International Regimes and Democratic Governance: Political Equality and Influence in Global Institutions

Proponents of cosmopolitan democracy rely primarily on institutional design to make their case for the feasibility of democratic governance at this level. Another strategy seems more plausible: proposing a 'non-ideal' theory in Rawls's sense that examines the social forces and conditions currently promoting democracy at the international level. The strongest forces operating now are various transnational associations that help to produce and monitor regime formation and compliance. Such a highly decentralized form of governance suggests that democratization is thereby promoted by a dense network of associations in international civil society, a global public sphere, and responsive political organizations. However much these forces disperse power through the normative principle of equal access to political influence, they could also fall well short of realizing desirable ideals such as free and open deliberation. In order not to devolve into an interest group pluralism, the decentralized strategy requires that a richer democracy be realized through the legal institutionalization of free and equal access to the global public sphere.     

A Wish List for 21st Century Environmental Policy: Decentralization, Integration, Cooperation, Flexibility, and Enhanced Participation by Citizens and Loc Governments

Jeanne W. Clarke and Daniel McCool, Staking Out the Terrain : Power and Performance Among Natural Resource Agencies (2nd 4.).
Larry S. Luton, The Politics of Garbage : A Community Perspective on Solid Waste Policy Making.
Peter J. May, Raymond J. Burby, Neil J. Ericksen, John W. Handmer, Jennifer E. Dixon, Sarah Michaels, and D. Ingle Smith, Environmental Management and Governance: Intergovernmental Approaches to Hazards and Sustainability .     

Beyond Subsystems: Policy Regimes and Governance

We suggest attention to policy regimes provides a fruitful means for joining the contributions of scholars who study policy processes with those who are concerned with governance challenges. Our research synthesis underscores the limits of existing theorizing about policy processes for problems that span multiple areas of policy and highlights the prospects for and limitations of governing beyond the boundaries of subsystems. We suggest new avenues for theorizing and research in policy processes based on the concept of a boundary‐spanning policy regime. We develop notions about this type of policy regime within the context of the broader literature about regimes in political science, discuss the forces that shape the strength and durability of such regimes, and provide a variety of examples. This synthesis challenges the focus of policy process scholars on subsystems and broadens the traditional focus on policymaking to consideration of the dynamics of governing.     

Explaining Institutional Effectiveness in Australian Environmental Management: An Application of the Haas,Keohane and Levy Model

In their Institutions for the Earth (1993), Haas, Keohane and Levy argue that, at the international level, three fundamental conditions must be met for the effective management of environmental problems. They summarise these conditions as the three 'Cs'-the building of concern; the existence of a suitable contractual environment; and the growth of state capacity. We applied the Haas, Keohane and Levy (HKL) model to three case studies at the national level, in order to ascertain the extent to which the three Cs explained the emergence of successful institutional regimes. We found that two of the three variablesimprovements to the contractual environment and increases in state capacity-had considerable explanatory power. Concern was important in providing the motive force for change, but high levels of concern did not lead to effective institutional regimes unless the other two factors were present. We found a strong reciprocal relationship between state capacity and the contractual environment-the ability to monitor solutions and to generate policy-relevant 'trustable' information, was positively associated with improved negotiating structures and outcomes.     

Systemic Flexibility,Production Fragmentation and Cluster Governance

The recent process of production fragmentation and the rapid growth of firm clusters have been explained by the increasing need for output flexibility. Although the mainstream literature relates flexibility mostly to labour adjustments, this paper investigates sources of flexibility as being related to forms of inter-firm production. Two extreme cases are compared: industrial districts and monopsonistic clusters. The nature and the implications of production flexibility are discussed in both settings. It is argued that the governance structure of industrial districts affects the dynamics of inter-firm linkages, which in turn enables systemic flexibility to be achieved.     

Reshaping Boundaries: International Ethics and Environmental Consciousness in the Early Twentieth Century

As questions of global ethics, struggles over space, place, time and nature occupy much late twentieth-century intellectual debate, this paper analyses some comparable currents of thought at the previous fin de sièGcle . Particular interpretations of nature–society relations emerged within a political and social context marked by widespread concern over the need to rehabilitate British society, in order to confront adequately the challenges of the new century. In transcending the narrow confines of national and imperial citizenship, these visions of nature and the international offered a different model of cultural regeneration and transformation. The work of a group of scientists and public figures associated with the Scottish polymath and prominent anti-imperialist, Patrick Geddes, notably Andrew John Herbertson and Marion Isabel Newbigin, reveals that their support for values of harmony and cooperation central to civic responsibility found common ground across geographical and cultural boundaries and were important components of an international imagination. In promoting these values, their advocacy of both a critical and a practical geography is demonstrated.     

Implementing International Environmental Agreements: The Case of the Wadden Sea

It has been a feature of the past 30 years or so that individual sovereign states have been increasingly willing to partially set aside their own interests in favour of international treaties on pollution control and wildlife protection. It is the political will of the government signatories to such agreements that is the key to successful implementation as that political will provides the legitimate enforceable authority that is necessary to ensure compliance. This paper examines a trilateral agreement made by the Governments of Denmark, Germany and Holland for the protection and management of the Wadden Sea—one of Europe's most important wildlife sites. The examination of that agreement explores the key mechanisms used for its implementation and, in the case of the Wadden Sea, those mechanisms include the operation of key European Union environmental Directives. The paper finds major differences in approach and application of the Birds, Habitats and Environmental Impact Assessment Directives across the Wadden Sea region and argues that these differences undermine the trilateral agreements made by the three governments.     

Russia's Involvement in the International Environmental Process: A Research Report

The paper surveys Russia's engagement, both in terms of policy formulation and implementation, with the main initiatives outlined at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). Although coverage extends through the entire period from 1992 to present, a particular focus is on recent developments under the Putin administration, a period characterized by an ostensibly utilitarian approach to environmental management. Russia's response to the recent World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) is assessed in the broader context of the country's problems in effecting major environmental policy changes.     

International Environmental Treaty Engagement in 19 Democracies

This study examines the regular pattern of involvement of 19 democratic states in relation to 15 international environmental treaties over the past 20 years. An attempt is made to understand what accounts for the international environmental engagement of democratic states through an empirical evaluation of four theories, specifically structural conditions, political institutions, idea-based, and international connectivity theory. Rather than case study analysis or an evaluation of a single country or theory, the value of the study is its comparative statistical evaluation of multiple indicators of four rival theories across 19 countries. Empirical findings reveal that the strongest causal forces underlying collaborative democratic state behavior are the citizenry's postmaterial orientations and executive-centered political institutions. International environmental commitments among democracies are constructed by the cultural composition of the polity and institutional rules that centralize ratification procedures, rather than by structural conditions and international forces. The study thus corroborates the idea-based theory's emphasis on the underlying values of the citizenry and the institutional theory's emphasis on domestic policy processes.     

International Perspectives on the Effectiveness of Geography Fieldwork for Learning

Much geographical scholarship on teaching and learning details the intellectual, technical and personal benefits stemming from residential field course offerings, reflecting characteristics of constructivist active learning. With the sustainability of these offerings in question given logistical and political issues, there is greater demand for changes in field course delivery and structure. This paper seeks to expand the range of pedagogical tools, contexts and ways in which geographical field experience can take place. It does so by reconceptualizing ‘the field’ based on the idea of ‘everyday life’ as a meaningful entry point within a classroom context, and as a space of learning in which students construct knowledge for themselves. An empirical investigation of student learning experiences explores the possibility of re-creating the benefits of residential field course offerings in a classroom-based field course.     

Policy Subsystems and Regimes: Organized Interests and Climate Change Policy

This research is an examination of the role of organized interests in international climate change policy formation. Systematic survey results are used to demonstrate that organized interests actually engage in the same activities in both the international and domestic arenas. This research demonstrates that the climate change negotiations can be characterized as both a policy subsystem and an international regime. It is further argued that these two concepts are in fact highly analogous, thereby facilitating new cross-discipline research opportunities. The research is based on a web survey of organized interests accredited by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and on interviews and field research at the 8th Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC in New Delhi, India.     

Legitimacy and Public Policy: Seeing Beyond Effectiveness,Efficiency, and Performance

Studies of failure typically assess public policies through the lenses of effectiveness, efficiency, and performance. Here I wish to propose a further dimension to the evaluation and assessment of policy failure—legitimacy. The substantive elements of public policies and the procedural steps taken by authoritative decision makers during the policy cycle affect the perception of policy legitimacy held by both stakeholders and the public. In substantive terms, policy content should align with the dominant attitudes of the affected policy community and, ideally, the broader public. Procedurally, factors such as policy incubation, the emotive appeals deployed to gain support for an initiative, and the processes of stakeholder engagement shape the legitimacy of public policies and the governments who promote them. This argument is based on a comparison of education reform in two Canadian provinces during the 1990s. Governments in Alberta and Ontario pursued common agendas of education reform, but while Alberta achieved success, the Ontario government experienced a series of setbacks and lost the support of education stakeholders and the public. The root of Ontario's failures lies in the realm of legitimacy. These findings highlight the fact that the strategies used for enacting policy change may fail to bring about the necessary consensus among societal actors to sustain a new policy direction and calls attention to our need to better understand how governments can achieve meaningful public participation while still achieving legislative success in an efficient fashion.     

No Race in Any Direction: State Welfare and Income Regimes

This paper has two objectives. First, we examine state adoption and implementation of income support policies under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. We develop a composite measure of income support that includes welfare programs that scholars traditionally investigate and adds optional policies that encourage independence through work. Second, we engage a substantive focus on the administrative ability and willingness of states to adopt and implement sophisticated income support policies. We investigate the extent to which state government professionalism, ideology, economic resources, and racially based policies have shaped state policy. We find that the percentage of the state population is liberal; state racial demographics and governmental professionalism are critical determinants of state welfare and income support regimes. Significantly, we find no evidence that states are converging toward high‐quality, effectively financed welfare policies or income regime policies to help the poor move into and economically survive in the job market.     

Pet Sounds: Subsystems,Regimes, Policy Punctuations,and the Neglect of African American Farmers, 1935–2006

Punctuated equilibrium theory (PET) has reoriented the study of public policy and American politics in particular. In this study, we documented how a policy punctuation that appears to take hold at the macro level of the polity in the form of a policy regime has difficulty penetrating subsystem politics. We drew on subsystems theory, PET, and the latest work on policy regimes to document the resistance of the agriculture subsystem to efforts to add a civil rights dimension to agriculture policy between 1935 and 2006. We concluded that the issue evolution of agricultural support programs, and their insulation from civil rights policy, is a prime example of how subsystems use negative feedback to resist change.