SynthesisProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2022
International treaties have mostly failed to produce their intended effects.
Synthesis in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed.
- Beyond polarization for coexistence with biodiversity: Reply to Bruskotter et al. (2025).Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2026Article
- Speech Repression and Threat Narratives in Politics: Social Goals and Cognitive Foundations.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Review
- Review
- Pathogens and planetary change.Nature reviews. Biodiversity · 2025Article
- Effects of student human rights ordinances on mental health among middle and high school students in South Korea: a difference-in-differences analysis.Epidemiology and health · 2025Article
- Article
- The latent net effectiveness of institutional complexes: a heuristic model.Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences · 2024Article
- Occupation in the Anthropocene and Ethical Relationality.Canadian journal of occupational therapy. Revue canadienne d'ergotherapie · 2024Article
- Developing a protocol on antimicrobial resistance through WHO's pandemic treaty will protect lives in future pandemics.Globalization and health · 2024Article
- The planetary commons: A new paradigm for safeguarding Earth-regulating systems in the Anthropocene.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Costing the intergovernmental negotiating body (INB) process.PLOS global public health · 2024Article
- Ethical and Practical Considerations for an Agreement to Ensure Equitable Vaccine Access Comment on "More Pain, More Gain! The Delivery of COVID-19 Vaccines and the Pharmaceutical Industry's Role in Widening the Access Gap".International journal of health policy and management · 2024Article
- A Critical Evaluation of International Agreements Towards a Revised Categorization for Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs).Environmental management · 2023Article
- Independent monitoring and the new pandemic agreement.BMJ global health · 2023Review
- The importance of accountability in tackling future pandemics.Lancet (London, England) · 2023Article
- Global decadal assessment of life below water and on land.iScience · 2023Article
- Transforming Capitalism, From Top Down to Bottom Up; A Response to the Recent Commentaries.International journal of health policy and management · 2023Article
- Computer clinical decision support that automates personalized clinical care: a challenging but needed healthcare delivery strategy.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2022Article
- Between rules and resistance: moving public health emergency responses beyond fear, racism and greed.BMJ global health · 2022Review
- Editorial: Whither globalization and health in an era of geopolitical uncertainty?Globalization and health · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
31 authors.
Funding
Abstract
There are over 250,000 international treaties that aim to foster global cooperation. But are treaties actually helpful for addressing global challenges? This systematic field-wide evidence synthesis of 224 primary studies and meta-analysis of the higher-quality 82 studies finds treaties have mostly failed to produce their intended effects. The only exceptions are treaties governing international trade and finance, which consistently produced intended effects. We also found evidence that impactful treaties achieve their effects through socialization and normative processes rather than longer-term legal processes and that enforcement mechanisms are the only modifiable treaty design choice with the potential to improve the effectiveness of treaties governing environmental, human rights, humanitarian, maritime, and security policy domains. This evidence synthesis raises doubts about the value of international treaties that neither regulate trade or finance nor contain enforcement mechanisms.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.