Empirical Analysis of the Impact of International Courts' Rulings on Public Opinion for Compliance

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16H06800
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Research Field: International relations
• Research Institution: Hitotsubashi University
• Principal Investigator: Matsumura Naoko 一橋大学, 大学院法学研究科, 専任講師 (20778500)
• Project Period (FY): 2016-08-26 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: サーベイ実験 / 世界貿易機関 / WTO / 国際機構 / 貿易紛争 / 司法的紛争処理 / 世論 / 遵守

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The research project was aimed to examine the effect of international court's ruling on the public　support for their government's compliance with international agreements. I hypothesize that an international court's judgment would encourage people's support for compliance. Although this hypothesis is widely shared by previous research, it has not been empirically tested due to methodological difficulty to observe disputes that could have been settled by non-judicial methods (e.g., diplomatic negotiations). Using survey-based experiments to overcome this issue, this research found that a court's ruling increases public support for compliance, while it also found the effect of ruling may weaken depending on the types of issue at dispute and the levels of compliance by a winning plaintiff.

Free Research Field

国際関係論