Violators amongst Us: International Regimes and the Role of Compliance, a Case Study on Official Development Assistance

This article extensively reviews and evaluates international regime theory and the importance of noncompliance. It uses international foreign aid, specifically official development assistance (ODA), to test regime theory and compliance levels. Many scholars have argued that states tend to comply fully with regime tenets based upon rationality, common values, and other reasons. The ODA case study presents a strong argument against past claims, as it demonstrates that regimes can have large-scale violations from the beginning and over the long term. This study measures the limits and effectiveness of regime theory and develops a more comprehensive and current perspective. I propose a new definition of international regimes and offer a concise description of the purposes and characteristics of regimes. This is the first major study emphasizing noncompliance as a key theoretical and real-world issue. It hopes to encourage the continued search to improve understanding of international regimes and their operations.