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Norm scholars tend to treat norm contestation and acceptance as binary categories. This obscures variation in how much states agree over how to apply international law to specific situations. I distinguish between disagreements over norm frames (justifications) and claims (actions) and thus highlight four different outcomes of norm contestation. These differ in their effects on the clarity and strength of the contested norms, as well as on subsequent debate over them. Specifically, I argue that frame agreement limits the range of actions that actors can legitimately pursue and thus involves norm recognition. In contrast, if states only agree on the action that should be taken, but not on the norm that applies, we see norm neglect. Both outcomes structure subsequent debates, but norm neglect is the more volatile outcome: because of the lack of normative commitment, states can justify the agreed-upon action as exceptional compromise and later revert back to a norm impasse (frame and claim disagreement). However, the joint action may also trigger socialization processes that lead to agreement on both frames and claims—that is, produce norm clarification. Hence, this typology builds a bridge between understandings of contestation as a never-ending debate and as an avenue toward agreement; it helps improve our understanding of compliance mechanisms and of contestation.

It is usually assumed that the cost of abating pollution is the main deterrent of domestic support for international climate cooperation. In particular, some scholars have argued that, due to the burden of pollution abatement, businesses commonly constrain governments, which then take less cooperative positions on global climate agreements. I suggest that this argument needs further qualification: pollution-related costs rarely have unconditional effects on preferences for global climate agreements. Instead, a sector’s pollution level is more likely to influence preferences for climate cooperation if mediated by its trade exposure. If pollution is high, firms in high-trade sectors may be less able to absorb climate regulation, and hence they should be more sensitive to climate cooperation. If pollution is low, firms in high-trade sectors may support climate cooperation, because by being more efficient they are more capable of adjusting to regulation. These dynamics should then affect governmental positions on global climate politics. I test my sectoral argument with original data from business statements and national communications at the United Nations climate negotiations. In line with my argument, I find that businesses in trade-open sectors are more likely to oppose climate agreement as their sector’s emissions increase. I also find that in countries where high-emission sectors are open to trade, governments have low preferences for climate cooperation. The findings have implications for the domestic politics of environmental agreements and the distributive politics of global public good provision.

In 2004 private military and security companies lacked effective transnational governance. Ten years later, however, an agreed-upon framework drew these services within established international law. It inspired various complementary nonbinding instruments and instigated changes in government policy. Hegemonic-order theories, whether realist or liberal, would expect this change to reflect shifts in US preferences. But the United States displayed no initial interest in transnational coordination. I build an alternative explanation from pragmatism and network theory. A Swiss-led process created connections among stakeholders around the problem of regulating private military and security companies. Relatively open interactions among participants spurred original ideas, which in turn appeared useful for addressing the issue. Their usefulness, led more actors to \"buy into\" the process. This relational-pragmatic account offers new ways for understanding the nature and development of governance.

In the 1950s, the United States and Soviet Union abandoned secrecy and began sharing nuclear technology internationally. Soon thereafter, the two superpowers worked together to create the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to place safeguards on nuclear assistance and eventually added other nonproliferation measures. What explains these decisions? We argue that an international hierarchy framework offers a robust explanation for the superpowers’behavior. We identify three distinct mechanisms through which rival hierarchies can influence the internal workings of one another: competitive shaming, outbidding, and interhierarchy cooperation. We then probe the plausibility of our argument by investigating multiple observable implications in our case study of nuclear politics. We show that Soviet competitive shaming motivated the United States’ Atoms for Peace program, which sought to strengthen the loyalty of client states or attract new ones. In response, the Soviet Union attempted to outbid the United States with its own technology-sharing program. Ultimately, Moscow and Washington cooperated on the IAEA to limit the risks that nuclear sharing posed to their own dominant positions vis-à-vis subordinate states.

Are international migration flows racially biased? Despite widespread consensus that racism and xenophobia affect migration processes, no measure exists to provide systematic evidence on this score. In this research note, I construct such a measure—the migration deviation. Migration deviations are the difference between the observed migration between states, and the flow that we would predict based on a racially blind model that includes a wide variety of political and economic factors. Using this measure, I conduct a descriptive analysis and provide evidence that migrants from majority black states migrate far less than we would expect under a racially blind model. These results pave a new way for scholars to study international racial inequality.

At a time when many states are increasing restrictions on immigration, others are using formal agreements on international economic migration to open their borders. The use of international agreements on migration presents a puzzle, as most states can open their borders to migrants unilaterally. I argue that, when states cannot generate large enough flows of migrants or the right type of migrants to fill open positions in the labor market, they turn to the sending state to help them. States that need migrants can negotiate a bilateral labor agreement with a sending state, which then acts as a recruiter, helping to channel labor to the receiving state. This article details the conditions under which immigrant-receiving countries use these treaties and tests the implications of the argument on a new dataset on migration treaties.

This article argues that substantial natural resource wealth leads to more restrictive low-skill immigration policy in advanced democracies. High-value natural resource production often crowds out labor-intensive firms that produce tradable goods. When these proimmigration business interests disappear due to deindustrialization, also known as the Dutch Disease, the proimmigration coalition weakens in domestic politics. Without strong business pressure for increased immigration, policymakers close their doors to immigrants to accommodate anti-immigrant interests. Using a newly expanded dataset on immigration policy across twenty-four wealthy democracies, I find that oil-rich democracies are more likely to restrict low-skill immigration, especially when their economies are exposed to foreign competition in international trade. The results supplement the voter-based theories of immigration policy and contribute to an emerging literature on the political economy of natural resources and international migration.

To travel undetected by state authorities and criminal predators, Central Americans pass as Mexican during their journey to the United States. This 'passing' underscores the ambiguities of social roles, such as nationality. Over time, these performances partially reconstruct imagined communities, blurring the boundaries between foreigners and citizens. However, international-relations scholarship tends to overlook how uncoordinated everyday practice complicates borders in a globalized world. By tracing the co-constitutive relationship between migration policing, national performances, and transnational routes, this article reveals the makeshift nature of the identities that underscore distinctions between citizens and foreigners. I argue for the continued inclusion of ethnography as a method for exploring the dynamic relationship between territory, state, and nation. Migrants complicate borders, but also suffer the very real, material consequences of both state and nonstate violence. My analysis of clandestine transnationalism therefore chronicles challenges to, and reconfigurations of, sovereignty.

Recent scholarship presents conflicting views on the ability of grassroots movements to resist neoliberal globalization. This article moves beyond this broad debate. It explores the specific challenges and opportunities faced by networks of the marginalized, and their allies, as they attempt to transform neoliberal global governance. The Global Alliance of Waste Pickers, a transnational advocacy network of informal recyclers and their allies, sought to influence the practices of the Clean Development Mechanism between 2009 and 2015. I assess their efforts via a “historical dialectic” framework that bridges neo-Gramscian theory with liberal constructivist scholarship. It differentiates between more and less “embedded” networks, categorizes distinct forms of policy change, and helps us to understand the factors that contribute to more or less transformative policy gains. I identify four distinct forms of policy: transformative, concessional, problem-solving, and maintenance. I argue that the network gained mostly concessional, rather than transformative, changes. My analysis suggests that concessional gains are likely in contexts in which embedded advocacy networks effectively combine discursive and institutional forms of leverage but fail to mobilize political leverage in the form of a powerful “counterhegemonic bloc.”

Our article offers an in-depth account of the role of the transnational practices of collaboration, storytelling, and learning in the diffusion of rights-based climate litigation (RBCL). Drawing on semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and quantitative data, we trace how the performance of these practices by lawyers, litigants, communities, scholars, and NGOs have fostered and sustained the transnational generation, exchange, and flow of resources, relationships, narratives, and knowledge underlying the field of RBCL. We argue that all three practices have fostered the diffusion of RBCL by influencing the local determinants of legal mobilization through enabling, discursive, and relational pathways. Finally, we show that these practices have had structural effects that have shaped the ideas and identities of the practitioners in the field of RBCL. Over time, the discursive and relational dimensions of practices have given rise to and have been strengthened by the formation of multiple communities of practice. The emergence of distinct communities provides the possibility for deeper forms of socialization and acculturation among their members, but they also make conflict and competition between different communities more likely. Overall, our article emphasizes the importance of understanding legal mobilization for climate justice as a set of practices that are shaped by the transnational social-legal context in which they are performed.