The Concept of Rewarding States in International Law

Abstract

Discussion on why states cooperate and comply with international law has been a burning issue in global discourse. The compliance and cooperation discussion have primarily focused on penalizing and punishing states who do not comply and cooperate with international law. This paper seeks to argue that there is the case of ‘rewarding States,’ which has mainly been undertheorized and, as a result, made unpopular. Instead of penalizing states for not complying and cooperating with international law, they should be made to see the benefits of complying and reward those who comply with serving as a stimulus and incentive to others. Compliance by states should be full not, partial. This is because compliance goes beyond the signing and ratification of a treaty. The fact is that just signing and ratifying a treaty does not translate to true compliance. Apart from being very expensive, penalizing states destabilizes both the state being disciplined and the state issuing the penalty. This paper concludes that the international community should focus more on rewarding states for complying with international law and discourage issuing penalties for states who do not comply. The point about the reward is that it is incentive-prone. It only makes one state well off and no state beleaguered. In other words, the reward makes the state at fault ultimately realize itself and do the needful. This is unlike penalties which are not incentive prone. The reason is because they make the state receiving the penalty always defeated. This study becomes necessary because the positive effect of rewards has been ignored in international law discussion.