Learning to Learn Some Thoughts on Improving Global Governance Copyright 1993, Peter M. Haas and Ernst B. Haas. All rights reserved. For information contact author. by Peter M. Haas and Ernst B. Haas prepared for the Commission on Global Governance, Geneva May 1993 1. Challenges for Global Governance The world is in turmoil. Leaders face an array of problems far more complex than those confronting the architects of the United Nations in 1945. Problems are interlinked with others to an extent previously unimagined by the designers of organizations created to cope with discrete problems, and now include issues which were not even on the agenda at San Francisco, including macroeconomic management, sustainable development, averting ecological disaster, and nuclear proliferation. Virtually all of the original concerns apparent at San Francisco - collective security, stable world commodity markets, public health, expanding trade and assuring stable currencies - remain with us. In the absence of a dominant state willing to lead, only flexible institutions with an expanding organizational vision can effectively respond to these problems, and help to guide their member states toward more productive governance likely to benefit the international community as a whole. We wish to help in the design of IOs that are able, quickly, to amend the ideas of their founders when it becomes apparent that these ideas have lost relevance because new problems and actors have arisen to claim a place on the global agenda, and even to shape it. We do not aim at the creation of a world government; we take for granted that states will remain the most important actors on the world scene, but we also believe that their centrality and range of autonomous choice will decline in the face of transgovernmental, transnational, and nongovernmental actors. In simpler times, the main role-players were only governmental delegates, especially when the main issues on the agendas of IOs were kept in almost watertight compartments: collective security, balance of payments stability, development aid and lending, commodity prices, decolonization, human rights. Changes in processes underlying events in IOs are enormous: issues now refuse to stay in their compartments, new non-state actors are becoming numerous and vocal, experts no longer invariably mirror the preferences of their governments. States themselves are porous and often unable to satisfy their citizens by relying on their national capacities alone. Because of these changes it is realistic to expect IOs to trigger and amplify learning far more often than in the past. Because of the world's growing reliance on the knowledge of specialists, networks of experts as learners and transmitters of knowledge have become of enormous significance. This focus sets us apart from many existing efforts at reforming global governance. Speaking of the reform of global governance, an experienced United Nations official noted that "practically all attempts are aimed at improving efficiency, effectiveness, impact, coordination and usually provide a blueprint for the ideal structure. Few address higher level considerations of the nature of the activities to be undertaken, of 'whither?' or 'what for?' or present an articulated vision of 'how' the world problems of the 21st century might be solved ... its key concepts are variations on the themes of simplification, concentration, integration, coordination, and, overly or covertly, centralization and control."[1] We aim to do none of these things. Efficiency and effectiveness have been brilliantly probed by Maurice Bertrand; whither the UN ought to move should be decided by the world's peoples and their governments, not by us; and they, not we, must decide what purpose multilateral organizations (IOs) ought to serve, or whether IOs ought to be transformed into something more supranational. The problems of the 21st century have already been authoritatively placed on the global agenda by UNCED. We advocate neither centralization nor decentralization, simplification or better coordination. We are concerned with devising global institutions in which the participants can make their own decisions on these matters, but make their choices so as to better meet the global needs on which all seem to agree already. We want to help develop global institutions that can aid the evolution of a global consensus on humankind's problems, or shape such a consensus so that its parts can be made into a coherent whole. In other words, we aspire to help IOs learn to learn; that is to apply emerging policy relevant information to the better performance of the organization's mission. We cite the features of organizations which have successfully learned to improve their programmatic activities for environmental management as a positive example of organizational design writ large for institutions capable of encouraging effective governance after the Cold War as well as attending to strategies by which the new lessons for dealing with new problematiques are likely to be endorsed by member governments. 2. Learning: Who, What, How? Authoritative decisions are ultimately taken by states, and those reflecting the authority of the state. Yet, contrary to many of the currently held views in the scholarly American international relations community, the understanding and objectives of states are fraught with uncertainty and often subject to change. Effective international organizations, while in part reflecting the community of attitudes of member states, can also help to guide states through the challenging maze posed by the current international agenda by developing timely and more effective roadmaps for governance. IOs can become agents for the redefinition of global problems. States, and more particularly those persons and collectivities who act in their name, may be steadfast about what they want to achieve by multilateral action; if so, they merely continue a pattern of cooperative action that motivated them when they founded their organizations. Actor interests and their informing values, in that case, do not change much. Still, we think it very likely that these interests and values do change; we suggest that states formulate new demands and expectations of IOs all the time even while not demanding change on other issues; some actors' interests and values are redefined and others are not. We wish to clear up how lessons learned by and in IOs come to infect decision-making, agenda-setting, and public policy at the national level. But we cannot hope to understand such developments until we first know how multilateral processes are able to teach something to national and local officials, and we cannot answer that question unless we first specify who is going to learn what, and how that learning is likely to occur. 2.1 Individuals Learn We think of the global learning process as animated by individuals and small groups performing roles in IOs on behalf of national bureaucracies, interest groups, business firms, and nongovernmental advocacy groups. The roles include representation, interest articulation, providing informational feedback to the clients at home, and (occasionally) making decisions that matter. These individuals include delegates, experts, consultants, lobbyists and members of the international civil service. In simpler times when the objectives of states did not change much, these role-players only mirrored the interests, perceptions, and forces outside the IO. We are concerned with devising IOs that improve global governance by acting on global events and solving global problems, rather than mirroring events and studying problems. 2.2 Individuals Learn About the Complexity of the Domain they Seek to Control When states found a new IO they charge it with solving some problem as defined at the time of founding: collective security was designed to avoid the presumed causes of World War II; balance of payments stability was pursued in order to prevent the competitive devaluations of the Great Depression. Learning implies that the causal links between the perceived underlying political and economic conditions and the evil to be averted--aggression and a breakdown in world trade are reconceptualized. A reconceptualization of causal chains implies a redefinition of the problem the IO is to solve, along with the development of a new attendant array of organizational activities. Learning, therefore, calls for an organizational capacity to reconceive and redefine the problem the IO is called upon to ameliorate or remove, not merely inside the Secretariat but throughout the roster of role-players. Learning implies the realization that problems are more complex than thought earlier. When the continued convertibility of currencies becomes causally linked to the absence of budgetary deficits, low inflation, and economic growth at the national level, and the ensemble is linked to a certain volume of international lending, the definition of "macroeconomic management" becomes more complex. When the avoidance of aggression is seen as related to the stopping of civil wars, and domestic peacemaking to the guarantee of human rights, the causal network informing "the problem of peace" becomes denser. Earlier notions of causality do not disappear; they are subsumed under the more complex picture. When things are seen as more complexly linked the attribution of desired effects to single causes and linear forces of influence become untenable. Complexification may well increase uncertainty about effective remedies as the certainties of the past are discarded. One core consequence of a more complex picture of causality is the need for linking issues on negotiating agendas, issues which in simpler and earlier times were kept in their separate compartments. Complex causality implies more uncertainty, and the attempt to cope with more uncertainty calls for a more complex linking of policy issues into comprehensive issue packages. This, in turn, complicates international negotiations because it calls for large package deals. IOs, or units of IOs, can be said to learn when the role-players understand all of these complications and adjust their organization's behavior accordingly. IOs that learn are likely to be characterized by fragmented or substantive issue linkage and member state goals' becoming increasingly interconnected. We recognize and applaud the likelihood that a single IO can be a learner, an adapter and simply continue to do its originally-assigned task, all at the same time. It is a wise organization which can identify appropriate organizational routines with the nature of the problem at hand. Some issue packages are decomposable and others are not. Learning to link issues requires actors to think about spatial, temporal, and functional dimensions of problems differently than did an earlier generation of actors. Problems of many kinds used to manifest themselves purely locally, or at the most, nationally; now, they frequently infect entire regions or the entire globe, and the atmosphere and stratosphere infect entire regions or the entire globe, and the atmosphere and stratosphere as well. Now, we have to think in terms of social time, which not only calls for projections and scenarios about trends and possible effects fifty or a hundred years in the future, but also compels us to evaluate the consequences of a given act at various points in the future. Thinking in long-run terms does not allow us to jettison the short run as a focus for analysis. Social time has taken the place of the more familiar progression.[2] The functional dimension for characterizing problems overlaps with both space and time. For instance, when we seek to specify the "problems" of peace, economic growth, sustainable development, or intergenerational equity we must show how such diverse "places" as water, atmosphere, and terrestrial ecosystems interact with such human "acts" as agricultural and industrial production, armaments and the arms trade, and demographic trends, and how these in turn look in various "Social time frames." "Policy spaces," such as public health measures, macroeconomic choices, military operations ought to be studied in terms of these complications. A given set of interdependent problems, places, acts and policies such as those associated with sustainable development, is what we call a problematique. How integrated is such an amalgam? How tightly linked are the components? Is each link in a functionally conceived chain of causation truly necessary as the focus of policies that seek to deal with the problematique (nondecomposability)? Or are solutions conceivable that ignore some of the links and concentrate on others (partially decomposable)? The answer is crucial in the design of public policy in complex situations involving great uncertainties. If we believe that some links matter more than others then we simplify our problem because the policies can be concentrated. We also save organizational resources and apparently reduce uncertainty. But if we believe that we have to understand the entire system before we can act to influence any part of it, and if we also think that every part depends causally on every other, then we cannot disaggregate or unlink any component -- spatial, temporal, or functional. The latter vision is particularly gruesome for political architects of international governance: there is still no political constituency behind such a grand vision (absent Gaia) and virtually no one can suggest how to effectively formulate policy when every action influences everything else, much less administer such policies. Luckily, we feel, there is growing consensus that not all problems are equally interconnected - they are partially decomposable - and the specialized agencies appear to be learning to assemble more comprehensive measures recognizing the problematique one piece at a time. Analysts from many developing countries express legitimate concerns that environmental problematiques be cast sufficiently broadly to include the prevailing economic development styles associated with patterns of environmental degradation.[3] Responses by the United Nations system to major ecological disasters are a case in point, especially if such disasters are likely to ignite warfare. In deciding who is to do what to make sure such disasters do not recur we must first know whether the disaster problematique is a wholly or partly decomposable problem set. If it is nondecomposable the management task is so demanding as to put solution in doubt; humankind seems to lack the managerial skills to solve megaproblems. Learning, therefore, involves the institutional ability to judge the extent to which a given problematique is wholly or partly decomposable. Full decomposability facilitates action, but the action is less and less frequently effective under conditions of complex substantive issue linkage. Learning ought to develop the institutional ability to treat complex problems as if they were partly nondecomposable, and develop appropriate responses, rather than commit the errors of treating everything as an integral system or as totally decomposable?[4] Many problems should be resolvable through existing organizations without having to construct new super organizations. 2.3 Learning Occurs Through the Application of Consensual Knowledge to the Policy Process Within IOs Learning is a political process by which consensual knowledge is applied by policy makers to change their policy projects. A change in problem-solving behavior can be induced by means of trial-and-error experimentation, without involving any profound study of causality. It can also follow a simple change in perceived interest on the part of the actor, not necessarily as a result of deep cogitation about causes and effects. An institutional capacity to learn, however, should not rely on these possibilities because they are too haphazard and unlikely to yield the rich agendas by whose with fuller understandings of the causal texture of a given problematique. The capacity to learn is based on the willingness to make use of available (or obtainable) "knowledge," the structured authoritative information about causes and effects offered by communities of expert- specialists. Knowledge may, or may not, be "consensual," depending on whether a given community of experts can reach agreement and the consensual knowledge will be accepted by policy makers if the experts-scientists command a near- monopoly on authoritativeness in the eyes of policy makers. If not consensual the relevant communities of experts compete in the advice they offer. If a given knowledge scheme is considered authoritative and if actors are persuaded to accept it as such in their organizational role-playing we speak of "consensual knowledge," without passing any judgment as to its ultimate truth or efficacy. We acknowledge that our conceptualization of learning and consensual knowledge contains a rationalist bias, more consistent with the western intellectual tradition than with cultural matrixes from other parts of the world. If decisionmakers in IOs or their constituencies do not share this bias, then they are unlikely to find persuasive our institutional design for learning institutions. IO cultures that reflect an unintegrated amalgam of various cultural traditions and modes of perception are likely to exhibit behaviors that are neither fully rational nor conducive to learning to manage interdependence. In short, our argument holds persuasive power only to the extent that our rationalistic bias has a counterpart in the beliefs and practices of the IO being examined. It gains strength from trends that result in the acceptance by decisionmakers -- experts as well as politicians -- of information and of procedures that respect the validity of consensual knowledge. We are careful to offer institutional suggests that stress wide democratic participation because we expect them to contribute to challenging different perspectives and possibly leading to a resolution of conflict or synthesis. The insinuation of consensual knowledge into policy passes through stages. Consensual knowledge is purveyed by informal networks of experts-specialists we call "epistemic communities."[5] They may function exclusively within single countries or as transnational entities, such as communities of atmospheric scientists, Keynesian or monetarist economists. The advice of a dominant and authoritative epistemic community temporarily monopolizes the initiation of the learning process; members of the group in national and international bureaucracies take the first steps in suggesting a new way to envision a problematique and possible solutions to it. Lacking such a monopoly, competing epistemic communities seek to take over bureaucracies for their preferred knowledge scheme. Next, one group "captures" the key national bureaucracy, or perhaps even the entire national governmental apparatus responsible for the linked issues that make up the problematique. Eventually, other governments are also "captured" and they will then form a coalition to make their multilateral organizations act as the agents of the new lore. Alternatively, they may capture an international secretariat and use it as a springboard to reach national governments. Typical examples include four different problematiques that have dominated life in the United Nations since the 1950s: economic development, collective security, decolonization/democratization/ human rights protection, and the environment. New problematiques are developing in our age as certain epistemic communities try to repackage elements of knowledge drawn from these four earlier bodies of policy into new initiatives which are more or less decomposable, depending upon the community's base of consensual knowledge. Learning does not stop when IOs have become agents of implementing a new consensual knowledge, validated by a group of member states. Next, a learning organization "teaches" the other member states the "lesson" learned earlier by the initiators of the change. The IO becomes an active transmitter of new ways of defining and solving problems by persuading most member governments of the appropriateness of the consensual knowledge involved. The final step in the evolution of learning to learn comes when the IO is given something akin to executive powers to induce members governments to accept the implications of that knowledge. Perhaps only the World Bank and IMF have reached that stage, although the history of the European Community could be written in similar terms, and some organizations train national officials in new policy orthodoxies or doctrines. 3. How Have IOs Learned In the Past? Learning is rare. Most organizations have failed to apply consensual knowledge to a more effective policy enterprise. As we argue below, most of these organizations have followed an alternative response to organizational challenge which fails to recognize the significant links within the problematique due to their inability to effectively scan the technical or scientific community for new ideas, to muster political support for organizational reforms, to apply new approaches to rigid operating procedures, or to significantly effect the domain for which they were designed. 3.1 Most IOs Adapt Rather Than Learn To learn is to put consensual knowledge to work in defining and solving interconnected problems. To adapt is to change routines of problem-solving without bothering to reexamine one's beliefs about cause and effect. Adaptation occurs far more commonly than does learning, and adaptation is by no means to be despised as suboptimal or even as irrational behavior. When faced with disappointment about organizational effectiveness actors typically respond by first altering the means they used to realize their common interests. If that adaptation does not do the trick the ends the program are to serve may come under scrutiny, and be altered or mixed with new ends. What distinguishes adaptation from learning is the absence of any searching self-reflection about the proper way to compose, decompose, or recompose problem sets. It is unlikely to generate effective new organizational routines to cope with partially decomposable or nondecomposable problematiques. Adaptation typically follows one of two patterns; incremental growth and turbulent non-growth. Incremental growth proceeds slowly as an IO gradually acquires new tasks, while a turbulent non-growth IO lurches from one highly politicized problem to another. In the UN the practices relating to collective security followed the incremental growth pattern until 1965, changed to turbulent non-growth after the onset of the budget crisis, and may now be undergoing the learning pattern. The human rights and the disarmament activities followed the non-growth pattern most of the time (which does not mean that nothing was accomplished!), whereas UNDP started as a learning exercise and soon degenerated into turbulent non-growth. FAO is a turbulent organization, as is UNESCO; ILO mostly adapted in the incremental mode, as did GATT and the ITU. WHO adapted incrementally during the first twenty years of its existence, but then became a learning organization. The differences in organizational characteristics of organizations which engage in incremental growth and turbulent non-growth are as follows: Styles of Organizational Response to Threats Organizational Incremental Turbulent Characteristic Growth Non-growth World-order ideology one dominates None dominates, (e.g. liberalism v. among member several compete dependency reduction) states Mode of representation more powerful/ equality of all important states states; all are overrepresented; NGOs may speak only NGOs favored for states and by them are themselves represented Secretariat: merit alone; nationality how recruited complete autonomy quotas, exile and how autonomous? from member states staffing; states ÒpenetrateÓ secretariat Status of experts instructed by instructed as states well as independent Source of revenue annual assessments; same, but voluntary demands for contributions progressive taxation or usersÕ fees How are tasks directly; delegated same, with administered locally? to states; shared predominance of delegation Monitoring state consensus on a unpredictable compliance graduated scale of and measures, running inconsistent from consultations use of to sanctions, via these regular reporting, measures complaints, investigations Role of NGOs lobbyists, same complainants, experts, administrators Mode of leadership reactive to will reactive to by executive head of dominant will of coalition of majority states of states; takes no initiatives Authority and both increase do not legitimacy of increase; organizations possible decline Knowledge available there is a unresolved to guide policies stable consensus; tension between no new thinking old and new introduced knowledge; not more consensual Political objectives very item- some unchanging of states specific and not item-specific; changing others demand change and seek new links among items of policy Expected mode of decisionmaking behavior How are issues some linked in tactial linkage linked in the terms of sub- only; parties bargaining process? stantive causal disagree over connections; some causal in terms of connections tactial convenience Problem definition decomposable sets no agreement on dominate composability 3.2 International Organizations Able to Learn Almost all IOs respond to crises only after the troubles have become painfully obvious, rather than anticipating them. The difference between IOs which function in the two adaptive modes and IOs which learn is in the scope of their response; learning IOs are likely to redefine their missions in light of the new interdependencies to their original mission which the crisis helped to illuminate, whereas adaptive organizations are likely to only make slight modifications in their standard routines. Learning organizations may also react more promptly. Ideally of course, a learning IO would possess the ability to head off crises, presupposing the capability to recognize crisis-producing conditions before the emergency erupts and to bring flexible new exercises to bear. Crisis-management has to avoid over-combining linked issues. Once the likelihood of a crisis has been recognized care must be taken to conceptualize the resulting new problematiques so as to make eventual national and multilateral action possible. Understanding the crisis demands that all available causal schemas, no matter how unpopular, be examined for their relevance. Knowledge used must include science, but not all applicable knowledge must be "scientific" in terms of the logic, methods, and causal problems found relevant. Coping with the crisis calls for the design of policies that are not so complex as to make success depend on the effectiveness of every single component of the plan. For example, it is currently fashionable to combine military security issues with ecological ones by speaking of an "international security" problematique, and to substitute the term "cooperative security" for the more familiar collective security. Such over-aggregation suggests that ecological problems escape solution unless we banish war, that peacekeeping or peacemaking are not possible unless we achieve sustainable development. To think of all the possible problematiques as constituting a single system of causes and remedial actions is to learn the wrong lessons. Some assumptions must be made explicit before IOs that learn can be fully characterized. Learning by and in the IO is not possible unless there is an unimpeded flow of ideas and information "upward" from universities, think-tanks, national bureaucracies, and advocacy groups. Such groups serve as an early warning system of potential challenges to the organization, as well as a conduit of new responses. Ideas and information ought to be permitted to circulate freely within the IO; contact between secretariat members of sources of ideas and information should be continuous and not structured by the executive head's agenda. Consensual knowledge, which ultimately may develop from these sources, is very helpful in shaping the program of an IO capable of learning, but it is not absolutely essential. Competing bodies of knowledge, none of which is yet hegemonic, are also likely to yield self-reflection about past program failures which is infinitely superior to trial-and-error learning and the mindless addition of new objectives and programs to the failed older ones. The appreciation and the use of structured knowledge is dependent on the learners' exposure to a modern education. If not science in its full cornucopia, then an appreciation of scientific methods of doing research is probably a prerequisite for the utilization of consensual knowledge. Learning, in short, is associated with the prevalence of a culture in which specialists and experts with very modern educations (regardless of geographic location) are honored and respected by officials similarly educated. It seems likely that IOs would learn more effectively if they are preponderantly influenced by member states that possess a democratic culture, because such states would be less dogmatic and more flexible. The corollary of this assumption is the expectation that IOs learn better if they are dominated by member coalitions that favor the free flow of ideas and information, or are at least indifferent to imposing an ideological orthodoxy. We now offer a set of hypotheses about how lessons learned in and by IOs can most effectively be transmitted to their member states. If an appreciation of modern education and science seems a likely prerequisite for learning in an IO, the same holds true for the culture of member states expected to benefit from programs that incorporate prior learning. Lessons are more likely to be learned if much of the population no longer lives in a premodern and preindustrial manner, if it is largely "socially mobilized." The existence of a democratic culture, usually associated with advanced social mobilization, is helpful but not essential. The prevalence of competing political parties and interest groups able to communicate with the bureaucracy and with elected politicians certainly favors the circulation of new ideas and modes of thinking. However exposure to lessons transmitted by IOs is still possible in countries that also have socially mobilized populations but lack democratic cultures if the bureaucracy is highly centralized and determined to diffuse the lessons. Conversely, a centralized- authoritarian bureaucracy can also block the diffusion of lessons whereas this is much more difficult for a democratic bureaucracy. Consensual knowledge is likely to be given an appreciative hearing by politicians, whether democratic or not, desperately looking for solutions to crisis problems. An interest by political leaders in using such knowledge remains an essential prerequisite for effective transmission of lessons in any political setting. Without such a motivation consensual knowledge will not find its way into national programs. Centralized, non-democratic states may be capable of a more rapid application of lessons learned from IOs than their democratic counterparts which must rely upon building at least a minimal domestic consensus behind their new proposals, although the lessons may be more enduring and remain more firmly 'stuck' in democratic societies. More broadly, a learning organization must have characteristics which enable it to overcome or evade inhibitions to the information flow outlined above and internalize new understandings about the world. A successful learner must be able to effectively scan the technical or scientific community for new ideas, to muster political support for organizational reforms, to apply new approaches to rigid operating procedures, and to significantly effect the domain for which they were designed. Information used by IOs frequently comes from knowledge claimants such as scientist-experts and NGOs. Scientists- experts should be widely consulted, and should be largely independent of guidance or be part of an epistemic community. The organization should rely on consensual knowledge for designing new activities, while continuing to monitor national performance through extensive consultations with governments and NGOs, and reporting by governments and NGOs. The organization should at least be able to engage in adverse publicity to stigmatize non-performers, and monitor the quality of its policy domain in order to evaluate performance. If NGOs serve as complainants new information will also be made available. A learning organization receptive to new ideas must not be internally divided by irreconcilable political differences and also assure that different perspectives receive a hearing within the organization by maintaining extensive contacts between the secretariat and the scientific community and NGOs. There should be no more than two contending, but ultimately compatible ideologies, and the major perspectives must receive a fair hearing through representation of states associated with each, while the dominant coalition is comfortable with consensual knowledge consistent with its preferred ideology. NGOs should be heavily used for consultation, analysis and planning by serving as lobbyists, consultants, and complainants (or whistle-blowers). In order to respond flexibly an IO should be staffed with a competent secretariat endowed with adequate resources to fulfill its mission. The staff should be recruited by merit, or be only partially penetrated by the dominant coalition. The IO's revenues should be predictable and relatively impervious to being held hostage to member governments' pet peeves; it should be financed by fixed assessments and voluntary contributions for additional activities. Its Executive Head should be willing to be independent of the dominant coalition and make strong moral appeals inside and outside the organization; he or she should be a 'crisis manager.' The IO should be able to monitor national performance and make heavy use of NGOs for consultation, planning and analysis. In order to effect the policy environment a learning IO must be able to compel or encourage national involvement. Programs should be administered with extensive local participation in order to promote learning by doing; programs should be shared with local counterparts or administered indirectly by local managers and participants. National performance should be monitored, and the organization should at least be capable of publicizing infractions. Lastly, the IO should be held in high regard; it should claim legitimacy in its domain of activity as member states endorse its proclamations, and exercise authority by states generally implementing its proposals. In the next section we will present empirical evidence about IOs that learned to learn (and some that did not) as well as illustrations about countries that proved hospitable to the lessons and policies previously learned in and by IOs, eventually transmitted to some of their members. Only the future can tell us whether the next stage--an increase in the authority and legitimacy of IOs--will also occur. 4. Organizational Learning and Environmental Management Investigating organizational responses to the environmental crisis provides an ideal empirical test for our learning propositions because environmental media transmit problems broadly, creating new organizational challenges for organizations responsible for particular domains. Operational international organizations were challenged to upgrade their programs to reflect the growing concern about and appreciation for the problematique as heralded by the widespread environmental disasters of the 1960s and growing public demand in the West for a concerted response. The problem was first universally confronted at the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Environment. The 1987 publication of the Brundtland Commission Report highlighted this new concern with controlling the collateral environmental damage of economic growth. The Brundtland Commission report and the ensuing preparations for the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development constituted an organizational crisis for many UN agencies, who were publicly expected to demonstrate their green credentials. All institutions were forced by their various constituencies to reform organizational procedures and respond to the environmental crisis. Organizations also feared a loss of institutional turf to other agencies. Below we consider the response since 1987 of the nine principal operational agencies, who are also the core group of the Secretary General's Inter-Agency Committee on Sustainable Development, as well as the UNFPA, IMO, World Food Program, and IFAD. Together, these organizations commanded over 7.65 billion dollars for the 1990-91 biennium.[6] Yet only a small number can be said to have learned. Despite a number of conferences held in preparation for Rio at which widespread statements were issued about the need to develop and apply systematic efforts to internalize environmental considerations into organizations' traditional package of activities, very few have yet been introduced. For many organizations, Rio, and Sustainable Development were merely an opportunity to repackage their traditional activities in the wrapping of environmental support, and have only reluctantly pursued some of the measures proposed at the nationally hosted conferences to which they were invited. 4.1 Organizations Which Learned to Learn Only UNEP and the World Bank can be said to have fully learned to integrate environmental considerations with their traditional responsibilities. UNEP's original mandate charged it with catalyzing the UN system into integrating environmental considerations into their activities while developing new approaches for sustainable development, monitoring environmental quality, training national officials in more environmentally benign development techniques, and developing international environmental law. In addition to fulfilling these charges, it now develops and publicizes ecosystems based management for regional seas and river basins. The World Bank now requires since 1989 environmental impact assessments on all its major projects, funds environmental protection projects, and helps to administer the Global Environment Facility for financing the share of development projects likely to improve global environmental quality. The WMO and WHO each demonstrate some learning, but have not moved as far as UNEP or the World Bank. In 1990, following the Second World Climate Conference, the WMO redirected a significant proportion of its activities to anticipating global climate change; a dramatic shift from its prior focus on weather monitoring. Climate and environmental activities now account for 30% of the organization's scientific and technical budget and 13.5% of its overall budget. The WHO reveals its reorientation through the introduction of a wide variety of projects aimed at preventing a number of environmentally caused threats to public health. Most other organizations merely adapted to the environmental crisis by adding a few disjointed activities to their traditional package of activities. The following table summarizes the major organizational changes which occurred as a consequence of organizational learning. Organizations Which Learned to Learn About Environmental Management Formally changed New programmatic introduced organizational activities capture Environmental mandate to control many of the Impact environmentally consensually Assessment destructive identified causal procedures effects of its links between activities traditionally mandated responsi- bilities and new problems identified within the problematique. IBRD (1989 UNEP (programs draw UNEP, UNFPA (1989), Operational links between IBRD (1989), FAO Directive on environmental (1989), UNDP, WFP, Environmental quality and a wide UNESCO, WHO, WMO, Assessment), variety of human IFAD (1990) UNEP (1973 activities): WHO original mandate), (new programs draw WMO. links between environmentally mediated threats to public health arising from a wide range of social activities), IBRD considers environmental packages within structural adjustment lending source: United Nations Everyman's United Nations: A Handbook on the United Nations Its Structure and Activities New York; Food & Agriculture Organization FAO Policies and Actions Stockholm 1972-Rio 1992 (1992: United Nations, Rome); United Nations Development Programme The Challenge of the Environment- 1991 UNDP Annual Report (May, 1992: UNDP Division of Public Affairs); Timothy Rothermel "UNDP Plays its Part" World Health (April, 1986); UNESCO The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission: A Strategy for the Ocean; UNESCO An Initiative of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission: Global Ocean Observing System; UNESCO Marine Science and Ocean Services for Development (January 4, 1985: IOC/INF-612, Paris); UNESCO: Environment and Development (informational packet distributed at Rio); Michael Mercier and Morrell Draper "Chemical Safety: The International Outlook" World Health (August/September 1984);"Watchdog" World Health (March 1985); Twenty Years after Stockholm 1972-1992 (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1982); Ludwik A. Teclaff and Eileen Teclaff "International Control of Cross-Media Pollution--An Ecosystem Approach" Natural Resources Journal Vol. 27 (Winter 1987) pp. 21-53; Alexandre Kiss and Dinah Shelton International Environmental Law (New York: Transnational Publishers, 1991); Lee A. Kimball Forging International Agreement (Washington: World Resources Institute 1992). The widespread introduction of environmental impact assessment procedures is actually a weak indication of learning because these activities are seldom integrated into the organization's overall activities. Conducting such assessments is often the responsiblity of small and marginalized environmental units which lack leverage over the rest of the organization. It is only IOs which have installed environmental experts in operational divisions which have learned. The new programmatic activities undertaken by the learning organizations capture many of the causal links between traditionally mandated responsibilities and new problems consensually identified within the problematique.[7] The temporal dimensions of these problems are not widely addressed in the new programs, while the programs' grasp of the problems' spatial dimensions varies appropriately by the geographic nature of specific problems. The organizations which successfully learned are those organizations which satisfy our propositions regarding the necessary attributes for learning. The variation between organizations can be seen in the appendix. A number of identifiable features characterize the international institutions which learned to develop more comprehensive management efforts in response to crises. These features are largely absent from the institutions which merely adapted. The organizations were able to promptly assess changes in their policy environment through their own monitoring systems; through an open flow of environmental information from the scientific community or local NGOs, or from other IOs on whom they rely for information about environmental quality (such as the way the World Bank relies on UNEP and UNEP's joint monitoring programs with other IOs). They were able to apply non-partisan consensual knowledge to the problem by soliciting information from ecological epistemic communities. They were staffed by relatively autonomous and capable secretariats who were able to obtain authorization from their governing bodies (which weren't riven by irresolvable political disputes) and disseminate their advice through networks and the publicity commanded by their authority and legitimacy. The World Bank provides an example of how these institutional characteristics help to promote learning. US NGOs sounded the alarm in the early 1980s that large scale Bank funded projects in Brazil were contributing to massive destruction of the Amazonian rainforest. With the US government, they pressed the IBRD Governing Board to pay greater attention to environmental consequences of its funded development projects. Bank President Barber Conable hired new environmental personnel; at first establishing an environmental department, which became marginalized and lacked any leverage over the operational divisions, and later placing environmental staff in each of the bank's operational divisions where they drafted new environmental impact assessment procedures and introduced training programs in environmental management for borrowers. Since 1989 nearly 75% of the Bank's projects have been reappraised to compensate for potential environmental damage, and a structural adjustment loan to the Malagasy Republic was refined to support environmental administration and conservation. Advising and consulting ties between the bank staff and NGOs have become much closer, and ecosystems experts are increasingly consulted for project design. UNESCO offers a curious example of how units within an organization can learn while the organization as a whole is adaptive. The environmental units are less confined by the deadlocked higher level politics of the organization, and also interact with scientist-experts belonging to ecological epistemic communities and who are independent of close governmental briefings, unlike many of the relationships in the rest of the organization. 4.2 Teaching The learning organizations tried to disseminate the lessons which they have drawn about environmental management with other organizations and with states who rely on the organizations for operational activities. 4.2.1. Teaching Other Organizations The diffusion of learning between organizations has occurred primarily through three channels: interagency coordination, programs jointly administered with other agencies, and environmental monitoring. None have performed well in inculcating other IOs with a more comprehensive approach to environmental management.. Since its creation, UNEP has been responsible for coordinating environmental activities with other UN agencies in order to encourage them to integrate environmental concerns into their package of activities. Neither the Environment Co-ordination Board (1972-1977) or the Designated Officials on Environmental Matters (1977-) have been effective at persuading other agencies to take environmental matters seriously because of UNEP's lack of organizational leverage within the UN system and due to lack of financial resources to be used as incentives for other agencies to change their behavior. The World Bank has served a similar role in the CIDIE since 1980 with similarly unimpressive responses by other multilateral development banks. Incremental changes in other agencies' activities have occurred as a result of interagency programs initiated by UNEP, WHO, and WMO. These three bodies have coordinated joint activities with a number of other agencies in the UN system, instilling a seed for more comprehensive approaches elsewhere.. UNEP has more than doubled the monetary value of its expenditures on programs through partnerships with other agencies, although many of these have occurred in tandem with WHO and WMO. A distinguishing feature of UNEP's joint ventures is UNEP's enthusiasm at including the scientific community along with environmental, grassroots and corporate NGOs in its activities. As a consequence NGOs gain access to organizations of whom they are suspicious, yet do not feel that they are compromised by association due to UNEP's insulating role. Organizations like UNEP, WHO and WMO also monitor the quality of the environment, thereby alerting other agencies to problems falling within their purview. These outreach efforts by learning organizations appear to have, at best, the effect of stimulating or reinforcing adaptive efforts in other agencies. 4.2.2 Learning IOs Teach States These learning organizations exerted more influence on the states who rely on their operational activities. Organizations which learned have helped national bureaucracies to learn in several ways, leading in turn, (at times) to changes in national policy from which individuals and firms have changed their behaviors in ways which are more environmentally friendly.[8] Organizations exercise a demonstration effect by which they identify and justify policies which national decision makers may adopt. For instance, the WHO recommended exposure limits for various chemicals serve as the basis for legislation and policy in many developing countries. While this organizational activity is, properly speaking, more often a case of imitation by governments rather than reflection and the application of newly discovered consensual knowledge at the national level, it is an important channel by which organizational learning is converted to new measures on the ground which may more effectively manage environmental risks. Training programs for national officials train them to adopt and apply the new techniques which had been developed or identified by the organizations. Persuaded of the viability of such measures, they may serve as a political constituency within national administrations for the adoption and enforcement of the organizationally identified measures. Public education efforts serve a long-term function of changing individual consumption habits, while contributing in the shorter-term to the creation of new domestic constituencies for environmental protection, at least in democratic societies where they may exercise influence over governmental activity. Finally, many national bureaucrats and scientists level learn by doing as they participate in projects coordinated or funded by the organizations. Thousands of developing country officials and scientists have attended UNEP sponsored training seminars in environmental monitoring and comprehensive approaches to of environmental management. It is not clear that democratic societies absorbed lessons more effectively than did non-democratic ones. For instance, in response to UNEP's Mediterranean Action Plan, Egypt and Algeria responded as quickly as Israel and Greece to the UNEP imparted suggestions about the need for more comprehensive coastal environmental policies once the information was transmitted by national scientists, and Algeria and Egypt have remained nominally committed to these reforms, in part due to the allure of foreign funding from the World Bank and the European Community for the necessary sewage treatment plants and sewerage system modifications. In this regard international financial institutions, and institutions with resources which are highly desirable to national governments can offer linkages to encourage countries to adopt and comply with the new lessons imparted by learning organizations. 5. How to Encourage Organizational Learning What lessons for institutional reform may be drawn from this study to improve global governance? The limiting conditions for organizations which can learn appear to be the absence of irreconcilable political differences amongst the dominant member countries and stable, impartial information flows to an effective secretariat. Organizations which learned were ruled by a dominant coalition whose members were in agreement on the main principles of world order. Effective discussions are hamstrung and political compromises by which more comprehensive programmatic missions may be crafted are impossible without such agreement. At a minimum learning requires an institutional design which provides for the provision of nonpartisan scientific information about the state of the physical environment, the regularized feedback of information regarding activities by governments and firms, building developing countries' capacity to conduct environmental monitoring and research and to apply it indigenously to their policy process, and providing for the widespread dissemination of such information in readily usable manner so that all partners can keep track of each other's activities and hold governments accountable for enforcing their environmental commitments. By soliciting input from a variety of different actors with different experiences and concerns, including the scientific community, grassroots environmental groups, larger scale national environmental NGOs, and industry groups which command the necessary knowledge about markets and processes, institutions can learn and disseminate their lessons. Secretariats ought to be recruited on the basis of merit alone. Connections between secretariats and NGOs and the sceintific community, from which new ides and warnings can be received, should be close, especially when monitoring of the environment and of national performance are delegated to NGOs. Greater independent monitoring of national performance to augment reports by governments, and more public education to inform groups about problems also benefit from close secretariat-NGO ties. Closer adminnstrative ties to local authorities may accelerate the diffusion of institutional learning. Learning and institutional reform must come from within. Learning, and efforts to educate others by organizations other than UNEP, IBRD, WHO and WMO have largely proved to be failures. Other bodies should be reformed to allow for greater input from more diverse groups, which might result also in the acquisition of mandates, eventually, to monitor national performance. Organizations characterized by irreconcilable disagreements over desirable world orders or inept secretariats (such as UNCTAD, UNESCO, and perhaps ILO and UNIDO) may not even be made capable of learning to manage interdependence, rather than merely adapt to it. 6. Why the Environmental Management Problematique Cannot Be Generalized Our discussion of organizations which learned to manage interdependence and successfully passed their lessons on to the member states has been confined to activities that deal with the problems of late capitalism/industrialism. Dealing with environmental degradation in the context of the economics of highly developed (and mostly democratic) countries is different than prescribing institutions capable of learning when we deal with such things as sustainable development, democratization, national self-determination or collective security. Yes, but how and why? Issue-areas vary with respect to the extent of consensual knowledge available for conceptualizing and managing them. They also differ with respect to the extent of the political and value agreement about the issues. Before assigning problems or problematiques to IOs that have been able to learn in the past we must be certain that it is in the nature of the problem "to be learned." If we do not observe this stricture we will undoubtedly overload IOs with tasks; the inability to carry them out will diminish the authority and undermine the legitimacy of international institutions. But even in the absence of the ideal learning pattern it is still necessary that new and old tasks continue to be carried out; IOs able to adapt fall short of our ideal but they ought still be able to handle this kind of problem. Few dispute the knowledge that establishes causal links between styles of economic development, pollution, ill health, and ecosystemic health. The ties between ecological problem sets and a broader economic problematique encompass costs of industrial production, and the competitiveness of a nation's industries in international trade. This problematique, however, is much more contested in value and in knowledge terms than environmental management, taken alone. Equally important, to the extent that this consensus is weak those who purvey that knowledge to politicians-- scientists, engineers, economists--are less of a privileged group in their access to policymaking; as are articulate and well-informed interest groups. 6.1 What if there is no value consensus? There are many other actual and potential problematiques less inclusive than the ones made popular decades ago by the Club of Rome. Some, to be considered below, seem poor candidates for any kind of learning because they lack the necessary value consensus and consensual substantive knowledge. Sustainable Development (SD), while now characterized by value dissensus and less-than-consensual knowledge, nevertheless might become the kind of concept that, when made part of its mandate, could enable the organization to become a true learner. 6.2 Making Sustainable Development into a Problematique That Is Conducive to a Learning Experience. _ What institutional design changes seem appropriate to this kind of learning? To change global institutions to accommodate SD to be more than a value-laden slogan, to turn it into an ongoing activity, implies upgrading environmental management by adding new issue-areas and new connecting tissue among them. Such upgrading calls for the augmentation of environmental management with development economics, planned technology transfers, resource allocation and resource planning that takes the future needs of all of humankind into account. In short, making SD into an organizational mandate--and creating the setting of a major learning experience for the organization so blessed, and of its member states, is an act of creating a nearly nondecomposable problem set from what was previously thought to be a series of decomposable ones. UNCED implied that the world approves of such a huge act of conceptual and programmatic aggregation. SD then implies that hitherto separate substantive issues and disciplines be combined. It also implies that the concepts and methods needed to link these disciplines analytically be invented. Only thus can the causal patterns thought to be operative be highlighted. Yet, unlike environmental management, SD remains a highly contested concept until a value consensus about its nature emerges. How can institutions be changed to advance such an agenda? (1) Fora, such as the International Council of Scientific Unions and its committees, could be made to proliferate. To do so would be to generalize all over the world the privileged position occupied by scientists and engineers in industrialized countries. It would provide opportunities for contact and discussion from which a more global substantive consensus might emerge. (2) Local interests ought to be increasingly empowered to contribute to policy debates on SD issues. Empowerment is likely to confer increasing legitimacy and authority on IOs that seek to practice and teach SD because the lessons imparted to national governments will have the blessing of local interests. Advice and support from IOs will no longer fall into a national vacuum. Western and non-western attitudes, thus focussed on a common and urgent problem set, may be made to overlap. (3) The representation of non-governmental interests at the IO level ought to be enhanced, thus giving a number of such interests (labor, industry, consumers, trade associations, as well as ecological advocacy groups) a direct voice in the elaboration of international measures with direct impact on their ecological and their economic interests. The model of the ILO might be kept in mind here, or of the institutionalized role of such interests in the ITU. 7. Problematiques Not Now Susceptible to Learning by International Organizations. When we have good reason to suspect that a value consensus remains an elusive goal these institutional devices are unlikely to be useful. Our prescription for the construction of nearly nondecomposable problem sets ought to be rejected when we have reason to fear that substantive issue-aggregation--no matter how easily justified by Club of Rome-type models--is not accepted by many experts and does not enjoy widespread support. Decomposability ought to be pursued instead. The issue-areas of collective security, human rights protection, democratization, and the fostering of ethnic self-determination do not warrant being made into a single comprehensive problematique, or expressed in a single highly aggregated United Nations program. We take this position because we are convinced that these fields are more highly contested on moral grounds than even SD, and that the effort to make integrated UN programs of them would condemn the UN to overload, disappointment by member governments, disrepute, and failure. 7.1 Collective Security The practice of preventing or stopping acts of aggression and breaches of the peace is well institutionalized in the Security Council through the principles of peacemaking, peacekeeping and enforcement measures. Such desirable improvements as standing and earmarked forces, joint training exercises, preventive deployment on one side of a threatened border, and even a single command in a revived Military Staff Committee are not our present concern. We are worried about the lack of legitimacy of such measures in the eyes of countries other than the Permanent Five and about the veto as a method of stopping such measures. In order to increase the legitimacy of Security Council decisions the Council's permanent members must come to include not only Japan and Germany but key third world countries: Brazil, India, Nigeria and Egypt. Moreover, a Council with 11 permanent members cannot function with a veto for each. Hence the voting formula must be changed to a qualified-majority vote, perhaps following the IMF format or that of the reformed Council of the European Communities. All members would dispose of votes weighted according to some combined power/GNP index. Passing resolutions would have to have the support of 75% of combined votes in each of two "colleges", the permanent and the nonpermanent members. Thus, the main third world countries, now often critical of the Permanent Five, will become part of the oligarchy responsible for peace and security, thus enhancing the authority of the Council; the nonpermanent members "represented" by the new permanent members will, as peacekeeping and enforcement become predictable and more effective, bestow more legitimacy on the UN. 7.2 Protection of Basic Human Rights The existing UN and ILO machineries have evolved rapidly. They are now as authoritative as they are likely to be as long as the nation-state remains the most important actor on the global scene. If efforts were made to add a stronger supranational component and if the representational role of NGOs were to be enhance--as is advocated by many-- the legitimacy of the machinery would surely decline in the eyes of most third world states, and of many first- world ones as well. Moreover, demands for the expansion of the list of basic human rights to include such things as more women's rights, children's rights, rights for ethnic minorities, etc., are likely to delegitimate the current system by adding obligations not yet acceptable in many societies. They would burden the system with the need to seek implementation and to hear complaints when the supporting consensus does not exist. Much the same could be said of a system of protecting economic, social and cultural rights which are truly binding rather than being merely hortatory. In short, we think that this topic ought to be left as it now is, decomposable, specific, separate from such cognate issues as democratization and ethnic self-determination. 7.3 Democratization and Ethnic Self-Determination We believe that IOs can do relatively little to establish and consolidate new democracies because the social forces and institutions that buttress democratic governance must grow at home in the political experiences of the local populace. The most IOs can do is provide for the monitoring of elections and the certification that the proper procedures have been observed. IOs can also train local people in the techniques of running elections and legislatures; they can provide manuals for education in civics. And by increasing the economic welfare of the democratizing country they can aid in shoring up the legitimacy of the new regime. These activities do not involve the kind of cognitive evolution of which new problematiques are made; they bridge no conceptual gaps and they connect no discrete causal contexts with a more fundamental causality. Hence they do not require the machinery required for an organization that is to engage in learning. If competing and mutually distrustful ethnic groups are determined to fight for a given territory there is very little an IO can do to deter them, other than cutting off the supply of arms and threatening neighboring states about to intervene with punitive sanctions. These steps are consistent with the normal assurance of collective security. Additionally, complaints of violations of basic human rights can be investigated, and if warranted, stigmatized as they now are. More than cannot be expected in the present world climate. To advocate upgrading these activities into a new problematique will condemn the organization charged with the task to more turbulent non-growth and probably benefit nobody. 8. Conclusion We have discussed the core issues on the global agenda in an effort to sort them into those that might lead to more effective IOs that are able to engage in and benefit from cognitive evolution, as opposed to others which will do their work without undergoing a similar growth. We have attempted to show that by no means all kinds of knowledge--and the human collectivities that provide and diffuse it--are likely to lead to learning to manage interdependence more effectively. We have stressed the knowledge apt to lead to learning is not universally shared or even available everywhere. And we have argued that there are many kinds of knowledge and of policies that are not likely to become more consensual or more interconnected and nearly nondecomposable. We have urged that organizations charged with missions that reflect sharply contested knowledge and values be left as they are currently constituted. But, clearly, it is not possible to foretell with any confidence which fields are likely to become more consensual. We cannot guess which conceptual and cognitive breakthroughs that now seem unlikely may still come about in the not-too- distant future. Hence what we really need are IOs that are flexible enough to learn new interconnections and profit from new interdependencies among functions, values, time periods and places even though we cannot foresee the problematiques to which they might be responding. The truest learning organization, we believe, is the one blessed with people and institutional routines that will recognize and identify such brand-new problematiques before the problems have become too serious to yield to a multilateral response. Appendix Environmental Management Problematique: Organizational Learning or Adaptation, 1987-1992 IO Characteristic Program Experience World-order ideology Mode of reprtn Secretariat Status of experts Source of revenue Admin of local tasks Monitoring state compliance Monitoring environment Role of NGOs Leadership Authority, Legitimacy Knowledge Political objectives Issue-linkage Problem definition UNEP extensive programs covering many environmental/human interactions moderate dependency reversal v. liberalism; compromise possible equality, biased toward 3rd world; NGOs represent recruitment by merit; unpenetrated represent epistemic communities annual assessments, voluntary contributions; other IOs mostly indirect consultations, regular reporting, publicity sanction increasing lobbying, advisers to staff, consultants, participate in meetings crisis manager authority growing; legitimacy unclear more consensual expanding /intercncted mostly fragmented, some substantive nearly nondecomposable sets IBRD commitment to reducing environmental externalities of loans; stress their environmental benefits liberalism modified by selective incentives to LDC governments sharply stratified by state power; NGOs do not represent recruitment by merit; unpenetrated represent epistemic communities capital subscriptions, borrowing shared consultations, ad hoc reporting none advisers to staff, consultants crisis manager authority growing; legitimacy disputed in parts of 3rd world more consensual; integration with economics expanding /intercncted fragmented, becoming more substantive nearly nondecomposable sets WMO sharp increase in resources devoted to climate and environmental programs weather prediction v. global change equality of states recruitment by merit; unpenetrated represent epistemic communities; independent annual assessments, UNDP voluntary contributions indirect, shared irrelevant none lobbyists; ICSU personnel as program adminstrs reactive to G-77 declining toward consensus expanding /intercncted fragmented, some substantive nondecomposable Environmental Management Problematique: Organizational Learning or Adaptation, 1987-1992 IO Characteristic Program Experience World-order ideology Mode of rep. Secretariat Status of experts Source of revenue Admin. of local tasks Monitoring state compliance Monitoring environment Role of NGOs Leadership Authority, Legitimacy Knowledge Political objectives Issue-linkage Problem definition UNDP environmental externalities to be considered in project design liberalism v. dependency reduction donor-recipient balance; no NGO rep. recruitment by national quotas; some penetration independent voluntary contributions shared consultations no project administration both low not more consensual static/specific none decomposable UNFPA guidelines for conservation strategies; family planning program resource conservation, welfare enhancement same as UNDP recruitment by national quotas; no penetration epistemic community voluntary contributions, UNDP shared evaluations no consultants, project administration reactive /passive authority high, legitimacy mixed less consensual expanding /intercncted none decomposable IAEA radioactive emissions, radiation safety, reactor improvement AIC nuclear hegemony v. dependency reduction stratified by state power; no NGO rep. recruitment by national quotas, exile staffing; penetrated instructed by states; some epistemic community annual assessments, voluntary contributions direct regular reporting, inspections, sanctions regular reporting none reactive to AIP members both improving consensus improving static/specific fragmented decomposable Environmental Management Problematiqe: Organizational Learning or Adaptation, 1987-1992 IO Characteristic WHO ILO UNESCO Program Experience World-order ideology Mode of rep. Secretariat Status of experts Source of revenue Admin. of local tasks Monitoring state compliance Monitoring environment Role of NGOs Leadership Authority, Legitimacy Knowledge Political objectives Issue-linkage Problem definition public health redefined to include environmental hazards "primary health care" "health for all by 2000" stratified by power of states; NGOs can penetrate delegations recruitment by merit; full autonomy represent epistemic communities annual assessments, UNDP, voluntary contributions mostly indirect regular reporting, some complaining, investigationspublicity sanction no consultants, lobbyists, complainants crisis manager both high not more consensual intercncted /expanding little linkage nondecomposable environmental threats to health/safety social democratic reformism stratified by power of states; NGOs represent their national interests recruitment by merit; some penetration NGO-instructed same direct regular reports, complaints, hearings, investigationspublicity sanction no lobbyists, legislators, complainants, mediators reactive to G-77 low on authority, high on legitimacy not more consensual static/specific tactical decomposable programs on marine pollution, species preservation, mapping biomes liberalism v. dependency reduction, redistribution egalitarian; NGOs can serve on delegations recruitment by national quotas and exiles; heavily penetrated independent; instructed; some epistemic communities same shared consultations, some reporting expert panels, national commissions lobbyists, consultants, some administration M-Bow reactive to G-77; Mayor reactive to West both low more consensual static/specific tactical decomposable; some nearly nondecomposable Environmental Management Problematiqe: Organizational Learning or Adaptation, 1987-1992 IO Characteristic Program Experience World-order ideology Mode of rep. Secretariat Status of experts Source of revenue Admin. of local tasks Monitoring state compliance Monitoring environment Role of NGOs Leadership Authority, Legitimacy Knowledge Political objectives Issue-linkage Problem definition FAO environmental projects added to earlier tasks liberalism v. dependency reduction stratified by power of states; recruitment by national quotas; exile staffing; partly penetrated mostly independent annual assessments; UNDP; voluntary contributions; subsidies from firms shared consultations no lobbyists, consultants reactive to G-77 both low not more consensual static/specific tactical decomposable IFAD applies environmental principles to projects dependency reduction tripartite egalitarian; NGOs do not represent voluntary contributions none no static/specific decomposable WFP seeks to avoid harmful environmental effects from normal projects voluntary contributions shared no lobbyists, consultants, complainants crisis manager static/specific decomposable Environmental Management Problematique: Organizational Learning or Adaptation, 1987-1992 IO Characteristic IMO Program Experience World-order ideology Mode of rep. Secretariat Status of experts Source of revenue Admin. of local tasks Monitor state compliance Monitoring environment Role of NGOs Leadership Authority, Legitimacy Knowledge Political objectives Issue-linkage Problem definition ship-caused marine pollution liberalism stratified by maritime state power; NGOs participate in meetings recruitment by national quotas; somewhat penetrated NGO-instructed annual assessments, UNDP direct regular reporting; publicity sanction above lobbyists, consultants passive mediator both high toward more consensus expanding /intercncted tactical nearly nondecomposable 1NOTES We acknowledge the valuable research assistance of Nicola Poser and Sean Kay for helping to collect and code information about environmental management. We appreciate the advice about the make up of international institutions offered by Barbara Crane, Roger Coate, Ray Hopkins, Ernest Landy, Karen Mingst, Ron Mitchell, Craig Murphy, John Perry, Larry Scheinman, and Mark Zacher. The interpretations remain our own. . Antonio Donini, "Resilience and Reform: Some Thoughts on the Processes of Change in the United Nations," International Relations November 1988, p. 290. 2 . On social time see especially John Gerard Ruggie, "Social Time and International Policy" in Margaret Karnes (ed.), Persistent Patterns and Emergent Structures in a Waning Century (New York: Praeger, 1986); and by the same author, "International Structure and International Transformation," in James N. Rosenau and Ernst-Otto Czempiel (eds.), Global Changes and Theoretical Challenges (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1989). 3 . For instance Osvaldo Sunkel "Beyond the World Conservation Strategy: Integrating Development and Environment in Latin America and the Caribbean" in Peter Jacobs and David A. Munro eds Conservation With Equity Proceedings of the Conference on Conservation and Development, Ottawa, Canada 31 May -5 June 1986; Latin American and Caribbean Commission on Development and Environment Our Own Agenda (Washington and New York: Inter- American Development Bank and United Nations Development Programme, 1991). 4 . This entire section is an adaptation of Herbert Simon's work. See, for one of many sources, his "Rationality in Psychology and Economics," in Robin M. Hogarth and Melvin W. Reder (eds.), Rational Choice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986); and Peter M. Haas, "The Capacity of International Institutions to Manage Bhopal-like Problems," in Sheila Jasanoff (ed.), Learning from Disaster (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993). 5. We consider all knowledge to be socially constructed, but we also think that knowledge relating to the natural sciences is more likely to survive truth and reality tests that demonstrate that "scientific" knowledge is at least communicable and sharable among collectivities that differ on questions of value and interest. We do not consider consensual knowledge ever to be final or complete, nor to be consensual for very long periods. Members of epistemic communities are not merely advocates (like lawyers) because they subordinate their advocacy to the certified body of knowledge to which they subscribe (along with other experts equally certified but not part of the community) and are willing to jettison those beliefs when confronted with significant anomalies consistent with their preestablished truth tests. See Peter M. Haas ed "Knowledge, Power, and International Policy Coordination" International Organization Vol 46 No 1 (Winter 1992). Epistemic communities are therefore not comparable to interest groups or what Hugh Heclo called "policy networks" in the American bureaucracy, in Anthony King (ed.), The New American Political System (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1978), pp. 98-102. 6. "Program resources of the United Nations System" U.N. Document E/1991/42/Add.1, 10 April 1991, pp 7-9, cited by Lee A. Kimball Forging International Agreement (Washington: World Resources Institute, 1992) p 36. 7. As drawn from Council on Environmental Quality and the Department of State (1982) The Global 2000 Report to the President Washington, DC; Martin W. Holdgate, Mohammed Kassas, and Gilbert White (1982) The World Environment 1972- 1982 Dublin, Ireland: Tycooly Press; David A. Kay and Harold K. Jacobson (eds) (1983) Environmental Protection: The International Dimension Totowa, NJ: Allanheld, Osmun; OECD (1985) The State of the Environment Paris: OECD; David W. Orr. and Marvin S. Soroos (eds) (1979) The Global Predicament Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press; Dennis Pirages (1978) The New Context for International Relations: Global Ecopolitics North Scituate, MA: Duxbury Press; Repetto, Robert (ed) (1985) The Global Possible New Haven: Yale University Press; Simon, Julian and Kahn, Herman (eds) (1984) The Resourceful Earth: A Response to Global 2000 Oxford: Basil Blackwell; World Resources Institute (1986) World Resources 1986 New York: Basic Books; WorldWatch Institute (1985) The State of the World New York: Norton; Worldwatch Institute (1986) The State of the World New York: Norton; World Commission on Environment and Development (1987) Our Common Future Oxford: Oxford University Press. 8. See Peter M. Haas, Robert O. Keohane and Marc A. Levy eds Institutions for the Earth: Sources of Effective International Environmental Protection Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993; Peter M. Haas Saving the Mediterranean New York: Columbia University Press, 1990. ??