Investigates whether internal (domestic) factors may be responsible for influencing why a state resists or joins international treaty regimes. Incorporating two case studies on the US and China, this book traces the impact of domestic institutional structure, state capacity and internal social norms on state decisions to resist or participate. '...provides a sustained account of the relationship between domestic political orders and participation in international treaty regimes. A particularly appealing feature of the analysis is the combination of in-depth case studies of American and Chinese participation in human rights regimes and extensive descriptive statistics covering a much broader range of treaty regimes. Oran R Young, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA