Not All Nations at All Times: How States Imitate Each Other’s Behavior Towards Non-Compliance with International Law Norms: An ABM proposal

iCourts Working Paper 318; Proceedings of the AMPM-Workshop@JURIX2022

13 Pages Posted: 23 Feb 2023

See all articles by Katharina Luckner

Katharina Luckner

Institute of Law and Economics, Universität Hamburg; iCourts, University of Copenhagen

Veronika Fikfak

University College London - School of Public Policy; University of Copenhagen - iCourts - Centre of Excellence for International Courts

Date Written: February 16, 2023

Abstract

In international law studies on compliance in general and compliance with court judgments, there is an assumption of states being compliant by default, and compliance being understood in terms of isolated acts of individual states. Empirical research on compliance with European Court of Human Rights judgments has questioned the first theoretical assumption, and has produced insights into the compliance dynamics within the Council of Europe. One such insight shows an initial “conditional generosity” of the European Human Rights system towards non-compliers which did not impede (or even facilitated) a gradual development of better compliance rates among the states. However, even empirical research often leaves the second theoretical assumption untouched.

In the present contribution, we report on a model of the 47 (now 46) member states of the Council of Europe as a dynamic network of unitary actors and explore with a threshold model how the norm of compliance-with-ECtHR-judgements moves within the network, and how states associate and disassociate from one another in the course of establishing and spreading a norm. With the model, we aim to contribute to the discussion around these theoretical assumptions and empirical findings by showing that (a) rather than strictly favoring compliance under all conditions, the network of states tends towards non-compliance often, (b) the behavior of compliance is not and cannot be seen as a series of isolated actions by individual states, and that (c) compliance rates are locked in relatively quickly and subsequently do not change much over time.

Keywords: Compliance, International Law, European Court of Human Rights, Council of Europe

Suggested Citation

Luckner, Katharina and Fikfak, Veronika, Not All Nations at All Times: How States Imitate Each Other’s Behavior Towards Non-Compliance with International Law Norms: An ABM proposal (February 16, 2023). iCourts Working Paper 318; Proceedings of the AMPM-Workshop@JURIX2022, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4361321 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4361321

Katharina Luckner

Institute of Law and Economics, Universität Hamburg ( email )

Johnsallee 35
Hamburg, 20148
Germany

iCourts, University of Copenhagen ( email )

Studiestraede 6
Copenhagen, DK-1455
Denmark

Veronika Fikfak (Contact Author)

University College London - School of Public Policy ( email )

29/30 Tavistock Square
London, WC1H 9QU
United Kingdom

University of Copenhagen - iCourts - Centre of Excellence for International Courts ( email )

Studiestraede 6
Copenhagen, DK-1455
Denmark

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