Yielding Sovereignty to AIIs
47
Notes
1
Krasner is right to emphasize that state sovereignty has always been violated (1999). What seems to us
distinctive about current developments is the spread of legally binding international institutions, as opposed to non-
institutionalized predations by the strong against the weak. In fact, strong states have been arguably the most willing
to delegate slices of their sovereignty to authoritative institutions in the modern era.
2
Moravcsik actually focuses on governments, not states, as the primary actors. Here we use the term “states”
for convenience when referring to both arguments.
3
Shocks are structural because they undo structural constraints and because they are beyond the control of even
the strongest states.
4
For space reasons, we focus here only on states “yielding” sovereignty. This excludes the related issues of
whether and how AIIs can usurp or accrete authority states did not intend to yield. This loss has been most
thoroughly modeled by historical institutionalists (see Pierson, 1996). There are also nascent literatures in both
liberal rationalism and constructivism that suggests reasons why AIIs may gain authority independent of the wishes
of member states (see Pollack, 1997; Barnett and Finnemore, 1999).
5
Authoritativeness also differs from “centralization” (Koremenos et al., 2001) and “legalization” (Abbott et al.,
2000). Centralization refers to the extent to which states allocate institutional tasks to a single focal entity.
Institutional tasks such as information collection may be centralized but they are not necessarily authoritative in the
way we use the term. For example, the UN’s Human Rights Commission provides a centralized location for the
collection of information, but it has no authority to make legally binding decisions for other states. Legalization is a
complex, multi-layered concept referring to the degree of precision, obligation, and delegation in international rules.
Authoritativeness comes closest to a combination of its two dimensions of obligation and delegation, without
including precision.
6
We are not aware of any environmental AII that would qualify for the High category of sovereignty loss.
Convention