International Linkages and Environmental Sustainability: The Effectiveness of the Regime Network
| Date | 01 March 2006 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343306061545 |
| Author | Hugh Ward |
| Published date | 01 March 2006 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
149
Introduction
Considerable effort has been put into con-
structing international environmental
regimes, especially since the UN Stockholm
Conference on the Human Environment in
1972. Although air and water quality have
improved in some respects in rich countries,
in many there are considerable problems with
decoupling economic growth from emissions
of greenhouse gases, constraining waste and
encouraging recycling, and preventing
overuse of renewable resources such as water
and fish stocks (EU Commission, 2003;
OECD, 2004). In many poorer countries,
problems with air pollution and availability
of clean water are growing along with urban-
ization and industrialization, even though
there is often progress with respect to meeting
basic needs (UNEP, 2002). Although con-
siderable progress has been made over deple-
tion of the ozone layer, the pace of advance
on many other global issues has been very
slow. One problem may be the single-issue
focus of international environmental regimes.
© 2006 Journal of Peace Research,
vol. 43, no. 2, 2006, pp. 149–166
Sage Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA
and New Delhi) http://jpr.sagepub.com
DOI 10.1177/0022343306061545
International Linkages and Environmental
Sustainability: The Effectiveness of the Regime
Network*
HUGH WARD
Department of Government, University of Essex
While the literature on environmental regime effectiveness has focused on particular regimes considered
in isolation, the overall effects of the system of regimes are more relevant. First, regimes are connected
because they often share institutional architecture, deal with different aspects of the same problem,
frame issues using similar legal and policy principles, and are subject to attempts to coordinate across
issues by groups of nations, NGOs and international agencies. Thus, the network of regimes has social
capital that can be applied to particular issues. Second, owing to ecological interconnectedness, regimes
can have both positive and negative side-effects on environmental issues that they do not explicitly deal
with. Allowing for political interconnectedness using concepts drawn from social network theory and
for ecological interconnectedness using broad measures of sustainability, this article argues that nations
more central to the network of environmental regimes should score higher on measures of sustainabil-
ity. This is because the social capital in the regime network can more easily be brought to bear on cen-
trally placed nations to make them cooperate and because they are more likely to be aware of negative
regime side-effects. Measures of network centrality do, indeed, positively impact on nations’ perform-
ance on four sustainability indicators. The analysis also finds that a nation’s position in the general
international system further positively impacts on its sustainability scores. This leads to the suggestion
that the environmental regime network is supported by social capital in more general international
networks.
* Thanks to Marc Levy for making available the Environ-
mental Agreement Dataset; Eric Tannebaum for writing a
programme to convert the Environmental Agreement
Dataset into the format I needed to produce an affiliation
network; and Jon Pevehouse for making the CoW IGO
dataset available in a convenient format. The data and
appendices are available at http://www.prio.no/jpr/datasets.
Correspondence: hugh@essex.ac.uk.
Many regimes displace problems, spatially,
into the future or onto other issue-dimen-
sions. This calls into question existing ways of
conceptualizing their effectiveness, focusing
on the current impact of individual regimes
on particular problems. The central issue is
whether, on balance, the system of environ-
mental regime governance promotes sustain-
ability.
I argue that, when nations participate in
particular regimes, they also become part of
a wider network. This network links nations
and also individual regimes. It embodies
social capital that may be used to encourage
nations to behave sustainably. It channels
broad environmental concerns and allows for
issue-linkage. Through information transfer,
it can also help to prevent the negative side-
effects of issue-specific regimes. Drawing on
social network theory, I measure nations’
centrality in affiliation networks created by
international environmental treaties and co-
membership of environmental intergovern-
mental organizations (IGOs). I find that
nations in central positions are more likely to
act sustainably, controlling for a range of
other influences. This supports my concep-
tion of how social capital operates in the
regime network. Centrality in the environ-
mental network is highly correlated with
centrality in more general international
networks. I find that general centrality has
greater statistical power. My interpretation is
that a nation’s general ties support and
enhance those created by its specifically
environmental commitments.
The Effects of International
Networks on States
Neoliberal institutionalism sees states as
increasingly interdependent economically
and politically (Keohane & Nye, 1977),
requiring international institutions and
regimes to help solve a range of collective
action problems (Stein, 1982; Keohane,
1984; Axelrod & Keohane, 1985). Among
the key problems are those associated with
the global and regional environment (e.g.
Young, 1989; List & Rittberger, 1991;
Vogler, 1995; Rosenau, 1997). Not only do
regimes help nations contract to enjoy the
gains from cooperation, but they also shape
nations’ perceptions of their interests and of
good behaviour (Young, 1999; Hasenclever,
Mayer & Rittberger, 1997: 136–211).
Regimes are both a symptom of interdepen-
dence and a means whereby ties are forged
between nations. Individual regimes are also
linked together (Keohane, Haas & Levy,
1993: 15–16).
Regimes may be ‘nested’ in some legal and
institutional architecture that relates to a
family of issues (Vogler, 1995: 37; Young,
1999: 183). A ‘cluster’ of different regimes
may deal with different aspects of the same
problem (Young, 1999: 184–185). Dis-
courses travel across issue domains and
between regimes, through borrowing, adap-
tation and imposition by powerful nations
(Stokke, 1998). For instance legal concepts
and institutional arrangements are borrowed
from other regimes (Oberthür, 2001).
Groups of nations, such as the G-77 and the
EU, attempt to coordinate across different
issue-areas (Vogler, 1995: 32). Since the mid-
1980s, environmental NGOs have created
advocacy networks that span a wide range of
issues (Keck & Sikkink, 1998: 121–163),
and work has started to explore these using
social network theory (Anheier & Katz,
2005). Private corporations concern them-
selves with the interactions between trade,
the environment and development, and they,
too, build networks to coordinate across
these issues (Falkner, 2003). Finally, scien-
tific networks interconnect issue-areas (Haas,
1989). Thus, the system of regimes has a
structure that is not reducible to the proper-
ties of individual regimes. Why might this
matter to nations’ behaviour?
The notion of interconnectedness is
journal of PEACE RESEARCH volume 43 / number 2 / march 2006
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