An argument that secretariats—the administrative arms of international treaties—are political actors in their own right. Secretariats—the administrative arms of international treaties—-would seem simply to do the bidding of member states. And yet, Sikina Jinnah argues in Post-Treaty Politics, secretariats can play an important role in world politics. On paper, secretariats collect information, communicate with state actors, and coordinate diplomatic activity. In practice, they do much more. As Jinnah shows, they can influence the allocation of resources, structures of interstate cooperation, and the power relationships between states. Jinnah examines secretariat influence through the lens of overlap management in environmental governance—how secretariats help to manage the dense interplay of issues, rules, and norms between international treaty regimes. Through four case studies, she shows that secretariats can draw on their unique networks and expertise to handle the challenges of overlap management, emerging as political actors in their own right. After presenting a theory and analytical framework for analyzing secretariat influence, Jinnah examines secretariat influence on overlap management within the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), two cases of overlap management in the World Trade Organization, as well as a case in which the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) secretariat failed to influence political outcomes despite its efforts to manage overlap. Jinnah argues that, even when modest, secretariat influence matters because it can establish a path-dependent dynamic that continues to guide state behavior even after secretariat influence has waned.

Why do some attempts to conclude alliance treaties end in failure? From the inability of European powers to form an alliance that would stop Hitler in the 1930s, to the present inability of Ukraine to join NATO, states frequently attempt but fail to form alliance treaties. In Arguing about Alliances, Paul Poast sheds new light on the purpose of alliance treaties by recognizing that such treaties come from negotiations, and that negotiations can end in failure. In a book that bridges Stephen Walt's Origins of Alliance and Glenn Snyder's Alliance Politics, two classic works on alliances, Poast identifies two conditions that result in non-agreement: major incompatibilities in the internal war plans of the participants, and attractive alternatives to a negotiated agreement for various parties to the negotiations. As a result, Arguing about Alliances focuses on a group of states largely ignored by scholars: states that have attempted to form alliance treaties but failed. Poast suggests that to explain the outcomes of negotiations, specifically how they can end without agreement, we must pay particular attention to the wartime planning and coordinating functions of alliance treaties. Through his exploration of the outcomes of negotiations from European alliance negotiations between 1815 and 1945, Poast offers a typology of alliance treaty negotiations and establishes what conditions are most likely to stymie the attempt to formalize recognition of common national interests.

A richly textured account of the making, implementing, and changing of international legal regimes, which encompasses law, politics and economics.

The book is about the peace implementation process in Bosnia-Herzegovina viewed, or interpreted reasonably, as a continuation of war by other means. Twenty years after the beginning of the Dayton peace accords, we need to summarize the results: the author shares the general agreement in public opinion, according to which the process is a failure. Pehar presents a broad, yet sufficiently detailed, view of the entire peace agreement implementation that preserves 'the state of war,' and thus encourages the war-prone attitudes in the parties to the agreement. He examines the political and narratological underpinnings to the process of the imposed international (predominantly USA) interpretation of the Dayton constitution and peace treaty as a whole. The key issue is the – perhaps only semi-consciously applied – divide ut imperes strategy. After nearly twenty years, the peace in document was not translated into a peace on the ground because, with regard to the key political and constitutional issues and attitudes, Bosnia remains a deeply divided society. The book concludes that the international supervision served a counter-purpose: instead of correcting the aberration and guarding the meaning that was originally accepted in the Dayton peace treaty, the supervision approved the aberration and imposed it as a new norm under the clout of 'the power of ultimate interpretation.'

Investment treaties are some of the most controversial but least understood instruments of global economic governance. Public interest in international investment arbitration is growing and some developed and developing countries are beginning to revisit their investment treaty policies. The Political Economy of the Investment Treaty Regime synthesises and advances the growing literature on this subject by integrating legal, economic, and political perspectives. Based on an analysis of the substantive and procedural rights conferred by investment treaties, it asks four basic questions. What are the costs and benefits of investment treaties for investors, states, and other stakeholders? Why did developed and developing countries sign the treaties? Why should private arbitrators be allowed to review public regulations passed by states? And what is the relationship between the investment treaty regime and the broader regime complex that governs international investment? Through a concise, but comprehensive, analysis, this book fills in some of the many "blind spots" of academics from different disciplines, and is the first port of call for lawyers, investors, policy-makers, and stakeholders trying to make sense of these critical instruments governing investor-state relations.

Examines the changing role of popular politics in the early republicDuring the mid-1790s, citizens of the newly formed United Statesbecame embroiled in a divisive debate over a proposed commercialtreaty with Great Britain. Long regarded as a pivotal event in the historyof the early republic, the controversy pitted protreaty Federalistsagainst anti-treaty Jeffersonian Republicans. Yet as Todd Estes arguesin this perceptive study, the year-long debate over the ratification of theJay Treaty represented more than a clash over foreign policy betweentwo nascent political parties.

This book explores how the law of treaty withdrawal operates. Many commentators have observed a wider sense of crisis in international law as governments of different ideological stripes withdraw or threaten to withdraw from international organisations and treaties. There are different political forces behind all of these cases, but they all use the same basic device in international law – a treaty withdrawal clause. This book focuses on withdrawal clauses within multilateral treaties, providing a detailed overview of their operation, drawing on a range of case studies including Brexit, nuclear weapons treaties and investment arbitration agreements. The obligations a withdrawal clause places on a withdrawing state help regulate the withdrawal process, providing a notional form of stability. Using insights from international relations theory and legal theory, this book unpacks how and why the law of withdrawal operates and what its limitations are.