Ratification Delay: Signaling Intent to Comply with International Agreements.

Legislative delay has been overlooked as a signal of commitment to abide by the terms of an international agreement. Nations face varied international and domestic pressures to formalize international conventions. I argue that this struggle between competing pressures reveals the intentions of each nation to abide by the terms of the agreement. Previous studies of legislative delay neglect important variables, suffer from restrictive assumptions, and fail to frame legislative delay as part of a two stage game. This paper uses the case of the Basel Convention to support my hypotheses. I use Kaplan-Meier and Cox-proportional hazard models to estimate the proportional effects of international and domestic political pressures and resource constraints on legislative delay. After controlling for the type of ratification, legislative delay is a function of previous domestic regulations in the same policy space and the regulatory quality of the nation. These factors signal satisfaction with the convention and represent significant commitments to abiding by its terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]