Unpacking the State’s Reputation

By Rachel Brewster

I. Introduction
 It is hard to explain why states comply with international law
o The defining characteristic of international law is the lack of a centralized enforcement mechanism 
International law is enforced when enforced by the states themselves
 One of the few areas of agreement among scholars is that fairly robust levels of compliance can be achieved by tapping into
states’ concerns with their reputation
o Rationalist scholars formalize reputational concerns as a repeated prisoner’s dilemma game while non-rationalists
rely on more intuitive notions of reputation
 The story is premised on the benefits of international cooperation
o Even purely self-interested states will comply with international law because the benefits of cooperation outweigh
the short-term costs of compliance
 For this to work, states must actually lose the benefits of cooperation if they fail to comply with
international law  This is where reputation enters the story
 A state that cheats develops a “bad reputation” which may lead others to exclude said state from future
opportunities to cooperate  the costs of such boycott may lead government leaders to comply with
international law
 In cost-benefit terms, states will comply with international law when the boycott costs outweigh the
immediate compliance costs
 International relations, on the other hand, are far more complicated
o The level of compliance that reputation can sustain depends on how the government decision makers value the
possibility of being excluded from future cooperative agreements
 Problem: state’s reputations are not unitary
o We are used to discussing the reputation of states in very broad and unified terms – good states, bad states, or ideas
of “soft power” based on the state’s reputation  but the reputation of the state, for predicting future compliance, is
complex and difficult to determine
o Two critical questions that have not been answered by the compliance literature are
(1) whose reputation; and (2) a reputation for what?
o (1) whose reputation  this goes to the identity and the stability of the government
 For example: many scholars and popular commentators have argued that the Bush admin violated
international rules on the treatment of detainees
 Without engaging the merits of the allegation, what will the cost be to the reputation of the US? How does
this feed back into the admin’s decision-making process? There are two points that need to be clearly
distinguished:
1. The Bush admin might not fully internalize the reputational costs because the admin is in office for a
limited period of time. (will the political party suffer, will this affect the preference of voters in the future
generations, etc.)
2. Even if the Bush admin fully internalized the reputational costs to the state, the costs may not have been
particularly high (if the perception is that the Obama admin can rehabilitate the US’ reputation, then no
problem, the audience expects that the next admin will act differently)  the costs of violating
international law might have been small
 The point of reputation is to predict future behavior, not punish states for past action
o (2) a reputation for what  this question addresses the informational content of specific violations of international
law for predicting future violations
 Say that the US admin violates an arms control agreement; the reputational costs will depend on the
interferences the international audience draws from that violation about whether the US will comply with
other international obligations  this is difficult to predict
 It may not even provide much information about future compliance with other arms control agreements
because the domestic political considerations in a future period may be different  much depends on how
the state’s reputation is bundled, both typically and temporally
 Plus, legal compliance with an agreement may not be particularly predictive of how cooperative the state
will be in future interactions  States can be poor treaty partners while maintaining strict legal compliance
with an agreement by attaching reservations or even withdrawing their commitments

II. Reputation and Compliance

 Compliance with international law is a puzzle, one that political scientists and international lawyers spend a lot of time
considering
 o There are many approaches to explaining compliance  routine, persuasion, socialization and acculturation
o This article addresses how reputation is used in rationalist accounts – where states make compliance decisions
based on cost-benefit calculations
 Under the rationalist account: a state complies with international law not because of the rule’s status as law, but because
complying is in the state’s interests
o Three interest-based reasons why a state complies with international agreements: (1) the agreements are in the
state’s immediate interests (there are no benefits to defecting); (2) the other parties to the agreement will retaliate
against non-compliance; or (3) the state wished to preserve its reputation for abiding by agreements
o In the rationalist account, reputation is defined as a belief about the state’s future actions based on its past actions
 A state’s reputation for compliance with international law then is formed based on the state’s compliance
with international law in the past
 Reputation is information  it is useful if the state’s past actions are a good predictor of the state’s future
actions
 States want to appear to be good treaty partners and this leads government leaders to comply with
international rules where they would not have otherwise
 Here, reputation is purely instrumental  it is a means of securing gains to the state by entering into more
cooperative agreements

A. Uses of Reputation in International Law

 There is a consensus among scholars that reputation is a motive for compliance with international law  references to
reputation as a cause of compliance are found widely in the international law literature
 The importance of reputation is particularly strong with rationalist scholars who view states as acting based on an explicit
cost-benefit basis
o Andrew Guzman argues that reputation can explain why countries do and do not comply with international
commitments
 Guzman posits that states comply with international agreements because they are concerned with (1) direct
sanctions and (2) reputation
 Reputation is particularly important in the international system because of the relative lack of direct
sanctions
 Reputational concerns can make cooperative activity sustainable even without a centralized sanctioning
system
 Reputation is a causal mechanism because it influences the future range of cooperative activities available
to the state
 Without a good reputation, other states will not want to enter into cooperative agreements that provide joint
gains because of the possibility of opportunistic defection
o Oona Hathaway also uses reputation to explain compliance
 Hathaway argues that states comply with international agreements because of (1) domestic enforcement of
treaty agreements, (2) international enforcement of treaty agreements, and (3) collateral consequences,
which include reputation as well as other benefits (such as foreign aid) that can be conditioned on treaty
compliance
 Hathaway notes that collateral consequences can lead a state to comply with international law that is
adverse to the state’s immediate interests to demonstrate that the state can be trusted in international
negotiations
o Jack Goldsmith and Eric Posner include reputation as a causal mechanism in explaining compliance with
international law, although they are wary of relying on reputation too much because of its definitional problems
 Both argue that compliance with international agreements is driven by domestic factors, such as the state’s
institutions, traditions, and interests in foreign policy
 Both not that “states refrain from violating treaties (when they do) for the same basic reason they refrain
from violating non-legal agreements: because they fear retaliation from the other state or some kind of
reputational loss, or because they fear a failure of coordination.”
 The use of reputation as a source of compliance has been applied to customary law as well as to treaty regimes  this is
done in two ways
o George Normal and Joel Trachtman link reputation for compliance with customary law with the ability of the state
to form treaties
o Alternatively, David Golove looks to the fact that customary law involves all states, a much broader audience than
most treaty regimes
 Golove also maintains that reputation can increase compliance because even states not hurt by the
defection may alter their behavior toward the violating state
 The only major critique of this use of reputation in international law has been made by George Downs and Michael Jones in
their discussion of multiple reputations
o Both maintain that states do not have just one reputation, but many reputations over a host of issue areas.
o Reputations across issue areas are connected only to the extent that the costs of compliance with international
obligations are similar
o Down and Jones conclude that reputation is still an important source of compliance with international law, but the
effects are limited to issue areas

B. Differences Between the “Global Standing” and the “Reputation for Compliance”
 It is important to differentiate between what we popularly think of as the global standing of the state (or global public
opinion) and the state’s reputation for compliance with international law
 Compliance with international law is only one of the many dimensions along which states and governments are judged
o For example, the United States’ refusal to join the Kyoto Protocol on Global Climate Change is widely believed to
have hurt the reputation of the US
 Even when a state’s acts are necessary for compliance with international law, these actions may negatively
impact its popular image
o For example, the US announcement that it would not ratify the 1998 Rome Statute creating the ICC was legally
required but arguably hurt the US’ image
 In the last days of his admin, President Clinton signed the treaty (signature is the first step in a state’s
acceptance of a treaty obligation  this commits the state to consider ratification of the treaty and to avoid
actions that would undermine the purpose of the treaty
 When George W. Bush became president, he announced that he planned to “unsign” the treaty 
under international law, the concept of unsigning a treaty does not exist, but states can announce
that they have no plans to ratify a treaty that they have signed  the decision of the Bush admin
to announce this was the legally correct action
 Violations of international law might improve the popular perception of the state with a global audience
o For instance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) bombing of Serbia to stop the ethnic cleansing in the
former Yugoslavia was a violation of international law on the use of force  yet, the bombing of Serbia improved
the reputation of NATO members as it demonstrated that NATO was willing to take action to stop genocide
 An independent report on the legal issues implicated by the NATO actions coined the term “illegal but
legitimate” to describe the bombing of Serbia  this term makes explicit the gap between the content of
international law and what is widely believed to be good policy
o Another similar argument is the invasion of Iraq
 Anne-Marie Slaughter stated that the US invasion of Iraq could be an illegal but legitimate means of
reforming the Iraqi government
 This subsequently probably hurt the US’ reputation with global audiences, but Slaughter’s
commentary is revealing  according to her, the American reputation is damaged because the
invasion was not viewed as a policy success: American forces did not find weapons of mass
destruction and the new Iraqi government has not proven effective in establishing order
 It is then therefore seen that it is not the violation of international law that is the factor that
damaged the US’ reputation  Slaughter suggests that this violation would be acceptable if the
invasion were successful on a policy level
 The concept of reputation as a global standing is not enough to say that a government cares about the reputation of its state
and this will lead to greater compliance with international law
o A state can be concerned with its popular image, but this does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that the state
will then comply with international law more than it would otherwise
 A government may provide foreign aid, extend emergency assistance, support human rights groups, or
promote green technologies, but this is reputation on a different axis than the concept of the state’s
reputation for compliance with international law
 This article defines reputation to mean the state’s reputation for compliance with international law
o This is different from global standing and a necessary distinction if we are interested in the causal link between
reputation as global standing and compliance is attenuated
 For instance, the US can potentially repair any reputational loss associated with violation of the Geneva
Conventions by providing higher levels of foreign aid or joining the International Criminal Court

C. The Rationalist Model of Reputation

 The logic of how reputation matters to state decision making, under the rationalist approach proceeds along the following
lines
o States have reputations that extend into the indefinite future and potentially apply across issue areas
  States care about their reputations because they are engaged in cooperative activities with other states and
continued interaction depends, at least in part, on having a good reputation for cooperation
 Reputational concerns make state compliance with international law more likely because a bad reputation
leads to less cooperative opportunities in the future
 The idea that states will comply with international law because of their interest in future cooperative opportunities comes out
of international relations theory and its focus on prisoner’s dilemma situations
o In a prisoner’s dilemma game, the player has the option of cooperating or defecting an agreement
 The game is a dilemma because the dominant strategy, in a one-play game, is to defect, but mutual
defection leaves money on the table – both players would be better off if they could cooperate
 Once one player decides to cooperate, however, that player is vulnerable to defection by the other player.
This can be overcome if the game is indefinitely repeated, if each player has a sufficiently high value for
future gains, and if each player believes that the other player will cooperate as well
 Reputation in a prisoner’s dilemma becomes important because it is an indicator of what the player is
likely to do in future rounds of the game
o Reputation is not a silver bullet for compliance
o Although we do not always know the value of reputational gains or losses, reputational concerns are often
advertised as potentially being very high
 This is because reputational concerns are not necessarily limited to the players in the immediate game
 Instead, any member of the international audience that can observe the action can alter its understanding of
the state’s reputation and act on the change  and reputational concerns can extend to any issue area
 Because defection from one agreement potentially affects many agreements and many partners, the value
of reputation is thought to be high  for instance, if a state is excluded from a multilateral treaty because
of its poor reputation and compliance, then it effectively is shut out of the higher gains from cooperation
and relegated to the non-cooperative payoff
 In international relations, reputation is argued to be particularly important because there is no global enforcement system
and states have a choice of whom to cooperate with
o As Robert Keohane argued to international relations scholars, the possible exclusion from international regimes
provides states with an incentive to abide by existing international agreements that can overwhelm the immediate
benefits of defection
 Under Keohane’s view, those regimes do not have to be legal obligations
o For a reputation to be an effective enforcement mechanism, other governments must actually draw the
informational inferences that the state is a desirable or an undesirable treaty partner and this must then motivate
the acting government
 Observing a state’s violation of a treaty or customary law must make other governments believe that this is
good information about that state’s likely actions in the future

D. The Limits of the Reputation Model

 Reputational losses are also not equally effective for all states and in all strategic situations,
o First, reputational sanctions are not necessarily effective against states with significant power in certain issue areas
 This is particularly relevant when we are discussing customary international law because states often make
new law by violating the previous rule
o Second, reputational sanctions are unlikely to be effective in international agreements designed to provide public
goods, such as those addressing climate change or nuclear non-proliferation
 The ultimate threat for reputational losses is exclusion from future cooperative agreements, but this is not a
realistic option when collective action is necessary to address the problem

1. Reputation Where There Are Power Disparities

 Reputation is unlikely to be an effective mechanism for encouraging compliance when a state has significant power in an
issue area
o Reputation works through exclusion: the state with a poor reputation is either excluded from deals or it is charged
a high price of admission
 In the prisoner’s dilemma game, each state is modeled as being equally powerful, but in the international
system, there are significant power disparities
 For states with the capacity to be a bully – that is, states that cannot effectively be excluded
because of their importance to the cooperative activity – reputational sanctions my simply not
work particularly well
 For instance, the US and the EU are necessary partners for any global trade deal  even if the US
and the EU have less than stellar records for compliance with the WTO, the possibility of
excluding them is simply unrealistic
  The rationalist international law literature assumes that states want a cooperative reputation because this maximized the
states’ gains  but does a good reputation always lead to the greatest future gains?
o Unlike in the prisoner’s dilemma, in many situations, a reputation for being a bully can be beneficial because it may
allow a government to demand a larger share of the joint gains
 Wealth-maximizing states may not always want a good reputation either for compliance with international
law or for cooperativeness
 Some states might want a tough reputation when bargaining for an agreement but then a cooperative
reputation when the agreement is sealed  but, having a tough reputation even after an agreement is struck
can produce gains for the state
 For example, treaties are always susceptible to renegotiation  if one party can credibly threaten
to exit from a treaty regime unless the changes it desires are made, even if this involves short-term
losses to both parties, then that party is more likely to have its demands met
o Having a tough reputation can be particularly effective in improving a state’s gains in customary international law
 Unlike treaty law, customary international law is the result of state practice rather than negotiations
 In the short-term, the violating state might suffer a loss  but the state might achieve greater
gains if it has a reputation for sticking with its violation of customary law until other states adopt
its proposed change to the rule
 In short, states might be rewarded – not punished – for non-compliance with current agreements

2. Reputation in the Provision of Public Goods

 In areas where the global good is a true public good, reputational sanctions of exclusion or a higher price of admission will
be ineffective
o For example, the problem of global climate change is a true public good  all states share the environment, and
pollution from one state affects the global level of carbon dioxide
 So far, governments have negotiated two multilateral treaties addressing climate change. The first, the
Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the second, the Kyoto Protocol. The higher costs of
compliance with the latter as compared to the former led some states, most notably, the US, to decline to
sign onto the Kyoto Protocol. This lack of participation by the US is widely viewed as a serious problem in
addressing climate change
 In a public good scenario, state participation is of the utmost importance
o Reputational sanctions are not an effective means of enforcing the agreement among the member states
 Threatening to exclude or attaching harsher terms for entry to states that have signed onto the Kyoto
Protocol is not a realistic option for solving climate change issues
 But given current emissions levels, it is easy to imagine that some states will fail to meet their
emissions goals  YET we do not expect that complying members of the Kyoto Protocol are
likely to exclude defecting members from joining other environmental treaties or make it more
costly for defecting states to join
 Excluding non-complying states from future environmental agreements would be worse for the
environment than the violation of the Kyoto Protocol  such a strategy is self-defeating when
wide participation is necessary to address a public good problem
 For reputational sanctions to work in either of these situations, reputation would have to apply across issue areas
o A state’s violation of the Kyoto Protocol would have to lead the international audience to believe that a violation
here means that the state is more likely to violate an agreement in another issue area
o Once sanctions are costly, the sanctioning states (not just eh target state) suffer and are, thus, less likely to apply the
sanctions

III. Whose Reputation?

 Whose reputation is implicated by violations of international law - the government’s or the state’s?

A. Government’s Consideration of Reputational Costs

 International law scholarship has tended to view the state as a territorial entity, and thus the “country” has a reputation, much
like an individual, for being trustworthy or not. 
o This view is misleading because it does not recognize how governments often fail to internalize the costs to the
state’s reputation in the government’s decision-making process.
 Treating the state as a single, ongoing entity has two aspects. 
o First, the state is the same “person” over time; the state is thought to continue in its present form for the indefinite
future. Even though we know that the governments of states change practically all the time, the state is an entity that
will exist as a stable body.
  I.e. we have a concept of the United States as having a reputation that endures beyond any given
presidential or congressional election.
o Second, the state can control its reputation by its actions.
 I.e. governments develop a reputation for honoring contracts by choosing to adhere to agreements
o Both of these concepts are problematic when we consider the government’s motivation to comply with international
law.
 First, governments do not fully or consistently internalize the costs of an action to the state. 
 Second, governments do not always have the capacity to control the state’s reputation.
 Using a unitary view of the state is a good strategy for analysis if the underlying assumption holds: if the territorial state
model predicts how states will act even when we acknowledge that states are much more complicated. 
o But when dealing with reputation, treating the state as a unit existing into the indefinite future does affect the
predictions and prescriptions of reputation-based models.

1. The State’s Existence into the Indefinite Future

 While the state as the country will last into the indefinite future, the government making the decisions will almost always
have shorter and varying time horizons.
o Where an individual will internalize future costs to him or her from reputational (or other) sources, governments do
not necessarily internalize all future costs to the state.
o Government decision making is based on the value of the short time span,, not all the costs that the state will bear in
the future. This shortened time horizon lessens the impact of reputational costs.
o Governments will not have consistent concerns about the future as an individual would. So even if we acknowledge
that government leaders have shorter time horizons than the state, we still cannot treat reputational concerns as a
constant that will have the same influence on a government throughout its time in power.
o Along the same lines, we cannot assume that reputational concerns matter more for leaders that have managed to
stay in power for a long time.
 Dictators do not have an electoral constraint, but still face domestic opposition. A dictator with a strong
domestic support base may expect that he or she will remain in power indefinitely and thus care about the
state’s reputation. However, a dictator that faces a crisis of domestic opposition may (truly) face a quick
end date and have very short time horizons.
 Alternatively, we might think that governments treat the state’s reputation as special. 
o With regards to the state’s international reputation, government leaders have a longer term view. Here, we can think
of the state’s reputation as being in the trust of the executive, who will undertake costly actions to preserve it for
future governments. 
o But it is hard to explain why this legacy concern is so uniquely strong with reputation.
 Reputation is not a constant that we can add or subtract from a state’s payoffs when conducting a cost-benefit analysis. 
o The state may very well have a reputation but this does not mean that the government fully internalizes the costs (or
benefits) of an action to the state’s reputation or that the government will have a consistent value on the state’s
reputation throughout its term in power. 
 Reputational analysis is highly contingent on domestic politics. 
 Consequently, treating the state as a rational individual systematically exaggerates the importance of reputation in state
decision making.

2. The Government’s Control over Reputation

 When discussing the state’s reputation, analysts are often ambiguous about what constitutes the state: the current
government, the state’s history, its institutions, the preferences of the population, or something else. 
o How we define the state is extremely important if reputation is a cause, rather than simply an indicator, of
compliance. 
 In many circumstances, the reputation of the state is unconnected with the actions of government leaders.
 The proper definition of “state” has implications in how reputation is factored in the compliance with international law
o The choice of a definition is critically important to theories of compliance: if a state has a good reputation because it
has a history of obedience to international law, then reputation is an indicator of compliance but not a cause.
 Goldsmith and Posner’s analysis of reputation in state decision making:
o They describe reputation as characteristics of the entire state (its history and institutions)—attributes that the current
leaders of the state cannot change.
o Here, other states might rationally consider  these traits, but they should almost never be a motivation for
government leaders to comply with international law.
o Their conclusion: states can develop a reputation based on history and institutions. But it does not follow that the
state will base compliance decisions on
 o this reputation.

B. The Reputational Costs to the State

 From the audience’s (other states/countries) perspective, the reputation of the state may be highly dependent on the current
government or current political conditions. 
o The actions of a past government are only relevant to the extent that those actions are predictive of what the state
will do in the future. 
o If the expectations of the audience change when a new administration comes to power or when political conditions
change, then the reputational costs of violating international law to the state, as well as the current government, may
not be very high.
 I.e. (1) the policy choices of the Bush administration caused the loss to the United States’ reputation and
the audiences may assess that the policy options of the current government officials consider reasonable
thus the USreputation should be relatively easy to fix if a new executive, who holds different views of what
are reasonable policy options, is voted into office
 I.e (2) if the loss of reputation is caused by the policies supported by the American electorate,then the US’
reputation should be harder to fix (although repairable over time). Here, the newly elected president may
have a harder time to repair the US reputation by investing more political capital, which s/he may not do if
the benefits of improving the reputation for him/her will not be large.
 Where the reputation truly belongs to the state rather than the government, reputational concerns have less influence on the
decision maker because the state’s reputation is relatively immutable. 

C. The Reputation of the State and Sovereign Debt

 Michael Tomz examined the effect of reputation on the investors' willingness to lend to sovereign nations and on what
terms.
o Tomz argues that sovereigns earn reputations as stalwarts (always pays debt), fair weathers (pays debts in good
times), or lemons (never pays debt). He demonstrates that sovereigns receive either low rates of interest, high rates
of interest, or no credit at all based on this reputation, which Tomz uses as an independent variable in his
quantitative analysis.
o Tomz theory of how reputation attaches to the sovereign includes the possibility for political change within the
state.
o Tomz conclusion: investors are highly responsive to governments in determining the “state’s reputation.” being
“[t]he possibility of political change makes reputations fragile.” He did not treat the state as an on-going stable
entity with a long-lived reputation, investors are interested in the reputation of the government currently controlling
the state. 
 Thus one government can change the reputation of the state notwithstanding the state’s history. A focus on
governments is not irrelevant, but rather necessary, to explain patterns of sovereign debt lending.

IV. A REPUTATION FOR WHAT?

A. The Scope of Reputation: The Implications of a Violation

 Reputation is useful to an audience because it helps predict future action. The audience draws inferences on the state’s
trustworthiness based on whether it complies with international rules. 
o The question is how useful information about non-compliance in one situation is to predicting non-compliance in
other situations. 
 Reputation might be limited to one issue area or might apply across issue areas.It can also be partner specific or apply to all
states.
 On multiple reputations: George Downs and Michael Jones argue that states maintain several separate reputations because
information in one area is not necessarily useful in predicting state action in others.
o Changes within the state, such as a change in the coalition supporting the government in power, can lead to different
policy preferences. 
o Treaties are policy outcomes as well as legal agreements. Non-compliance might not signal a general lack of respect
for legal rules but a shift in the policy goals of the state. 
o In these cases, the likelihood of compliance might increase for some agreements and decrease for others. Greater
compliance with one regime might actually be an indicator of more defections in other policy areas.
 I.e. a government that violates a human rights treaty only suffers a reputational loss in the human rights
issue area. This is not much of a deterrent because the government would continue to be invited to join
trade agreements, security treaties, and other cooperative ventures—just not human rights treaties.
o If non-compliance in one area or with one partner is not predictive of other situations, then the costs to the state of
possible future gains is lessened or eliminated. 
  Without broad effects, reputation cannot sustain compliance with international law generally because it
does not necessarily create collateral for other agreements or partners
 Reputation must be bundled across issue areas if we think that reputation is an important cause of
compliance with a wide range of agreements.
 Oona Hathaway argues that the transferable quality of reputation is also relevant to theories of why states join treaties
(rather than why they comply with treaties).
o States join international treaties for the reputational benefit of being a member of the treaty regime (as distinct from
a reputation for compliance with international law).

B. A Reputation for Legality and a Reputation for Cooperativeness

 States are said to want a good reputation for cooperativeness, but defining this concept is more difficult than it immediately
appears. In international relations, states do not face a dichotomous choice between cooperation and defection.
 International Law scholars are less clear about whether a reputation for “cooperativeness” as a reputation for reliability in
commitment to the goals of the regime or as a reputation for strict compliance with legal commitments.
o Yet a reputation for reliability and a reputation for legal exactness do not go hand in glove: a state can completely
fulfill its legal obligations and yet develop a reputation for being unreliable
 I.e. treaty reservations displays how differently scholars view reputation and whether formal compliance aids or subtracts
from a cooperative reputation. (Treaty reservations allow a state to exempt itself from some of the terms of a treaty.)
o Edward Swaine implicitly views reputation as related to formal compliance with the treaty, and views reservations
as improving the state’s reputation
o Larry Helfer conceives of reputation as concerning the state’s general willingness to cooperate with other states,
and views reservations as detracting from the state’s reputation:
 Reservations clarify what a state is signing up for, by explicitly stating the part of the treaty regime to which the state will not
be bound. 
o Thus reservations may improve a state’s “good” reputation for legal compliance but also give the state a “bad”
reputation for being unwilling to accept cooperative agreements fully.
 Concern for a good reputation for reliability can even lead states to violate international law.
o Sometimes reputational concerns may push a government toward remaining in a treaty regime, even if in violation
of some provisions, rather than withdrawing from the regime to prevent a breach of the state’s legal obligations. 
o Here, a state would be more likely to violate international law to maintain a good reputation for being committed to
the treaty regime.

V. CONCLUSION: WHERE TO GO FROM HERE?

 In international law scholarship, reputational analysis has taken on a central role in explaining compliance with international
law. 
o The logic is intuitively appealing: a state needs a good reputation to enjoy the benefits of international cooperation
because the international system lacks a centralized  mechanism of enforcing agreements and violations of
international law are difficult to deter in the current decentralized system.
 The state’s reputation for compliance with international law determines whether the state is considered a useful treaty
partner. 
o Without a good reputation, the international community will cut the state out of international agreements. The state
will be isolated when it needs the cooperation of other states to achieve its goals. 
 The logic is intuitive but how “the state’s reputation” influences government decision making is not straightforward.
o Here, we analyzed how the state’s reputation works as a causal mechanism in explaining compliance with
international law.
 Reputation is a source of compliance with international law but there are
 important limits. 
o Knowing how the audience views the state’s reputation and how the government internalizes the state’s reputation is
critical to assessing the effect of reputational concerns on compliance.
 When we analyze how reputation affects the government’s decision-making process, we need to know what our model of
reputation is. (there are 3)
o (1) governments will not fully internalize the state’s reputation.
 Under this formulation of the reputation model, there is a gap between the assignment of reputation and the
decision-making process: the reputation belongs to the state, but the government makes decisions for the
state. 
 Governments have shorter and more varying time horizons than states, and thus the government will take
actions that are not optimal from the perspective of the state.
 o (2) if the audience observes the state’s domestic politics, then the audience may not view the actions of past
governments to be very good predictors for the actions of the new government.
 If the audience expects that successive governments will act differently from past governments, then the
reputational cost of a violation of international law to the state, not just the government, will be lower.
 The state will have some reputational loss but the informational value of this action will be low when a
new government comes to power. Thus the reputational cost to the state will be lower than if the audience
did not expect a new government to act differently.
 The more costly the state’s reputation is to improve, the less likely a new government is to invest in
rehabilitating the state’s reputation by complying with more international obligations.
o (3) we have to know how broadly the audience views a government’s
o decision to abide by or violate an international law obligation to assess
o reputational costs.
 Without a clear definition of reputation, we are not able to say ex ante whether reputation will influence the state’s decision
making and by how much.
o This approach to reputation is a setback to efforts to understand better the sources of compliance with international
law. Having a source of compliance like reputation that is intuitive but vague and underspecified distracts us from
other sources of potential compliance with international law.