Extradition: An Empirical Test of International Cooperation

Extradition is a critical component of transnational criminal law (Cullen and Burgess, 2015:208). Given the globalization of crime, extradition is becoming increasingly important to businesses, governments and individuals. For example, if a criminal embezzles corporate assets and flees the United States, the corporation, the U.S. government and shareholders will all benefit from an effective extradition regime. However, efficient extradition regimes could come at the cost of harming human rights and weakened protections for the accused (Cullen and Burgess, 2015:209). Accordingly, it is crucial that we have a nuanced understanding of extradition.Unfortunately, there is little empirical testing on the subject. For example, I am aware of only one study in Political Science and it is fairly limited; it only suggests that Democratic Peace Theory may help explain extradition (Wagner, 2003). On the other hand, there is some treatment of the matter in the legal and policy research. However, that research is primarily descriptive and often only focused on a particular country. Furthermore, although the policy and legal research are rich in detail and often in theory, they lack any quantifiable justification to substantiate many of their claims. For example, Pyle suggests that the United States has become “the long arm of foreign injustice” (Pyle, 2001:4). He claims that the United States extradites individuals to regimes that are undemocratic, where they will be afforded few protections. This is a serious concern; particularly since 10 to 20 percent of those extradited from the United States are United States’ citizens (Pyle, 2001:4). Although he cites a few instances where this is alleged to have happened, there is no systematic attempt to fully address the issue. Without a more in depth analysis, it is difficult to say whether the cases Pyle cites are idiosyncratic or whether they are endemic and signal U.S. complicity in corroding human rights. In this paper, I address Pyle’s assertion only indirectly and attempt to make more general claims. I do not consider whether individuals are extradited to particular countries; that is an issue of compliance and beyond the scope of this paper. Furthermore, this project is not per se a project on human rights. Rather I ask a more fundamental question: with whom do states commit to extradite? In this study, commitment is conceptualized as states signing bilateral extradition treaties. Although, admittedly imperfect, this is a good starting point to quantify extradition policy decisions. Furthermore, without a bilateral extradition agreement, extradition can be difficult and perhaps even impossible. For example, the United States does not extradite absent a bilateral treaty. Thus, Pyle’s concern is assuaged if the United States (or any democracy for that matter) is more likely to sign with other democracies than with non-democracies.Accordingly, the ultimate aim of this project is to uncover the factors that influence states’ decisions to sign extradition treaties. To accomplish this goal, I place extradition into an empirically based research program. Specifically, I adopt and modify several theories of Political Science and International Law to address issues of extradition. I begin with a discussion of the extant Political Science literature. This literature attempts to view extradition decisions as an extension of the democratic peace research agenda. I suggest that such an explanation may be incomplete because there are good reasons to believe that states consider more than shared democratic institutions in making their extradition decisions. In fact, this shortcoming is admitted. To address the problem, I offer a more general and comprehensive explanation. The model in its most distilled form is labeled as an opportunity\willingness model. This nomenclature was chosen so to create a common language from which social science and other disciplines, which do empirical research can understand extradition. Admittedly, many of the variables do not always fit neatly into either of these categories. Nevertheless, I adopt these terms, because in order to bring extradition into an empirically driven research program and to clarify its theoretical underpinnings, it is useful to have some common ground from which to move forward. Furthermore, most of my theoretical arguments focus on the willingness part of the equation. This is primarily because those arguments are more nuanced and allow me to better connect the social science literature to extradition. Additionally, in the opportunities section of the analysis, I focus mostly on legal systems. I do so because it allows me to introduce the reader to important extradition concepts, which may help future research.