Soft Balancing, Binding or Bandwagoning? Understanding Institutional Responses to Power Disparities in the Americas

Abstract

What strategies will states pursue in managing their relations with more powerful neighbours? International Relations scholarship identifies a wide range of policy options open to secondary states, including soft balancing, bandwagoning and institutional binding. We provide a conceptual framework to distinguish between these similar and often conflated institutional strategies on the basis of two dimensions: Threat perception and inclusiveness. We then apply this framework to the inter-American system. Analyzing original data on treaty action between 1946 and 2015, we find that secondary states' adherence to multilateral agreements increases when the United States participates and when states do not perceive the hegemon to be a threat. These findings suggest that institutional binding captures the dynamics of inter-American cooperation more adequately than either soft balancing or bandwagoning: States balance against perceived threats but bind their friends.