Domestic political structure and social norms: Explaining cooperation and conflict towards regime-based global governance (China)

This dissertation project is directed towards understanding how variations in the domestic institutional structure and social norms among mature democracies and non-democracies influence their decision to cooperate or resist the impact of global governance regimes. Different countries have responded varyingly to the influence of global regimes. Some states have resisted cooperating with these regimes, while others have eagerly sought to join them. Still others have attempted to limit or selectively engage with them. To examine the puzzle of variations in state behavior, I focus on the behavior of China and the United States towards human rights regimes. In my analysis, I trace the socioeconomic and political processes that influence cooperation and resistance towards the human rights regimes. In addition, I perform cross-national analysis drawing variables from the POLITY IIID and United Nations Treaty Index to examine the ratification record of democracies and non-democracies towards weapons of mass destruction, trade, environment, and human rights regimes. Overall, this dissertation is able to provide a better explanation as to why the national policies of democracies and non-democracies vary towards global governance regimes by focusing on domestic political structure and social norms. Moreover, findings also suggest that the interconnected systems of treaty-based-regimes play a significant role in both circumscribing and empowering domestic and foreign policies of the cooperating and non-cooperating states.