Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper will discuss the various sets of theories on which we can draw to construct better theories of global environmental politics, particularly drawing on the concepts of issue framing, norm construction, and the interaction of environmental NGOs and coalitions, business actors, media, and publics as political structural elements in the multi-level games that produce global environmental regimes, policy, and practice, within a global political economy. While neo-realists have tended to focus on security issues, and neo-liberals on economic issues, both have addressed the question of conflict and cooperation in the environmental area. Both neo-realist and neo-liberal regime theory have tried to explain how global environmental regimes have developed or been implemented. Theories of hegemonic leadership and, more recently, nonhegemonic cooperation and transnational activist networks, have helped us focus on the interaction of states and international and transnational organizations. This paper will draw on these theories, as well as theories of the global commons and common property resource regimes, of sustainable development, and of norm construction and social learning, including the role of scientists and epistemic communities, that have helped to frame our thinking about global environmental politics. It will argue that a theory of global environmental politics could also usefully incorporate two-level games theory and work from organizational public-policy-making, interest group theory, and the older foreign-policy making literature. It will attempt to situate global environmental politics within the broader question of the international political economy.