The Institutionalization of Bilateral Cooperation, 1945–2020
The project “The Institutionalization of Bilateral Cooperation, 1945–2020” makes a major contribution to International Relations (IR) scholarship by covering an as-of-yet largely overlooked class of international institutions, namely what we term joint bodies (JBs). JBs are intergovernmental institutions set up through international agreements between at least two states that pursue specified objectives through periodic interactions. Typical names are joint committees, joint commissions, or joint councils. The project assesses JBs across roughly 30,000 international agreements included in the treaty database of the United Nations. Theoretically, the proposed project formulates an original argument on agreement design and tests it across an unrivalled number of bilateral agreements. We also aim to make a significant contribution to the literature and on the effects of JBs. Methodologically, we use cutting-edge techniques to test our hypotheses and show how they provide fresh insight into decades-old research agendas in IR. More information is available from Dr. Markus Gastinger’s personal homepage.
