Thomas Gehring

The causal mechanisms of interaction between international institutions

This article develops a conceptual framework for the systematic analysis of the interaction between international institutions as a first step towards building a theory of international interaction. It examines how international institutions may exert causal influence on each others development and effectiveness and suggests that four general causal mechanisms can elucidate the distinct routes through which influence travels from one institution to another. Institutional interaction can thus rely on transfer of knowledge, commitments established under an institution, behavioural effects of an institution, and functional linkage of the ultimate governance targets of the institutions involved. The article also puts forward hypotheses about the likely effects of specific types of institutional interaction for governance within the international system. The causal mechanisms and types of interaction are mutually exclusive models that help analyse real-world interaction situations. They may also serve as a basis for the systematic analysis of more complex interaction situations.

Supranational regulatory agencies between independence and control: the EMEA and the authorization of pharmaceuticals in the European Single Market

ABSTRACT The European Medicines Agency (EMEA) represents a new type of supranational regulation. Formally, it merely advises the Commission and a member state committee on the authorization of pharmaceuticals. In practice, however, it dominates decision-making and operates much like an independent agency. Based upon a brief discussion of the merits of independent regulation and the necessity to control regulatory activities, the article explores the institutional arrangement in which the EMEA is embedded and seeks to explain how tight oversight is compatible with quasi-independent action. It argues that the multi-tiered oversight mechanism restricts the non-scientific actors involved in the authorization of pharmaceuticals more than the agency – as long as the agency adheres to its mandate of producing scientifically convincing decisions.

Institutional Stimulation of Deliberative Decision-Making: Division of Labour, Deliberative Legitimacy and Technical Regulation in the European Single Market

Institutions stimulate deliberative decision-making if they hinder stakeholders from introducing bargaining power into the decision process. This article explores the conditions for, and limits of, the creation of deliberative legitimacy in single market regulation. An assessment of the standardization procedure demonstrates that legitimacy arises only from the combination of political and technical deliberation.

Exploring Regime Interaction

The international system is populated by a steadily growing number of international institutions. More than two hundred major regimes exist in the field of international environmental protection alone; with five major agreements being adopted per year since the 1980s (Beisheim et al. 1999; see also Sand 1992). While these institutions usually are separately established to respond to particular problems, they increasingly affect each others’ development and performance. In some cases, “regime interaction” creates conflict.1 Whereas the Word Trade Organization (GATT/WTO) promotes free international trade, several international environmental regimes, such as the Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and the Montreal Protocol for the protection of the ozone layer, establish new trade restrictions (see Petersmann 1993; Lang 1993; Moltke 1997). Likewise, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change provides incentives for establishing fast-growing mono-cultural tree plantations in order to maximize carbon sequestration from the atmosphere, whereas the Convention on Biological Diversity of 1992 aims at preserving biological diversity of forest ecosystems (see Gillespie 1998; WBGU 1998; Tarasofsky 1999; Pontecorvo 1999). In other cases, interaction creates synergistic effects. The global regime on the transboundary movement of hazardous wastes has been strengthened, for example, upon the establishment of a number of regional regimes addressing the same environmental problem (Meinke 1997).

Governing in nested institutions: environmental policy in the European Union and the case of packaging waste

Abstract The environmental policy of the European Community is nested within a broader institution devoted predominantly to market integration. It also co-exists with the domestic environmental policies of the member states. This institutional arrangement has important consequences for environmental governance in the present Union. Not only does the wide scope for domestic environmental action generate different logics of harmonization for the regulation of products and processes, it also creates an institutional preference for European product standards because this type of regulation allows a trade-off between environmental and single market concerns. This effect is demonstrated by the development of the originally purely environmentally motivated and process-related directive on packaging and packaging waste adopted in 1994. During its preparation, this legislative project was supplemented with a strong product-related component that made a trade-off between policies possible and facilitated majority s...

The European Union as an Inadvertent Great Power: EU Actorness and the Ukraine Crisis

We examine how the EU can act as a great power in its own right even in the absence of military capability and how its institutional structure conditions this ability. We first theorize EU great power politics. Based on theories of corporate action, the EU constitutes a strong market power in its own right and a weak security power. While it is institutionally ill-equipped to purposefully mobilize its market power to pursue high-politics goals, its communitarized external relations may inadvertently challenge important security interests of other great powers. Second, we show that the EU acted as an inadvertent great power vis-a-vis Russia in its Ukraine policy which was primarily driven by the supranational decision-making apparatus and low-politics considerations, but engendered a bipolar power struggle with Russia over Ukraine. The risks inherent in EU inadvertent great power politics are deeply engrained in the EUs institutional structure and therefore difficult to mitigate.

Methodological issues in the study of broader consequences

The study of the broader effects of international regimes is just beginning. For a long time, regime analysts operated with a two-fold fiction, namely that a regime could be established largely in isolation from other regimes and that its consequences were concentrated to its own domain. In the real world, the international system is increasingly densely populated by international governing institutions. A study elaborated for the Rio Summit of 1992 counted more than 125 important multilateral environmental regimes alone, most of which were institutionalized separately from each other (Sand 1992). Every year, states conclude about five new important environmental agreements (Beisheim et al. 1999: 350 – 51). Against the backdrop of this trend and the sheer number of independently established international regimes, it is difficult to image that interaction among regimes is an irrelevant phenomenon.

Internationale Regime als Steuerungsinstrumente der Umweltpolitik

Die Bedeutung der internationalen Umweltpolitik wachst seit langer Zeit unaufhaltsam. Die Stockholmer Konferenz der Vereinten Nationen uber die menschliche Umwelt von 1972 hatte einer breiteren Offentlichkeit erstmals deutlich gemacht, das Umweltprobleme nicht an den Grenzen der Nationalstaaten enden. Spatestens mit der offentlichen Diskussion um die Zerstorung der stratospharischen Ozonschicht durch Industriechemikalien und um den durch menschliches Handeln verursachten „Treibhauseffekt“ ist die internationale Dimension von Umweltpolitik fest auf der politischen Tagesordnung verankert. Ausdruck dieser gewachsenen Aufmerksamkeit war die Konferenz der Vereinten Nationen uber Umwelt und Entwicklung im Juni 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, auf der neben einem Umweltaktionsprogramm fur das 21. Jahrhundert („Agenda 21“) unter anderem zwei Rahmenubereinkommen uber Klimaanderungen und uber die biologische Vielfalt verabschiedet wurden.

Fazit: Internationale Umweltpolitik durch Verhandlungen und Verträge

Internationale Umweltregime stellen neben internationalen Organisationen die wichtigste Form der internationalen Zusammenarbeit zum Schutz der Umwelt dar. Sie sind stets darauf gerichtet, das Verhalten von Akteuren durch die Setzung von Normen in eine umweltvertraglichere Richtung zu lenken. In der Regel beruhen sie auf einem volkerrechtlich verbindlichen Ubereinkommen. Daruber hinaus umfassen sie jedoch auch einen andauernden Verhandlungsprozes, der es den beteiligten Akteuren erlaubt, die geschaffenen Normen weiterzuentwickeln, die Normumsetzung zu uberwachen und auftretende Konflikte zu bearbeiten. Durch die Verbindung verhaltenslenkender Normen mit einem andauernden Verhandlungsprozes werden sie zu in sich abgeschlossenen, weitgehend selbstandigen Steuerungsinstitutionen, die trotz aller Veranderungen im Detail langfristig Bestand haben und deshalb den Eindruck hoher Stabilitat vermitteln. Trotz des gemeinsamen Grundschemas unterscheiden sich internationale Umweltregime in vielfaltiger Weise voneinander.

Das internationale Regime zum Schutz der Ozonschicht: Modell für das Klimaregime

Das internationale Regime zum Schutz der Ozonschicht wird vielfach als Modell fur das derzeit im Entstehen begriffene Regime zum Schutz des Weltklimas angesehen. Bei allen Unterschieden im Detail scheint es ein institutionelles Arrangement darzustellen, das es erlaubt, auch im horizontal strukturierten internationalen System erfolgreich gezielte Umweltpolitik zu betreiben.