Compliance and Post-Agreement Bargaining

Most literature on international cooperation focuses on the phase leading up to the signing of a treaty, while neglecting the dynamics of bargaining in the aftermath of an international agreement. Reviewing existing literature, we find that bargaining theory deals almost exclusively with the pre-agreement phase and that the enforcement and management schools in the study of compliance are predominantly static in their orientation. We present a framework for analyzing the dynamics of compliance bargaining - which can be understood as a process of bargaining between the signatories to an agreement already concluded, or between the signatories and the international institution governing the agreement, which pertains to the terms and obligations of this agreement - and explore compliance bargaining in the EU in light of this framework. Specifically, the EU case illustrates third-party, as opposed to self-help, enforcement and points to sources of bargaining power in compliance bargaining.