Decisions in international institutions such as the European Union (EU) are often made by consensus, even when it is not required. Tit-for-tat exchanges provide an explanation for this phenomenon, as such exchanges can help to build up support for agreements states might otherwise not have had an incentive to support. Tit-for-tat exchanges are typically analyzed as trades of support across agreements. However, we argue that the priority of negotiators to further their national and bureaucratic interests makes exchanges across micro-level issues within a single proposal for agreement more prevalent than exchanges across agreements. Using both qualitative and quantitative analyses, we show that such within-agreement, rather than cross-agreement, linkages are related to an increased likelihood of consensus across an array of different EU agreements. To understand consensus in international institutions, more broadly, it is therefore necessary to look at the substantive issues at stake within each agreement.

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Governing elites often ratify human rights treaties, even when their policies do not align with those treaties’ obligations. This article argues that this can be explained by the fact that executives anticipate the potential challenges these treaties could raise vis-à-vis their domestic policies and enter different types of reservations when they ratify to head them off. The types of reservations they use depend on key characteristics of the executive’s policies and practices, as well as its relationship with the legislative and judicial branches. Domestic actors can raise different types of challenges against the executive depending on variations in these key factors. The types of reservations executives use will therefore vary depending on the specific challenges ratification raises for them. Using an original dataset of the reservations states entered on human rights treaties registered with the United Nations, and employing an event history analysis, this study shows that the particular challenges treaties present for executives in different types of states help explain variation in how they use reservations when they ratify human rights treaties.

Although the Convention on the Rights of Migrant Workers (CRMW) is a 'core' human rights treaty, it is poorly ratified. Previous studies have elucidated the barriers to ratification; in this article we focus on the factors that generate incentives to ratify. We argue that states that ratify this treaty desire to strengthen their relationships with their own emigrants and their citizens at home who advocate for emigrant protections, not to protect the rights of immigrants residing in their own country. The political incentives to strengthen this relationship depend on the costs and benefits that inward migration and outward migration bring to the state. The benefits of emigration are captured by the size of remittance flows, the net immigration position of the country, and by the ratio of unskilled to skilled emigrants, whereas the costs are reflected in the size of the immigrant stock. When the benefits of migration are substantial and the costs of potentially providing rights are small, states will be more likely to ratify this agreement. These determinants are distinctive from the explanations proffered for other human rights treaties. Our statistical analysis is consistent with the theoretical arguments that we make. Only one 'core' United Nations human rights treaty explicitly focuses on non-nationals: the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families (CRMW). 1 The protections provided by the CRMW affirm the rights found in many other human rights agreements (the right to life, freedom from torture, etc.), but importantly this treaty also specifies rights that are particularly relevant for immigrants, such as access to the judicial system (Article 26), due process in deportation proceedings (Article 22), the right of appeal (Article 22), the prohibition of mass deportations (Article 22), and the right to take part in trade unions (Article 26). The agreement also requires equal treatment of nationals and immigrants regarding employment (Article 49) and social benefits (Article 43). Furthermore, it guarantees documented immigrants' choice of employer and occupation, and free movement within the immigrant-receiving state. While states may protect some of these rights through domestic legislation, immigrant rights are commonly limited in comparison to the rights of nationals, especially the right to work (Morris 2003). Importantly, most rights are provided by the CRMW without regard to legal status in the country; ratifying states are thus required to protect the rights of individuals who are present without authorisation whom the state might actively be seeking to remove. 2 Although the CRMW's ratification rate is low compared to most other human rights treaties, it entered into force in 2003, and as of the end of 2018 fifty-four states have ratified it. Given both the salience of migration and migrant rights and renewed efforts within the United Nations to protect migrant rights, despite more than a century of failure, this treaty deserves

Treaties are a valuable tool for policymakers because they are both legally binding on, and symbolically powerful signals of, commitments of states that ratify. Why states choose to ratify treaties is unclear, although social pressures appear to play some role. This article argues that global performance indicators can influence the ratification process, but that the effect varies depending on where states fall on these measures. In the mid‐range of a scale, fast ratification has significant benefits and relatively few costs. However, indicators have less of a catalysing effect at the extreme ends of the scale, where the costs are higher and the benefits are lower. This article uses policy performance indicators as independent variables in duration analyses of the ratification of the United Nations Convention against Corruption (2003) and the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children (2000). It finds states in the mid‐range of the indicator are faster to ratify than states that are not ranked, whereas the other categories are statistically insignificant. These findings imply that indicators matter for those in the middle, but not as much for those at the extremes. This finding enriches our understanding of treaty ratification and has potential implications for performance metrics as a tool to promote policy change for those states in the middle, highlighting the strengths and limitations of indicators as a force for change.