Multilevel Bilateralism and Multilateralism: States' Bilateral and Multilateral Fisheries Treaties and Their Secretariats

Abstract

Actors often face challenges demanding bilateral or multilateral cooperation, each with quite different implications. Analytically separating these levels of activity raises the question whether they are driven by similar or different factors. We argue that to answer such questions, one should treat them as interlocking unipartite and bipartite networks, respectively, in a multilevel network. Here we employ multilevel ERGMs to model how bilateral and multilateral fisheries treaties between states, as well as relationships between multilateral treaties, are structured. We find that states prefer either bilateralism or multilateralism and, amongst multilateral treaties, those that are managed ..