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Introduction
The question of why states comply or fail to comply with international legal rules strikes at the heart of debates in both international law (IL) and international relations (IR) over whether and how international institutions matter. The literature is divided between what might be called norm-based and instrumentalist models (Keohane, 1997; Hathaway, 2005). For IL scholars who focus on the normative characteristics of law, states feel an internalized obligation to comply with international rules, which exert an independent 'compliance pull' (Franck, 1990; Chayes and Chayes, 1995; Koh, 1997). This view resonates with constructivist work in IR on the social bases of compliance with rules and norms (Finnemore, 2000; Lutz and Sikkink, 2000; Checkel, 2001). The norm-based perspective is generally optimistic: compliance is the default behavior.
Instrumentalists, on the other hand, view the compliance decision as based on rational calculations of self-interest. States create law to reflect their interests and subsequently comply only when significant deviations in behavior are not required (Downs et al., 1996). The Realist variant of this rationalist logic denies that international law and institutions have any independent effect on the actions of states; compliance occurs either when it is costless or when powerful states promote it (Morgenthau, 1985; Mearsheimer, 1994/95; Goldsmith and Posner, 2005). Instrumentalists are thus more pessimistic when it comes to the expected frequency and range of conditions for compliance.
In his book How International Law Works, Andrew Guzman (2008) attempts to bring instrumentalism and optimism together. He shows that even with restrictive rational-choice assumptions - states are selfish maximizers with no particular affection for international law and its legitimacy - we can nevertheless tell a theoretical story for why states often comply. Guzman's theory rests on three mechanisms that provide an incentive to comply: reciprocity (the fear of tit-for-tat non-cooperation by others), retaliation (the fear of punishment by others), and reputation (the need to be viewed as trustworthy in order to find cooperative partners in the future). The impact of reputation receives top billing. Even when reciprocity and retaliation are insufficient on their own to induce compliance, the reputational benefits from compliance, or the costs of a damaged reputation from noncompliance, can sometimes override the short-term payoff to be gained...