewed to the left, suggesting a comparative advantage, in terms of precision and participation level, for environmental negotiations between countries with relatively similar levels of institutional capacity. In the case where institutional capacities are evenly distributed, more ambiguity is required to increase participation. Furthermore, the more noncompliance concerns are valued over policy concerns, the more vagueness is required in the agreement.
Research Associates
Dina Kassab
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Economics and Political...