Inter-Organizational Cooperation Agreement (IOCA) Data

The Inter-Organizational Cooperation Agreement (IOCA) dataset has been developed as part of the research project “Overlapping Regionalism in Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe Compared”, which was funded by the German Research Council (grant number PA 1257/7-1; 421167407) The research questions guiding the development of the dataset are: Why do some but not all overlapping international organizations (IOs) establish cooperation agreements with each other? How can variation in the institutionalization of inter-organizational cooperation designs be explained? In this dataset, we are code cooperation between RIOs (regional international organizations as IOs with regional membership criteria) that can be traced through written documentation. There needs to be a paper trail (= necessary condition). This includes written results/documentation, such as treaties, agreements, joint statements, RIO press reports, or any other official documentation, also from RIO websites, etc. It is sufficient that documentation is prepared and/or presented by one of the concerned RIOs (i.e. document found on the website of one RIO but not the other).