Compliance with international commitments and domestic political institutions

Scholars have recently argued that democracies can make more credible commitments than non-democracies in various foreign policy settings due to the stronger audience costs found within democracies. Although the empirical support for this claim is strong, cases in which democracies violate their commitments and in which non-democracies honor their commitments remain unexplained. Furthermore, the audience cost literature fails to capture the dynamic nature of domestic audiences and their changing preferences towards compliance with commitments. This dissertation addresses these shortcomings by examining which types of international commitments democracies and non-democracies are most likely to honor.; Utilizing Bueno de Mesquita, Smith, Siverson, and Morrow's (2003) selectorate theory, I argue that all leaders want to retain power, and thus they are expected to choose policies that reward their winning coalition. However, because winning coalition size varies across states, large-coalition leaders are more likely to honor agreements that distribute public goods to all of society, whereas small-coalition leaders are more likely to honor agreements that channel private goods to a particular group of society. Moreover, I argue that instances in which large-coalition leaders violate their commitments should reflect a change in the winning coalition between the time that the agreement was signed and the time that it must be honored.; After adapting the selectorate theory to fit an investigation into compliance, I conduct Logit analyses of the effect that the type of the commitment (public versus private goods commitments) and the size of the winning coalition within a state has upon compliance. I show that both large-coalition states and small-coalition states are more likely to honor territorial, maritime, and river settlements (which approximate private goods) than they are alliance commitments (which approximate public goods). I also include a case study which shows how a change in a state's winning coalition can produce inconsistent foreign policies regarding the signing of, and non-compliance with commitments. The argument and results presented in this dissertation integrate and supersede the isolated findings of the audience cost literature on democratic credibility, and they also provide a novel application of the selectorate theory to leaders' compliance decisions.