Replication Data for: Empowered by Information: Disease Outbreak Reporting at the World Health Organization

Information provision by international organizations (IOs) facilitates international cooperation. However, scholars have rarely explored the heterogeneous enforcement triggered by IO information due to interdependence, and thus, who cooperates. I examine the institutional design of global health surveillance at the World Health Organization (WHO), where disease concealment is prevalent among isolated states due to the stronger border restrictions they face than integrated ones. I argue that the WHO can leverage its intelligence network and disseminate information to trigger outbreak responses, which serve as enforcement against concealment and induce proactive disclosure by those isolated states. Using the International Health Regulations reform as a natural experiment, I show that delegating the WHO the authority over information dissemination increased outbreak reporting by states politically misaligned with the US and its allies. This heterogeneity reveals how interdependence indirectly allows powerful states to discipline their non-allies through information dissemination by IOs.