Author: Pierre-Hugues Verdier

Linos Book Symposium: Comments by Pierre-Hugues Verdier

[Pierre-Hugues Verdier is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law] Katerina Linos’s new book, The Democratic Foundations of Policy Diffusion, is one of the most important contributions to arise from the recent turn to empirical scholarship in international law and international relations.  Instead of following a deductive path from broad theoretical assumptions, the book carefully combines survey evidence, cross-country regression analysis and case studies to paint a coherent picture of policy diffusion through democracy in the fields of health and family policy.  Yet, this careful and inductive approach leads to a central theoretical contribution to the field.  From a descriptive perspective, the book shows that non-binding standards with minimal institutional support can contribute to significant domestic policy shifts in high-stakes areas, despite resistance by domestic interest groups.  From a normative perspective, its model of diffusion through democracy may solve a perennial and vexing paradox of global governance, by providing international policy coordination that is both effective and consistent with democratic accountability. However, while the book’s focus on the often neglected areas of health and family policy is innovative and welcome, it inevitably raises the question whether the mechanism it identifies applies to other areas of international law and policy coordination. As the book points out, the field of social policy is characterized by non-binding international models rather than binding agreements, with a few exceptions such as ILO conventions.  Nevertheless, the book suggests in several places that diffusion through democracy may apply much more broadly to other policy choices, and can inform longstanding general questions of institutional design such as the choice of hard law or soft law instruments.  Likewise, the book’s conclusion implies that the normative benefits of this mechanism in alleviating the democratic deficit of global governance also apply to other areas of international policymaking.  In this short contribution, I want to suggest two reasons for caution is assessing the broader potential implications of this mechanism.