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Takes a political economy approach to understanding the role of business in global environmental politics. The book's contributors - from a range of disciplines including international political economy, management, and political science - view the evolution of international environmental governance as a dynamic interplay of economic structures, business strategies, and political processes. By providing comparative insights to the responses of business to major international environmental issues, the book illuminates the ways business activity shapes and is shaped by global environmental policies. It moves beyond the usual emphasis on state actors and formal regimes, instead focusing on empirical and theoretical contributions that examine the reciprocal relationship between corporate strategy and international environmental governance.
After developing a theoretical framework for understanding the role of business in environmental governance, the book provides empirical studies of business strategies across a range of cases, from formal regimes to combat climate change and ozone depletion to more informal and private regimes for tropical logging and the ISO 14000 environmental management standards. These case studies demonstrate the key roles of business, markets, and private actors in shaping international environmental institutions and constructing new forms of governance.
David L. Levy is Professor in the Department of Management at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. His research examines the intersection of business strategy and politics in the development of international governance, and he has published widely on the topic. Recently, he has studied the response of multinational corporations in the oil and automobile industries to the emerging greenhouse gas regime, and is currently examining prospects for the renewable energy industry in Massachusetts. Peter J. Newell is Professor of Development Studies at the University of East Anglia. He has published widely on the political economy of the environment, including the books Climate for Change (2000), The Effectiveness of EU Environmental Policy (2000), co-authored with Wyn Grant and Duncan Matthews, Development and the Challenge of Globalisation (2002), co-edited with Shirin M. Rai and Andrew Scott. He currently works on issues of corporate regulation and accountability and the politics of GMO regulation.
This wide-ranging book is essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in the political economy of environmental issues. I enthusiastically recommend it. --Thomas L. Brewer, McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University, and Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels "A path-breaking contribution to the study of international economy and international environmental politics, based on a compelling theoretical scheme and illuminated with important case studies." --Dimitris Stevis, Department of Political Science, Colorado State University "There is no doubt in my mind that the book will contribute significantly to both the study of international environmental politics and global political economy. The book reveals the innermost workings of power, economy, and politics across a range of important environmental concerns." --Ronnie Lipschutz, Department of Politics, University of California, Santa Cruz
