Global public policy, transnational policy communities, and their networks

Public policy has been a prisoner of the word "state." Yet, the state is reconfigured by globalization. Through "global public–private partnerships" and "transnational executive networks," new forms of authority are emerging through global and regional policy processes that coexist alongside nation-state policy processes. Accordingly, this article asks what is "global public policy"? The first part of the article identifies new public spaces where global policies occur. These spaces are multiple in character and variety and will be collectively referred to as the "global agora." The second section adapts the conventional policy cycle heuristic by conceptually stretching it to the global and regional levels to reveal the higher degree of pluralization of actors and multiple-authority structures than is the case at national levels. The third section asks: who is involved in the delivery of global public policy? The focus is on transnational policy communities. The global agora is a public space of policymaking and administration, although it is one where authority is more diffuse, decision making is dispersed and sovereignty muddled. Trapped by methodological nationalism and an intellectual agoraphobia of globalization, public policy scholars have yet to examine fully global policy processes and new managerial modes of transnational public administration

Global Climate Change and the Futility of the Kyoto Process

This article assesses continuing international efforts to establish an international regime to limit global climate change based on the Kyoto Protocol of 1997. It is highly unlikely that enough states will ratify the protocol for it to enter into force. Even if it does come into force, few of the developed countries are positioned to comply with their commitments to reduce or limit emissions of greenhouse gases by the target years 2008 to 2012. Furthermore, the Kyoto-man-dated reductions will at best be a first step toward the emission reductions needed to stabilize concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Among the reasons for the failure of the Kyoto process are the indeterminancy of the science of climate change, the complexity of the Kyoto Protocol's flexibility mechanisms, the tendency for differentiated responsibilities to encourage self-serving negotiating strategies, and the stalemate between the North and South. The prospects for reviving and energizing the Kyoto process are dim in the wake of the collapse of the climate change talks at COP6 in The Hague in November 2000 and the new Bush administration in Washington. Copyright (c) 2001 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Constructing Environmental Conflicts from Resource Scarcity

This essay reviews Malthusian themes in current discourses about resource scarcity and environmental security. It argues that these themes are unjustifiably dominant in current discussions, and suggests that increased attention should be to paid to discourses revolving around Sustainable Development, as well as on institutional designs that can influence patterns of resource consumption and collective responses to perceptions of resource scarcity Copyright (c) 2002 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.