Breaking The Law Essay

In the United States, states and people follow the laws because the government has a way to enforce cooperation, by threatening punishment on those who break the law. The enforcement of laws is how most institutions promote cooperation. At the international level, however, there is no central authority that has the ability to make and enforce laws, in other words it is an anarchy. For example, countries like Russia or the UK do not have to do what the United Nations tells them to, since they cannot enforce anything. Because of the lack of enforcement, cooperation has to be self-enforcing, meaning the states have to punish the defectors and take responsibility when they don’t cooperate. Without a way to enforce the rules then every state would have an incentive to break the rules. This creates a prisoner’s dilemma where each actor is better off to defect. For example, after the Cold War the Soviet Union and the United States set up an agreement to limit the amount weapons each could have. However, in the international system the agreement isn’t enforceable so they would both collect weapons they are not allowed to have even though they would both be better off if each actor cooperates and doesn’t collect anymore weapons. On the other hand, if

This treaty had specific standards of behaviors that the nuclear-weapons states do not give their weapons to non-nuclear states and the latter promise to not try to develop nuclear material. They use an IGO, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to monitor compliance by having inspectors go to each state to check up on them and make sure their abiding by the rules. Then if any rules were broken the UN Security Council would enforce cooperation by imposing sanctions on a state that broke the