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Abiding by the Vote: Between-Groups Conflict in International Collective Action

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 October 2013

Christina J. Schneider  and
Branislav L. Slantchev
Christina J. Schneider
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego. E-mail: cschneider@ucsd.edu
Branislav L. Slantchev
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego. E-mail: slantchev@ucsd.edu
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Abstract

We analyze institutional solutions to international cooperation when actors have heterogeneous preferences over the desirability of the action and split into supporters and opponents, all of whom can spend resources toward their preferred outcome. We study how actors can communicate their preferences through voting when they are not bound either by their own vote or the outcome of the collective vote. We identify two organizational types with endogenous coercive enforcement and find that neither is unambiguously preferable. Like the solutions to the traditional Prisoners' Dilemma these forms require long shadows of the future to sustain. We then show that cooperation can be sustained through a noncoercive organization where actors delegate execution to an agent. Even though this institution is costlier, it does not require any expertise by the agent and is independent of the shadow of the future, and thus is implementable when the others are not.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Organization , Volume 67 , Issue 4 , October 2013 , pp. 759 - 796
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 2013 

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