From the inside out: The domestic sources of international cooperation

The world system is currently experiencing an expansion in the breadth and scope of economic agreements, as well as the simultaneous ebb in depth and influence of military alliances. Recent theories on international cooperation inadequately address these changing trends in international cooperation. International cooperation is generally attributed to systemic level explanations that focus on structural polarity, relative gains or the role of international institutions and regimes. These theories, although useful, fail to explain variation among state responses to similar external stimuli. Nor do they illustrate why states opt for cooperation in specific policy realms that may not be deemed economically or diplomatically beneficial. Or, conversely, why states that are obvious candidates for certain agreements fail to cooperate at the international level. This project points to the role of domestic institutions on international cooperation, examining the impact of variation within states' domestic political environment as a key source for alternate responses to new developments in the international system. The research design entails three chapters of quantitative analyses that focus first on which states tend to cooperate across policy realms, as manifest through preferential trade agreements, currency unions and alliances. Next, I expand the empirical model to focus on dyadic-level analyses, and explore which states tend to cooperate together in the current era as well as over the past century. I apply these results to three of the most influential trends in cooperation in the world system---East Asian regionalism, Latin American dollarization, and transatlantic diplomatic tensions. In short, across all policy realms, domestic institutional constraints consistently impact a state's propensity to cooperate in the international arena. These results have important implications for current trends in the international system, providing an additional nuance to the often-asked question, "why do states cooperate?" and illustrate the interplay of cooperative agreements.