John Vogler

Taking Institutions Seriously: How Regime Analysis can be Relevant to Multilevel Environmental Governance

This article starts with the observation that in the study and practice of global environmental governance (GEG) institutions and organizations are often conflated. For regime theorists they are not the same thing and the argument is advanced that, despite its failings, the regime/institutional approach continues to have significant analytical advantages. However, the benefits of regime analysis can only be realized if it avoids becoming an arena for inter-governmental rational choice theorizing and takes institutions seriously. One way of doing this is to utilize John Searles general theory of institutional facts. Searles work provides the inspiration for a re-consideration of the bases, components, domain and explanation of global environmental regimes. It is argued that it could yield a new institutional approach which overcomes some of the problems of existing regime analyses in ways appropriate to the study of multilevel environmental governance.

The European Union as a Sustainable Development Actor: the Case of External Fisheries Policy

Abstract Promotion of sustainable development and poverty eradication in the worlds poorest countries are interlinked and frequently reiterated commitments of the European Union. While their achievement depends upon successful implementation of the Unions policy coherence for development (PCD) strategy, they also epitomize the challenges facing that strategy. This article examines EU actorness in relation to sustainable development, using the external dimensions of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), with particular reference to fisheries agreements with West Africa, as an illustrative case. Given the many sources of incoherence identified in relation to the CFP, it is concluded that, while the Union is undoubtedly a global actor, implementation of the PCD strategy is insufficient to enable it to function effectively as a sustainable development actor.

A global actor past its peak

Examining a range of policy areas in which the European Union (EU) acts externally – notably trade, development, climate change and foreign and security policy – this article considers the notion that the years since the mid-2000s have witnessed a decline in EU actorness/effectiveness. In evaluating EU performance, the article employs the interrelated concepts of presence, denoting EU status and influence; opportunity, denoting the external context of EU action; and capability, referring to EU policy processes and instruments, with particular reference to the impact of the 2009 Lisbon Treaty. It is contended that achievement of the increased capability envisaged by the Lisbon Treaty, together with resolution of the Eurozone crisis, with its deleterious effect upon the Union’s presence, would not fully compensate for the loss of opportunity provided by the changing international structure.

Climate change in world politics

1. Introduction 2. Framing and Fragmentation 3. The UNFCCC Regime 4. Interests and Alignments 5. The Pursuit of Justice 6. Recognition and Prestige 7. Structural Change and Climate Politics 8. Conclusion

Changing conceptions of climate and energy security in Europe

The ways in which energy and security have been framed in Brussels since the early days of the European Coal and Steel Community through to recent developments in climate policy are considered, with a main focus upon the European Commission, which prepares policy for decision by the Council and Parliament. Both in terms of institutions and ideas, energy, security, and environmental policy have evolved separately. However, since 2005, there has been a growing convergence as the Commission attempts to develop the internal and external dimensions of EU climate policy. The reasons for this and the potential implications of such a ‘synergistic’ approach are briefly explored.

Environment and Natural Resources

Governments have been concluding agreements on matters relating to the conservation of the physical environment for over a century. International action to preserve ‘birds useful to agriculture’, for example, can be traced back to 1868 (Caldwell, 1990, pp. 17–18). A large number of international fisheries commissions were set up in the first half of the twentieth century and current international marine pollution law dates back to the 1950s. However, environmental issues were most definitely not considered to be part of the mainstream of world politics. Environmental politics were so ‘low’ on the international agenda as to be virtually invisible. In the most important textbook of the Cold War era, Hans J. Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations (1967), the only mention of the physical environment was as one element of national power (alongside decisive factors such as national character). Natural resources were, in Morgenthau’s words, ‘another relatively stable factor’ (1967, p. 109). The environment, then, was simply regarded as the unchanging context of international politics, and environmental issues the preserve of technical negotiations about fish stocks, wildlife preservation and the design of oil tankers.

Recognition and Prestige

The very earliest writings on international relations confirm the significance of the pursuit of honour and prestige alongside more ‘base’ concerns with relative power and wealth. Thucydides’s description of the Peloponnesian war accounts for the fate of the Melians in their unequal struggle with the Athenians. Simple survival should have counselled surrender, yet honour dictated what turned out to be a suicidal course of action. This theme is taken up in classical realism. In Martin Wight’s (1978, p. 97) discussion of power politics ‘honour is the halo around interests, prestige is the halo around power’. Hans Morgenthau (1967, p. 69), doyen of realist theorists, identified the contest for prestige as one of three ‘basic manifestations’ of the struggle for power in international relations and outlined the prestige policies that statesmen may pursue. The other two are protection of the status quo or imperialism — where pursuit of prestige represents one of the instrumentalities through which they may be achieved.

The Pursuit of Justice

The pursuit of justice is inseparable from the politics of climate change. Considering the gross imbalance between the benefits accrued by those high income societies whose emissions triggered the enhanced greenhouse effect and the likely impacts visited upon the poor and vulnerable, who bear little or no responsibility for the problem, it could not be otherwise (Shue, 1995; Elliott, 2006). Climate justice has been defined as the linking of human rights and development ‘to achieve a human centred approach, safeguarding the rights of the most vulnerable and sharing the burdens and benefits of climate change and its resolution equitably and fairly’ (Mary Robinson Foundation, 2011).

The UNFCCC Regime

The fragmented nature of interstate regulatory activity on climate change inevitably casts some doubt upon the continued significance of the UN’s Climate Convention. It aspires to play a central coordinating role but is confronted by a growing array of sometimes unrelated, and usually unregulated, transnational and private governance activities (IPCC, 2014a). In the light of these circumstances, the devotion of an entire chapter to the intricacies of the UNFCCC requires some justification. Analysts have disagreed on the centrality of the Convention. For Keohane and Victor (2010) it remains at the core of the climate regime complex, but for Abbott (2012) it is one among many relevant intergovernmental, transnational and civil society entities. Where the UNFCCC sits in relation to present and future climate governance is a vitally important and unresolved question, but is not one posed in this book. Instead the focus is upon international climate politics, where attention remains fixed upon the Convention. This is despite those attempts, discussed in the previous chapter, to avoid, or even subvert, the UNFCCC. Most of these have been orchestrated by developed world governments. But the overwhelming majority of state Parties value the UN climate regime, because it is open to their influence and because they have development needs that may potentially be met within its expanding activities.

Framing and Fragmentation

Even a cursory glance at international attempts to solve the problem of climate change would suffice to establish two things. First, that, although there is a UN Climate Convention (UNFCCC) and associated Kyoto Protocol, there is also a plethora of other climate-related initiatives and institutions. Second, there is a significant disconnection between the way in which the UNFCCC attempts to mitigate climate change and scientific and even ‘common sense’ ideas of what would really be required to tackle the human forces that drive the enhanced greenhouse effect. This chapter examines the way in which the international climate regime was set up and how ‘framings’ of the problem have been associated with the ‘fragmented’ responses of the international community.