Disaggregating International Regimes: A New Approach to Evaluation and Comparison

6. Behavioral Effectiveness

Behavioral Effectiveness 6 The behavioral problem in focus for international regimes is to ensure that international rules really influence the actions of the target groups— those that engage in the activities regulated by the regime. Examining target-group impact, as this chapter does, is fundamental to the analysis of regime effectiveness since neither cognitional nor regulatory effectiveness will matter to resource management if there is no effect on the activities that exert pressure on the resource in question. The disaggregate approach to international regime effectiveness developed in chapter 2 revolves around counterfactual path analysis and the Oslo-Potsdam yardstick, which measures effectiveness as the ratio of the actual improvement on a hypothetical no-regime situation to the potential improvement—or the distance from full problem solving. That is why the first section specifies the behavioral problem and identifies an appropriate standard for measuring degrees of problem solving and for defining what would constitute a full score: no practical deviation from the agreed-upon rules for behavior. Both parameters of my effectiveness yardstick refer to the most plausible level of problem solving that would pertain in the hypothetical no-regime situation. Substantiating that counterfactual estimate requires a good account of the variation in problem solving among actual cases. Drawing on earlier work as well as on the general mechanisms identified by regime-effectiveness scholars, I develop a causal model that reflects utilitarian and normative considerations on the part of target groups and member states. As in previous chapters, malignancy is among the explanatory factors; others are legal obligation, behavioral transparency, and shaming. The model structures the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), which reveals causal combinations that reliably deliver behavioral success (high quota adherence), as well as combinations that reliably produce failure. Conceptualizing cases at the state level rather 194 Chapter 6 than at the regime level generates more observations than in chapters 4 and 5, which in turn permits various statistical procedures to complement the comparative analysis and support the findings. The reliable paths to behavioral success or failure help simplify the counterfactual analysis and place it on a firm empirical footing. Rather than immediately tackling the difficult question of what levels of problem solving would be plausible had the regime not existed, the disaggregate approach begins with the easier question of what the properties of the causal factors would be—the counterfactual antecedent. Analysis of those hypothetical paths, notably whether they fit any of the reliable paths to success or failure, helps narrow down the range of plausible counterfactual problem-solving estimates, thereby supporting the assessment of behavioral effectiveness. The Problem: Keeping Catches within Quotas Ever since national quotas were introduced as a major instrument in international fisheries management, quota overfishing has been quite common in the Barents Sea and elsewhere. Data are available for a slightly longer period than in the preceding chapters, so this section traces regime impacts on problem solving up to 2006.1 I first explain why distance from national quotas can provide a good yardstick for measuring behavioral problem solving, then use variation in quota adherence to scale the yardstick, and finally show how Norway and the Soviet Union/Russia have performed on the scale. Both the quotas and the scientific advice are relevant for evaluating the harvesting pressure exerted by fishers, but in this chapter the latter plays only a modest role, for two reasons. First, scientific advice is essential in the yardstick for regulatory problem solving, so using it here would blur the distinction between two aspects of resource management. Second, unlike its cognitional and regulatory counterparts, the yardstick for behavioral problem solving should be applicable at the state rather than at the regime level since the two states have differed considerably over time in their quota adherence and in their scores on several of the explanatory factors. Thus, any effect of one state’s quota overfishing on the overall compatibility with the ICES option range will depend on catches by the other state(s). In the early 1980s, for instance, the Soviet Union frequently took less than its post-transfer quotas, which served to soften the sustainability impact of severe Norwegian overfishing; Behavioral Effectiveness 195 but such softening cannot validly affect the other party’s problem-solving score. Instead, I opt for a solution that mirrors the procedure for grading cognitional problem solving: it differentiates among cases according to the percentage distance of national catches from quotas and uses...