Digitized Statecraft in Multilateral Treaty Participation

This book is a rarity in that it opens a genuinely creative new vista for understanding global politics as distinguished from international politics, enhancing the vision for understanding global subjects such as multilateral treaties and the Covid-19 virus. Six hundred multilateral treaties deposited in the UN are conceptualized as a bundle of quasi-social contracts by sovereign states. A state’s participation in multilateral treaties is envisaged as digitized statecraft. Using a state’s physical actions and treaties’ attributes, 193 profiles of statecraft are analyzed with the implications for the future of global politics. This book demonstrates that multilateral treaties are both a vehicle and an agency in the globalization trend; thus, both state and international actors influence a state’s joining multilateral treaties. The book represents a marriage of international law and applied information science. It provides a framework for empirical modeling based on artificial intelligence and analyzes this framework in terms of international law and international relations. This book thus creates a new understanding of global politics.

Inoguchi and Le have written a highly original book. The most interesting part of their analysis arises from the regional differences they identify in terms of the number and density of treaties, particularly their description of the "Sinic East." Their multi-volume project, drawing on sources from Machiavelli to machine learning, pushes the boundaries of traditional international relations by drawing on the techniques and technologies available in a Digital Age."

Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO, New America; Bert G. Kerstetter '66 University Professor Emerita of Politics and International Affairs, Princeton University

This is a terrific book Imaginative yet fully solid in research on the differences between the year of promulgation and the year of ratification in multilateral treaty participation of sovereign states along with such a treaty's policy domain and participating states geo-historical-cultural groups. Truly a most original and solidly researched work!

Bruce Russett, Dean Acheson Research Professor of International Politics and Professor of International and Area Studies in the MacMillan Center, Yale University Relatively few books can be identified as “rare”, “innovative”, or “groundbreaking”.  This new volume by two of the field’s most prolific researchers warrants such an attribution. […]This book should be regarded as “must read” by policy makers and policy researchers the world over. Richard J. Estes, Professor, School of Social Policy & Practice, University of Pennsylvania