Gentleman, Scholar, Visionary- A Living Tribute to Harold K. Jacobson

Tribute to Harold Jacobson

Gentleman, Scholar, Visionary- A Living Tribute to Harold K. Jacobson

Tribute to Harold Jacobson

Why the United States did not become a party to the Kyoto Protocol: German, Norwegian, and US perspectives

According to two-level game theory, negotiators tailor agreements at the international level to be ratifiable at the domestic level. This did not happen in the Kyoto negotiations, however, in the US case. We interviewed 26 German, Norwegian, and US participants in and observers of the climate negotiations concerning their views on three explanations for why the United States did not become a party to Kyoto. Explanation 1 argues that Kyoto delegations mistakenly thought the Senate was bluffing when adopting Byrd–Hagel. Explanation 2 contends that Europeans preferred a more ambitious agreement without US participation to a less ambitious agreement with US participation. Finally, explanation 3 suggests that in Kyoto the Clinton–Gore administration gave up on Senate ratification, and essentially pushed for an agreement that would provide them a climate-friendly face. While all explanations received some support from interviewees, explanation 1 and (particularly) explanation 3 received considerably more support than explanation 2

Does politics impact carbon emissions?

"Do political variables influence long-term environmental transitions? The discussion on the determinants of the environmental performance of countries has been dominated by a focus on the Environmental Kuznets curve. This concept concentrated primarily on the role of economic factors, in particular per capita income levels. By contrast, we outline both conceptually and empirically how political factors can affect long-term carbon trajectories. Our findings from an error-correction model suggest that political factors are an important explanatory variable for carbon emissions in over 100 countries during the period 1970-2004. The results show that political capacity reduces carbon emission in OECD countries whereas political constraints, democracy and the Kyoto Protocol reduce long-term carbon emission in the group of all countries as well as in non-OECD countries." [author's abstract

International Nonregimes: A Research Agenda1

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146934/1/j.1468-2486.2007.00672.x.pd

Problems of cross-level inference in political science

Political Science research encounters inferences across levels of analysis; however, they are fraught with challenges. After introducing voting examples of aggregation bias, problems posed by aggregation bias are summarized more generally. Subsequently, the article reviews the major methodological approaches to overcome aggregation bias and to solve the ecological inference (disaggregation) problem. The article highlights the possibility that aggregation bias may lead governments to accept (or reject) international climate agreements when negotiating as blocs of countries as compared to the distribution of the preferences of all countries involved in the negotiations

Long-Term environmental policy challenges for research

Long-term policy issues are a particularly vexing class of environmental policy issues which merit increasing attention due to the long-time horizons involved, the incongruity with political cycles, and the challenges for collective action. Following the definition of long-term environmental policy challenges, I pose three questions as challenges for future research, namely 1. Are present democracies well suited to cope with long-term policy challenges? 2. Are top-down or bottom-up solutions to long-term environmental policy challenges advisable? 3. Will mitigation and adaptation of environmental challenges suffice? In concluding, the contribution raises the issue of credible commitment for long-term policy issues and potential design options

Long-Term Environmental Policy: Definition, Knowledge, Future Research

Considering the long-term is not new, yet we seem to be overwhelmed by the long-term nature of many of our environmental policy problems. Following a definition of long-term policy problems, this editorial introduces the contributions to this special issue of Global Environmental Politics and outlines three major challenges for future research, including the time inconsistency problem, the effect of democratic and decentralized governance on problem-solving, as well as institutional designs to prevent or recover from unwanted long-term policy outcomes. </jats:p