Susan Park

The University of Sydney · Department of Government and International Relations

It is difficult to exaggerate the scale of contemporary ecological crises. These challenges, particularly climate change, necessitate new modes of politics and policy, even potentially new institutions, that seem anathema to the emphases of traditional accounts of environmental political science. In this paper, we explore contemporary ecopolitics r...

The global uptake of renewable technology is both a dramatic and insufficient contribution to achieving a 1.5–2° world. However, urgently decarbonizing energy use and systems by shifting to renewables relies on intensifying global supply chains, beginning with the extraction of “critical” minerals, an industry that has a long history of generating...

Pacific Island Countries (PICs) advocate for greenhouse gas emissions reductions but face many barriers in transitioning from fossil fuels. Despite these obstacles, PICs aim to shift to renewable energy to meet ambitious Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Research suggests that this is limited by state and regulatory capacity, market struc...

The proliferation of concerns over the transparency, accountability, and democracy of international organizations has contributed to an increase in accountability mechanisms to hold global governors to account, by both state and non-state actors. Much of the scholarly focus on this subject has been on how levers of accountability can improve global...

Established as a multilateral development bank ( MDB ) funded by African states, the African Development Bank (AfDB) is one of many similar international organizations ( IO s) comprising the development finance regime complex. Arguably, states and policy elites recreate similar IO s that enable “norm conformance” within the complex. This is demonst...

This chapter recounts the main findings of the book to make three points: First, that the banks used a range of strategies for resisting a norm that threatened their autonomy and lending-imperative culture. This included compromise over the design of the accountability mechanisms, acquiescence to periodic accountability mechanism reviews, avoidance...

Powerful international development organizations like the World Bank recognized that they contributed to ecosystem destruction and a loss of land and livelihoods for people in developing countries in the 1990s. Pressure from activists and the United States led the World Bank to give affected people recourse through an inspection panel. Within a dec...

This book is the first of its kind to examine the role of great powers in the international politics of climate change. It develops a novel analytical framework for studying environmental power in international relations, what counts as a great power in the environmental field, and what their special environmental responsibilities are. In doing so,...

We outline the main concerns for grappling with increasing environmental disasters in this Symposium. Our focus is threefold: first, to theoretically investigate what constitutes an environmental disaster and identify the parameters for political responses through the discourse in high level multilateral fora; through the construction of the sovere...

Water scarcity in northern Chile highlights critical relations between society and nature, marked by conflict and cooperation and mediated by power. Thus, intergenerational dynamics (IGDs) would appear to be a good perspective from which to both reflect and reinforce different approaches to this phenomenon within an Indigenous community when dealin...

Created to facilitate the transition of economies of Central and Eastern Europe towards democracy and the free market, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is a regional institution in the development finance regime complex. This article examines how the EBRD’s independent accountability mechanism (IAM) emerged and changed to...

Renewable energy (RE) is critical for curbing global greenhouse gas emissions to achieve 2 to 4 degrees of global warming by 2100. While this is an imperative technical response to the climate crisis, the shift to renewables is also driving a surge in demand for metals and minerals used in RE. Calls are being made for “smarter” and more “responsibl...

2019 was the second hottest year on record, with enhanced ice melts, sea level rises, heatwaves, droughts, and unprecedented large-scale wildfires of record intensity. Here I chart a new research agenda for understanding the interconnections between human behaviour, environmental disasters, and governing a more disaster-prone world. I argue that so...

Global governance now provides people with recourse for harm through International Grievance Mechanisms, such as the Independent Accountability Mechanisms of the Multilateral Development Banks. Yet little is known about how such mechanisms work. This Element examines how IGMs provide recourse for infringements of three procedural environmental righ...

This chapter examines the role that international organizations play in world politics. It explains what international organizations are, whether we need international organizations in international relations, and what constraints and opportunities exist for international organizations to achieve their mandates. The chapter also considers the reaso...

International Organisations and Global Problems - by Susan Park July 2018

International Organisations and Global Problems - by Susan Park July 2018

International Organisations and Global Problems - by Susan Park July 2018

International Organisations and Global Problems - by Susan Park July 2018

International Organisations and Global Problems - by Susan Park July 2018

International Organisations and Global Problems - by Susan Park July 2018

International Organisations and Global Problems - by Susan Park July 2018

An examination of whether accountability mechanisms in global environmental governance that focus on monitoring and enforcement necessarily lead to better governance and better environmental outcomes. The rapid development of global environmental governance has been accompanied by questions of accountability. Efforts to address what has been called...

An examination of whether accountability mechanisms in global environmental governance that focus on monitoring and enforcement necessarily lead to better governance and better environmental outcomes. The rapid development of global environmental governance has been accompanied by questions of accountability. Efforts to address what has been called...

An examination of whether accountability mechanisms in global environmental governance that focus on monitoring and enforcement necessarily lead to better governance and better environmental outcomes. The rapid development of global environmental governance has been accompanied by questions of accountability. Efforts to address what has been calle...

In 1993, the World Bank created its Inspection Panel, unprecedently opening itself up to being held to account by people negatively affected by its development projects. Within a decade, the other Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) – the Asian, African, Inter-American Development Banks, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and th...

This chapter examines the role that international organizations play in world politics. It explains what international organizations are, whether we need international organizations in international relations, and what constraints and opportunities exist for international organizations to achieve their mandates. The chapter also considers the reaso...

Governance arrangements have become increasingly complex over time, such that today everything from the Internet to medicine and warfare is subject to some form of governance at the global level. Notably, these changes in global governance can come slowly or quickly, depending on circumstances. For example, evolutionary change is evident in the est...

Intergovernmental Organizations (IOs) such as the Asian Development Bank (ADB) were created by and for states. The ADB was established to further economic growth and cooperation in the Asia Pacific. At the behest of its powerful member states the ADB created an accountability mechanism (AM) in 1995. This mechanism was created to provide recourse to...

Constructivists trace how ideas change state and non-state actor identities as a result of socialisation. Rationalists too use the concept of socialisation to explain change in actors’ behaviour. Studies of socialisation examine change through the states’ spreading ideas through pathways such as elite learning and upwards mobilisation from the mass...

In the 1990s Multilateral Development Banks created accountability mechanisms (AMs) that allowed people affected by development projects redress. Currently undertheorized, this paper examines how and why the Asian Development Bank (ADB) created an AM, and whether the AM serves its purpose to hold the ADB to account and to provide ‘fair hearing of t...

The Asian Development Bank (adb) is engaged in development projects throughout the Greater Mekong Subregion, although for most of the past two decades it has boycotted Myanmar (Burma) because of donor government sanctions. Despite being criticised for its neoliberal focus and its lack of transparency and accountability, the adb’s operations compare...

Activists promote the importance of the global environment. This chapter identifies the actors, aims, and agency that constitute activism in global environmental politics in five sections: first, it identifies the variety of environmental activists; second, activists' aims and activities are examined; third, the agency of activists to bring about c...

Widmaier, Wesley W. and Susan Park. (2012) Differences Beyond Theory: Structural, Strategic, and Sentimental Approaches to Normative Change. International Studies Perspectives, doi: 10.1111/j.1528-3585.2012.00459.x © 2012 International Studies Association Over the past two decades, one of the main themes in IR theory debates has been a concern for...

Over the last decade there has been an increasing recognition that non-state actors can be bearers of authority (Clapp, 1998; Cutler, 2003; Cutler et al., 1999; Hall and Biersteker, 2002; Hanson and Salskov-Iversen, 2008; Higgott et al., 2000; Ronit and Schneider, 1999). Conceived of here as legitimized power (Cutler et al., 1999, p. 362; Hall and...

As pillars of the post-1945 international economic system, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank are central to global economic policy debates. This book examines policy change at the IMF and the World Bank, providing a constructivist account of how and why they take up ideas and translate them into policy, creating what we call...

Introduction The IMF and the World Bank have taken up new ideas and retained old ones in ways which modify their policies and therefore actions, yet how and why they do so remains under-studied. In the introduction (chapter 1) we identified the need for in-depth empirical research investigating why the IMF and the World Bank behave the way they do....

As pillars of the post-1945 international economic system, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank are central to global economic policy debates. This book examines policy change at the IMF and the World Bank, providing a constructivist account of how and why they take up ideas and translate them into policy, creating what we call...

This chapter focuses on transnational environmental advocacy networks' (TEANs) criticism on the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) over its role as a political risk guarantor of private sector capital in developing countries that have a negative environmental impact. It investigates how TEANs attempted to influence MIGA again through p...

This chapter investigates how the International Finance Corporation (IFC) became embroiled in environmental debates over its loans and guarantees. It explains that though the IFC operates separately and has different role and function than the World Bank, it has overlapping member states with similar power structures and espouses the same developme...

This chapter provides an overview of the debates over causes of international organisation (IO) change in relation to constructivist and rationalist accounts. It argues that a constructivist account establishes a more comprehensive and dynamic analysis of IO and World Bank Group (WBG) change by examining how international norms shape IOs through in...

This chapter assesses the broader implications of environmental shifts in the World Bank Group (WBG) organisation identities for the future of international development lending and environmental activism. It discusses the role of socialisation in the formation of the identity of WBG organizations and explains how they were influenced by norms of su...

This book shows how environmentalists have shaped the world's largest multilateral development lender, investment financier and political risk insurer to take up sustainable development. It challenges an emerging consensus over international organisational change to argue that international organisations (IOs) are influenced by their social structu...

Over the last two decades, demands for greater international economic organisation (IEO) accountability have been both prominent and vitriolic. This article demonstrates how an influential IEO, the World Bank, took up concerns of its lack of accountability through creating the Inspection Panel in 1993, in response to civil society pressures and mem...

It is well documented that international organizations diffuse norms, but how and why do they do so? I compare how the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation attempt to spread sustainable development norms through their compliance, mainstreaming, and diffusion efforts. I propose that international organizations spread norms in differe...

International Organizations (IOs) promote and diffuse norms within world politics. This prompts the question: where do these norms come from? This inquiry analyses how IOs have been perceived within the emerging norms literature where IOs are `norm diffusers' within the international system, and finds that the way in which IOs themselves internaliz...

Environmental organizations, characterized here as transnational advocacy networks, use various strategies to "green" international financial institutions (IFIs). This article goes beyond analyzing network strategies to examine how transnational advocacy networks reconstitute the identity of IFIs. This, it is argued, results from processes of socia...

Constructivists often argue that International Organizations (IOs) diffuse norms throughout the international system. This article asks the question: if IOs promote and diffuse specific norms within world politics, where do these norms come from? In particular, this analysis seeks to formulate how IOs' identities emerge in issue areas where rationa...

For decades environmental groups have tried to 'green' the World Bank. Yet another part of the World Bank Group, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) has also been criticised for its involvement in environmentally destructive development. IFC finances private enterprise in developing countries by providing venture capital for private project...

This paper examines the World Bank's implementation and modification of environmental and social safeguard policy norms. Initially implemented as a series of ad hoc guidelines, environmental and social policies would become entrenched as appropriate "safeguards" for international development lending through the World Bank in the 1980s and 1990s. In...