The Role of Soft Instruments in Creating Hard Consequences in Governance: A Link between Public Policy and Law Case Study: Trafficking in Person Report

The convergence of three streams in the international arena has created a new context for making pressure and influencing the national governance in countries. The state-based approach has shifted to governance, the international indicators have paved the way for remote administration and the legal systems have paid much more attention to soft law instead of hard law. In this study, the common components and capacities of these three streams are explained and it is shown that how this linkage has created a strong synergy for making pressure on states. This paper, using case study methodology, scrutinies “Trafficking in Person Report”. It shows that international soft instruments in the global governance context can result in hard consequences, punishment, sanctions and shaming national states; a mechanism which used to be employed in other ways in the past. Findings of this paper will investigate the process and methods of this new type of governance and will present guidelines for Iran policymaking system in facing with this issue. International programs in the form of soft law will become quasi-binding when they employ indicators. This will increase the validity of these indicators and consequently will strengthen the probability of adherence of the states.