How might international institutions matter? To consider this central question of International Relations, we analyze a most-likely case for the importance of materially driven enforcement: the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) use of blacklisting in the global regime targeting money laundering and terrorism financing. Scholars and practitioners often argue that fear of financial harm caused by FATF’s lists explains the near-global commitment to FATF’s standards, even if compliance lags. We search for statistical evidence of this impact across four different measures of financial flows and find that listing is not correlated with financial harm. To explain these null results, we examine bank decision-making and find that the lists’ impact is likely diminished by two overlooked factors: the existence of multiple, competing lists and banks’ access to more fine-grained, client-specific information provided by third-party companies. We interpret this contradiction—a commitment to compliance generated in part by a fear of enforcement, despite a lack of evidence for enforcement’s impact—as a “rational myth.” The results challenge a common understanding of a major global governance regime, confirm ideas about the limited ability of states or International Organizations to control governance outcomes, and advance a new research agenda on the impact of bank decision-making on global governance.

中文翻译：

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全球金融治理中的执法限制：FATF 中的黑名单是理性的神话


国际机构有何重要意义？为了考虑国际关系的这个核心问题，我们分析了一个最有可能证明物质驱动执法重要性的例子：金融行动特别工作组 （FATF） 在针对洗钱和恐怖主义融资的全球制度中使用黑名单。学者和从业者经常争辩说，担心 FATF 名单会造成经济损失，这解释了 FATF 标准几乎全球承诺的原因，即使合规滞后。我们在四种不同的资金流动衡量标准中搜索了这种影响的统计证据，发现上市与财务损害无关。为了解释这些无效结果，我们研究了银行的决策，发现名单的影响可能会因两个被忽视的因素而减弱：多个竞争名单的存在以及银行能够获得第三方公司提供的更细粒度的客户特定信息。我们将这种矛盾解释为“理性神话”，尽管缺乏证据证明执法的影响，但对合规的承诺部分是由于对执法的恐惧。研究结果挑战了对主要全球治理制度的普遍理解，证实了关于国家或国际组织控制治理结果的能力有限的观点，并推进了关于银行决策对全球治理影响的新研究议程。