Leveraging Effective Provision of International Public Goods: A Limit On Hegemonic Leadership.

It is often impossible or irrational for the hegemon directly to provide international

public goods itself. However, it can still influence supply by using its leverage,

bribing or threatening other states to contribute. Often supply will not increase unless

some essential group of states all contribute. This makes it easy for another major

power that wants a lower level of provision than the hegemon to block the hegemon’s

influence attempts: if it cannot veto or does not wish to use its veto, it only needs to

exert countervailing power to ensure that one essential state blocks action; whereas

the hegemon must get all essential states on side. By formalizing this idea as a spatial

veto game with sidepayments we are able to show that the hegemon must have

considerable predominance over the major power if provision is to be higher than the

major power wants, depending on the number of essential states and the disposition of

preferences. Using data on international environmental problems, we find support for

our hypothesis.