The emergence of environmental stewardship as a primary institution of global international society
| Author | Barry Buzan,Robert Falkner |
| Published date | 01 March 2019 |
| Date | 01 March 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1354066117741948 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066117741948
European Journal of
International Relations
2019, Vol. 25(1) 131 –155
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1354066117741948
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E
JR
I
The emergence of
environmental stewardship
as a primary institution of
global international society
Robert Falkner
London School of Economics, UK
Barry Buzan
London School of Economics, UK
Abstract
This article develops an English School framework for analysing the emergence
of new primary institutions in global international society, and applies this to
the case of environmental stewardship. The article traces the impact that global
environmentalism has had on the normative order of global international society,
examines the creation of secondary institutions around this norm and identifies the
ways in which these developments have become embedded in the constitution and
behaviour of states. It assesses the ways in which environmental stewardship has
interacted with the other primary institutions that compose global international
society, changing some of the understandings and practices associated with them.
The conclusions argue that environmental stewardship is likely to be a durable
institution of global international society, and that it might be a harbinger of a more
functional turn in its priorities.
Keywords
English School, environmentalism, environmental stewardship, global international
society, pluralism, primary institutions, secondary institutions, solidarism, world
society
Corresponding author:
Robert Falkner, International Relations, LSE, Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE, UK.
Email: r.falkner@lse.ac.uk
741948EJT0010.1177/1354066117741948European Journal of International RelationsFalkner and Buzan
research-article2017
Article
132 European Journal of International Relations 25(1)
Introduction
This article develops an English School (ES) framework for investigating the impact
that global environmentalism has had on the normative/constitutional order of global
international society (GIS). The study of long-term and deep-seated norm change is one
of the hallmarks of the ES tradition (Buzan, 2004, 2014; Clark, 2007; Holsti, 2004;
Mayall, 1990; Reus-Smit, 1999; Wheeler, 2000). Curiously, however, despite spawning
a burgeoning literature in International Relations (IR) (Stevis, 2014), the rise of global
environmental politics has not yet sparked comparable interest among ES scholars in
understanding how a loose set of environmental ideas originating in the 19th century
came to redefine international legitimacy and the moral purpose of the state in the late
20th century. We seek to correct this by applying ES theory to the field of global envi-
ronmental politics and analysing environmental stewardship as a deep normative devel-
opment in GIS, comparable to, and interacting with, the emergence and evolution of
other primary institutions. For the ES, environmental stewardship offers a live contem-
porary case study of normative development and contestation in GIS to set alongside
other more recent additions to the international constitutional order (nationalism, the
market, human rights). It provides insights into the roles that both states and non-state
actors (world society) play in bringing about normative change, and the interplay within
GIS between primary and secondary institutions. It also adds to the insights gained from
studying nationalism, human rights and the market about how the emergence of a new
primary institution has repercussions for other institutions within the constitutional
structure of GIS.
We show how environmental stewardship evolved from a few scattered normative
initiatives in the 19th century, through being a largely Western concern during much of
the 20th, to becoming a globally accepted primary institution of GIS during the 21st.
Over this period, global environmentalism gradually evolved into a distinctive set of
global values that transcended their diverse local and national origins. World society
actors turned environmentalism into a transnational movement and pushed for its inser-
tion into the normative order of international society. However, it was a state-centric
process of norm adoption and consolidation that morphed world society environmental-
ism into a primary institution of GIS. As expected in transnationalist and some ES litera-
tures, world society actors thus played the key role as norm entrepreneurs, but state
agency and leadership by great powers made it possible for environmentalism to change
the criteria for international legitimacy in GIS. The strengthening of the environmental
norm can be seen in the creation of a vast network of international environmental regimes
and in state-level behavioural and constitutive changes. In this sense, secondary institu-
tions serve as manifestations of the scope and strength of the underlying primary institu-
tion. At the same time, the limitations of, and struggles over, the regulatory power of
secondary institutions also provide a measure of the depth of international norm change.
While global environmentalism implies a strong solidarist development in global gov-
ernance, environmental stewardship has made only limited progress on the path from a
pluralist logic of international coexistence to a solidarist logic of cooperation. It has been
successfully globalized, in part, because it follows a universally accepted ‘common fate’
logic rather than a more exclusive Western liberal agenda, but its ability to transform the
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