Courts and Compliance in International Regulatory Regimes

International regulatory regimes are increasingly important parts of interstate politics. As these regimes multiply, the question of what exactly governments are agreeing to is becoming increasingly important. Some scholars see the high levels of observed compliance with these regimes as a sign that they are transforming interstate relationships. Others argue that compliance rates are uninformative since governments will only choose a depth of agreement that is self-enforcing. This study demonstrates that even seemingly deep agreements with well developed, and seemingly effective, adjudicating mechanisms can suffer from severe enforcement problems. The relevance of this model for a real world deep agreement, the European Union, is demonstrated, and predictions that can determine if a regulatory regime suffers from enforcement problems are derived.