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Cooperation Failure or Secret Collusion? Absolute Monarchs and Informal Cooperation

Melissa Carlson

University of California, Berkeley

Barbara Koremenos University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Abstract: Despite sharing attributes that scholars argue promote international cooperation, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have few formal international agreements with each other. Does this absence of formal agreements imply a cooperation failure? We argue that absolute monarchies frequently cooperate with each other but do so informally. At the domestic level, absolute monarchs pursue their personal interests by unilaterally and nontransparently developing and implementing policies. These norms of domestic policymaking engender an absolutist logic, which shapes how absolute monarchs selectively use informal and formal cooperation at the international level. When cooperating with each other, absolute monarchs maximize mutual private benefits through similarly unilateral and nontransparent policymaking, producing secret, cartel-like informal agreements. Using the 10 Million International Dyadic Events data, we develop a data set of informal and formal cooperation from 1990 to 2004. We find that joint absolute monarchy dyads have higher levels of informal cooperation and lower levels of formal cooperation than joint democratic dyads and dyads of mixed regime types. We also draw on the Continent of International Law dataset to demonstrate that, when absolute monarchs enter into agreements with leaders of other regime types, they strategically accept the formal design mechanisms necessary for optimal cooperation. We assess the causal mechanisms underlying the absolutist logic through an in-depth case study of the informal, secret 2014 Riyadh agreements that outlined security cooperation between the Gulf monarchies. Acknowledgements: We are very grateful to all those interviewed for this project. We thank Jonas Tallberg, Michael Mosser, Nicole Simonelli, Mark Dincecco, and workshop participants at the University of Michigan (CPRD), U.C. Berkeley (MIRTH), U.C.L.A. Law School, and the University of St. Gallen’s School of Economics and Politics for comments on earlier drafts. Jeff Smith kindly and expertly provided detailed and very helpful comments on our penultimate draft. Barbara Koremenos thanks the KROC Institute at the University of Notre Dame for fellowship support during the early stages of this project and Julia Gysel and Raya Saksouk for providing excellent research assistance. Finally, we thank the four anonymous reviewers for their careful reading and insightful feedback. This project has been approved through UC Berkeley IRB protocol 2017-10-10405.

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1. Introduction The extent to which pairs of states engage in formal cooperation varies in dramatic and, as explained below, surprising ways. The United Nations Treaty Series (UNTS) features the most comprehensive list of formal international agreements to date. Article 102 of the United Nations (UN) Charter encourages states to register their agreements with the UN, stating that:

1. Every treaty and every international agreement entered into by any Member of the United Nations after the present Charter comes into force shall as soon as possible be registered with the Secretariat and published by it.

2. No party to any such treaty or international agreement which has not been registered in accordance with the provisions of paragraph 1 of this Article may invoke that treaty or agreement before any organ of the United Nations (United Nations, 1945).

Given the near universal membership of the UN, agreement registration with the UNTS is informative about broader patterns of cooperation in the international community. Particularly striking is the extent to which the same state formally cooperates at different rates depending on its partner. For example, while Saudi Arabia and the United States (US) have registered 53 bilateral agreements with the UNTS, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have registered only one. The substantial difference in the number of UNTS-registered agreements between Saudi Arabia and the US on the one hand and Saudi Arabia and the UAE on the other stands in tension with one of the main empirical findings in the international cooperation literature: States with similar domestic institutions, such as joint democratic and joint autocratic dyads, are more likely to enter into agreements with each other (Leeds 1999; Mattes and Rodriguez 2014). In this view, the low incidence of cooperation between Saudi Arabia and the UAE is puzzling. Both are dynastic monarchies, territorially contiguous, and possess the resources necessary to enter into formal agreements.1 Both have similar cultural backgrounds, tribal networks, and Islamic legal systems.

1 Wealthy states (those ranked in the top 25% of GDP) on average participate in three times as many formal international agreements than do poor states (those ranked in the bottom 25% of GDP). This pattern is consistent across issue areas. See Koremenos (2017).

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The lack of formal cooperation between Saudi Arabia and the UAE is not isolated. Rather, it is part of a broader pattern: Despite possessing extremely similar characteristics that conventional wisdom indicates are important for international cooperation, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have registered few – if any – agreements with their fellow Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members. For example, while the UAE and Kuwait are party to 97 and 118 bilateral agreements respectively, the UAE has only seven agreements, and Kuwait only three, with fellow GCC members.2 Although the GCC was established 37 years ago, only its charter is registered with the UNTS, and a mere four other agreements have been made public.3 Why do these states have fewer formal (or at least visible) agreements with each other than expected? The answer to this question has crucial implications for our understanding of the conditions that produce – or stymie – diverse forms of cooperation between members of the international community. Identifying factors that reduce states’ propensity to enter into formal agreements or influence states’ preferences for certain forms of cooperation is critical given that formal agreement design facilitates cooperation that might otherwise not occur (Koremenos 2016).4 We seek to determine whether these pairs of states rarely cooperate or whether they use informal rules and procedures to structure their interactions. If the latter is the case, we want to know why these states select informal cooperation and whether this choice imposes costs on their citizens. We argue that absolute monarchies do frequently cooperate, but they do so informally. Drawing on the international cartel and firm literatures, we define informal cooperation as that in which partners determine their commitments through privately developed and mutually agreed upon understandings rather than legally binding contractual obligations

2 See Table 7 for a comprehensive comparison of the number of UNTS agreements each GCC state has with fellow members versus the number it has with all other states. 3 The other four public agreements are the Convention on the Implementation of Judicial Decisions, Awards, and Declarations; the Economic Agreement between Cooperation Council Countries; the Convention on the Conservation of Wildlife and Natural Habitats; and the Agreement Establishing the Monetary Union of the Gulf Cooperation Council. 4 For example, the delegated monitoring provisions that accompany formal treaties, like the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, are often key to their effectiveness.

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(Levenstein and Suslow 2006; Coe and Vaynman 2015). Informal agreements tend to be secret, verbal, and enforced through cartel–like behavior wherein parties set and adhere to norms that promote their narrowly–defined mutual interests, minimize mutual risk, and determine forbearance (Pressey and Vanharanta 2016). Existing explanations suggest that variables like domestic legal system (Powell 2015) and oil exportation (Ross and Voeten 2015) influence states’ preferences for informal types of cooperation; we suggest something more fundamental: rule of law, particularly rule under law. In absolute monarchies, executives preserve their power by implementing policies and establishing institutions unilaterally. Decision-making is highly personal, nontransparent, and not subjected to well-defined and established laws. Any checks on absolute monarchs’ exercise of power – if they exist – are largely informal and not institutionalized. We argue that absolute monarchies’ domestic policymaking practices reproduce themselves at the international level, creating incentives to informally cooperate as opposed to entering into formal agreements. In contrast to existing scholarship (Lai and Reiter 2000; Westerwinter, Abbott, and Biersteker 2018), we maintain that absolute monarchies receive distinct private benefits from informality, spurring them to engage in informal cooperation more frequently than democratic regimes. When absolute monarchies cooperate with each other, they do so according to an absolutist logic. Specifically, the highly personal, non–transparent, and unconstrained policymaking at the domestic level not only makes similarly secretive, cartel-like collusion possible but also helps absolute monarchs realize their mutual, narrowly–defined interests. Additionally, because the commitments made in informal cooperation are dynamic and shaped by monarchs’ shared understandings of compliance, absolute monarchs can update what constitutes agreement compliance in response to changes in their political, economic, or social environment. Doing so reinforces and enhances monarchs’ ability to stabilize their control over the domestic sphere while reaping the private benefits of informal cooperation. As elaborated in Section 5, after the 2011 Arab uprisings, the Gulf monarchies and Jordan developed an informal security agreement – and revised the terms of cooperation three different times – with the goal of bolstering regime stability through coordinated domestic policies.

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We develop a mixed-methods research design to assess our hypotheses. First, we use King and Lowe’s (2003) 10 Million International Dyadic Events data to develop a novel data set of informal and formal cooperation from 1990 to 2004. Exploiting this data, we demonstrate that joint absolute monarchy dyads have higher levels of informal cooperation and lower levels of formal cooperation than joint democratic dyads and dyads of mixed political regime types. Second, we draw on the Continent of International Law (COIL) dataset (Koremenos 2016), which features a random sample of UNTS agreements from 1925–2004,5 to demonstrate that absolute monarchies strategically use formal design mechanisms when engaging with other regime types. Lastly, we assess the causal mechanisms driving informal cooperation through an in–depth case study of informal agreements among Arab monarchies, including informal territorial agreements concluded throughout the 1950s and 1970s and the secret 2012–2014 Riyadh security agreements. Studying informality that manifests itself in nonpublic agreements presents various methodological challenges. We respond by employing multiple datasets and case study evidence that exhibit temporal variation and cover both bilateral and multilateral settings. Our findings make several distinct contributions to international cooperation scholarship. First, we understand little about the circumstances under which states choose to cooperate informally instead of designing formal agreements. We argue that, in the dyadic context, the extent to which leaders implement domestic policies (non)transparently and unilaterally critically influences how they cooperate internationally. By providing new insights about absolute monarchies and cooperation, we lend increasing sophistication to the literature on domestic and international factors that promote states’ use of informal and covert tools of statecraft. Second, we make a distinct contribution to the growing literature on autocratic regime types. By highlighting that domestic policymaking in absolute monarchies differs from that in personalist, single party, and military regimes, we advance a more fine–grained theory of autocratic institutional constraints than currently exists; we also demonstrate that this distinction critically influences autocrats’ choices regarding the design of international

5 The majority of agreements in the COIL dataset were signed between 1970–1999.

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cooperation. Third, we provide historical context to the existing literature on informal cooperation. Scholars who have explored informal cooperation consider it a recent phenomenon6 and largely focus on the bureaucratization around informal institutions dominated by Western, democratic, and major powers, such as the G8 and G20 (Vabulas and Snidal 2013; Abbott and Snidal 2000, Avant and Westerwinter 2016). We demonstrate that informal agreements have been central to cooperation among absolute monarchies for decades. In what follows, we first highlight why existing explanations of states’ propensity to cooperate informally – namely oil wealth, possessing an Islamic legal system, and being democratic – cannot explain the puzzling descriptive statistics highlighted above. Second, we present our theory and research design. We then describe our empirical results, both quantitative and qualitative. We conclude by discussing the implications of our analyses regarding states’ use of informality to facilitate the provision of private goods, such as regime security, that distinctly benefit state executives. Indeed, understanding how autocratic monarchs informally cooperate to secure personal benefits is critical as this form of cooperation often negatively affects the citizens of these states. 2. Existing Explanations International cooperation scholarship indicates that states with a similar regime type more readily enter into treaties and alliances (Leeds 1999; Lai and Reiter 2000; Mansfield, Milner, and Rosendorff 2002). Within this body of literature, scholars have found that joint democratic dyads have higher rates of cooperation than joint autocratic dyads (Lai and Reiter 2000). Because democratic leaders are constrained by their citizens and face legislative and judicial checks on their policy decisions, they can make more credible commitments than autocrats, increasing the likelihood that they form secure, sustainable agreements with each other (Leeds 1999; Mattes and Rodriguez

6 A notable exception is Kahler (2000), who traces variation in the legalization of regional institutions in the Asia-Pacific from their conception to the Asian economic crisis of 1997/1998. Specifically, Kahler (2000) examines changes in the precision of member states’ obligations, non-interference in member states’ domestic affairs, and the presence of third-party dispute resolution mechanisms.

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2014). Similarly, greater economic interdependence between democracies may boost their levels of formal cooperation (Mansfield, Milner, and Rosendorff 2002). Recently, scholars have examined how institutional variation across autocratic regimes influences their propensity to cooperate with democracies and other types of autocracies. Autocratic leaders who are held accountable for their actions by political parties or military juntas have restricted policy flexibility and thus are able to make credible commitments (Weeks 2008, 2012; Ezrow and Frantz 2011). However, this literature cannot explain low levels of formal cooperation among Gulf states. Because Gulf states are characterized by similar regime type, existing literature leads us to expect that Gulf states should have relatively higher levels of formal cooperation than state dyads with mixed regime types, but not democratic or single party dyads (Mattes and Rodriguez 2014). This makes the absence of formal cooperation among these states even more puzzling. Emerging scholarship does identify political regime type as an important driver of state preferences for informal cooperation. However, this work largely argues that democracies receive distinct benefits from informal agreements, implying they informally cooperate at higher rates than autocracies (Westerwinter, Abbott, and Biersteker 2018). Specifically, democratic governments face a variety of institutionalized constraints on domestic policymaking (Tsebelis 1995, 1999), making it costly for democracies to secure consensus and ratify formal agreements (Mansfield and Milner 2012; Snidal and Thompson 2003). Democratic leaders can avoid these costs by cooperating through informal institutions, which require little to no involvement of domestic veto players (Aust 1986; Lipson 1991; Abbott and Snidal 2000; Westerwinter 2013). Because autocracies often lack institutionalized veto players, they do not face the same costs as democracies when implementing foreign policy and do not receive the same benefits from participating in informal institutions (Westerwinter, Abbott, and Biersteker 2018). While this explanation provides insight into why democracies participate in informal institutions, it cannot fully explain varying rates of formal and informal cooperation between dyadic partners of different regime types. Specifically, it cannot explain autocracies’ propensity to participate in formal agreements with certain states but not

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others. Moreover, as demonstrated in Table 2 below, dyads of absolute monarchies have significantly higher mean levels of informal cooperation than joint democratic dyads. Grouping autocracies into a homogenous category misses the potentially important role that domestic autocratic institutions, such as the presence or absence of veto players, play in the development of states’ foreign policies.7 In our theory section, we highlight the distinct benefits absolute monarchs receive from informal cooperation relative to other regime types. Aside from regime type, scholars have identified other domestic characteristics that may reduce the likelihood of formal cooperation. For example, because oil–exporting states can easily attract foreign investment and gain access to foreign markets without making costly commitments to international institutions, these states have lower incentives to join international organizations, accept international judicial bodies’ compulsory jurisdiction, and agree to binding arbitration (Ross and Voeten 2015). While this scholarship illustrates why oil–exporting states may be less likely to join particular international institutions, economic incentives alone cannot sufficiently explain the conditions under which states decide to engage in institutionalized cooperation across various issue areas. Similarly, scholars have found that shared cultural, ethnic, and, in particular, religious backgrounds encourage both formal and informal cooperation (Barnett 1996; Lai and Reiter 2000; Leeds et al. 2002). For example, countries with Islamic legal systems may be less likely to make legal commitments and more likely to use non–binding methods of dispute resolution because non–formalized reconciliation is emphasized in the Sunna (Powell and Wiegand 2010; Mitchell and Powell 2011: 50). While we agree that domestic practices influence levels of cooperation, the causal mechanism linking religious law and a state’s decision to adopt particular modes of cooperation is unclear. Because authoritarian leaders often circumvent domestic laws and constitutional constraints to achieve political goals, it is not obvious how laws on the books, including references to Sharia law, actually influence leaders’ behaviors. For example, in September 2017, the

7 Weeks (2008) and Mattes and Rodriguez (2014) make a similar criticism. Both demonstrate that various types of autocracies, distinguished by the civilian or military nature of the leader and presence of veto players, influence conflict and cooperative behavior.

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Saudi monarchy issued a decree rescinding the ban on women driving. Although Sharia law had been used to justify the ban for decades, the Council of Senior Scholars – the kingdom’s top clerical body – supported the decision (Hubbard 2017). Many speculate that, rather than a sudden change in the Council’s interpretation of Sharia law, the monarchy lifted the ban to encourage female employment in non–oil industries as part of its plan to diversify its economy (Revesz and Stevenson 2017). 3. Theory In this section, we define informal cooperation and articulate the benefits that state leaders stand to gain and the costs they may incur when informally cooperating. We then explain why absolute monarchies gain more from informal cooperation than do other kinds of autocracies. Finally, we describe the collusive, cartel–like behavioral logic of informal cooperation and briefly address why this logic does not extend to interactions between absolute monarchies and other regime types.

3.1. Distinguishing between formal and informal cooperation

We distinguish between formal and informal cooperation by whether the text of an agreement is public.8 Our definition of informality focuses on cooperation that is secret. This distinction allows us to differentiate between completely informal agreements and formal agreements that have design characteristics sometimes associated with informality. Our definition of informal cooperation thus excludes agreements that are legally binding but lack delegated dispute resolution or precise terms.9 We also exclude cooperation conducted by informal intergovernmental organizations like the G5 because the commitments made are public, implying that third parties can hold actors partially accountable.

8 When the text of an agreement is public, that often implies the agreement is registered with an international or regional organization. 9 At least half of formal treaties do not incorporate dispute resolution mechanisms. These treaties most likely do not need such provisions, but that does not imply the cooperation embodied in these treaties is informal. See Koremenos (2007; 2016).

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Informal agreements can be wholly secret or parties may publicly acknowledge their existence while keeping their specific commitments and/or the agreement text (if it exists) secret (Schachter 1977; Westerwinter 2017). Informal agreements often consist of oral bargains or implicitly understood rules and norms shaped by parties’ shared understandings of how they should act and which violations will be punished or excused (Lipson 1991). What drives our definition of informal agreements? The majority of existing scholarship elucidates the role of informality within the context of legally binding, formal cooperation. For example, some scholars have examined informal governance and decision-making within the European Union (EU), International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization (Kleine 2014; Stone 2011, 2013). Other work investigates formal agreements that possess particular ‘informal’ characteristics, such as imprecise or vague wording, weaker obligations, and low levels of delegation (Abbott and Snidal 2000; Abbott et al. 2000). Lastly, scholars have examined the conditions under which states formally incorporate certain design features and consciously leave other design features informal (Koremenos 2013b, 2016). While this scholarship elucidates the conditions under which states draw on a combination of formal and informal mechanisms to cooperate, we seek to explore whether certain pairs of states wholly fail to cooperate or if their cooperation is completely informal. Our definition thus allows us to investigate theoretically the benefits particular leaders reap - and the costs their citizens incur - when cooperation is completely informal.

3.2 The benefits and costs of informal cooperation Informal cooperation can confer a variety of benefits, particularly to state executives. First, informal cooperation allows state executives to disregard the interests of other domestic actors and bypass the bureaucratic control these actors may have over policy development (Lipson 1991; Deeks 2017). When domestic actors like government institutions, non-governmental organizations, and citizens can identify and trace state executives’ actions, they can more easily assess whether those actions align with their interests (Stasavage 2004) and pressure the

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executive to make different substantive commitments or not cooperate in the first place (Lipson

1991; Carson 2016; Deeks 2017). Through informal agreements, state leaders open up a more extensive range of bargaining settlements than would be available if the agreement were public (Stasavage 2004; Kurizaki 2007). This is particularly important when commitments have sensitive implications for state sovereignty and capacity (Deeks 2017). Second, informal cooperation allows state executives to secure private goods, such as regime stability and security, in ways that violate international legal norms or conventions to which these same states have formally committed, including those that guarantee certain human rights for their citizens. Conversely, transparent cooperation empowers other state and nongovernmental actors to protest policies and pressure partners to adhere to international legal norms (Carnegie and Carson 2017; 2018). As described in our case study, the Gulf and Jordanian monarchs agreed to implement a set of autocratic policies after the Arab uprisings, including cross-border policing and punishment of citizens critical of any Arab monarchy, that provided these monarchs protections against their opposition but that violated their commitments to international human rights covenants: All GCC member states have ratified the Arab Charter on Human Rights, which guarantees protections from arbitrary and unlawful interference in individuals’ privacy and the right to freedom of opinion and expression. Kuwait and Bahrain have also ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which stipulates similar protections (Human Rights Watch 2014). Third, informal cooperation gives state executives the opportunities to adapt or reinterpret their commitments in ways that maximize mutual self–interest (Bruggeman 2001; Neyer and Wolf 2003). Specifically, leaders can agree to interpret their commitments differently than originally understood at the time of agreement formation in response to changes in the political and economic environment. We are not arguing that parties can more easily renege on their informal commitments. Rather, informal agreements expedite the process of updating what commitments entail and facilitate the use of discretion when deciding which violations to punish relative to their formal

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counterparts.10 As elaborated in the case study, Gulf monarchies updated the 2012 Joint Security Agreement pact twice in 2014 in order to add and clarify commitments and punishment mechanisms. Fourth, cooperating informally allows state executives to strategically limit public information about their commitments and violations, which can bolster agreement durability. Specifically, if a government calls attention to a partners’ specific violations, third parties are then able to exact costs on that partner, which may lead the partner to abrogate the agreement entirely (Lindley 2007; Carnegie and Carson 2018). Informal agreements thus allow partners to resolve violations bilaterally without threatening the robustness of their overall cooperation.

Although state leaders can gain distinct private benefits from informal cooperation, they may also bear various costs. First, certain cooperation problems – such as domestic commitment problems – are only effectively resolved through public agreements (Goldstein et al. 2000). These types of problems are particularly prominent in human rights and some economic sub–issue areas (Koremenos 2016). For example, the public nature of human rights treaties allows citizens to take their governments to court and hold them accountable for violations (Simmons 2009). Given the cooperation problems underlying these issue areas, informality may lead to less effective problem solving or to cooperation failure.

Second, by allowing state executives to bypass international legal norms and oversight from third party governments, informal cooperation may weaken these norms by reducing their value for compliant governments. Leaders who engage in informal cooperation may thereby hamper their ability to reap benefits from norm compliance when they formally cooperate with other partners. Relatedly, for issue areas in which reciprocity is an optimal response, it is difficult if not impossible to condition one’s behavior when other actors keep their actions invisible (Kreps 1990; Axelrod and Keohane 1985; Milgrom, North, and Weingast 1990). For example, the torture and assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi–which was carried out in the Saudi

10 Formal agreements with informal elements foster a similar dynamic. The implicit, discretionary punishment mechanism in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty has been used to maximize the interests of the permanent members of the UN Security Council (Koremenos 2013a).

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consulate in Turkey and likely ordered by the Saudi Crown Prince–violated the international legal norm of extraterritorial enforcement, the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (Ratner 2018). State partners have a shared security interest in adhering to these rules: “Keep your hit–men off my territory and I’ll keep mine off yours; use your embassies and consulates for diplomatic purposes, and we’ll leave them alone” (Ratner 2018). Given the secrecy with which this policy was carried out, it is difficult for other states to hold the correct actor accountable, reducing the likelihood of punishment and thereby weakening these norms. Table 1 summarizes the benefits that state executives may gain and the costs they may bear when engaging in informal cooperation.

Table 1: The Benefits and Costs of Informal Cooperation Benefits Costs

• Allows state executives to disregard the preferences and interests of domestic actors and bypass bureaucratic control and oversight

• Allows state executives to pursue self-

interested policies that violate their international legal commitments and/or their citizens’ human rights

• Allows parties to adapt their

commitments to more effectively pursue policies that maximize mutual self–interest in response to political or economic changes

• Allows state executives to strengthen

agreement durability by strategically

• Prevents resolution of certain cooperation problems, like domestic commitment problems, that are only resolvable through public agreements

• Reduces state executives’ ability to

benefit from norm compliance when formally cooperating with other partners

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controlling information about commitments and violations

It is important to note that the private benefits that leaders receive from informal cooperation often come at the expense of other domestic actors, particularly citizens. As indicated, informal cooperation may incentivize leaders to grant and revoke citizens’ rights in an arbitrary manner. For example, the Saudi monarchy increased the number of elected seats in municipal–level advisory councils from half to two–thirds and allowed women to vote and run as candidates in the 2015 elections. Less than two years later, the monarchy restricted political participation by ordering the widespread arrest of prominent organizations and activists that questioned or declined to support the government’s blockade of Qatar (Freedom House 2018). Moreover, the individualistic and nontransparent nature of informal agreements may divert political power away from institutionalized veto players like political parties by excluding them from critical foreign policy decision–making. As elaborated in the next section, the likelihood that state executives bear the costs of informal cooperation largely depends on variations in the transparent and multilateral nature of decision–making across different regime types. Absolute monarchs face few – if any – of these costs when implementing secret agreements. For example, Jordan’s agreement to monitor and punish its citizens for criticizing Gulf monarchies led to the arrest of prominent leaders in the Islamic Action Front (IAF), the only viable political opposition group in the country; these arrests facilitated the fragmentation of the IAF in 2015 (Laub and Daraghmeh 2015). 3.3. Absolute monarchs and the ability to cooperate informally We assume that, akin to all autocrats, absolute monarchs seek to remain in power (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2004; Kinne 2005). Despite this similar goal, leaders across autocratic regime types use vastly different domestic strategies to ensure their political survival (Kinne 2005; Weeks 2008, 2012). In absolute monarchies, state executives preserve and consolidate their political power by enacting and enforcing policies secretly

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and arbitrarily, particularly in terms of providing due process to the accused (Stepan, Linz, and Minoves 2014). By doing so, monarchs make themselves indispensable to their countries’ political system and bolster their resilience to internal and external threats. For example, in 2013 and 2014, the Jordanian and Saudi monarchies both passed similar domestic laws that broadened the legal definition of terrorism to include harming the government’s reputation or its foreign relations (Abuqudairi 2014; Al-Buluwi 2014). The deliberately vague language of these laws gave officials extreme leeway in determining what acts of protest (including posts on social media) were acts of terrorism (Yom 2016a). Outside the realm of security policy, scholars have highlighted how Gulf monarchies use vague and ambiguous language when developing environmental and educational policy (Haimerl 2013; Luomi 2014). The absence of constraints on monarchs’ behavior is critical to maintaining opaque rule of law. In absolute monarchies, executives unilaterally develop and implement policies in the domestic sphere without institutional, religious, or ideological constraints (Anderson 1991; Chehabi and Linz 1998). Legal institutions purposefully lack the ‘teeth’ necessary to create policy precedent and ensure consistent implementation. Within these regimes, executives control all aspects of the legal system. While the monarch and parliament may interact, the parliament cannot restrict or sanction the monarch in most areas. Similarly, the judiciary is appointed by and serves at the will of the monarch (Stepan, Linz, and Minoves 2014). Unlike in single party regimes and military juntas, executive powers in absolute monarchies are not subject to checks by established intra–governmental bodies (Weeks 2008; 2012). Any checks and balances that do exist are informal, such as intra–family or intra–tribal alliances. These constitutive characteristics of absolute monarchies – namely unitary and nontransparent policymaking – transfer to the foreign policy realm and shape how these leaders cooperate internationally.11

11 Extant scholarship indicates that domestic behavioral norms in particular regime types influence preferences for particular modes of international cooperation. For example, constitutive characteristics of democratic regimes, such as openness towards civil society, rule of law, accountability, and transparency, affect democracies’ preferences for openness towards transnational actors in international organizations (Tallberg, Sommerer, and Squatrito 2016).

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We argue that other autocratic leaders cannot easily engage in informal cooperation because of the relatively greater transparency with which they have to implement domestic policies. In single party and military regimes, decision–making power is diffused throughout formal intra–governmental coalitions – whether a political party or a military council – rather than concentrated in a single leader. These intra–governmental coalitions monitor and check leaders’ behavior (Weeks 2008; 2012). Because of these institutional constraints, domestic policymaking in these autocratic regimes is necessarily more transparent than it is in absolute monarchies (Peceny and Butler 2004). Put differently, leaders in single party and military regimes maximize their chances of political survival by implementing policies multilaterally and transparently so as to balance their interests with the interests of the party or junta. This transparency calculus not only constrains their ability to engage in cartel–like types of international cooperation; it also disincentivizes them from doing so. In fact, single party regimes and military juntas are more likely to cooperate with democracies than are other autocratic regime types given similar institutional transparency and formalized checks on leader behavior (Mattes and Rodriguez 2014). Although scholars largely equate personalist leaders and absolute monarchs as erratic and unchecked policy makers (Weeks 2008; Ezrow and Frantz 2011), we argue that personalist leaders face greater constraints on their decision-making than absolute monarchs, thereby restricting their ability to engage in secret, cartel–like cooperation. Personalist leaders gain and maintain support from citizens and government officials through building patronage networks that overtime become institutionalized (Van den Bosch 2015). Because these institutionalized patronage networks can act as a blunt tool to remove the leader from power, personalist leaders are accountable to these networks, necessitating relatively higher levels of transparency and the inclusion of key members of these networks in policy development and implementation. Relatedly, we anticipate that absolute monarchs have distinct advantages to engage in informal cooperation than personalist leaders because they face a lower rate of leader and regime overturn (Hadenius and Teorell, 2006). The relative durability of absolute monarchies allows monarchs to consolidate their positions and develop idiosyncratic strategies concerning the rule of law. Over time, these strategies create and reinforce expected patterns of

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behavior within the dyadic context (Stepan, Linz, and Minoves 2014), 12 boosting their ability to make credible, informal commitments to each other. Empirically, we demonstrate the differences in the constraints faced by various leaders by drawing on Williams’ (2015) Accountability Transparency Index, which measures regime transparency based on whether the information provided by the government actually allows domestic and/or international audiences to hold the leader accountable. Student t–tests13 indicate that, on average, absolute monarchies have significantly lower levels of accountability transparency than personalist regimes (p

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consolidate power. Indeed, absolute monarchs’ commitments to each other are inherently personal, with credibility and reliability grounded in the relationship between the monarchs rather than in an institutional framework. Similarly, direct interactions between individual monarchs are couched in informal social, economic, and political networks that connect each royal family. In the case of the GCC, absolute monarchs share kinship ties, bolstering their sense of personal obligation to their partners’ interests and reinforcing elite–level decision–making. For example, because the Saudi, Emirati, and Qatari royal families are closely connected through various tribal networks, political issues often become familial issues (Ramesh 2017), and decision–making consistently features the same core elite (Bank, Richter, and Sunik 2014). After the Arab uprisings in 2011, these informal familial ties played a key role in facilitating direct lines of communication among the Gulf monarchs, frequent summits among foreign ministers, and ‘royal–only’ ministerial meetings (Yom 2016b). Our definition of informal cooperation is not equivalent to partners who follow mutually beneficial policies because they share a harmony of preferences. Existing research demonstrates that the presence of a harmony of preferences does not necessarily influence how states choose to cooperate (Koremenos 2013; 2016). Many state partners that share a harmony of preferences formalize these preferences through public, registered agreements. Moreover, absolute monarchs often face complex cooperation problems when informally cooperating, like incentives to defect and domestic shocks that alter their expected gains from cooperation. Our argument is that, in the dyadic context, absolute monarchs select to use secret, cartel–like cooperation to overcome these problems rather than cooperate formally. As elaborated in our case study, while Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab monarchies collectively desired to guard against internal instability caused by the Arab uprisings, they disagreed about how to pursue this policy (e.g., whether to allow the funding of particular Islamic political groups) and maintained distrust over whether their partners would pursue the agreed policy (e.g., the Gulf monarchs repeatedly revised their agreement because they believed Qatar was violating its commitments).

3.4. Cartel–like cooperation

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Because of the personalistic, collusive nature of the commitments that absolute monarchs make to each other, we anticipate that their informal cooperation resembles behaviors observed in international cartels. Cartels occur when a group of firm executives that produce similar goods informally agree to pursue certain policies (like manipulating supply and fixing prices) to capture joint benefits (Griffin 2000; Awaya and Krishna 2016). Within cartels, cooperation is dynamic, centered on pursuing mutual interests with specific partners rather than adhering to broader legal norms (Bruggeman 2001; Neyer and Wolf 2003). Illustratively, the US Department of Justice highlights that cartels often do not survive changes in executive leadership (Griffin 2000). Key to the successful functioning of cartels is nontransparency and mutual understandings of agreed–upon behaviors (Griffin 2000; Green, Marshall, and Marx 2014; Coe and Vaynman 2015). Relevant scholarship suggests that cartels rely on shared perceptions of threats and social relationships to incentivize certain behaviors and deter others (Richards, Patterson, and Acharya 2001; Munger 2006). Behavioral norms are reinforced through expectations of reciprocity and constant communication among members, tying them to a ‘common fate’ (Costa and Kahn 2007; Genesove and Mullin 2001). For example, after the onset of the Arab uprisings in 2011, GCC monarchies began to view themselves as members of a pan–royal community under attack (Yom 2016a); they responded by “fall[ing] back on the norms that bind their regime[s] together” (Yom 2016a). Cartel members – in our case, heads of state – maintain shared understandings and nontransparency by travelling to meet each other frequently (Genesove and Mullin 2001; Awaya and Krishna 2016). As illustrated in Table 3 in our Findings section, around one third of all informal cooperative events involve dyads hosting meetings, visiting each other, and engaging in discussions. Executives may hold secret, conspiratorial, ‘unofficial’ meetings in conjunction with official meetings or use meetings within formal organizations to ‘cover’ their discussions about joint policy coordination (Griffin 2000). During these meetings, executives determine whether members have mutually adjusted their policies appropriately and whether additional adjustments are warranted (Genesove and Mullin 2001; Awaya and Krishna 2016). Frequent meetings also allow executives to share and track sensitive information about violations, serving

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as an informal monitoring mechanism (Genesove and Mullin 2001; Harrington 2006; Pressey and Vanharanta 2016). Cartel members develop compensation schemes that redistribute benefits if an executive violates the agreement to ensure that other cartel members still have incentives to continue cooperating (Griffin 2000). Absolute monarchs may also use ad hoc threats of violence, the curtailment of diplomatic ties, and cuts in aid to create incentives for future cooperation (Berman 2009; Berman and Laitin 2008; Skarbek 2011). In fact, when Saudi Arabia and the UAE met with the Qatari Crown Prince to address Qatar’s perceived violation (i.e., continued support of Islamic groups critical of the Gulf monarchies), the Saudi and UAE monarchs demanded more costly commitments from Qatar, such as shutting down Al–Jazeera, to offset Qatar’s past violations and prove its commitment to their informal security agreement.

3.5. Cooperation in mixed dyads When absolute monarchies engage with democracies and other autocratic regime types, their differing constitutive characteristics will result in different forms of cooperation. In these heterogeneous dyads, partners will likely develop formal agreements. With respect to these formal agreements’ design provisions, while absolute monarchs may prefer less formalization, like vague and ambiguous language and wholly informal dispute resolution mechanisms, it is not likely that these preferences will align with the preferences of, say, democratic regimes. In mixed dyads, partners lack the opportunities and shared understandings that shape the absolutist logic underlying absolute monarchs’ cartel–like cooperation. Of course, in the context of heterogeneous dyads, it is possible that the monarchs themselves prefer formal agreement design given the absence of longstanding and familial ties that help enforce informal agreements. 4. Research Design We develop a mixed methods research design: First, we draw from King and Lowe’s (2003) 10 Million International Dyadic Events data to assess whether joint absolute monarchy dyads informally cooperate more and formally cooperate less than joint

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democratic dyads. Second, we exploit the COIL data set to examine whether absolute monarchies that cooperate with other regime types use formal design provisions or tend to ratify agreements with less formal provisions. Third, we conduct a case study of informal cooperation among Gulf monarchies, beginning with Gulf monarchies’ informal territorial agreements developed during the 1950s and 1970s as well as the secret 2012-2014 Riyadh agreements.

4.1. Dyadic Data Set Construction

Developing a measure of informal cooperation is challenging given we can only study informal cooperation that is observable or secret agreements that are later publicized. Still, secret, informal cooperation can manifest in observable behavioral exchanges between states. Frequent meetings between state executives, public assurances by state executives of policy coordination and collaboration, the hosting of or attendance at high–level meetings, and policy consultations between state executives, among other behaviors, are probable indicators of informal cooperation. To identify these behavioral exchanges, we draw from the 10 Million International Dyadic Events data (Bond et al. 2003; King and Lowe 2003). International events data consists of daily accounts reported in the open press of who engaged in what action towards whom. Specifically, King and Lowe (2003) use VRA Reader software to pull daily events from Reuters Business Briefing news stories from 1990 to 2004 and classify them based on the Integrated Data for Event Analysis (IDEA) typology. King and Lowe (2003) then map IDEA events onto the Goldstein (1992) conflict–cooperation scale. The Goldstein cooperation scale ranges from –10 to 8.3. Each event type is assigned a relative score on this scale based on the intensity or magnitude of cooperation or conflict embodied in each type of event. Negative scores indicate increasingly hostile events and positive scores indicate increasingly cooperative events. To illustrate, the most negative, intense event on the scale is a declaration of war or military attack (–10). The most positive, intense form of cooperation is the provision of military assistance (8.3). Neutral events, such as a private transaction or a sports contest, are coded as 0. The complete list of all IDEA event types and their corresponding score on the Goldstein cooperation scale can be found in Section 1 of the

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appendix.18 By identifying different types of events and assigning them a theoretically meaningful measure of intensity, international events data allow scholars to trace and compare relationships between pairs of states over time. Examining informal cooperation in this particular time period minimizes the likelihood that states’ cooperative behavior is influenced by the pressures of the bipolar international system, including Cold War ideological and bloc politics. Moreover, by collecting daily media reports, King and Lowe’s (2003) events data allow us to create a fine–grained measure of the intensity of informal cooperation between state dyads. A number of other studies of international cooperation and conflict have also relied on events data (for example, Leeds 1999; Colaresi 2004a, 2004b; Pevehouse 2004; Fordham 2005; Murdie and Davis 2012; Mattes and Rodriguez 2014). To identify events indicative of informal cooperation, we draw on behavioral screening techniques developed by both academics and the US Department of Justice to detect international cartels. For instance, informal cooperation is likely when executives and heads of state regularly travel to meet each other, develop and accept potential partners’ proposals, frequently communicate, and discuss how to address joint problems (Marshall and Marx 2012; Green, Marshall, and Marx 2014). In particular, collusion is likely when heads of state gather publicly to express solidarity and collective support for or confidence in each other’s domestic policies or jointly reaffirm that they will continue to pursue particular policies (Marx and Marshall 2012). The comprehensive list of the IDEA events and their corresponding Goldstein cooperation scores that we included in our measure of informal cooperation are listed in Table 1.

18 The appendix and replication data can be found on the Review of International Organization website.

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To construct our measure of informal cooperation, we first filtered events to keep only those that occurred between state governments. We then assigned each event a score on the Goldstein scale corresponding to Table 1 in King and Lowe (2003). To obtain the average level of cooperation for state dyads in a given year, we summed dyads’ Goldstein cooperation scores and divided by the total number of cooperative events that occurred in that particular year. We provide more detail about the construction of our dependent variable in Section 1 of the appendix. Our measure faces several limitations. First, our measure only captures observable informal cooperation. Because we cannot capture informal cooperation that is entirely secret, our measure likely reports lower average levels of informal cooperation between certain state dyads. Second, because events data draws from news reports, it is possible that the same event may be featured multiple times in the same news story. As such, certain types of events between certain types of dyads may be over (or under) reported in the dataset. We minimize this bias by dropping all but one observation of the same event between the

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same actors on the same day. Similarly, using the average level of cooperation intensity – rather than the frequency with which actors engage in certain types of events – also minimizes over and under-reporting bias of some dyads and events relative to others (Mattes and Rodriguez 2014: 522; Leeds 1999). Third, it is possible that the events we include in our measure of informal cooperation do not actually correspond to informal agreements. To assess the accuracy of our measure, we identified an informal agreement that occurred during the time period of our data set and explored whether informal cooperative events in our data set correspond with this agreement. Gulf monarchs signed an informal joint defense agreement at an annual GCC advisory summit in Bahrain on December 30, 2000 (Henderson 2001; Brown and Katzman 2001). While the text of this agreement was never published, public statements by the Kuwaiti Minister of Defense in 1999 suggest that this agreement stated that an attack on one Gulf state would be considered an attack on all (Henderson 2001). Reportedly, while Gulf monarchs agreed on the substance of the defense pact by the end of 1998, rivalries between Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Bahrain led these monarchs to boycott meetings throughout 1999, stalling the signing of the agreement until 2000 (Henderson 2001). As a first step towards identifying whether events in our data set correspond with this informal agreement, we looked for whether the December 30, 2000 meeting hosted by Bahrain appeared in our data set; it did. We also wanted to ensure that this event was not coded in our measure of formal cooperation; it was not. Because this informal agreement was developed through a variety of discussions and meetings in 1998, we explored the distribution of informal cooperative events prior to and after the December 2000 summit, visualized in Figure 1. As expected, Figure 1 confirms that there was a sharp increase in discussions and meetings between Gulf monarchs in 1998 as well as a drastic increase in agreeing and accepting and engaging in negotiations in 2000. Collectively, these descriptive trends suggest that the events we include in our measure of informal cooperation do capture informal agreements.

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We have two distinct measures of formal cooperation. First, we follow the same procedure described above to create a variable that indicates the intensity of formal cooperation between state dyads in a given year. When identifying IDEA events indicative of formal cooperation, we selected events that either explicitly involve or are highly likely to result in publicly signing and publishing an agreement. We provide a list of all IDEA events we identify as formal cooperation, their descriptions, and their corresponding Goldstein scores in Table 2.

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We constructed a second measure of formal cooperation to assuage our concerns regarding how the Goldstein cooperation scale ranks individual formal cooperative events. It is unclear why the provision of humanitarian, military, and economic aid are ranked as more intense than making a substantial agreement and why promises of humanitarian, military, and economic support are ranked as more intense than collaboration. To overcome this potentially problematic ranking of formal cooperative events, we construct a dummy variable that indicates whether state dyads engaged in events that result in a public, signed agreement at least once in a given year. These events include ratifying a decision, making a substantial agreement, or collaborating.

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To construct our explanatory variables, we code states that received a score of six or higher on the POLITY IV democracy scale as democracies (Marshall, Jaggers, and Gurr 2010; Mattes and Rodriguez 2014). For all other states, we employ Geddes et al.’s (2014) categorization of autocratic regime types, which differentiates among personalist, military, monarchical and single party regimes. We created an additional binary variable coding whether a state is an absolute monarchy. Included in this category are monarchies that have hereditary succession and whose leaders rule absolutely (they face neither audience costs nor constraints). Specifically, we took the list of states Geddes et al. codes as monarchies and then eliminated monarchies who scored higher than 1 on the Political Constraints Index, which scores states based on the feasibility of policy change contingent on existing political institutions (Henisz 2006). After scoring each partner, we constructed dummy variables indicating the dyadic combination of regime types. To identify control variables, we draw from competing explanations of low levels of formal cooperation – or preferences for informal cooperation – outlined in the section on existing literature. First, we integrate Powell’s (2015) binary classification of whether a given state has an Islamic legal system (i.e., a state whose legal system is substantially based on or influenced by Sharia law) to construct a binary variable that indicates whether both states in a dyad have an Islamic legal system. Second, we use Ross and Voeten’s (2015) dummy variable that indicates whether a state is a major oil exporter (i.e., its oil exports make up at least 50 percent of total exports in a given year) to construct a binary variable that indicates whether states in a given dyad are both major oil exporters. Since many absolute monarchies are in the Middle East, we control for whether both states in a given dyad are in the Middle East.19 We also draw on the COW territorial contiguity data set to code whether two countries in a given dyad share

19 When defining countries in the Middle East, we include all 22 Arab League members as well as Israel and Turkey.

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a land or sea border. Finally, we control for whether state dyads have major power status,20 are both wealthy,21 are characterized by stability,22 and have alliance ties.23

4.2 Monadic Data Set Construction

A key aspect of our theory is that, when cooperating with leaders of other regime types, absolute monarchs will use formal design mechanisms to optimize the benefits they receive from cooperation. To probe this part of our theory, we exploit Koremenos’ (2016) COIL data set, which consists of a random sample of all bilateral and multilateral agreements registered with the UNTS across the issue areas of economics, environment, human rights and security with registration dates through 2006. Koremenos (2016; 2013b) codes the underlying cooperation problems24 and design characteristics of these agreements, including the degree of precision and delegated dispute resolution, both of which we engage.

4.3. Case study

Lastly, we assess the causal mechanisms driving the relationship between rule of law (or absence thereof) in absolute monarchies and informal international cooperation through an in-depth case study of the informal interactions among GCC member states that produced secret territorial agreements throughout the 1950s and 1970s as well as the secret 2012-2014 Riyadh Agreements. This case study allows us to assess process–based aspects of informal, collusive cooperation that cannot be easily captured through events data. In particular, the firm and management literatures highlight two indicators of cartels that we look for in our cases: when policies across different actors are strongly

20 Major powers, particularly Western and democratic major powers, may have more influence over agreement design relative to their partner (Drezner 2008; Stone 2011). 21 We define a state as wealthy if they are in the top 25% of all countries in terms of their total GDP, drawing from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators. 22 This binary variable indicates whether both country regimes in a dyad have been stable (i.e., not experienced armed conflict) for at least 5 years based on POLITY IV durable variable. 23 This is a binary variable that indicates whether a dyad is part of the same alliance, drawing from the ATOP data set. 24 The COIL research agenda’s premise is that states choose particular design features because those provisions help them most effectively resolve the problems that arise when they attempt to cooperate.

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and positively correlated (essentially uniform across several related policy dimensions), and when there is low variation in policy implementation (Harrington 2006). We recognize that information about informal cooperation, particularly agreements that are secret and sensitive in nature, is difficult to access and often biased. To overcome these problems in our case study, we draw from a diverse set of primary-source materials, including historical documents, agreement texts, and officials’ public statements. We also draw from ten in–depth interviews conducted with relevant policy makers and academics in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the UAE, and the US.25 Triangulating across these sources helps us minimize potential bias and strengthens the inferences we draw from the available data. 5. Findings

5.1. Regime Type and Informal Cooperation Table 3 presents descriptive statistics about the frequency of the events we argue coincide with informal cooperation. Partners most often accept or agree to proposals and invitations, with this type of event characterizing almost 40% of events indicative of informal cooperation. An example of this event includes Senior Hungarian and Romanian officials agreeing to cooperate to encourage Romanian refugees in Hungary to return voluntarily. Engaging in discussions and negotiations are the next most frequent type of informal cooperation. An example of engaging in negotiations includes the president of the French National Assembly holding talks with leaders of Romania’s new government, marking the first high–level Western delegation to visit Romania since the revolution. Traveling to meet and hosting a meeting are the next most frequent events. Examples include Iraqi President Saddam Hussein arriving in Jordan for an unannounced visit and Russian President Boris Yeltsin hosting the Japanese Prime Minister for an informal meeting aimed at establishing close personal relations between the two leaders. Descriptive statistics about the frequencies of different types of formal cooperation are presented in Table A.3 in the appendix.

25 For more information about how these interviews were conducted, see the appendix.

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Figure 2 illustrates relative trends of informal cooperation over time by dyad type. Specifically, the figure shows the frequency of informal cooperation as a percentage of total cooperative events for each dyad type and year. Interestingly, Figure 2 suggests that informal cooperation among joint democratic dyads has slightly decreased over time – in 1997, joint democratic dyads’ informal cooperation dipped and remained below the mean intensity of informal cooperation (horizontal dashed line). Conversely, informal cooperation between joint absolute monarchy dyads remains relatively higher than joint democratic dyads, except for a dip in 1999.26

26 The percentage of informal events that occurred between joint absolute monarchy dyads substantially dropped in 1999 as well, indicating that there were lower levels of cooperation overall in this year. As mentioned previously, rivalries between Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Qatar led these monarchs to boycott meetings, likely depressing overall levels of informal cooperation between absolute monarchs in 1999.

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As a first step toward examining absolute monarchies’ propensity for informal cooperation, Table 4 presents the mean intensity of informal cooperation between various dyads to probe whether dyads of absolute monarchies are significantly different with respect to informal cooperation. There are 210 joint absolute monarchy dyads (0.12% of the dyadic observations in the data set), with a mean intensity of informal cooperation of 1.08.27 Comparatively, there are 43,553 joint democratic dyads (24.92% of the dyadic observations in the data set), with a mean intensity of informal cooperation of 0.15.

27 With respect to Table 4, the category ‘Other dyads’ consists of at least one government that Geddes et al. (2014) coded as having a ‘mixed’ regime type, e.g., a mix of military-personalist characteristics.

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Using joint democratic dyads as the baseline, Table 4 indicates that joint absolute monarchy dyads have the highest mean levels of informal cooperation and have significantly higher mean levels of informal cooperation than do joint democratic dyads.28 Moreover, all other joint autocratic dyad types have lower mean levels of informal cooperation than absolute monarchies. This difference is statistically significant and supports our argument that, unlike other autocrats that face institutional constraints and must implement policies more transparently, absolute monarchs are uniquely able to engage in informal cooperation. Additionally, mean levels of informal cooperation for dyads of absolute monarchies and other regime types are lower than the joint democratic baseline. This statistically significant difference reinforces our argument that absolute monarchs selectively use formal and informal cooperative mechanisms, with absolute monarchs behaving in a cartel–like fashion with each other but not with others.

28 Our data set has a low number of joint absolute monarchy dyads for two reasons. First, the time period of events examined spans 1990 to 2004. This, coupled with the exclusion restrictions outlined in section 4.1, implies that the only absolute monarchies included are Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, Swaziland, and Brunei.

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Table 5 demonstrates the effects of regime type on the intensity of formal and informal cooperation across pure and mixed dyads, using joint democratic dyads as the baseline

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category. We use the generalized estimating equations (GEE) method to estimate generalized linear models and logit models.29 Table 5 confirms core aspects of the absolutist logic. First, our models indicate that pairs of absolute monarchies are the only dyads that informally cooperate more and formally cooperate less than joint democratic dyads. Similarly, all other joint autocratic dyads both informally and formally cooperate less than pairs of democracies. These statistically significant differences confirm our expectation that absolute monarchs – unlike other autocrats – have the ability to use secretive, cartel-like informal agreements when cooperating with each other.30 Second, Table 5 illustrates that absolute monarchs are less likely to engage in informal cooperation with all other regime types relative to joint democratic dyads; this difference is statistically significant and strengthens our assertion that absolute monarchs rationally select formal mechanisms when cooperating with regimes that face greater domestic constraints and must implement policies with greater transparency. Table 5 also indicates that joint Islamic law states (joint ILS) informally cooperate significantly more than joint democratic dyads, although not at the same levels as joint absolute monarchy dyads. The positive and not statistically significant coefficients on formal cooperation indicate that joint ILS dyads formally cooperate at about the same rates as joint democratic dyads. These findings challenge the competing hypothesis that the Islamic nature of states’ legal systems make them inherently prefer informal rather than formal cooperative mechanisms.

29 We specified a first-order autoregressive correlation matrix in our models. We use the GEE method because it estimates population-averaged (marginal) coefficients from correlated data, allowing us to compare changes in the mean levels of formal and informal cooperation across subpopulations like dyad types (Zorn 2001; Hardin and Hilbe 2003). Put differently, using a GEE model allows us to obtain the average effect of dyad type on informal cooperation (Zeger and Liang 1986). Previous scholarship that examines the effect of regime type on various types of international behavior has used this modeling technique (e.g., Oneal and Russett 2001; Mattes and Rodriguez 2014). 30 Because the events ‘Collaborate,’ ‘Mediate talks,’ ‘Agree to mediate,’ ‘Request to mediate,’ and ‘Promise to mediate,’ may indicate informal cooperation, we ran the same models above including these events in our measure of informal cooperation. The direction, magnitude, and significance of our coefficients are robust to these category changes.

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Because absolute monarchies are largely time invariant, it may be that other factors associated with joint absolute monarchy dyads confound the effect on informal cooperation. To deal with dyad–invariant heterogeneity and minimize potential omitted variable bias, we also estimate a generalized least squares (GLS) random effects model with the same control variables. Our results are robust to this model change. In fact, joint ILS dyad’s positive effect on Formal Average cooperation and the joint absolute monarchy’s negative effect on Formal Average cooperation become statistically significant. We present the full estimations for our random effects model in Table A.4 in the appendix. Moreover, because joint absolute monarchy dyads are not mutually exclusive from joint ILS dyads (i.e., there are dyads that are coded as joint absolute monarchy dyads and joint ILS dyads), it is important to disaggregate and assess the differential effects of Islamic legal systems and absolute monarchy regime type in the dyadic context. As a first step towards assessing these variables’ effects, we calculate the Pearson’s correlation co-efficient for joint ILS and joint absolute monarchy dyads, which is 0.23, indicating that these variables are positively but weakly correlated. Second, we present two additional population–averaged models in Table A.5 and A.6 in the appendix, dropping joint absolute monarchy dyads in the first and dropping joint ILS dyads in the second. The significance of the coefficients for both variables remain robust across the models for both informal and formal cooperation.

5.2 Do Absolute Monarchies Make Rational Design Choices? Our theory about the absolutist logic relies on a critical assumption: absolute monarchs rationally select agreement design mechanisms when cooperating with other regime types. In this section, we probe this assumption by examining whether absolute monarchs’ regime type influence the likelihood that their UNTS–registered agreements possess two formal design characteristics: precise language31 and delegated dispute

31 For the measure of precise language, we draw from Koremenos (2016), who codes the precision of an agreement, namely the “degree of precision surrounding the main prescriptions, proscriptions, and/or authorizations embodied in an international agreement” (2016: 159). The precision variable is ordinal and takes four ascending values: (1) very vague; (2) somewhat vague; (3) somewhat precise; and (4) very precise.

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resolution.32 Our independent variable is binary and captures whether at least one state signatory is an absolute monarchy.33 Not a single agreement in the COIL sample is composed exclusively of absolute monarchies. Because certain design characteristics have been shown to vary with the particular underlying cooperation problems the agreements address, we control for the relevant cooperation problems (Koremenos 2016). Empirically, we expect null results because it would indicate that, when absolute monarchs cooperate with other regime types, they use the formal design mechanisms necessary to resolve underlying cooperation problems; secret, cartel-like behavior would be precluded given the domestic characteristics of other regime types.34 Table 6 presents our models with coefficients and marginal effects in adjacent columns, using democracies as the baseline for comparison.35 As expected, Table 6 reports null findings, Specifically, Table 6 shows that UNTS agreements with at least one absolute monarchy use precise language and delegated dispute resolution at similar rates as those that include no absolute monarchy. Although not statistically significant, marginal effects indicate that, when one of the parties is an absolute monarchy, the probability that an agreement contains very precise language (i.e., Precision=4) increases by 10 percentage points and the probability that an agreement includes externally delegated dispute resolution decreases by 14 percentage points.36 Table A.7. in the appendix indicates that the magnitude, direction, and significance of the coefficients of absolute monarchies and

32 For the measure of externally delegated dispute resolution, we draw from Koremenos (2016), who defines formal (i.e., delegated) dispute resolution mechanisms as those which stipulate third–party arbitration and/or adjudication with the third party being external to agreement membership as opposed to a subset of the member states (what Koremenos defines as internal delegation). 33 Our other regime binary variables are coded similarly. For example, our variable ‘Personalist Regimes’ codes whether at least one state signatory has a personalist regime. 34 Our results also call into question existing literature’s assertion that Islamic law states have a non–instrumental preference for less formalized dispute resolution and that Islamic law states tend to use informal design characteristics. It is important to note that, for absolute monarchies and states with Islamic legal systems, the Pearson’s correlation co-efficient is 0.35, indicating the weak correlation between the variables. 35 It is important to note that we include issue area dummies and use human rights as the baseline for issue area comparison (the excluded variable) because the COIL sample is random conditional on issue area. As such, the coefficients on the issue areas are relative to human rights agreements. 36 It is possible that we do not have enough power to statistically detect effects of substantively meaningful size.

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Islamic law states remain consistent when we drop variables indicating Islamic law states and absolute monarchies respectively from the models.37

37 We should note that the magnitude and lack of significance of the coefficients do not change when we run the model with unclustered robust standard errors. Our results also remain robust when we include Uncertainty about the State of the World and Uncertainty about Behavior, two cooperation problems that Koremenos (2016) includes in her analysis of delegated dispute resolution but for which she finds no theoretical justification and no statistical significance.

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5.3. Case study: Arab Monarchies and Informal Agreements

We use our case studies to probe important process-based aspects of the absolutist logic. We describe how Arab monarchs implement domestic policies nontransparently and without constraints. We show how, even after these monarchs established GCC mechanisms to facilitate formal cooperation among their kingdoms, they consistently opted to resolve their territorial disputes and engage in security cooperation through secret, cartel-like agreements. And we trace how, after the 2011 Arab uprisings, Arab monarchs implemented several informal agreements that both reflected and undergirded their ability to execute policies nontransparently and unilaterally at the domestic level. In general, Gulf monarchs implement domestic policies nontransparently and without any real institutional constraints. Despite the fact that Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE are based on tribal political structures (Barnett and Gause, 1998: 164–167), and have parliaments or family coalitions that potentially constrain the monarch’s behavior, all ten interviewees stated that parliaments in these countries were, at best, weakly able to constrain monarchs’ behaviors and only in specific issue areas, such as domestic economic policy. Of all interviewees, no one could identify a single government official, institution, or family coalition that could check or constrain the behaviors of the King and Crown Prince in each GCC state, particularly in terms of foreign policy development and implementation. For example, the Qatari and Emirati monarchs have historically held the position of foreign minister. Similarly, the Saudi King overhauled all top government positions in December 2018, helping the Crown Prince further consolidate power after heavy international criticism for the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. This shake-up included appointing a new Minister of Foreign Affairs and reshuffling members of the Supreme Council, which is headed by the Crown Prince (who is also the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense) and largely responsible for the Kingdom’s security policy (Batrawy 2018). Historically, Gulf monarchies have conducted all substantive security and political cooperation through informal elite–level discussions. In the late 1950s, the Saudi Arabian and Emirati monarchs resolved their territorial dispute through an unwritten

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agreement in which Saudi Arabia dropped its claims to the Buraimi and al–Ain regions in exchange for the UAE granting a Saudi land corridor through Khor al–Udaid (Schofield 2011). Similarly, although Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Oman resolved additional territorial disputes and natural resource distribution through the 1974 Treaty of Jeddah, the text of the treaty remained secret until the countries agreed to publish it in 1995, a full two decades after the agreement was originally concluded (Schofield 2011). As elaborated below, even though Gulf monarchs designed and established the GCC to facilitate formal cooperation among their countries, they continually eschew these mechanisms, instead relying on informal, secret agreements that exist outside of GCC infrastructure.

5.3.1. Lack of Formal Cooperation Among GCC Members GCC member states have few formal agreements with each other, particularly compared to the large number of UNTS agreements each has with states outside the region displayed in Table 7. As a comparison, Liechtenstein has a total of 68 UNTS–registered bilateral agreements, 34 of which (i.e., 50%) are with Switzerland.

Table 7: Frequency of UNTS Agreements for GCC Member States*

GCC member state Total agreements with other GCC members

Total agreements with non–GCC states

Saudi Arabia 15 (9.7%) 139 (90.3%) Kuwait 3 (2.5%) 115 (97.5%) Qatar 7 (8.0%) 80 (91.9%) United Arab Emirates 7 (7.2%) 90 (92.8%) Oman 4 (4.4%) 87 (95.6%) Bahrain 8 (12.3%) 57 (87.7%)

* The numbers reflect the total number of bilateral and closed multilateral UNTS agreements.

Although Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, and Qatar formed the GCC in 1981 to strengthen member states’ economic, financial, social, and cultural cooperation in the face of regional security threats, like the 1979 Iranian revolution and

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the 1980 Iran–Iraq war (Nuruzzaman 2015),38 almost all substantive cooperation occurs outside of GCC mechanisms, with the monarchs addressing issues informally as they arise (Tripp 1995: 293). Illustratively, besides the creation of the largely symbolic Peninsula Shield Force in 1982, Gulf monarchies have not passed any formal security agreements through GCC mechanisms (Bronner and Slackman 2011). In fact, the GCC bureaucracy allows Gulf monarchs to mask their informal cooperation by justifying their collusive actions through post-hoc claims that they acted under GCC auspices. Besides the secretariat, which oversees the implementation of GCC policies, the GCC bureaucracy consists of two main intergovernmental bodies - the Supreme Council, which consists of the six monarchs and formally meets once a year, and the Ministerial Council, which consists of the six foreign ministers and formally meets every three months (Guazzone 1988: 147). Gulf monarchs can easily bypass this infrastructure. For example, Article 10 of the Charter states that the Supreme Council can convene a “Commission for the Settlement of Disputes” on an ad hoc basis tailored to the specific needs of disputing member states. Although the Charter does not define what constitutes a dispute, relevant government officials have made statements suggesting that they consider economic, territorial, and military disputes to fall under the purview of the Commission (Pinfari 2009). Moreover, because the Commission acts as a nested recommending body within the Supreme Council, it cannot bind member states to adhere to any formal resolution reached. Moreover, the few agreements that are published through the GCC are vague, provide for informal, bilateral dispute resolution, and allow member states to place substantively important contingencies on their commitments, facilitating elite-driven, cartel-like cooperation. The GCC is undergirded by only four formal agreements (excluding its Charter)39 and ten laws and regulations, all published through the GCC Secretariat.40 Comparatively, the EU has more than 40 treaties41 and almost 300 general regulations

38 Several interviewees suggested that GCC member states sought cooperation in order to prevent domestic upheaval. 39 The 2010 Agreement Establishing the Monetary Union was only signed by Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait. 40 For the complete list of GCC laws and regulations, see Table A.8 in the Appendix. 41 See Other Treaties and Protocols, EUR-Lex at: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/collection/eu-law/treaties/treaties-other.html. Accessed on July 2, 2018.

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pertaining to agriculture alone.42 Table 8 lists the four formal agreements published through the GCC Secretariat and provides information on whether each mentions dispute resolution mechanisms, whether these mechanisms stipulate informal resolution between members, and whether they allow member states to place contingencies on their commitments. Table 8 indicates that only half of the agreements explicitly mention dispute resolution; the two agreements that do mention dispute resolution encourage parties to resolve these disputes bilaterally and outside GCC bureaucracy. Moreover, all four agreements allow member states to place contingencies on fulfilling substantive commitments outlined in the agreements, ranging from non-fulfillment due to ‘local situations’ to refusing judicial decisions that would threaten the sovereignty or order of the state required to implement the decision.

Table 8: GCC Agreements and their Characteristics

GCC Agreement Year Ratified

Dispute Resolution?

Only Informal Resolution?

Contingencies?

Convention on the Implementation of Judgements, Disputes, and Judicial Declarations

1997 No -

Member states can refuse to execute judicial declarations if their implementation relates to a political crime committed by the state or if such execution may prejudice the sovereignty or public order of the state.

Economic Agreement between the GCC states

2002 No -

Member states may be temporarily exempted from applying provisions depending on local situations.

Convention on the Conservation of Wildlife and Natural Habitats

2004 Yes

Yes: disputes are resolved through direct negotiations between the parties.

Member states can place reservations on any of the required methods of killing a particular species. Members can also withdraw from the agreement at any time via an official letter.

42See the Directory of EU Legislation, EUR-Lex at: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/browse/directories/legislation.html?root_default=CC_1_CODED%3D03&displayProfile=allConsDocProfile&classification=in-force#arrow_03. Accessed on July 2, 2018.

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Agreement Establishing the Monetary Union of the Gulf Cooperation Council

2010 Yes

Yes: disputes are resolved in an amicable manner in accordance with agreed upon arbitration rules between the parties.

Only Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain signed; other GCC states may join if they meet the necessary criteria for economic performance and approval of the Supreme Council.

In addition to these agreements, there are ten laws and regulations appended to the GCC Charter (these ten laws and regulations are listed in Table A.8 in the appendix). Of these ten regulations, more than half pertain to regulating livestock movement and environmental protection; the other half concern trademark and patent systems. Arguably, the clearest example of Gulf monarchs using GCC bureaucracy to conceal their informal cooperation is their approach to the mediation of intra-member disputes. More often than not, member states involved in disputes directly appeal to other Gulf monarchies to step in as third–party mediators rather than operate through the (albeit vague) dispute settlement and arbitration mechanisms outlined in the GCC Charter (Pinfari 2009; Nuruzzaman 2015).43 In fact, of the three border disputes between Gulf states, all have been unilaterally mediated by other Gulf monarchies. For example, Saudi Arabia mediated the Harwar Island dispute between Bahrain and Qatar in 1986 and 1987; official GCC involvement was limited to overseeing the Saudi–brokered agreement ex post. Kuwait mediated the 1992 territorial conflict between Qatar and Saudi Arabia without formally convening the Commission (Bercovitch and Fretter 2004). Although these successes won the GCC significant recognition as an effective mediator, GCC bureaucracy and institutions made no direct institutional efforts in resolving these disputes (Barnett and Gause 1998; Guazzone 1988; Tow 1990; Nuruzzaman 2015).

5.3.2. The 2012 Joint Security and 2013-2014 Riyadh Agreements

43 Additionally, of the ten interviews conducted, all participants agreed that the six GCC member states cooperate at elite levels outside of the GCC bureaucracy.

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On March 14, 2011, Saudi Arabia and the UAE bilaterally deployed troops and police to Bahrain after weeks of massive Shiite-led protests against the Sunni monarchy threatened its viability (Hamid 2011). Fearing similar widespread protests in their own countries, Arab monarchies implicitly understood that to maintain their stability, they would need to pursue coordinated policies to stymie domestic opposition and criticism (Smith–Diwan 2017). Because of regime similarity, GCC member states recognized that criticism of one Arab monarchy could and would be applied across all monarchs, weakening their legitimate authority. GCC member states understood that their collective reassertion of state authority over nonstate Islamic political actors would stabilize and thus mutually benefit all authoritarian monarchies affected by the Arab uprisings (Smith–Diwan 2017). In particular, the UAE and Saudi Arabia–both early opponents of political Islam–saw the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic political groups as a threat to their strategic positioning in the region (Beck 2015). As one interviewee stated, GCC member states viewed Qatar, which has traditionally promoted Islamic pluralism among domestic political actors to develop its regime, as violating this norm of autocratic consolidation. Specifically, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain accused Qatar of funding and providing safe haven for Islamic extremist groups, including some associated with Iran, thereby threatening the security of Gulf states (Beck 2015). Although the Qatari monarchy publicly denied the accusations, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain broke diplomatic relations with Qatar by recalling their ambassadors in March 2014 (Smith-Diwan 2017). They accused the Qatari monarchy of undermining their key security concerns and interfering with their internal affairs by promo