Investigates whether internal (domestic) factors may be responsible for influencing why a state resists or joins international treaty regimes. Incorporating two case studies on the US and China, this book traces the impact of domestic institutional structure, state capacity and internal social norms on state decisions to resist or participate.

Why do some states resist entering into international treaty regimes while others demonstrate eagerness to participate? Drawing on United Nations treaty ratification data from three different issue areas - arms control, environment and human rights - this volume focuses on the United States and China to study the participation patterns of democracies and non-democracies in international treaty regimes.

'...provides a sustained account of the relationship between domestic political orders and participation in international treaty regimes. A particularly appealing feature of the analysis is the combination of in-depth case studies of American and Chinese participation in human rights regimes and extensive descriptive statistics covering a much broader range of treaty regimes. Oran R Young, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA