How can states credibly make and keep agreements when they are uncertain about the distributional implications of their cooperation? They can do so by incorporating the proper degree of flexibility into their agreements. I develop a formal model in which an agreement characterized by uncertainty...

This article introduces the Continent of International Law (COIL) research project on international agreement design. COIL stems from the conviction that the International Organization subfield's focus on the couple hundred international organizations with physical headquarters had to be...

Most efforts at international cooperation are heavily conditioned by the relative bargaining power of the states involved. But often states expect their bargaining power to change over time. Can cooperation survive such changes--especially when they are unpredictable? I argue that the detailed...

An examination of a random sample of international agreements that are conditional on four issue areas shows that only about one out of every two agreements has any dispute resolution provision. This observation begs for an explanation, and which half needs explaining depends on where one is...

During his relatively short tenure in office, Illinois Department on Aging (IDOA) Director Victor Wirth performed an apparent managerial miracle. Inheriting an agency ridden with internal conflicts and in bad repute with its contractors and constituencies, Wirth successfully refocused his...

We reply to John Duffield's critique of the Rational Design project, a special issue of <italic>International Organization</italic> that explains the features of international institutions from a game-theoretic perspective. The project was deliberately limited to the analysis of explicit and observable...

Why do international institutions vary so widely in terms of such key institutional features as membership, scope, and flexibility? We argue that international actors are goal-seeking agents who make specific institutional design choices to solve the particular cooperation problems they face in...

In this article we summarize the empirical results of the Rational Design project. In general the results strongly support the Rational Design conjectures, especially those on flexibility and centralization; some findings are inconclusive (in particular, those addressing scope) or point toward a...