Hi all,
Thanks to those who responded to my early message for your comments and suggestions! Only two empirical studies were identified that bear directly on the question of the effectiveness of legal vs. non-legal agreements: one by Gunnar Sjostedt that will be appearing in volume 10 of International Environmental Agreements, entitled "Exploring the Consequences of Soft Law and Hard Law: Implementing Nutrient Commitments in Norwegian Agriculture;" the other by Martin Koppel, entitled "The Effectiveness of Soft Law: First Insights from Comparing Legally Binding Agreements with Flexible Action Programs," Georgetown International Environmental Law Review, vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 821-835 (2009). Given the prominence of the issue for the last 15-20 years, I found the lack of more empirical studies to be very surprising. It definitely suggests the need for more work on this question.... Other regimes that people suggested might be worth studying are those addressing (1) land-based sources of marine pollution (in which there are both hard and soft law instruments, including in the latter category the Montreal Guidelines for the Protection of the Marine Environment against Pollution from Land-base Sources) and (2) forests (where the issue of whether to develop a forest treaty has been very prominent). Thanks again for your responses! Best Dan From: Daniel Bodansky [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 21 June 2010 09:59 To: [email protected] Subject: Effectiveness of legal vs. non-legal agreements Hi all, I'm working on a paper about whether the political vs. legal status of the Copenhagen Accord matters. So I'm looking for empirical studies comparing the effectiveness of legal vs. non-legal agreements -- for example, studies that compare the effectiveness of the Cairo Guidelines on hazardous wastes with the Basel Convention, or the voluntary UNEP/FAO PIC procedures for chemicals and pesticides with the Rotterdam Convention. I know there's some theoretical writing on this topic (for example, in the legalization issue of IO), and some studies arguing for the effectiveness of soft law (in Shelton's book on Commitment and Compliance). But what I'm most interested in are comparative studies of legal and non-legal agreements. So if you're aware of any (either in the environmental arena or in international relations more generally), please let me know. Thanks in advance for your help. Best regards Dan Bodansky
