Dissertation

The policy process in international environmental governance

Aggarwal-Khan, Sheila

2008

Overview

There is much published literature pessimistically commenting on international environmental governance (IEG) and as a result, many proposals to reform IEG. Such critiques do not sufficiently appreciate the extent to which the pursuit by multiple actors of their diverse agendas and interests, and the interactions between them, affects the outcome of IEG. The result is reforms to IEG that are likely to have difficulties in achieving more effective outcomes for IEG. Competing social, political and economic interests of actors play out within the policy processes of institutions of IEG. Within these processes, actors frame environmental problems in ways that represent their beliefs and agendas, shaping the design of policy and setting the direction of the rest of the policy process. Taken-for-granted practices affect the outcome of IEG. This study identifies such practices by examining the policy processes of two case study institutions of IEGâ UNEP and the CBD, following the policy process from the international level to local levels. Policy processes occur in every institution of IEG, which his why this theme as a subject for study has broad implications for IEG. The study uses social institutional constructivism as the theoretical framework to understand how different actors affect the policy process. The structure of the policy process determines which actors participate in the policy process and the way in which actors behave. These behaviours can, in turn, reproduce and modify the structure, institutionalizing practices of the policy process. Structuration theory is used to examine this structure. The study concludes by presenting how policy processes could be better structured to produce more effective outcomes for IEG given multiple, competing social, political and economic objectives of actors.

• Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Subject: International law