Draft:Treaty Nesting

Treaty nesting is a term coined by John P. Willerton, Gary Goertz, and Michael Slobodchikoff to describe when previous treaties are explicitly referenced in a treaty. This is important because it challenges traditional views that each treaty is a separate agreement. In fact, treaties are linked together through treaty nesting. In using network analysis, it is possible to visualize how each of the treaties is tied to previous treaties as well as determine which treaties are most important to a relationship because they are most central. Using network analysis provides a way of measuring the effectiveness of a bilateral or multilateral relationship, or even the structure of the relationship, often referred to as a treaty network. Slobodchikoff has also argued that the more nesting there is in a relationship, the less likely there is to be armed conflict between two countries and also determined a state’s preference for maintaining or revising the global order.