Summary of SEER Research Project

"The Domestic Basis of International Environmental Agreements: Modelling National-International Linkages"

The general purpose of this project is to provide insight into some of the institutional factors that facilitate and inhibit the development and implementation of cooperative solutions to transboundary environmental problems. Our starting point is the assumption that in order to understand what is likely to happen at the international level we must examine those processes, structures and values at the national unit level which determine the manner in which national positions on the issues to be negotiated are arrived at and the resulting international agreements are then carried out. Building on both the work on international regimes and structural analyses of national positions on international issues, a three phase model is developed for examining the institutional structures and processes through which such national preferences are in fact formulated; subsequently promoted and modified during the course of international negotiations; and the agreements reached are then implemented (at both the international and national levels). The project focuses on the first and third phases of this process: the formulation of national positions and preferences, and the implementation of international environmental agreements. Using both documentary analysis and interviews, we will examine a number of countries that have taken different positions in the course of the development of the "acid rain regime". For the countries selected, processes of decision making leading to the decision to participate (as well as to the substantive positions taken at a particular time in the negotiations) and processes through which the agreements arrived at have (or have not) been carried out will be analyzed. Applying this model to the international regime for dealing with the problem of "acid rain", the focus is on the interactions of a number of national governments within two different kinds of international organizations, and on the role played by these organizations themselves in stimulating and promoting cooperation among these states.