Parliamentary institutions and partisan norms are complex, and new members of parliament are unlikely to possess an innate awareness of optimal behavior. This paper examines how new legislators adopt the behavioral patterns of incumbent members in the 6th European Parliament. The 6th EP provides...

Under what conditions do states maintain trade cooperation? We explore this question using models of imperfect monitoring. Most formal models of international cooperation rely on signaling games, in which actors' actions are perfectly observable. Here we examine conditions for cooperation when...

We study the diffusion of policy by examining how the policy opinions of Americans are influenced by the policy choices of foreign governments. Using survey experiments, we find limited evidence that foreign governments' policy choices influence American public opinion. Our results show that...

Theories of statutory interpretation abound. Scholars, judges and commentators have long puzzled over the best method to locate the meaning of a statute and to this end have proposed a range of approaches that rely on various forms of evidence, including statutory text, legislative intent,...

Parties value unity, yet, members of parliament face competing demands, giving them incentives to deviate from the party line. For members of the European Parliament (MEPs), these competing demands are national party and European party group pressures. Here, we look at how MEPs respond to those...

Do beliefs in the credibility of institutions designed to constrain the state from violating rights affect the behavior of all individuals equally? We argue that the effect depends on how insulated an individual is from rights violations. We test this argument against individual-level data on...