National Governance and the Global Climate Change Regime

How do domestic interests affect international policymaking? What is the role of the nation-state within multilateral regimes? How can we understand the diversity of state responses to the internationalization of environmental regulation? National Governance and the Global Climate Change Regime compares the roles of different actors and institutions in international environmental policymaking. It focuses on the formation of a legally binding treaty to reduce greenhouse gases, the Kyoto Protocol, to show how domestic interests affect international treaty negotiations. Dana Fisher combines quantitative analysis of social, economic, and environmental data for the member-states of the OECD with qualitative case studies of three key countries, the United States, Japan, and the Netherlands. She argues compellingly that domestic debates within states and subsequent national policy formation have a significantly larger role in international environmental regime formation than many scholars recognize.

Societal and international struggles over the Kyoto Protocol will no doubt be the signature environmental conflict of fin du siècle global society. Dana Fisher is one of the few environmental sociologists to explore international environmental regime dynamics in the detail and breadth they deserve., Dana Fisher's interviews with a total of eighty national leaders; her superb command of the literature on global warming; and her use of contemporary environmental social theory add up to an excellent work in the field of environmental sociology., An important, well-written, insightful contribution toward explaining regulation of the global environment. Highly recommended., The world's future depends on what concerted measures major governments take to mitigate destructive effects of industrialization on environments across and around the earth. In this thought-provoking, closely documented study, Dana Fisher shows how officialdom, business, scientists, and activists in each country interact to produce their country's approach to worldwide environmental measures. Her sustained comparisons of Japan, the Netherlands, and the United States establish that countries differ dramatically in their readiness to act against global threats to the environment, and that national politics—not simply national interest—makes the difference.

Dana R. Fisher is assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Columbia University.