The Effectiveness of International Environmental Regimes Causal Connections and Behavioural Mechanisms

About this book

Examines how regimes influence the behaviour of their members and those associated with them. The book identifies six mechanisms through which regimes affect behaviour and discusses the role of each through case studies of three major environmental concerns: international vessel-source oil pollution, shared fisheries and transboundary acid rain. The behavioural mechanisms feature regimes as utility modifiers, as enhancers of co-operation, as bestowers of authority, as learning facilitators, as role definers, and as agents of internal realignments. The book develops methods to demonstrate which causal mechanisms come into play with specific regimes. It emphasizes the need to supplement conventional models assuming unitary and utility-maximizing actors to explain variations in regime effectiveness.

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Biography

Oran R. Young is Professor and Codirector of the Program on Governance for Sustainable Development at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, and Chair of the Scientific Committee of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change, sponsored by the International Council Of Science (ICSU), the International Social Science Council (ISSC), and the United Nations University (UNU). He is the author of The Institutional Dimensions of Environmental Change: Fit, Interplay, and Scale (2002) and coeditor (with Leslie A. King and Heike Schroeder) of Institutions and Environmental Change: Principal Findings, Applications, and Research Frontiers (2008), both published by the MIT Press.