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Evolution of the Ozone Regime: Local, National, and International Influences
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Abstract
Many of the factors that are instrumental in facilitating interstate cooperation on the environment are examined by Srini Sitaraman in Chapter 5. Realist and neo-liberal theories of international relations have focused on the structural causes of interstate cooperation. Relative versus absolute gains, anarchy, issue-domains, international regimes and institutions have received a disproportionate amount of scholarly attention. Domestic political processes and factor endowments have not been given sufficient attention. Sitaraman's chapter shows how domestic political processes and different factor groupings in the United States interacted with transnational alliances to influence the negotiation, shape and structure of the 1987 Montreal Protocol on stratospheric ozone depletion. The U.S. government internationalized the ozone problem by enabling the extension of scientific discourse to the interstate level. Sitaraman shows how domestic political processes and bureaucratic politics affected the final shape and outcome of the Montreal treaty. His chapter demonstrates that the state is a disaggregated entity, and that domestic political processes are linked to the external world through a network of intermediary organizations. Sitaraman shows how U.S. domestic political processes and intra-governmental politics contribute to the formulation of major international environmental agreements. Issues examined in the chapter include domestic sources of international environmental policy; the "internationalization" of ozone depletion by the United States; the contested science of ozone depletion; domestic politics and its influence on the shape, structure and the outcome of the Montreal Protocol; and the importance of local, national and international levels of analysis for our understanding of U.S. international environmental policy and international environmental cooperation more generally.
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