Barbara Koremenos
Professor of World Politics
Department of Political Science
University of Michigan505 South State Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1045
734.763.8842
[email protected]
Barbara Koremenos was born in Indiana (the diverse and urban Northwest part of the state), went to Kalamazoo College in Michigan, and graduate school at the University of Chicago. She therefore is a Midwesterner at heart and only lasted seven years in Southern California.
She went through college on a theater scholarship for acting. She also took a bunch of economics classes because she felt that she would learn things to help her run the family kitchen and bath business. Midway through college, her brother-in-law took over the business but, by that time, she liked economics even though it taught her nothing about kitchen and baths. Her senior year, she was offered a research assistantship at the Brookings Institution. She immediately found out what Brookings was. It was there she was first introduced to theories of political economy and heavy-duty politics.
She now draws on her economics background and her interest in politics and demonstrates that international agreements and institutions are consequential and their specific design features are, in great part, what make them stable and hence consequential. She uses economic methodology to show that their features vary in systematic and important ways and are deserving of focused research. Like scholars in international law, she takes seriously the actual provisions and details of international agreements and organizations. However, she goes beyond the descriptive work that characterizes much of international law to show theoretically that the careful choice of these provisions makes international cooperation both more likely and more robust.
Koremenos has been a Kroc Fellow at Notre Dame and currently has affiliations with both the Liu Institute and the Kellogg Institute. She has published in both political science and law journals, including American Political Science Review, International Organization, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Legal Studies, and Law and Contemporary Problems.
Koremenos received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award for her research — the first such winner to study international relations and law. She has been invited to give seminars at academic institutions in the United States, Canada, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, and Switzerland. She has spoken at the American Embassy in Copenhagen and for the UN Director-General’s Office, and was part of a small-group panel at the State Department to discuss issues of nuclear proliferation.
Her new book, The Continent of International Law: Explaining Agreement Design (Cambridge University Press), just won the Best Book Award from the ILaw Section of the International Studies Association 2017 as well as being the runner up prize for the Chadwick Alger Prize, International Studies Association, for best book on international organization and multilateralism.
Other Publications by Barbara Koremenos
“The Role of State Leadership in the Incidence of International Cooperation,” Global Policy 6 (3): 237–246, September 2015.
“Organizational Leadership and Collective Action in International Governance: An Introduction,” Global Policy 6: 234-237, September 2015 (with Aseem Prakash, Adrienne Heritier, and Eric Brousseau).
“The Continent of International Law,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 57: 652 – 680, August 2013.
“What’s Left Out and Why? Informal Provisions within Formal International Law,” Review of International Organizations, Vol. 8, 2: 137-62, June 2013.
“When, What, and Why do States Choose to Delegate?,” Law and Contemporary Problems, 71: 151-92, Winter 2008.
“If Only Half of International Agreements Have Dispute Resolution Provisions, Which Half Needs Explaining?” Journal of Legal Studies, 36: 189, January 2007.
“Contracting around International Uncertainty,” American Political Science Review 99: 549-65, November 2005.
Reprinted in Beth A. Simmons, ed,. International Law, London: Sage Publications, 2008: 549-565.
“Leadership and Bureaucracy: The Folk Theorem and Real Folks,” Rationality and Society 17: 35-79, February 2005.
“Moving Forward, One Step at a Time,” International Organization 57: 431-44, Spring 2003 (with Duncan Snidal).
“Can Cooperation Survive Changes in Bargaining Power? The Case of Coffee,” Journal of Legal Studies 31, 1:259-83, January 2002.
“The Rational Design of International Institutions,” International Organization 55, 4: 761-800, Autumn 2001 (with Charles Lipson and Duncan Snidal).
Reprinted in Joel Trachtman, ed., Library of Essays in International Relations Series – International Law and Politics, Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2008.
Reprinted in Rational Design: Explaining the Form of International Institutions, Cambridge University Press, Jaunary 2004.
“Rational Design: Looking Back to Move Forward,” International Organization 55, 4: 1051-82, Autumn 2001 (with Charles Lipson and Duncan Snidal).
Reprinted in Rational Design: Explaining the Form of International Institutions, Cambridge University Press, Jaunary 2004.
“Loosening the Ties that Bind: A Learning Model of Agreement Flexibility,” International Organization 55, 2: 289-325, Spring 2001.
Reprinted in Beth A. Simmons and Richard H. Steinberg, eds,. International Law and International Relations, Cambridge University Press, 2007.
“Exit, No Exit” Duke Journal of International and Comparative Law 21, 1: 81-119, Fall 2010 (with Allison Nau).
“Monitoring Provisions in International Agreements” in Jacob Cogan, Ian Hurd, and Ian Johnstone, eds., Oxford Handbook on International Organizations, Oxford University Press, 2016 (with Timm Betz).
“Institutionalism and International Law” in Jeffrey A. Dunnoff and Mark A. Pollack, eds., International Law and International Relations: Synthesizing Insights from Interdisciplinary Scholarship, Cambridge University Press, 2013.
“The Design of Dispute Settlement Procedures in International Agreements” in Jeffrey A. Dunnoff and Mark A. Pollack, eds., International Law and International Relations: Synthesizing Insights from Interdisciplinary Scholarship, Cambridge University Press, 2013 (with Timm Betz).
“Sustainable Peace Agreements in the Age of International Institutions,” in Richard N. Rosecrance and Arthur A. Stein, editors, No More States? Globalization, Self Determination, and Terrorism, Rowman and Littlefield, 2006.
Rational Design: Explaining the Form of International Institutions, editor, International Organization 55, Autumn 2001 (with Charles Lipson and Duncan Snidal). Special issue.
Reprinted as Rational Design: Explaining the Form of International Institutions, editor, Cambridge University Press, Jaunary 2004 (with Charles Lipson and Duncan Snidal).
“Leadership of a State Agency,” in Donald Kettl and H. Brinton Milward, editors., The State of Public Management, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996 (with Laurence E. Lynn, Jr.).
“U.S. Standing in The World: Causes, Consequences, and the Future.” Public report. Washington,D.C.: American Political Science Association. Task Force on U.S. Standing in World Affairs. 2009. (Co-author)
“U.S. Standing in The World: Causes, Consequences, and the Future.” Long report. Washington,D.C.: American Political Science Association. Task Force on U.S. Standing in World Affairs. 2009. (Co-author)