Recent studies on international regulatory regimes' compliance have argued that compliance is generally quite good, this high level of compliance has been attained with little attention to enforcement, those compliance issues that do exist are best addressed as management issues rather than enforcement issues, and the management approach rather than the enforcement approach holds the key to the evolution of future regulatory cooperation in the international arena. The descriptive results are essentially accurate, but endogeneity and selection issues seriously taint the policy implications. States creating treaties that ask them to do nothing more than they would do in the absence of a treaty often lead to high rates of compliance. Self-interest and enforcement both play important roles in situations when disobedience does occur and the consequences of selection are diminished.
