States and markets in global environmental governance: The role of tipping points in international regime formation
| Date | 01 June 2012 |
| Published date | 01 June 2012 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1354066110380962 |
| Author | Irja Vormedal |
States and markets in global
environmental governance:
The role of tipping points in
international regime formation
Irja Vormedal
University of Oslo, Norway
Abstract
This article develops a model for analysing international regime formation in the
environmental domain. It is argued that current approaches to understanding how
regimes emerge and develop are too narrow, and fail to account for the dynamic interplay
between states and markets which induce the emergence of ‘tipping points’ leading to
more extensive and stringent international institutions. The article demonstrates the
central role of tipping points in regime formation using the example of international
climate change.
Keywords
global governance, institutions, international relations, non-state actor, regime
Introduction
The proliferation of global environmental problems over recent decades has firmly
placed the issue of ecological degradation at the centre of the international agenda.
Indeed, transboundary environmental problems cannot be resolved unilaterally, but
require unprecedented multilateral cooperation to establish institutions that can guide
behaviour along the path of sustainable development (Clapp and Dauvergne, 2005;
DeSombre, 2007; Haas et al., 1993: Hurrell and Kingsbury, 1992). While there are
success stories of international rule-based cooperation, some pressing problems such as
climate change remain unresolved, rendering the issue of how to realize effective inter-
national institutions ever more urgent.
This article examines how international environmental regimes emerge and develop.
Previous literatures on regime formation come from a variety of traditions. When regime
theory first developed in the 1980s and 1990s, scholars adopted a state-centric approach
Article
European Journal of
International Relations
18(2) 251–275
© The Author(s) 2010
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DOI: 10.1177/1354066110380962
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JR
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Corresponding author:
Irja Vormedal, University of Oslo, Centre for Development and the Environment,
PO Box 1116 Blindern, Oslo 0317, Norway.
Email: i.h.vormedal@sum.uio.no
252 European Journal of International Relations 18(2)
to explaining successful institutional bargaining, notably focusing on factors such as
institutional design, the distribution of burden and commitments, hegemonic leadership
and social learning (see Hasenclever et al., 1997). More recently, researchers have taken
a broader approach to analysing regime formation, recognizing that in the face of glo-
balization and increased non-state actor engagement in world politics, institutional anal-
ysis should reflect the shifting and increasingly complex relationship between state and
non-state actors (see DeSombre, 2007; Grande and Pauly, 2005; Josselin and Wallace,
2001). Now, it is widely acknowledged that private actors, including multinational com-
panies and business and industry associations, influence the negotiation and formation
of international institutions, and that the traditional regime scholarship has failed to
account for the importance of business engagement in international rule-making
(Falkner, 2008; Fuchs, 2007; Levy and Newell, 2005; May, 2006). Yet, there have been
few attempts to bridge the divide between the regime school and research on business
power in regime formation.
This article develops a model for analysing environmental regime formation which
emphasizes how the interplay between states and markets produces particular conditions
for institutional change. The following section reviews relevant contributions from
regime theory and its critiques. The article then examines the political and institutional
drivers of corporate preferences, focusing on how embryonic, multi-level governance in
the environmental domain has changed the premises for business conduct. In the next
section, the article develops a framework for analysing the evolution of environmental
regimes which focuses on the intersections between multi-level governance, business
strategy and international regime formation. It is argued that the interplay between politi-
cal and institutional change and corporate preferences over time is likely to generate
‘tipping points’ in business strategies from opposition to support for international regula-
tion through regimes. In the next phase, emerging support from dominant business lob-
bies is likely to induce more favourable conditions for inter-state bargaining and thus the
adoption of more extensive and rigorous international institutions. The tipping point
model is illustrated using the example of the international ozone regime and is subse-
quently applied to a more detailed case study of the evolution of the international climate
change regime from 1990 to 2009. The case demonstrates how a tipping point in business
strategies became evident between 1997 and 2005, and argues that the adoption of the
Copenhagen Accord in 2009 also indicates the emergence of a tipping point in the
regime-formation process.
The formation of international environmental regimes
An important strand of the scholarship on inter-state cooperation to mitigate global envi-
ronmental problems has centred on the study of how institutional arrangements emerge
and develop. Institutions are commonly defined as connected sets of rules and practices
that prescribe behavioural roles, constrain activity and shape expectations (Haas et al.,
1993: 4–5). Institutions may refer to bureaucratic organizations, but the term is more
often associated with the concept regimes, which do not necessarily have organizations
attached. A consensus definition of regimes first appeared in a special issue of International
Organization in 1982, which described regimes as sets of ‘implicit or explicit principles,
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