Ann Hironaka

The Structuring of a World Environmental Regime, 1870–1990

In recent decades a great expansion has occurred in world environmental organization, both governmental and nongovernmental, along with an explosion of worldwide discourse and communication about environmental problems. All of this constitutes a world environmental regime. Using the term regime a little more broadly than usual, we define world environmental regime as a partially integrated collection of world-level organizations, understandings, and assumptions that specify the relationship of human society to nature. The rise of an environmental regime has accompanied greatly expanded organization and activity in many sectors of global society. Explaining the growth of the environmental regime, however, poses some problems. The interests and powers of the dominant actors in world society—nation-states and economic interests—came late to the environmental scene. Thus these forces cannot easily be used to explain the rise of world mobilization around the environment, in contrast with other sectors of global society (for example, the international economic and national security regimes).

The Globalization of Environmental Protection: The Case of Environmental Impact Assessment

Much of the literature on environmental protection focuses on domestic actors and domestic political activity. However, the degree to which environmental policies are influenced by international organizations and agendas is often overlooked. In the case of environmental policies in less developed countries, the role of the international system is particularly essential. Indeed, the international system is often the primary motivator of environmental protection policies in less developed countries. This paper demonstrates the strength of international influence in the case of one particular policy, Environmental Impact Assessment legislation. It argues that international environmental organizations, the international development bank community, and the international science community, have had central importance in the diffusion of Environmental Impact Assessment legislation, outweighing other factors such as the size of domestic environmental support or the degree of environmental degradation. This argument is supported by the results of an event history statistical analysis.

Changing Meanings, Changing Institutions: An Institutional Analysis of Patent Legislation

Conceptions of patents have changed significantly over the past two centuries, reflecting broad changes in state structures and the international system. In the late eighteenth century, the creation of democratic states such as the United States and France encouraged the conceptualization of patents as an economic and political right belonging to an individual, rather than to a corporate body such as a guild. A second conception of patents arose in the nineteenth century in which patents become a state-based mechanism for motivating economic growth. In the late twentieth century, patents have become conceptualized as an essential part of the economic infrastructure of a state, for both industrialized and less developed countries. This conceptualization has allowed international development organizations to become central in the diffusion of patent legislation to less developed countries. These changes in conceptions about patents did not always occur smoothly, however. Major controversies over the role and usefulness of patents occurred in each century, implying that the diffusion of patent legislation was by no means inevitable. This paper illustrates these arguments with a historical discussion of patents and a statistical analysis that models the adoption of patent legislation for all countries from 1790–1984.

When Things Fell Apart: State Failure in Late-Century Africa

This book has a catchy title and nice cover art, adding to the reader’s anticipation that it will be an absorbing—and entertaining— read. The price is reasonable, making it potentially attractive as a text. And the book is, in fact, generally quite well written. America’s romance with technology is complicated, contradictory, and confusing, and it certainly deserves more scholarly attention. However, much has already been written on this subject, not enough of which finds its way into the pages of this book. The introduction suggests that its author, fiction writer and English professor Glen Scott Allen, imagines an audience largely unfamiliar with social and cultural studies of science and technology, and tends to leave the impression that he is unfamiliar with much of this work himself. Allen concentrates on what he sees as Americans’ suspicion of the purely scientific, as opposed to the technological, a suspicion that he correctly surmises may have roots in social class distinctions. He reports that in researching this book, he ‘‘began to wonder to what extent . . . American culture [has] shaped American scientific practice’’ (p. 5), as though this were an entirely original question. In Chapter One, he marvels that in 1848 the American Association for the Advancement of Science adopted promotion of the ‘‘purer’’ sciences as its goal (p. 17), and in general implies surprise at his discovery of the social, political, and class-based character of science (although it is not exactly clear how the AAAS vision is an argument that Americans distrust science, instead of an argument that at least some of us approve of it). He discusses the ‘‘selling’’ of American science in Chapter Three without any apparent reference either to the work of sociologist Dorothy Nelkin or to that of media historian Marcel Lafollette, two scholars especially well-known for their careful documentation of how media representations of science and technology have historically served this purpose. Then, in Chapter Four, Allen presents American Pragmatism without reference to John Dewey, who makes only a cameo appearance a few pages later. Surely Dewey’s contribution to Pragmatism would have been an excellent pillar on which to build any argument about American perspectives on practical knowledge. Finally, as a postscript about two pages from the end of the entire work, Allen confesses that two issues ‘‘not specifically addressed in this book are race and gender’’ (p. 260). Struggling to express my reaction to this latter statement in particularly appropriate scholarly language, the phrase that seems to sum it up best is : ‘‘Well, duh!’’ While some of Allen’s insights into American culture are intriguing—for example, our preference for the practical and our obsession with efficiency certainly ring true—they are not ideally persuasive as presented because of the book’s tendency to ignore too many important issues and scholars. Allen may have read more broadly in the sociology and history of science – as well as in media studies and philosophy—than this presentation of his subject matter implies; if so, he ought to have reflected this reading in what he has written here. A dose of empiricism may be helpful in this context. While it seems to be true (on the basis of most relevant opinion polls) that today’s Americans prefer science that has economic or social benefits (for example, science that creates jobs, health, and wealth), it is also true that Americans continue to like and trust science as well as technology (even while some segments are doubtful about specific points, such as evolution and climate change). If, as Allen apparently takes as his premise, suspicion of all things purely scientific is a peculiarly American cultural