Sovereignty, International Institutions and Centralization

This project seeks to explain variation in states' propensity to join international institutions. It aims to do so by investigating the possibility that countries view sovereignty costs differently when weighing whether or not to join international institutions. Institutions have grown in size and function over the past fifty years, and determining what influences states to join these institutions is a major part of understanding why they have grown and what it means for a state to join an institution. To be more specific, there are costs and benefits to joining international institutions, and states must weigh the two when deciding whether or not to do so (and whether or not to continue being a part of the institution). The costs of joining an institution are usually associated with some sort of sovereignty cost: a state must agree to give up some of its internal sovereignty (or autonomy) in order to join the institution, which will generally impose some rules on how that state needs to behave in order to remain a member. In a trade agreement, for example, a state may be required to forgo the ability to enact tariffs. Other institutions have more strict impositions; the European Union has a governing body that supersedes national laws and courts. What makes some states more likely to join international institutions than others?...