The evidence contradicts prevailing explanations. It turns out that democracies experience more trade conflict, not less, and they resolve their disputes less cooperatively as well. Moreover, changes in the dispute settlement regime have had little impact. Rational Domestic Response to International Institutional Constraints , prepared for delivery at the Conference on the Interaction of International and Domestic Institutions, Boulder, CO, June 4-5, 1999. You can download the data for this paper .
Leaders can indeed tie their hands without ropes.
However, the model's results contradict many aspects of conventional institutionalist theory. Moreover, the benefits of tying hands without a rope can only be realized before the institution issues prescriptions, and only then, ironically, if the transaction costs of utilizing the institution are sufficiently high. The model yields a number of additional testable hypotheses, concerning, for instance, the differential influence of the institution on unified and divided governments. Preliminary quantitative tests offer support for these hypotheses. Yet few studies have examined whether spatial proximity leads firms with shared interests to be more active in politics.