Nonstate Actors and Compliance with International Agreements: An Empirical Analysis of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention
Abstract
© 2017 The IO Foundation. International relations scholarship has made great progress
on the study of compliance with international agreements. While persuasive, most of
this work has focused on states' de jure compliance decisions, largely excluding the
de facto behavior of nonstate actors whose actions the agreement hopes to constrain.
Of particular interest has been whether the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention (ABC) might
reduce the propensity of multinational corporations (MNCs) to bribe officials in host
countries through its mechanisms of extraterritoriality and extensive peer review.
Unfortunately, research is hampered by reporting bias. Since the convention raises
the probability of investors' punishment for bribery in their home countries, it reduces
both the incentives for bribery and willingness to admit to the activity. This generates
uncertainty over which of these incentives drives any correlation between signing
the convention and reductions in reported bribery. We address this problem by employing
a specialized survey experiment that shields respondents and reduces reporting bias.
We find that after the onset of Phase 3 in 2010, when the risk of noncompliance increased
for firms subject to the OECD-ABC, those MNCs reduced their actual bribery relative
to their nonsignatory competitors.
Type
Journal articleSubject
Social SciencesInternational Relations
Political Science
Government & Law
UNMATCHED COUNT TECHNIQUE
CORRUPTION
INVESTMENT
BEHAVIOR
INSTITUTIONS
COMPETITION
GOVERNANCE
LAW
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/17727Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1017/S0020818317000443Publication Info
Jensen, NM; & Malesky, EJ (2018). Nonstate Actors and Compliance with International Agreements: An Empirical Analysis
of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention. International Organization, 72(01). pp. 33-69. 10.1017/S0020818317000443. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/17727.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Edmund Malesky
Professor of Political Science
Malesky is a specialist on Southeast Asia, particularly Vietnam. Currently, Malesky's
research agenda is very much at the intersection of Comparative and International
Political Economy, falling into three major categories: 1) Authoritarian political
institutions and their consequences; 2) The political influence of foreign direct
investment and multinational corporations; and 3) Political institutions, private
business development, and formalization.

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