Article Why Do States Join Some Universal Treaties but Not Others? An Analysis of Treaty Commitment Preferences

Preferences are crucial to the analysis of many key questions regarding interna-tional institutions. This article analyzes the key predictors of states ’ preferences over universal treaties. It does so by using a spatial-modeling approach that con-ceptualizes a treaty commitment preference space that includes agreements across multiple policy areas. I analyze the treaty commitment preference space in order to better understand the key dimensions of these preferences. I find that economics, and particularly trade, is the clearest and most consistent predictor of treaty commitment preferences, including with respect to many treaties in non-economic policy areas