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Biopolitics in the EU and the U.S.: A Race to the Bottom or Convergence to the Top?
Abstract
This paper examines the circumstances under which economic globalization has led (and not led) to a convergence in the regulation of agricultural biotechnology in the European Union (EU) and the United States. While the EU has taken a precautionary approach to regulating biotech products, the U.S. has decided that these products are no different from those made using more traditional methods. As such, the U.S. government has implemented no novel legislation or risk assessment procedures to regulate them. These varying regulatory responses pose an interesting puzzle for scholars who are interested in examining the impact of economic globalization on domestic regulatory institutions and policy outcomes. Despite the fact that agricultural biotech products were developed for highly competitive and globally integrated agri-business markets, the paper argues that biotechnology regulation has followed very different paths in the two polities with the EU mimicking the environmental politics model and the U.S. remaining largely nonadversarial in its approach. We investigate why this has occurred by focusing on differences in the domestic political economies surrounding biotechnology issues in the two regions. The paper then examines why the U.S. biotechnology policy mode recently has shown signs of gravitating toward the EU model, signifying a potential for convergence to the top. Although no new statutes have been enacted or rules adopted yet, there are noticeable changes in the regulatory climate. The paper argues that these changes can be attributed to developments in the domestic political economy, especially the StarLink episode and how this opened the “policy window” for the pressures of globalization to influence the potential ratcheting-up of U.S. standards.
... The technical, as well as societal, risk evaluation differs among stakeholders who may invoke ethical issues (Levidow and Carr, 1997 ). Despite several claims of pro -GMO campaigners, the citizens and consumers of countries with the largest GMO hectarages are generally unaware of GMOs, believe that they do not eat them and more generally request to know if they do, by appropriate labelling, as shown by several studies including the PEW initiative on food and biotechnology (Prakash and Kollman, 2003 ;The Melman Group, 2006 ). The citizens and consumers ' fears are thus rather similar between cropping GMO third countries and those, as in the EU, with labelling established for consumers that keeps their ' right to choose ' (Bonny, 2003 ;Gaskell et al., 2006 ;Gaskell et al., 2003 ;Prakash and Kollman, 2003 ;TNS Opinion & Social, 2010 ). ...
... Despite several claims of pro -GMO campaigners, the citizens and consumers of countries with the largest GMO hectarages are generally unaware of GMOs, believe that they do not eat them and more generally request to know if they do, by appropriate labelling, as shown by several studies including the PEW initiative on food and biotechnology (Prakash and Kollman, 2003 ;The Melman Group, 2006 ). The citizens and consumers ' fears are thus rather similar between cropping GMO third countries and those, as in the EU, with labelling established for consumers that keeps their ' right to choose ' (Bonny, 2003 ;Gaskell et al., 2006 ;Gaskell et al., 2003 ;Prakash and Kollman, 2003 ;TNS Opinion & Social, 2010 ). As outlined by Prakash and Kollman (2003) , a regulatory convergence between USA and EU may be initiated. ...
... The citizens and consumers ' fears are thus rather similar between cropping GMO third countries and those, as in the EU, with labelling established for consumers that keeps their ' right to choose ' (Bonny, 2003 ;Gaskell et al., 2006 ;Gaskell et al., 2003 ;Prakash and Kollman, 2003 ;TNS Opinion & Social, 2010 ). As outlined by Prakash and Kollman (2003) , a regulatory convergence between USA and EU may be initiated. This hypothesis of convergence of some US be seen to be following their consumers ' wishes (Anonymous, 2008 ;BBC Radio4, 2010 ;PA, 2010 ;Schneider, 2007 ). ...
This chapter describes the European framework which induced coexistence and traceability needs in the EU. After having rapidly reviewed the context of GMO development, production and trade, this chapter outlines the socio-economic issues and consumers’ concerns raised by the introduction of GM plants into the agricultural system. It then summarizes increasing demands of consumers for safe and healthy produce, generally represented by “quality signs”. After summarizing the European regulatory framework, it develops the actions undertaken by the European Commission and EU member states for satisfying the often conflicting, freedom of cultivation of the farmers and freedom of choice for European consumers. The 2 main results are the coexistence of supply chains’ with an important traceability framework. The actions encompass, in particular, an enforcement network for traceability, with the duties for companies to provide detection methods of GMOs and to financially participate to the incurred costs of methods validation, research projects on traceability and coexistence issues. Some coexistence rules in place were either enacted by EU –MS, developed by the farmers and their organizations, or both. Finally, the commercialization of GMOs shall be accompanied in the EU by the post-market monitoring of environment and human health whose implementation is far from easy. This European frame of coexistence and traceability targets a peaceful development of GMO despite a very controversial situation, and should ensure that next generations of GMO, designed for e.g. pharmacy and industry, will not enter the food and feed chains.
... Keim (2003, p. 23) contends that '[t]he specific nature of efforts by NGOs to influence government decision makers is a function . . . of the institutional setting in which government policy making takes place'. In their study of biopolitics in the USA and EU, Prakash and Kollman (2003) argue that the early phases of the policy debate were largely structured by the domestic political economy surrounding the issue. Consistent with these insights, we contend that the difference in the institutional setting of the EU and USA is the critical factor in understanding policy-making in both locations, and particularly the influence of NGOs. ...
... By the end of 2003, little headway had been made in resolving US and EU differences over GM food products. This trade dispute is merely the culmination of a longstanding disagreement between the US and the EU over the approach to GM foods (Prakash and Kollman, 2003). Both sides claim to be concerned about public health and environmental safety. ...
... The relative influence of NGOs in the EU and US explains much of the variation in policies towards GMOs. Prakash and Kollman (2003) claim that, while US regulatory politics in the environmental area is characterized by the adversarial nature of the political economy surrounding industrial regulation, US NGOs have not yet succeeded in extending these adversarial relationships to biotechnology policy-making. They cite a lack of news-grabbing biotechnology accidents that would create political space for NGOs to redefine the policy problem, failure to use aggressively the judicial system, and a very favourable regulatory climate for the biotech industry as the main reasons why NGOs have been sidelined in the USA. ...
Concerns over the potential negative spillovers from globalization have resulted in increasing demands for multinational corporations (MNCs) to adhere to international standards and codes of responsibility. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have been important advocates for development and adoption of these standards and codes.
In this paper, we provide a brief review of the emergence of NGOs and their influence on debates about globalization, and a specific assessment of NGO efforts to promote stronger labor and environmental policies of multinational corporations.
We examine the role of NGOs in development and enforcement of twelve international agreements and codes of conduct addressing labor issues and environmental practices. We use findings from these cases and insights from international business and other managerial theory to develop propositions that explain the circumstances under which NGOs have more or less influence in developing and enforcing international codes.
... These regulatory frameworks may diverge between countries, but the study of this diversity of regulatory styles is concentrated mainly in the regulatory frameworks of the United States and Europe [2][3][4][5][6]. The rivalry between them has been analyzed by Daniel Drezner, who shows the GMO-friendly regulations sustained by the United States and the promotion of the precautionary principle and the resistance to GMOs by the European Union. ...
... Although this case was not about genetically modified plants, the conflict showed that there was a legal vacuum in Argentina regarding research in the agri-biotech field, since there were no guidelines to indicate how experiments should be performed, under which conditions, nor who should be the organization in charge of supervising. 5 Soon after this episode, local scientists from public laboratories obtained the first transgenic plants in Argentina and wanted to perform field assays. At that moment, at the beginning of the 1990s, transnational seed companies were also trying to commercialize their own GM crops in Argentina. ...
... Diplomatic actions of the United States in defense of Monsanto can be traced in Wikileaks[42]. The most significant answer of the Argentinean government is, in fact, its absence: as years pass by, it doesn't change its policies, with the result that Monsanto rescinded its claims and concentrated on how to better profit from the developments that followed.5 This episode was reported in a researchers' meeting in 1988 at an international conference on genetically modified organisms, to demand more regulations to experiments in the area[47]. ...
Regulatory frameworks on genetically modified crops present several differences, according to the specific procedures they take to deal with what they consider to be risks. Some of these differences have been studied between the United States and Europe, but there are other scenarios and subjects that may also be involved. Argentina not only has one of the major land areas devoted to transgenic agriculture, but it also has one of the first regulatory agencies in the region. Nevertheless, its regulatory policies towards genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have several differences with some international regulatory policies, such as the precautionary approach, the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and the labeling of food derived from GM crops. In order to understand this position, we analyze the development and function of GMOs' regulatory framework in Argentina, comparing it with Europe and showing how commercial interests in agriculture may explain each regulatory approach.
... The institutionalization of the precautionary principle into regulatory regimes has become important to discussions surrounding regulatory frameworks for agricultural biotechnology considered risky by some because of unknown long-term environmental and human health effects. In the EU, the politics surrounding biotechnology has been framed as an 'environmental issue' by those who oppose the process (Prakash and Kollman, 2003). ...
... The prevention principle stems from technical risk analysis handbooks and guides such as the 'Orange' and 'Red' books that have been used in risk assessment procedures around the world, but have been particularly influential in regulating innovative technologies associated with risk in Canada and the US. In both of these countries, the politics of biotechnology are primarily framed by scientific experts and policymakers as an issue of agricultural competitiveness (Prakash and Kollman, 2003). ...
The project addresses three critical questions about the future of genomics. When any innovation emerges, those questions are: Who owns it? Who controls it? Who wants it? The VALGEN team is investigating how new discoveries leave the laboratory as intellectual property, and the legal and business tools surrounding that property. It is also working to identify models for governing these new products and to determine how Canadians' views about new crops and bioproducts can most effectively be integrated into decision-making. This leading-edge research will inform future public policy that regulates how innovative products move from the laboratory to the marketplace. The VALGEN team includes researchers from the (Quebec City). Over 100 students and employees, as well as 60 industrial and government partners contributing to research design and development, are working on the VALGEN project.
... Concern over the impact on the safety of the food supply remains low in the United States but is substantially elevated in Europe (Falk et al., 2002). This divergence reflects the regulatory approaches of the United States and the EU in the area of agricultural biotechnology and can also be explained by examining how international pressure for change is filtered through and sometimes subverted by the domestic political economy (Prakash & Kollman, 2003). As the case of United States/EU regulation divergence demonstrates, globalization has complex dynamics and also creates the potential for the use of its own underpinning key principles, such as transparency (e.g., labeling-related issues), to contrast global market–driven trends (Prakash & Kollman, 2003). ...
... This divergence reflects the regulatory approaches of the United States and the EU in the area of agricultural biotechnology and can also be explained by examining how international pressure for change is filtered through and sometimes subverted by the domestic political economy (Prakash & Kollman, 2003). As the case of United States/EU regulation divergence demonstrates, globalization has complex dynamics and also creates the potential for the use of its own underpinning key principles, such as transparency (e.g., labeling-related issues), to contrast global market–driven trends (Prakash & Kollman, 2003). The EU regulatory approach on transgenic crops leans heavily on transparency and consumer choice as a means to rebuild confidence in a regulatory system, the credibility of which has been severely damaged (Arntzen et al., 2003). ...
The rapid adoption of transgenic crops in the United States, Argentina, and Canada stands in strong contrast to the situation in the European Union (EU), where a de facto moratorium has been in place since 1998. This article reviews recent scientific literature relevant to the problematic introduction of transgenic crops in the EU to assess if there are specific reasons why transgenic crops have a potentially greater adverse impact on sustainable agriculture in the EU context than elsewhere. Sustainable agriculture integrates three main goals: environmental health, economic profitability, and socioeconomic equity. Transgenic crops do not appear a suitable tool for sustainable agriculture in the EU due to specific environmental, economic, and socioeconomic reasons. Therefore, a moratorium on transgenic crops based on the precautionary principle should be officially adopted until proper risk assessment. In addition, agroecological alternatives to transgenic crops fit better the EU vision of agriculture.
... As many policy areas have acquired a multi-level character with the advancement of globalization and decentralization, scholars have identified the increasing role of international and local actors in policy-making processes (Evans and Davies 1999;Stone 2004Stone , 2010. Hence, today, international and regional organizations, such as the United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU) respectively, are seen as the primary agents of policy transfer in economic policies, human rights, gender equality, environmental regulations and sustainability standards (Prakash and Kollman 2003;Prakash and Potoski 2014;Zeng and Eastin 2007). Environmental policy is one such area where the role and responsibility of the actors have dramatically changed over the last decades (Arts and Leroy 2006;Betsill and Bulkeley 2004). ...
This paper examines the drivers and barriers of urban sustainability policy transfer through a case study in Turkey. We show that increased opportunities for collaboration between the international and local actors, when local demand exists, can encourage municipalities to espouse sustainability discourse and in turn implement sustainable infrastructure projects, breaking institutional inertia. However, we argue these bottom-up attempts have limited transformative impact unless the central government enacts the necessary legislation and regulation to provide local governments with the authority and tools to pursue urban sustainability. These findings provide an important perspective into forces driving the localization of sustainable development goals.
... It has been fuelled by the realization of the negative impact of the Green Revolution, 1 which while saving many developing countries from famine, also led to degradation of the soil and groundwater resources, given its water intensive and chemicals intensive production technology (Murgai et al. 2001) and caused a significant loss of bio-diversity (Shiva 1989). Moreover, recent 'accidents' such as 'Starlink', in 2000, whereby many food products containing genetically modified corn that had not yet been approved for human consumption were recalled, seem to be nudging policy makers to hold a more cautious view (Prakash and Kollman 2003). In developing countries also, controversies about GMVs are centered on these possible negative ecological consequences rather than immediate economic effects (Ramani and Thutupalli 2015). ...
This volume presents selected contributions from the 2018 conference of the International Schumpeter Society (ISS). The selected chapters in this volume reflect the state-of-the-art of Schumpeterian economics dedicated to the three conference topics innovation, catch-up, and sustainability. Innovation is driving catch-up processes and is the condition for a transformation towards higher degrees of sustainability. Therefore, Schumpeterian economics has to play a key role in these most challenging fields of human societies’ development in the 21st century. The three topics are well suited to capture the great variety of issues, which have the potential to shape the scientific discussion in economics and related disciplines in the years to come.
The presented contributions show the broadness and high standard of Schumpeterian analysis. The ideas of dynamics, heterogeneity, novelty, and innovation as well as transformation are the most attractive fields in economics today and offer the most prolific interdisciplinary connections now and for the years to come when humankind, our global society, has to master the transition towards sustainable economic systems by solving the grand challenges and wicked problems with which we are confronted today.
Therefore, the book is a must-read for scholars, researchers, and students, interested in a better understanding of innovation, catch-up, and sustainability, and Schumpeterian economics in general.
... It has been fuelled by the realization of the negative impact of the Green Revolution, 1 which while saving many developing countries from famine, also led to degradation of the soil and groundwater resources, given its water intensive and chemicals intensive production technology (Murgai et al. 2001) and caused a significant loss of bio-diversity (Shiva 1989). Moreover, recent 'accidents' such as 'Starlink', in 2000, whereby many food products containing genetically modified corn that had not yet been approved for human consumption were recalled, seem to be nudging policy makers to hold a more cautious view (Prakash and Kollman 2003). In developing countries also, controversies about GMVs are centered on these possible negative ecological consequences rather than immediate economic effects (Ramani and Thutupalli 2015). ...
It is great to launch these conference proceedings from the ISS 2018 conference held in Seoul, July 2–4, Korea. The theme of the ISS 2018 was “Innovation, Catch-up, and Sustainable Development. Keun Lee, one of the guest editors of this volume, served as the President of the Society (2016–2018) and also as the main host or Chairman of the Organizing Committee, for the Seoul conference. Actually, it took 26 years to return to Asia: the last ISS conference in Asia was held in Kyoto, Japan, in 1992. And it turned out to be a good decision for the International Schumpeter Society to return to Asia: About 380 papers were presented out of the 469 initial submissions from more than 50 nations around the world. Among these 380 presentations, there were about 90 papers presented by young scholars who are either graduate students or new Ph.D. students.
... It has been fuelled by the realization of the negative impact of the Green Revolution, 1 which while saving many developing countries from famine, also led to degradation of the soil and groundwater resources, given its water intensive and chemicals intensive production technology (Murgai et al. 2001) and caused a significant loss of bio-diversity (Shiva 1989). Moreover, recent 'accidents' such as 'Starlink', in 2000, whereby many food products containing genetically modified corn that had not yet been approved for human consumption were recalled, seem to be nudging policy makers to hold a more cautious view (Prakash and Kollman 2003). In developing countries also, controversies about GMVs are centered on these possible negative ecological consequences rather than immediate economic effects (Ramani and Thutupalli 2015). ...
Since the 1990s, agri-biotech multinationals have introduced a radical innovation in the form of seeds derived from genetically modified plant varieties or GMVs. However, on the basis of the ‘precautionary principle’ that advocates ensuring a higher environmental protection through preventative decision-taking, many countries have banned the cultivation of GMVs within their territories. Thus, the objective of the present paper is to attempt to explore the rationale for application of the precautionary principle. This is done through development of an evolutionary model of farmers’ technology choice incorporating intrinsic features of agriculture such as the technological obsolescence of seed varieties, impact of environmental degradation engendered by new seed technology adoption and farmers’ compliance choice vis-à-vis sustainability guidelines. Further, instead of a unique representative farmer, two types of farmers are considered. The first type is driven by short term profit maximization, while the second type aims to be sustainable, by maximizing profit over the life time of the technology. Integrating the above elements and considering two possible rules for application of the precautionary principle, the paper explores the conditions under which the precautionary principle can be implemented. It demonstrates that, even under complete and perfect information the need to exercise such caution depends principally on four factors: the economic gains from GMVs, the possibilities for sustaining the production of the conventional variety in the post-GMV period via compliance, the distribution of farmers over types and the compliance-contamination burden.
... 118 Where businesses enjoy privileged or superior access to these elites relative to public sector or civil society stakeholders, they are more likely to be able to use lobbying, framing battles or cultural tropes to impede the passage of new laws, push back against the growing acceptance of new norms and prevent any change in what environmental and social practices are seen as expected. Prakash and Kollman (2003), for example, highlight the critical role played by the relative connectedness of the biotechnology industry to key U.S. regulators in attenuating regulative and normative threats to GM products. ...
This dissertation shifts analytic focus from firm, stakeholder and institutional characteristics as drivers of a firm’s non-market strategy to the fields in which stakeholders are embedded which are characterized by their own social relationships, norms and identities. In so doing, I strive to develop a more socialized view of non-market strategy. The first chapter provides evidence that the identity of stakeholders in their fields and the structure of relations between them can circumscribe firms’ strategic responses to stakeholder conflict that require stakeholder cooperation. The second chapter explores the pathways by which firms attenuate stakeholder threats through an understudied phenomenon: cooperative non-market strategy, or when firms establish formal cooperative relationships with stakeholders. I find that cooperative non-market strategy is an effective way for firms allay threats from a broad swathe of stakeholders by exploiting the social networks and identity of an allied stakeholder. The first two chapters draw on a unique, self-constructed 25-year panel of all contentious and collaborative interactions between 118 environmental movement organizations and Fortune 500 firms, complemented by multiplex network data on movements and firms. While the first two chapters explore cooperative non-market strategy, the last chapter demonstrates the utility of taking account of stakeholder fields in unilateral non-market strategy, in this case, improvements in corporate social and environmental performance. Drawing on a dataset of 250 million media-reported events to construct comprehensive socio-political networks and stakeholder fields across 42 countries, I find that stakeholder ties to country-level socio-political networks and to each other, and who participates in stakeholder fields and mobilizes against firms, manifest in observable differences in corporate social and environmental performance across countries. In addition to establishing that stakeholder fields are central to explanations of non-market strategy, this dissertation finds that the mechanisms underlying their impact are multi-faceted, and consistently operate through two characteristics of stakeholder fields: the relational ties of stakeholders, and the identity of stakeholders within their field. Stakeholder fields are central to understanding firms’ strategic management of stakeholders because fields constrain stakeholder agency, are susceptible to influence through their relational structures and member identities, and in turn, influence issue salience for outsiders.
... However, European governments did not reach their decision on their own and have received significant input from several NGOs whom have in fact helped to define, develop, and spread the "precautionary principle" (Vogel, 2002). In contrast, powerful lobbyists in the United States limit NGOs influence on environmental governance because industry heavily opposes precautionary and environmentally friendly policies (Prakash & Kollman, 2003). ...
This dissertation applies a strong theoretical orientation and combines global political economy of development with environmental studies to address how transnational firms negotiate with producers, governments, and certifiers to shape social-environmental, market, and liability regulation for imported citrus. Understanding the governance of global value chains is important because trade between developing and industrialized countries has grown rapidly, requiring regulation of the transnational conditions of production. As 80 percent of products are now produced, manufactured, and sold in two or more countries, third-party certification schemes have emerged and are gradually coming to play a central role in supplementing transnational regulation. Since national governments have limited power to regulate the conditions of production abroad, third-party certification has been described as a response to the global “environmental governance gap”. However, we still know relatively little about what factors drive the size and shape of certified markets. This dissertation investigates what drives demand for certified production of citrus, whether the construction of certified citrus markets is an example of varieties of capitalism or world polity, and to what extent the structure of the global value chain predicts adoption of particular types of regulation. The present study uses a mixed method approach to evaluate the relevance of these theories for the construction of certified markets. First, I compare the role of US and Dutch political economies in constructing markets for third party certification. I qualitatively analyze the import requirements of US and Netherlands (within the EU) government organizations and the top ten retailers from each country. Results indicate that both public and private regulations are increasingly shaping the demand for certified products. Second, using an original dataset based on a comparative telephone survey of US and Dutch citrus importers, I quantitively analyze how socio-environment, market, and liability attitudes, varieties of capitalism variables, and value chain variables predict the sourcing of certified citrus. The survey results show that importer’s rate market incentives as more important than socio-environmental or liability factors as drivers. Importers in the Netherlands are also more likely to buy and to receive requests from buyers for certified citrus. Finally, selling to retailers and receiving requests from buyers are the most important value chain predictors for market construction.
... Environmental investments can also benefit firms' own interests. On the one hand, proactive environmental production, such as implementation of ISO 14001, can signal the government of their cooperative intents, can improve government's credit to firms, and can ease regulatory burdens (Darnall et al., 2008;Delmas & Montiel, 2008;Potoski & Prakash, 2004Prakash & Kollman, 2003). On the other hand, green innovation can also reduce their production costs and/or help expand the markets for their ecoproducts (Porter & Van der Linde, 1995). ...
Facing the challenge of environmental degradation in Vietnam, a growing number of firms have begun to integrate environmental management systems into their business strategies and develop green product diversification strategies. On the basis of the stakeholder theory, this paper attempts to explore the influences of stakeholders on the implementation of horizontal and vertical green product diversification. Empirical results show that foreign customers play a significant role in driving companies to adopt strategy of green product diversification. For foreign‐invested enterprises, the effect is limited to the adoption of horizontal green product diversification. It further reveals that institutional weakness, lack of transparency, community stakeholders, and regulatory stakeholders have no significant effect on the corporate green product strategy.
... In both the United States and Canada, regulatory procedures for GMOs are premised on the logic that if the developer of a GM crop or food can demonstrate that it is "substantially equivalent" to a conventional counterpart, the GM crop or food does not require an extensive risk assessment prior to its approval. 48 Ongoing scientific uncertainty with respect to the risks of GMOs does not automatically invoke a precautionary approach in these countries. In other words, agricultural biotechnology products are assumed to be innocent until proven guilty. ...
... Les investissements environnementaux peuvent également bénéficier aux intérêts des entreprises. D'une part, la production environnementale proactive, comme la mise en oeuvre de l'ISO 14001, peut signaler aux gouvernements leurs intentions de coopération, améliorer le crédit du gouvernement aux entreprises et faciliter les charges réglementaires (Prakash et Kollman, 2003;Potoski et Prakash, 2004. Darnall et al., 2008, Delmas et Montiel, 2008. ...
La globalisation des marchés impose des impératifs en matière de compétitivité aux entreprises et entraîne des conséquences sur l'environnement et les hommes. Dans ce contexte, des chercheurs proposent le développement durable (DD) comme une alternative pour préserver notre patrimoine environnemental et social. Les entreprises en tant qu'acteurs majeurs de notre société doivent jouer leur partition. Parmi celles-ci, les petites et moyennes entreprises (PME) sont plus nombreuses et importantes dans nos économies, ses responsabilités sont d’autant plus importantes. Pour être compétitives et survivre à laconcurrence qui vient de partout, elles n'ont d'autre choix que d'innover, déployer leurs stratégies en développant des produits plus respectueux de l’environnement. De plus, sans une masse critique de PME engagées dans le DD, ce projet serait irréalisable. Pour ce faire, intégrer à la fois de nouveaux produits et le DD dans leur mode de gestion serait une voiepossible pour que les PME soient responsables tout en étant compétitives. Mais, elles ne sauraient le faire en raison de l'insuffisance de ressources et de savoir-faire dans le domaine du DD. Qu’est-ce qui motive les PME à s’engager dans le développement durable? C'est la question centrale qui fait l'objet de notre étude. Des études montrent que l’engagement des entreprises au DD est motivé par l’avantage financier ou par le souci de la réputation. Les grandes entreprises ont commencé à prêter attention au processus de développement durable, les PME semblent être à la traîne et pourtant elles disposent des caractéristiques spécifiques comme la flexibilité organisationnelle, la proximité avec les acteurs locaux qui favorisent la mise en oeuvre de ce processus. Beaucoup de PME hésitent encore aujourd’hui à s’engager dans la pratique de Responsabilité Sociale de l’Entreprise (RSE) par manque de ressources et par crainte de rentabilité. Il y a une pénurie d'études sur la façon dont les PME perçoivent et mettent en oeuvre le concept, en particulier du point de vue d'un pays en développement. Cette étude aide à combler ces lacunes en examinant la façon dont le développement durable est perçu et pratiqué par les PME au Vietnam. Dans une économie en développement et en transition comme le Vietnam, où les ressources financières, humaines, technologiques et institutionnelles sont limitées et où le développement durable est interprété dans un contexte national et culturel, une étude de la durabilité dans le secteur des PME est particulièrement importante. Une étude empirique a été réalisée dans 4 articles auprès de 2000 PME manufacturières pour explorer dans quelle mesure le concept de RSE a été compris et adopté par les PME vietnamiennes. La théorie des parties prenantes, de l'entrepreneuriat et de base de ressources ont été principalement utilisées car elles aident à comprendre le phénomène de l'entrepreneuriat durable, en particulier dans un cadre de recherche spécifique à un pays. Les théories des parties prenantes et d’entrepreneuriat sont utilisées pour expliquer l'engagementdes PME en RSE à l’article 01. La théorie des parties prenantes est utilisée dans l’article 03 et partiellement dans l’article 02 pour examiner les impacts de différents acteurs sur le choix 4 stratégique durable. La théorie de ressources est utile afin d’expliquer les barrières qui entravent la pratique de RSE des PME (article 04).
... These regulatory frameworks may diverge between countries, but the study of this diversity of regulatory styles is concentrated mainly in the regulatory frameworks of the USA and Europe (Dunlop, 2000;Vogel, 2001;Vogel and Lynch, 2001;Prakash and Kollman, 2003;James, 2011). Both great powers have struggled in international fora to impose their position. ...
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explain bio-economy dimensions as a new stream of knowledge-based economy that exists in the new era of the information and communications technology.
Design/methodology/approach – Bio-economy refers to the production of a wide range of goods and services from plant, animal and forest-based material. It is more than just grain-based bio-fuels or bio-diesel as extensively highlighted in Latin America. It is related to biotechnology and other bio-activities based on knowledge generated from the bio-activities and extension of the knowledge-based economy.
Findings – The main concern of developing bio-economy is the environmental damage caused through the undesirable output produced by the bio-economy activities. Bioeconomy is centred on research and development (R&D) collaborations across different sectors, including the public and private sectors, in order to breakthrough new products through invention and innovation.
Originality/value – For bio-economy to be realised and put into practice, it should have a well-developed regulatory framework as a platform in order to run and work smoothly.
... These regulatory frameworks may diverge between countries, but the study of this diversity of regulatory styles is concentrated mainly in the regulatory frameworks of the United States and Europe (Dunlop, 2000;Vogel, 2001;Vogel and Lynch, 2001;Prakash and Kollman, 2003;James, 2011). Both great powers have struggled in international fora to impose their position. ...
Purpose: This paper aims to explain bio-economy as a new stream of knowledge-based economy that exists in the new era of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT). Design/Methodology/Approach: Bio-economy refers to the production of a wide range of goods and services from plant, animal and forest-based material. It is more than just grain-based bio-fuels or bio-diesel as extensively highlighted in Latin America. It is related to biotechnology and other bio-activities based on knowledge generated from the bio-activities and extension of the knowledge-based economy. Findings: The main concern of developing bio-economy is the environmental damage caused through the undesirable output produced by the bio-economy activities. Bio-economy is centred on Research and Development (R&D) collaborations across different sectors, including the public and private sectors, in order to breakthrough new products through invention and innovation.
... These regulatory frameworks may diverge between countries, but the study of this diversity of regulatory styles is concentrated mainly in the regulatory frameworks of the United States and Europe ( Dunlop, 2000;Vogel, 2001;Vogel and Lynch, 2001;Prakash and Kollman, 2003;James, 2011). Both great powers have struggled in international fora to impose their position. ...
Purpose: This paper aims to explain bio-economy as a new stream of knowledge-based economy that exists in the new era of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT). Design/Methodology/Approach: Bio-economy refers to the production of a wide range of goods and services from plant, animal and forest-based material. It is more than just grain-based bio-fuels or bio-diesel as extensively highlighted in Latin America. It is related to biotechnology and other bio-activities based on knowledge generated from the bio-activities and extension of the knowledge-based economy. Findings: The main concern of developing bio-economy is the environmental damage caused through the undesirable output produced by the bio-economy activities. Bio-economy is centred on Research and Development (R&D) collaborations across different sectors, including the public and private sectors, in order to breakthrough new products through invention and innovation.
... Local governance accounts for 15 percent of all governance codes collected (e.g., Liu, Lindquist, Vedlitz, & Vincent, 2010), state governance accounts for 12 percent (e.g., Robinson & Eller, 2010), regional governance accounts for 8 percent (e.g., Block & Paredis, 2013), transnational government accounts for 13 percent (e.g., Prakash & Some articles fell into more than one policy domain but none fell into more than three. Health (95), Environment (66), Governance (46), Education (28), Welfare (24), and Other: Agriculture (3), Arts (1), Defense (8), Diversity (5), Economic (11), Emergency Services (3), Energy (5), Firearm (2), Foreign Relations (4), Justice (5), Labor (3), Nonprofit (3), Planning/development (8), Real Estate (1), Religion (2), Technology (7), Transportation (8). Kollman, 2003), and federal/national accounts for 52 percent (e.g., Aberbach & Christensen, 2001. The high percentage of federal/national codes indicates a preference among MSA scholars to examine the national level, but it is worth pointing out the usefulness of MSA at lower levels of governance (see, e.g., Liu et al., 2010). ...
This study uses content analysis of recent Multiple Streams Approach (MSA) research to determine the scope of MSA applications, examining the consistency, and coherence with which concepts of MSA are applied. Our analysis examines peer-reviewed articles testing MSA concepts available in English published from 2000 through 2013 (N = 311). Among other findings, we observe that MSA is applied to study 65 different countries, at multiple levels of governance, across 22 different policy areas, and by researchers spanning the globe. Our findings suggest that while MSA is prolific, consistency across applications—in terms of operationalization of MSA core concepts—is needed to facilitate theoretical development of the approach.
... The EU has adopted a precautionary -or some observers would even say prohibitive (Paarlberg 2001) -stance on GMOs (Tosun 2013), while the USA has favoured a liberal regulatory approach (e.g. Bernauer 2003;Bernauer and Meins 2003;Prakash and Kollman 2003;Schreurs 2005;Rhinard and Kaeding 2006;Bernauer and Aerni 2008;Pollack and Shaffer 2009;Skogstad 2011;Schneider and Urpelainen 2013). During the negotiation of the Cartagena Protocol, the EU emerged as the leader in the final round of negotiations and 'pushed for the adoption of the precautionary principle in risk assessment and sought to assist developing countries in their efforts to strengthen domestic regulations, against the interests of the US and other GMO exporters' (Falkner 2007, p. 513; see also Arts and Mack 2003;Andree 2005;Rhinard and Kaeding 2006;Groenleer and Van Schaik 2007;Pollack and Shaffer 2009). ...
The literature on international regulatory regimes has highlighted how rival standards can create different points of convergence. Scholarly attention has also focused on how the European Union (EU) and the United States (USA) attempt to 'export' their environmental standards internationally. Here, we explore the effectiveness of these attempts by means of third states' decisions to ratify the Carta-gena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention on Biological Diversity, a multilateral environmental agreement regulating genetically modified organisms that is promoted by the EU but opposed by the USA. Our findings confirm that both rivals are able to influence the ratification decision of states, but they also suggest that these effects may have different origins. Countries relying more heavily on US markets for food exports tend to be less likely to ratify the Cartagena Protocol, while countries that have applied for EU membership are more likely to ratify the protocol.
... When dealing with uncertain risks, the European Union (EU) applies the precautionary principle (Löfstedt 2004(Löfstedt , 2014Vos 2006, 2008;Tosun 2013). 1 Consequently, many studies have analysed how the EU's precautionary regulatory approach to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) has affected trade relations with jurisdictions that have more liberal GMO regulations in place such as the United States (see, e.g. Bauer and Gaskell 2002;Bernauer and Meins 2003;Prakash and Kollman 2003;Aslaksen, Natvig, and Nordal 2006;Murphy and Levidow 2006;Alemanno 2007;Pollack and Shaffer 2009;Skogstad 2011;Schneider and Urpelainen 2013;Schulze and Tosun 2015). While this research perspective has provided many insights, it is important to note that the EU member states are not as coherent in their views on GMOs as one might expect. ...
Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have been a controversial issue in the
European Union (EU). A growing number of member states and regions within
the member states oppose the EU’s agro-biotechnology policy, resulting in a
complex multi-level structure of policy-making. This study is interested in the
regional opposition to GMOs and scrutinises the determinants of membership in
the European Network of GMO-free Regions. In terms of theory, this study
builds on the literature of policy diffusion. For the analytical purpose, we distinguish
among four diffusion mechanisms: learning from earlier adopters, economic
competition among proximate regions, imitation of economically
powerful regions and deviation from national law. Our research questions are the
following: How has membership developed since the foundation of the network?
Which mechanisms explain the diffusion patterns observed? The empirical findings
show that membership in the network has grown substantially between
2003 and 2014, which supports the general expectation that there is a diffusion
of GMO-free regions. Yet, most new member regions are located in the same
member states as the regions that founded the network. In other words, what is
observed is intra-country diffusion rather than inter-country diffusion. The
empirical findings provide support for the importance of learning from earlier
adopters for the growing of the European Network of GMO-free Regions.
... In the case of agricultural biotechnology and biosafety, the debate has focused on whether global policy will result in a "trading up," that is, an upward harmonization of national biosafety policies towards the more stringent level of the EU (e.g. Prakash and Kollman 2003;Young 2003). Evidence for such trading up remains inconsistent, however, and in recent years, attention has shifted to the persisting regulatory polarization between the USA and the EU and its consequences for national policy choices, particularly in the developing world (Bernauer 2003;Pollack and Shaffer 2009). ...
Biosafety: An Anticipatory Governance Challenge
Use of the techniques of modern biotechnology in agriculture and food produc-tion has given rise to impassioned debates over the last two decades about the benefits versus the risks posed by genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and prod-ucts thereof. So-called transgenic varieties now constitute significant percentages of important globally traded commodity crops, such as maize, canola, soybean, and cotton (James 2011). Governance of such products and ensuring their biosafety (i.e. safe uptake and use) remains a quintessentially anticipatory challenge, one where the very existence and nature of risk and harm remains scientifically and normatively contested (Gupta 2001; see also Guston 2010). Its anticipatory nature is related to the existence of "epistemological uncertainty" in this domain, whereby uncertainty and outright unknowability "lies at the core of a problem" (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1992: 259). Such uncertainty complicates the process of devising appropriate, adaptable, and stable biosafety governance arrangements. Anticipatory governance has to co-evolve with rapid socio-technical and environmental change, the contours of which are not easily discernible. Global governance of GMOs has thus been shaped by the contested nature of con-cerns over potential environmental, human health, and socio-economic risks posed by GMOs and the resultant diverse framings of the nature of the governance chal-lenge. This chapter reviews current global policy approaches to biosafety, including their central elements as well as potential conflicts between the global institutions wherein they take shape. It also reviews the national ramifications of existing global biosafety policy approaches.
... Environmental investments can also benefit firms' own interests. On one hand, proactive environmental process innovation, such as implementation of ISO 14001, can signal to the government their cooperative intents, can improve government's credit to firms, and can ease regulatory burdens (Prakash and Kollman, 2003;Prakash, 2004, 2005;Darnall et al., 2008;Delmas and Montiel, 2008). On the other hand, green innovation can also reduce their production costs and/or help expand the markets for their eco-products (Porter and Van der Linde, 1995). ...
Facing the challenge of environmental degradation in China, a growing number of firms have begun to integrate environmental management systems into their business strategies and develop green innovation strategies. Based on the stakeholder theory, this paper attempts to explore the influences of stakeholders on the implementation of green process and green product innovation. Empirical results show that foreign customers play a significant role in driving companies to adopt strategy of green process and green product innovation. For foreign‐invested enterprises, the effect is limited to the adoption of green process innovation. It further reveals that community stakeholders and regulatory stakeholders have no significant effect on the corporate green process and green product innovation. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.
... While at some level, the US reflects the purest liberal science-based model, even that country, given its highly fragmented policy-making system, has struggled over the prospects of social regulation, and proposals for non-traditional alternatives to the current model remain in discussion at federal and state levels (Prakash and Kollman, 2003). China, by contrast, finds itself divided. ...
The history of attention to local variation in science and technology studies notwithstanding, there is a growing emphasis in the study of science policy on global convergence. In this paper, we undertake a multi-state comparative study of agricultural biotechnology policies, illustrating the continuing value of attending to policy variation and the factors that mold it. We acknowledge the growing influence of supranational entities and transnational cultural exchanges in shaping policy. However, our research does not indicate the homogenization of agricultural biotechnology policies across the globe. Instead, we find three broad models of agricultural biotechnology governance: ‘liberal science-based’ regulation, ‘precautionary science-based’ regulation, and ‘social values-based’ regulation. While states are constrained by global and local factors, they actively shape policies by blending parts of these three policy models in distinct ways. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.
... Early analyses suggested that globalization of agricultural biotechnology might fuel policy convergence in diverse national contexts, with the debate centering on whether such convergence would be toward the more restrictive precautionary approach of the European Union or the more permissive sound-science regulatory approach of the United States. Some scholars originally hypothesized that a nascent "trading-up" effect between the European Union and the United States was at work, which would lead to greater convergence between the two main contenders in international norm creation on GMO trade, in the direction of the more stringent EU approach (Prakash and Kollman 2003;Young 2003). Others pointed to corporate interest in convergence between global regulatory approaches and the global pressures on states to create "common means by which to identify and manage risks associated with genetically modified products" (Newell 2003, 63). ...
The notion of global governance is widely studied in academia and increasingly relevant to politics and policy making. Yet many of its fundamental elements remain unclear in both theory and practice. This book offers a fresh perspective by analyzing global governance in terms of three major trends, as exemplified by developments in global sustainability governance: the emergence of nonstate actors; new mechanisms of transnational cooperation; and increasingly segmented and overlapping layers of authority. The book, which is the synthesis of a ten-year “Global Governance Project” carried out by thirteen leading European research institutions, first examines new nonstate actors, focusing on international bureaucracies, global corporations, and transnational networks of scientists; then investigates novel mechanisms of global governance, particularly transnational environmental regimes, public-private partnerships, and market-based arrangements; and, finally, looks at fragmentation of authority, both vertically among supranational, international, national, and subnational layers, and horizontally among different parallel rule-making systems. The implications, potential, and realities of global environmental governance are defining questions for our generation. This book distills key insights from the past and outlines the most important research challenges for the future.
Focusing on 23 greening measures, this paper systematically compares the greening efforts of the busiest container and cargo ports in the United States (US) and the European Union (EU). We move beyond accounts for general environmental differences between the EU and the US to examine how specific environmental decisions are shaped by the effects of regulatory characteristics in each region. We identify systematic variation in number and type of port greening measures adopted in the two regions. We demonstrate that differences in the number and type of measures adopted reflect the level of policy making with local policy making playing a more important role in the US compared to the EU, thus proposing a pathway through which the form of regulatory approach could influence content and extent of regulation. The EU adopts regulation that is broader in scope while US ports are more likely to address problems affecting local populations.
Decoupling in the health‐care sector is a highly problematic phenomenon that easily leads to dramatic failures in strategy implementation. Although decoupling is addressed frequently at the organizational level, there exists extremely poor evidence of its presence at the federal/regional level. This study provides an investigation on the implementation of Italy's directive on the re‐organization of regional health‐care systems' networks based on breast units, with the intent of detecting different levels of compliance across regions and possible decoupling phenomena. Nonparametric tests are carried out to assess the gaps between formal and concrete compliance to the national directive across regions. Results suggest that decoupling occurs at the regional level, but formal compliance positively affects concrete compliance in the long term. Implications for policymakers concern their awareness of possible discrepancies between formal compliance to their directives and concrete changes in the way health‐care services are managed, as well as a strategic understanding of how these are doomed to be mitigated in the long run. Such awareness should affect the ability of policymakers to adapt and interpret performance measurement systems accordingly.
Since the 1990s, agri-biotech multinationals have introduced a radical innovation in the form of seeds derived from genetically modified plant varieties or GMVs. However, on the basis of the ‘precautionary principle’ that advocates ensuring a higher environmental protection through preventative decision-taking, many countries have banned the cultivation of GMVs within their territories. Thus, the objective of the present paper is to attempt to explore the rationale for application of the precautionary principle. This is done through development of an evolutionary model of farmers’ technology choice incorporating intrinsic features of agriculture such as the technological obsolescence of seed varieties, impact of environmental degradation engendered by new seed technology adoption and farmers’ compliance choice vis-à-vis sustainability guidelines. Further, instead of a unique representative farmer, two types of farmers are considered. The first type is driven by short term profit maximization, while the second type aims to be sustainable, by maximizing profit over the life time of the technology. Integrating the above elements and considering two possible rules for application of the precautionary principle, the paper explores the conditions under which the precautionary principle can be implemented. It demonstrates that, even under complete and perfect information the need to exercise such caution depends principally on four factors: the economic gains from GMVs, the possibilities for sustaining the production of the conventional variety in the post-GMV period via compliance, the distribution of farmers over types and the compliance-contamination burden.
The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention of Biological Diversity, that was adopted on the 29th January, 2000 and became into force on 11th September 2003, is the most important global agreement on biosafety that governs the transboundary movement of living modified organisms for the protection of human health and environment . Malaysia and Singapore were among the countries participated during the Protocol negotiations. In the end, Malaysia signed the Protocol on 24th May, 2000 and ratified it on 2nd December, 2003. However, Singapore ended up not being a party to it. This study analyses the different stances taken by both countries towards the Protocol, in the domestic biosafety laws implementations. This study, in summary, is a comparative legal study with the Singapore legal and institutional framework of biosafety laws. This thesis examines Malaysian compliance towards the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety by analysing the current domestic legal and institutions’ compliance with the Protocol requirements. The regulatory theory is used as the theoretical framework to investigate the relevancy and application of the various regulatory strategies which were the norms in the environmental protection, from the traditional command and control approach to the new governance such as smart regulation, reflexive and meta-regulation, licence model also civil and self-regulation, within the biosafety regulations both in Malaysia and Singapore. Even though Singapore chose not to be a party of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, the Protocol is used as a global model of biosafety governance as it outlines the most crucial issues of biosafety. Towards the end of the comparative study, the similarities and differences of legal and institutional biosafety laws in both countries are highlighted, with a view to suggest recommendations for improvement of Malaysian future biosafety governance.
Purpose-The paper extends the literature by examining the politics, conflicts, and compromises resulting from external pressures (gaiatsu, 外圧) and internal pressures (naiatsu, 内圧) on the convergence and globalization of accounting and accountability in Japan.
Design/methodology/approach-Using Japan as a case study, we examine how and why the stimulus for significant accounting reforms arises, how the government manages and reacts to the powerful forces of gaiatsu, and how it balances naiatsu among key stakeholders.
Findings-The ongoing changes in accounting regulations in Japan are neither the result of an unmediated response to gaiatsu nor the outcome of naiatsu. Rather, Japanese accounting changes are the consequence of complex external interactions and internal compromises. Specifically, Japan demonstrates a repetitive pattern of conflict management, which alters the domestic power balance based on naiatsu, and forces the Japanese government to make compromises to policy changes initiated by gaiatsu.
Research limitations/implications-The findings have implications for the development of accounting and accountability, the globalized business world, and international accounting research because they challenge claims made by global standards setters that international standards such as IFRS are superior, built on so-called "best practices," and are relevant to all countries. Originality/value-Invoking the concepts of gaiatsu and naiatsu is a critical approach to understanding Japan's convergence towards economic liberalism and Anglo-American models of accounting and accountability.
A menudo se recurre a plataformas o asociaciones como representantes de la diversidad de puntos de vista y preocupaciones de la sociedad. A través del diagnóstico del rol que tienen estas organizaciones de la sociedad civil (OSCs) en el sistema de ciencia y tecnología se podrán plantear recomendaciones futuras para fomentar su participación. En este estudio se han realizado 25 entrevistas a directivos de OSCs con sede en el territorio español con el objetivo de analizar el papel actual que desempeñan en el sistema de I+D+i. Las asociaciones de pacientes y las relacionadas con el medio ambiente tienen un papel más activo en relación a la investigación. Sin embargo, en general, las OSCs ven de forma positiva su participación en investigaciones vinculada a su campo y consideran que puede ser beneficioso fomentarla. Por otro lado, la gran mayoría de las OSCs no considera que el peso de la investigación deba recaer en ellas sino que preferirían asociarse de algún modo con universidades o centros de investigación que tuvieran interés en sus respectivos campos de acción. La demanda más generalizada es fomentar la comunicación de los resultados de los estudios que les puedan afectar.
4151442 2 ABSTRACT Climate change and the continuing changes that accompany it require society and its broader institutions to evolve continuously. Today's continual atmospheric damage requires a commitment to ecological considerations that show consistent and meaningful carbon reductions. The success of global carbon mitigation depends entirely on the capabilities of individual governing bodies agreeing and delivering upon their climate ambitions. However, delivering impactful progress on emissions is a considerable challenge. Although there has been significant research as to what climate mitigation goals should encompass, the policy path and resulting incremental changes needed to achieve them require additional scholarly attention. This thesis analyses the role of institutions as they adapt to support societies addressing climate change. Adopting a historical institutional approach provides a pathway for understanding the coordination of information, individuals, institutional adjustments, and their role in the carbon policy process. By focusing on the impact of ecological modernisation ideas, this work addresses the ambiguity that lies between contradicting approaches to climate governance and instead, analyses the incremental changes needed to support societies as they address climate change. Systemically gathering policy tools from 1992-2012, this research empirically examines the nature, ambition, and achievements of mitigation policy in the EU and US as they transition to a low-carbon future. 4151442 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
States with large markets routinely compete with one another to shield domestic regulatory policies from global pressure, export their rules to other jurisdictions, and provide their firms with competitive advantages. Most arguments about market power tend to operationalize the concept in economic terms. In this paper, we argue that a state's ability to leverage or block these adjustment pressures is not only conditioned by their relative economic position but also by the political institutions that govern their markets. Specifically, we expect that where a state chooses to draw jurisdictional boundaries over markets directly shapes its global influence. When a state expands its jurisdiction, harmonizing rules across otherwise distinct subnational or national markets, for example, it can curtail a rival's authority. We test the theory by assessing how changes in internal governance within the European Union altered firm behavior in response to US extraterritorial pressure. Empirically, we examine foreign firm delisting decisions from US stock markets after the adoption of the Sarbanes–Oxley accounting legislation. The act, which included an exogenous compliance shock, follows the harmonization of stock market governance across various European jurisdictions. Econometric analysis of firm-level data illustrates that EU-based companies, which benefited from jurisdictional expansion, were substantially more likely to leave the American market and avoid adjustment pressures. Our findings contribute to debates on the role of political institutions in economic statecraft and suggest the conditions under which future regulatory conflicts will arise between status quo and rising economic powers.
Climate change and the continuing changes that accompany it require society and its broader institutions to evolve continuously. Today’s continual atmospheric damage requires a commitment to ecological considerations that show consistent and meaningful carbon reductions. The success of global carbon mitigation depends entirely on the capabilities of individual governing bodies agreeing and delivering upon their climate ambitions. However, delivering impactful progress on emissions is a considerable challenge. Although there has been significant research as to what climate mitigation goals should encompass, the policy path and resulting incremental changes needed to achieve them require additional scholarly attention. This thesis analyses the role of institutions as they adapt to support societies addressing climate change. Adopting a historical institutional approach provides a pathway for understanding the coordination of information, individuals, institutional adjustments, and their role in the carbon policy process. By focusing on the impact of ecological modernisation ideas, this work addresses the ambiguity that lies between contradicting approaches to climate governance and instead, analyses the incremental changes needed to support societies as they address climate change. Systemically gathering policy tools from 1992-2012, this research empirically examines the nature, ambition, and achievements of mitigation policy in the EU and US as they transition to a low-carbon future.
Globalization is a source of endless debate in both popular and scholarly literatures. In the case of Europe, the causes and effects of globalization are difficult to isolate from those of the effects of deeper regional integration, often referred to as ‘Europeanization’. Since globalization has occurred in tandem with regional integration, it leads to questions that are specific to the European case. Has the EU subversively acted as a Trojan Horse that helped bring globalization into the heart of Europe, or instead has the EU been Europe’s best defence against its negative effects? Are regional integration and globalization two facets of the same phenomenon? Do they reinforce each other or contradict each other?
This book explores the complex interrelationships between food and agriculture, politics, and society. More specifically, it considers the political aspects of three basic economic questions: what is to be produced? how is it to be produced? how it is to be distributed? It also outlines three unifying themes running through the politics of answering these societal questions with regard to food, namely: ecology, technology and property. Furthermore, the book examines the tendency to address the new organization of global civil society around food, its production, distribution, and consequences for the least powerful within the context of the North-South divide; the problems of malnutrition as opposed to poverty, food insecurity, and food shortages, as well as the widespread undernutrition in developing countries; and how biotechnology can be used to ensure a sustainable human future by addressing global problems such as human population growth, pollution, climate change, and limited access to clean water and other basic food production resources. The influence of science and politics on the framing of modern agricultural technologies is also discussed, along with the worsening food crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa, food security and food safety, and the relationship between gender inequality and food security. Other chapters deal with the link between land and food and its implications for social justice; the "eco-shopping” perspective; the transformation of the agrifood industry in developing countries; the role of wild foods in food security; agroecological intensification of smallholder production systems; and the ethics of food production and consumption.
Nanotechnology represents an emerging technology with varied application areas. It has been identified as the next scientific breakthrough with potential for positive impacts for society. The development and application of emerging technologies has been shown to be contingent upon societal responses to those technologies and their applications. Socio-psychological factors will potentially influence societal responses to nanotechnology, and play an important role in its development and commercialisation. The views of both experts and the general public regarding societal preferences for innovations in nanotechnology will be important in identifying which applications will be commercialised. If expert views regarding the determinants of societal acceptability do not align with those held by the general public, applications that consumers will reject may be introduced early in the commercialisation trajectory and focus public opinion on the negative aspects of nanotechnology. Conversely, applications which are acceptable to consumers may never be commercialised if experts perceive that consumers are likely to reject them. This thesis identifies and describes factors influencing societal response to nanotechnology by incorporating views from experts and the general public. Three research approaches were utilised. The first focused on reviewing previous scientific research into the socio-psychological factors that influence public acceptance of new technologies. The second focused on identifying and quantifying expert views on the factors that will influence societal acceptance or rejection of nanotechnology. The third tested whether the different factors do, in fact, drive public opinion.
This Article examines the unprecedented and deeply underestimated global power that the EU is exercising through its legal institutions and standards, and how it successfully exports that influence to the rest of the world. Without the need to use international institutions or seek other nations' cooperation, the EU has a strong and growing ability to promulgate regulations that become entrenched in the legal frameworks of developed and developing markets alike, leading to a notable "Europeanization" of many important aspects of global commerce. The Article identifies the precise conditions for and the specific mechanism through which this externalization of EU's standards unfolds. Enhanced understanding of these conditions and this mechanism helps explain why the EU is currently the only jurisdiction that can wield unilateral influence across a number of areas of law-ranging from antitrust and privacy to health and environmental regulation-and why the markets, other states, and international institutions can do little to constrain Europe's global regulatory power.
It is often argued that international financial regulation has been substantially strengthened over the past decades through the international harmonization of financial regulation. There are, however, still frequent outbreaks of painful financial crises, including the recent 2008 global financial crisis. This raises doubts about the conventional claims of the strengthening of international financial regulation.
The transatlantic dispute over genetically modified organisms (GMOs) has brought into conflict the United States and the European Union, two long-time allies and economically interdependent democracies with a long record of successful cooperation. Yet the dispute - pitting a largely acceptant US against an EU deeply suspicious of GMOs - has developed into one of the most bitter and intractable transatlantic and global conflicts, resisting efforts at negotiated resolution and resulting in a bitterly contested legal battle before the World Trade Organization. The authors investigate the obstacles to reconciling regulatory differences among nations through international cooperation, using the lens of the GMO dispute. The book addresses the dynamic interactions of domestic law and politics, transnational networks, international regimes, and global markets, through a theoretically grounded and empirically comprehensive analysis of the governance of GM foods and crops. They demonstrate that the deeply politicized, entrenched, and path-dependent nature of the regulation of GMOs in the US and the EU has fundamentally shaped negotiations and decision-making at the international level, limiting the prospects for deliberation and providing incentives for both sides to engage in hard bargaining and to 'shop' for favorable international forums. They then assess the impacts, and the limits, of international pressures on domestic US and European law, politics, and business practice, which have remained strikingly resistant to change. International cooperation in areas like GMO regulation, the authors conclude, must overcome multiple obstacles. Any effective response to this persistent dispute, they argue, must recognize both the obstacles to successful cooperation, and the options that remain for each side when cooperation fails. © Mark A. Pollack and Gregory C. Shaffer 2009. All rights reserved.
Genetically
modified
organisms
have
been
accompanied
by
hopes
and
concerns
regarding
the
potential
of
this
technology
to
reshape
agricultural
practices,
our
environment
and
the
food
we
eat.
The
controversy
surrounding
GMOs
raised
questions
regarding
the
present
and
future
relationship
between
science
and
society.
This
thesis
contributes
to
this
debate
by
exploring
GM
scientists’
thoughts
about
public
opinion
and
its
influence
on
their
work.
I
contend
that
how
scientists
listen
to
public
opinion
is
mediated
by
national
context,
which
I
explore
through
a
comparison
of
the
United
Kingdom
and
Italy.
Within
the
public
understanding
of
science,
and
social
studies
of
science
more
generally,
the
listening
capacity
of
scientists
has
largely
been
ignored.
Asking
if,
how
and
under
what
conditions
GM
scientists
listen
to
public
opinion
on
GMOs,
I
address
this
gap
in
the
literature.
A
mixed
method
approach
is
used
to
answer
these
questions.
This
combines
descriptive
statistics
with
a
range
of
qualitative
methods,
including
narrative
analysis,
case
study
and
situational
analysis.
This
methodological
approach
is
meant
to
bridge
qualitative
and
quantitative
methodologies,
historically
polarised
within
PUS
scholarship.
This
thesis
is
structured
by
my
own
changing
understanding
of
the
listening
process.
Initially,
I
assumed
a
stimulus-‐response
model
of
scientists’
listening,
in
which
the
public
talks
and
scientists
respond.
Following
my
data
collection
and
analysis,
I
developed
a
new
model
for
listening
that
includes
three
moments:
hearing
public
opinion,
interpreting
it,
and
responding
to
it.
Using
this
model,
I
identify
two
typical
patterns
in
GM
scientists’
listening
process.
Both
of
these
patterns
are
associated
with
the
‘deficit
model’,
which
scientists
used
differently
according
to
their
national
contexts.
Drawing
on
Jasanoff’s
(2005)
concept
of
civic
epistemology,
I
contend
that
these
patterns
are
indicative
of
scientists’
civic
epistemologies,
which
are
informed
by
a
number
of
different
factors.
In recent years, the Organization of American States has charted new terrain in the defense and promotion of democracy. Most significantly, it intervened in Peru (2000) and in Venezuela (2002–2004). The centerpiece of both initiatives was the establishment of a mesa, an OAS-facilitated intra-elite dialogue roundtable. In examining this "tale of two mesas," we trace three components of this approach: the actors at the table, the agendas, and the achievements. Although significant differences between the two processes make it difficult to articulate a single, coherent model, both the Peruvian and Venezuelan mesas exemplify a new mode of multilateral intervention—"intervention without intervening." Though this approach has limitations, it may have some potential for application beyond our two case studies.
An examination of how advocates for alternative agriculture confront “science-based” regulation of genetically engineered crops.
Genetic engineering has a wide range of cultural, economic, and ethical implications, yet it has become almost an article of faith that regulatory decisions about biotechnology be based only on evidence of specific quantifiable risks; to consider anything else is said to “politicize” regulation. In this study of social protest against genetically engineered food, Abby Kinchy turns the conventional argument on its head. Rather than consider politicization of the regulatory system, she takes a close look at the scientization of public debate about the “contamination” of crops resulting from pollen drift and seed mixing. Advocates of alternative agriculture confront the scientization of this debate by calling on international experts, carrying out their own research, questioning regulatory science in court, building alternative markets, and demanding that their governments consider the social and economic impacts of the new technologies.
Kinchy focuses on social conflicts over canola in Canada and maize in Mexico, drawing out their linkages to the global food system and international environmental governance. The book ultimately demonstrates the shortcomings of dominant models of scientific risk governance, which marginalize alternative visions of rural livelihoods and sustainable food production.
Policy makers of various countries are exposed to critiques that call for the consideration of issues that transcend human, animal, and environmental safety concerns when assessing agricultural biotechnology products. While some jurisdictions have decided to broaden the scope of their approval process for genetically modified (GM) foods, this paper analyzes legal, political, and economic factors that can influence the transfer of these initiatives. Drawing on mechanisms presented in the policy transfer literature, this article examines their mixed effects pertaining to the regulation of biotechnology. Although the mechanisms of competition and coercion do not preclude such a possibility, one must admit that they do not create any incentives for policy makers to include nonsafety criteria within biotechnology regulations. By contrast, to varying degrees, the mechanisms of mimicry and learning can foster the transfer of such a broadened scope that allows a better assessment of GM foods' social acceptability.
Over the past fifty years, top political science journals have published hundreds of articles about policy diffusion. This article reports on network analyses of how the ideas and approaches in these articles have spread both within and across the subfields of American politics, comparative politics and international relations. Then, based on a survey of the literature, the who, what, when, where, how and why of policy diffusion are addressed in order to identify and assess some of the main contributions and omissions in current scholarship. It is argued that studies of diffusion would benefit from paying more attention to developments in other subfields and from taking a more systematic approach to tackling the questions of when and how policy diffusion takes place.
Does national success with an emerging technology require ethical sacrifices? This question is considered through the simultaneous consideration of ethics, investment, and outcomes in the nine jurisdictions that are making the largest investments in nanotechnologies—an important emerging technology. It is found that while ethical environment has no notable effect on pure and applied research, a more positive ethical environment is associated with measures associated with invention and commercialization. In summary, a race-to-the-top supports invention and commercialization of emerging technologies. A critical finding as it suggests that issues such as corruption and regulation could be critical in limiting the extraction of social and economic benefit from emerging technologies (like nanotechnologies).
The introduction of different applications of nanotechnology will be informed by expert views regarding which (types of) application will be most societally acceptable. Previous research in Northern Europe has indicated that experts believe that various factors will be influential, predominant among these being public perceptions of benefit, need and consumer concern about contact with nanomaterials. These factors are thought by experts to differentiate societal acceptance and rejection of nanotechnology applications. This research utilises a larger sample of experts (N = 67) drawn from Northern America, Europe, Australasia, India and Singapore to examine differences in expert opinion regarding societal acceptance of different applications of nanotechnology within different technological environments, consumer cultures and regulatory regimes. Perceived risk and consumer concerns regarding contact with nano-particles are thought by all experts to drive rejection, and perceived benefits to influence acceptance, independent of country. Encapsulation and delivery of nutrients in food was thought to be the most likely to raise societal concerns, while targeted drug delivery was thought most likely to be accepted. Lack of differentiation between countries suggests that expert views regarding social acceptance may be homogenous, independent of local contextual factors.
A new global activism is shaming the world's top companies into enacting codes of conduct and opening their Third World factories for inspection. But before you run a victory lap in your new sweatshop-free sneakers, ask yourself: Do these voluntary arrangements truly help workers and the environment, or do they merely weaken local governments while adding more green to the corporate bottom line?
Supporters see the biotechnology revolution in agriculture as a Promethean step forward, whereas critics see it as the start down a slope to futuristic disaster. The supporters are right about the potential benefits of genetically engineered crops, but the critics are correct that the situation calls for government regulation. Free markets alone will not suffice to realize the new technology's promise while avoiding its pitfalls.
Ecological Modernisation Theory has been faced with various challenges from different theoretical perspectives throughout the years. This contribution reviews the various debates ecological modernisation ideas have been engaged in. The article starts with a historical perspective on some of the earlier debates that paralleled Ecological Modernisation from its birth in the early 1980s to its maturation. These initial debates with earlier neo‐Marxists and deindustrialisation/counterproductivity theorists were formative for Ecological Modernisation Theory, but are no longer all of similar relevance today. Subsequently we concentrate on more contemporary discussions, which only to some extent reflect similar topics. We will respectively enter into discussions with constructivists and postmodernists on the material foundation of social theory, review and refine the controversies with eco‐centrists on radical versus reformist environmental reforms and contribute to neo‐Marxist understanding of social inequalities in environmental problems and reform.
Hix (European and comparative politics, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK) presents an introduction to the political system of the European Union. Assessing a variety of explanatory theoretical models, he describes the organization and operation of executive, legislative, and judicial governance. He then offers separate chapters analyzing the influence of public opinion, parties and elections, and interest representation on EU politics. Finally, he looks at the formation of policy in the areas of market regulation, expenditures, economic and monetary union, citizen freedom and security policies, and foreign policy.
This paper outlines an approach for understanding the role of multinational corporations (MNCs) in global governance. We develop a typology of regime types with two dimensions, the goal of the regime, which can be market enabling or regulatory, and the location of authority, which can be national, regional, or international, with public and private elements. MNCs tend to support the creation of market enabling regimes at the international level, and prefer to keep social or environmental regulation under national or private authority. However, these are only generalizations and MNCs develop preferences based on their relative influence in various arenas, the costs of political participation, and competitive considerations. We argue that institutions of global governance represent the outcome of a series of negotiations among corporations, states, and non-state actors. The preferences and power of MNCs vary across issues and sectors, and from one negotiating forum to another, accounting for the uneven and fragmented nature of the resulting system. Our approach differs from the traditional FDI bargaining framework in that it recognizes the multi-party nature of negotiations and multiple sources of power. Moreover, the complexity and dynamic nature of the process results in a somewhat indeterminate process.
We present a unified model of the politics of the European Union(EU). We focus on the effects of the EU s changing treaty base from thefounding Rome Treaty (ratified in 1958) to the Single European Act (SEA,1987), the Maastricht Treaty on European Union (1993), and the AmsterdamTreaty (1999) on the relations among its three supranationalinstitutions the Commission of the European Communities, the EuropeanCourt of Justice, and the European Parliament and between these actorsand the intergovernmental Council of Ministers. We conceive of theseinstitutions in terms of the roles they perform in the three corefunctions of the modern state: to legislate and formulate policy(legislative branch), to administer and implement policy (executivebranch), and to interpret policy and adjudicate disputes (judicialbranch).
Liberal and critical theorists alike claim that the world political economy is becoming globalized. If they are right, leading corporations should gradually be losing their national characters and converging in their fundamental strategies and operations. Multinational corporations (MNCs) should be the harbingers of deep global integration. In fact, recent evidence shows little blurring or convergence at the cores of firms based in Germany, Japan, or the United States. In contrast to expectations now common both inside and outside academia regarding the imminent emergence of a truly global economy, this article shows that MNCs continue to diverge fairly systematically in their internal governance and long-term financing structures, in their approaches to research and development (R&D) as well as in the location of core R&D facilities, and in their overseas investment and intrafirm trading strategies. Durable national institutions and distinctive ideological traditions still seem to shape and channel crucial corporate decisions. Across the leading states of the three regions now commonly referred to as the "Triad," the foundations of corporate markets are not converging.Markets in this sense are not replacing political leadership and the necessity for negotiated adjustments among states.
An accessible but sophisticated introduction to, and analysis of, the increasingly important role of the European Union in environmental policy. Written by a well-known authority in the field, the book ranges widely over the emergence and evolution of the EU role in this critical field of policy, the relationship between policies made at the EU and member state levels, and the nature of the environmental policy process. The book ends with in-depth studies of EU activities in key policy areas - from air quality and waste management to global warming - and sums up the successes and failures of EU policy to date.
Traditionally, key figures at the PDA in particular have either held important positions at Monsanto, or are destined to do so in the future. Is it surprising therefore that Monsanto gets clearance for its often dangerous products?
A new dialogue is beginning between students of international law and international relations scholars concerning compliance with international agreements. This article advances some basic propositions to frame that dialogue. First, it proposes that the level of compliance with international agreements in general is inherently unverifiable by empirical procedures. That nations generally comply with their international agreements, on the one hand, or that they violate them whenever it is in their interest to do so, on the other, are not statements of fact or even hypotheses to be tested. Instead, they are competing heuristic assumptions. Some reasons why the background assumption of a propensity to comply is plausible and useful are given. Second, compliance problems very often do not reflect a deliberate decision to violate an international undertaking on the basis of a calculation of advantage. The article proposes a variety of other reasons why states may deviate from treaty obligations and why in many circumstances those reasons are properly accepted by others as justifying apparent departures from treaty norms. Third, the treaty regime as a whole need not and should not be held to a standard of strict compliance but to a level of overall compliance that is "acceptable" in the light of the interests and concerns the treaty is designed to safeguard. How the acceptable level is determined and adjusted is considered.
It seemed like such a good idea-a treaty that would lower barriers to foreign investment, just like the GATT had liberalized international trade. Instead, the Multilateral Agreement on Investment became a lightning rod for opposition to the global economy and turned the World Wide Web into a virtual battleground.
Nongovernmental organizations (NGOS) both lobby states and work within and across societies to advance their interests. These latter efforts are generally ignored by students of world politics because they do not directly involve governments. A study of transnational environmental activist groups (TEAGs) such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and World Wildlife Fund demonstrates that NGO societal efforts indeed shape widespread behavior throughout the world. TEAGs work through transnational social, economic, and cultural networks to shift standards of good conduct, change corporate practices, and empower local communities. This type of practice involves “world civic politics.” That is, TEAGs influence widespread behavior by politicizing global civil society—that slice of collective life which exists above the individual and below the state yet across national boundaries. This article examines the activity of world civic politics as practiced by environmental activists and evaluates its relevance for the study of NGOs and world politics in general.
Recent scholarship on international norms neglects the question of why some norms get selected over others to define and regulate appropriate behavior. I introduce a `socio-evolutionary' explanation for the entrance and evolution of norms, which focuses on the interaction of ideas with the social structure they encounter. This explanation best accounts for the most significant shift in environmental governance over the last 30 years, the surprising convergence of environmental and liberal economic norms toward `liberal environmentalism'. The 1992 Earth Summit institutionalized these norms, which predicate environmental protection on the promotion and maintenance of a liberal economic order. Current scholarship on international environmental institutions largely ignores the normative underpinnings of responses to environmental problems owing to its preoccupation with form and function, and thus cannot explain the shift. The proposed explanation also outperforms an `epistemic communities' explanation in its paradigmatic case, challenging the presumed primacy of science in environmental governance. Its advantages are also shown over power, interest and existing ideational approaches to normative development.
While the interventionist state was characterised by a high level of centralisation in administration and policy making, the regulatory state relies on extensive delegation of powers to independent institutions: regulatory agencies or commissions, but also the judiciary which is becoming an increasingly active player in the regulatory game. Delegation of important policy‐making powers to non‐majoritarian institutions raises novel problems of democratic legitimacy. This article argues that such problems should be tackled not by limiting the independence of the regulators, but rather by strengthening the accountability structure. Similar problems arise at the European level. Here, too, the correct solution is a better accountability structure rather than increased politicisation. The de‐politicisation of European policy making is a consequence of the fact that the large majority of Europe's voters support far‐reaching economic integration but oppose true political integration.
The study of urban politics has undergone considerable change over the last ten to fifteen years. During the 1950s and 1960s the ‘community power’ approach became well-established in American political science as the dominant form of analysis of local politics, although it was less marked in Britain. In contrast, and in part as reaction, to the ecological determinism and naturalistic explanation of the Chicago school in urban sociology that preceded it, power and decision making were seen as key features in explaining urban processes. Intentionality and human action were afforded explanatory dominance. In turn, however, this approach came under sustained critique as part of the ‘anti-behaviouralist’ or structuralist resurgence in Western social science in the 1970s which attributed causal primacy to structural determination and system contradictions, not actors or voluntarism. Yet structural approaches face methodological problems of functionalism and circularity, and in constructing tests of empirical adequacy and falsifiability. Some of the more interesting, recently-published work in urban politics seeks to maintain a non-behaviouralist, more structuralist interpretation of local policy outcomes within empirically-grounded analyses that allow space for politics and power. Dunleavy, Friedland and Saunders provided three of the best examples of such an approach, and have each sought to understand either a particular policy, or a set of policies in a particular locality, through frameworks which in varying degrees incorporate structuralist assumptions. They seek to apply objective cost-benefit analyses of public policies as empirically refutable hypotheses and accept the necessity of objective criteria for assessing whether or not interests have been met in any given situation. This article examines the extent to which these selected ‘non-behaviouralist’ interpretations of urban politics have successfully been applied to empirical contexts. A central element in this examination is a consideration of the way in which business is seen as a major influence in local politics.
This article seeks to clarify and then assess the regulatory legitimacy of the Precautionary Principle (PP). The investigation proceeds by way of an example, the commercialisation of genetically modified pest protected plants (GMPPPs). First, I sort the various formulations of the PP into two categories - weak and strong. Weak versions afford regulators significant latitude as to what counts as a good reason for approving or denying permission to commercialise environmentally risky technology. Strong versions restrict regulators to consider environmental risk in isolation from possible benefits. Then I argue that in domestic contexts the weak formulations are unobjectionable, justifiable, and otherwise legitimate. However, these formulations are problematic in the context of international trade agreements (e.g. The Cartagena Protocol). Finally, I argue that strong formulations of the PP should be rejected as legitimate regulatory responses to the environmental risks of GMPPPs.
Most people believe that large corporations wield enormous political power when they lobby for policies as a cohesive bloc. With this controversial book, Mark A. Smith sets conventional wisdom on its head. In a systematic analysis of postwar lawmaking, Smith reveals that business loses in legislative battles unless it has public backing. This surprising conclusion holds because the types of issues that lead businesses to band together-such as tax rates, air pollution, and product liability-also receive the most media attention. The ensuing debates give citizens the information they need to hold their representatives accountable and make elections a choice between contrasting policy programs. Rather than succumbing to corporate America, Smith argues, representatives paradoxically become more responsive to their constituents when facing a united corporate front. Corporations gain the most influence over legislation when they work with organizations such as think tanks to shape Americans' beliefs about what government should and should not do.
Obra que reconstruye el origen y evolución de las actuales redes transnacionales que, con la utilización de las nuevas tecnologías informativas como recurso organizador y aglutinador, han logrado constituirse en movimientos más o menos presionadores en la defensa de los derechos humanos, de la protección ambiental y de una mayor equidad de género, entre otros.
The word independent in the United States (US) context is most properly used in connection with the independent regulatory commissions. Those commissions are not independent of Congressional control. Both the commissions and the agencies of the regular cabinet departments live in a regime of statutory duties under which Congressional statutes not presidential policies control much of their behavior. Both are subject to judicial review. Commissions basically are independent in the sense that they are usually not subject to the complete control by commissioners of one political party. They are somewhat independent of the President in that no single President has appointed all the commissioners of a particular commission and commissioners may only be dismissed by the President for cause. American experience suggests that European Union (EU) independent agencies will create severe problems of co-ordination, legitimacy and control. These problems are not alleviated by the claim that EU agencies will have purely informational roles because information is a key element in policy-making and policy controversy.
Environmental Management Systems (EMSS) represent a new generation of voluntary “beyond compliance” environmental policies that neither set substantive goals nor specify final outcomes. As a result, many stakeholder groups are lukewarm toward them. Since 1993 two major supranational EMSs—ISO 14001 and the European Union's Environmental Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS)—have been introduced. Firms receive formal accreditation after their EMS has been certified by outside verifiers. This accreditation can potentially bestow monetary and nonmonetary benefits on these firms.
Firm-level EMS adoption patterns in the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States vary, thereby suggesting that national contexts influence firms' responses to them. In Germany and the U.K. a significant number of sites have become either ISO 14001 or EMAS certified, while the take-up of ISO 14001 in the U.S. (EMAS is available only to European sites) has been less enthusiastic.
This article begins with the hypothesis that firms in countries with adversarial economies— where regulators and business are on less than friendly terms—are less likely to adopt EMS-based programs. This hypothesis explains why ISO 14001 take-up has been relatively high in the U.K. and relatively low in the U.S. However, it cannot explain (1) the high rate of take-up of both ISO 14001 and EMAS in Germany, where the stringency of environmental legislation has been a contentious issue between the government and industry and (2) why EMAS has been more popular in Germany than in the U.K. This article argues that the original hypothesis, while largely correct, is underspecified. To better explain the cross-national differences in EMS adoption, one must take into account the type of adversarial economy (adversarial legalism versus prescriptive interventionism) and the nature of the policy regime (procedural versus substantive).
Studies of policy convergence among advanced industrial states are often based on an overly deterministic logic, a static conception of convergence and an unclear specification of the aspects of policy that are supposed to be converging. This article reviews a body of recent comparative policy literature to identify a fourfold framework of processes through which convergence might arise: emulation, where state officials copy action taken elsewhere; elite networking, where convergence results from transnational policy communities; harmonization through international regimes; and penetration by external actors and interests. In drawing some conceptual, methodological and theoretical lessons about how to study this phenomenon in the future, the article concludes that policy convergence should not denote an absence of state autonomy. Rather, an application of state-centred theory suggests that, with the exception of penetration, the other processes may occur through the autonomous preferences of policy makers to fashion convergent policies.
* The Study of Public Policy Processes Hank C. Jenkins-Smith and Paul A. Sabatier. The Advocacy Coalition Framework * Policy Change over a Decade or More P. A. Sabatier. * The Dynamics of Policy-Oriented Learning H. C. Jenkins-Smith and P. A. Sabatier. Qualitative Case Studies Of Policy Change And Learning * An Advocacy Coalition Approach to Change in Canadian Education Hanne B. Mawhinney. * Competing Advocacy Coalitions, Policy Evolution, and Airline Deregulation Anthony E. Brown and Joseph Stewart Jr. * California Water Politics: Explaining Policy Change in a Cognitively Polarized Subsystem John F. Munro. * Managing Technological Change in Federal Communications Policy: The Role of Industry Advisory Groups Richard P. Barke. Quantitative Analyses Of Policy Change * The Politics of Offshore Energy: Empirically Testing the Advocacy Coalition Framework H. C. Jenkins-Smith and Gilbert K. St. Clair. * From Vague Consensus to Clearly Differentiated Coalitions: Environmental Policy at Lake Tahoe, 19641985 P. A. Sabatier and Anne M. Brasher. Conclusion * The Advocacy Coalition Framework: Assessment, Revisions, and Implications for Scholars and Practitioners P. A. Sabatier and H. C. Jenkins-Smith. Methodological Appendix * Measuring Longitudinal Change in Elite Beliefs Using Content Analysis of Public Documents H. C. Jenkins-Smith and P. A. Sabatier. *
The author examines the concept of global civil society (GCS) through the use of theoretical tools and empirical evidence related to the study of International Communication. He demonstrates that scholarship on GCS tends to simplify the process through which information becomes knowledge and that the state system–GCS relationship often is presented in terms of an ahistorical power dichotomy. In relation to these problems, what the author calls “GCS progressives” tend to underplay political-economic factors shaping GCS, including the implications of structural power; they tend to emphasize the importance of spatial integration while neglecting related changes in temporal norms; and, more essentially, they often under-theorize the importance of socialization processes and relatively unmediated relationships in the ongoing construction of “reality.” The author concludes that through a more focused analysis—concentrating on how new technologies can be used to organize nationally and locally, and on lifestyle changes associated with communications developments—more precise analyses and fruitful strategies for GCS progressives may emerge.
Compared to other economically advanced democracies, the United States is uniquely prone to adversarial, legalistic modes of policy formulation and implementation, shaped by the prospect of judicial review. While adversarial legalism facilitates the expression of justice-claims and challenges to official dogma, its costs are often neglected or minimized. A survey of existing research, together with a case study of environmental regulation in the Port of Oakland, indicates the extent to which adversarial legalism causes (or threatens) enormous dispute-resolving costs and procedural delays, which in turn distort policy outcomes. Adversarial legalism, moreover, has increased in recent decades, as Americans have attempted to implement the ambitious, socially transformative policies of activist government through political structures, forms of legislation, and legal procedures that reflect deep suspicion of governmental authority.
An implicit assumption of most policy analysts and some academics is that globalization leads to a convergence of traditionally national policies governing environmental regulation, consumer health and safety, the regulation of labor, and the ability to tax capital. Some claim that globalization leads to a race to the bottom, where concerns about the regulatory standards are sacrificed on the altar of commerce. Others argue that the growth of transnational governance structures leads to a negotiated convergence of ample regulation. This essay reviews the arguments and evidence for how globalization affects the convergence of regulatory policies, in particular the setting of labor and environmental standards. It argues that the theories of policy convergence, which rely on structural factors to induce policy convergence, are largely unsupported by the empirical evidence. Theories that grant agents autonomous decisionmaking power perform better but remain underspecified. Ironically, the realist paradigm, which has generally denigrated the globalization phenomenon, could prove a fruitful source for theories of improved policy convergence.
In 1992 governments negotiated a multilateral treaty regime to manage biological diversity. Unlike the United Kingdom, the United States rejected this treaty. Yet both nations were equally at risk from biodiversity loss and equally likely to benefit from its protection. This empirical puzzle is used to explore state choice in regulatory cooperation. Epistemic community analysis helps to explain the onset of negotiations and the contours of debates over regime norms and rules. But state choices, and the regime itself, primarily reflected the regulatory politics of biodiversity management. The international commitments on biodiversity, ostensibly alike for the U.K. and the U.S., had to be implemented through their domestic regulatory structures; the result was a distinct set of domestic ramifications. Electoral incentives and especially domestic institutions influenced both industry and governmental assessments by shaping expectations about the impact of the regime in operation. As states increasingly seek to regulate internationally, domestic institutions and anticipated implementation will play ever greater roles in explaining state choice and, because powerful states are equally influenced by these dynamics, in explaining international outcomes.
[Full text available at: http://www.esf.edu/es/sonnenfeld/ecomod_intro.htm]
In this innovative account of the way policy issues rise and fall on the national agendaâthe first detailed study of so many issues over an extended periodâFrank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones show that rapid change not only can but does happen in the hidebound institutions of government. Short-term, single-issue analyses of public policy, the authors contend, give a narrow and distorted view of public policy as the result of a cozy arrangement between politicians, interest groups, and the media. Baumgartner and Jones upset these notions by focusing on several issuesâincluding civilian nuclear power, urban affairs, smoking, and auto safetyâover a much longer period of time to reveal patterns of stability alternating with bursts of rapid, unpredictable change. A welcome corrective to conventional political wisdom, Agendas and Instability revises our understanding of the dynamics of agenda-setting and clarifies a subject at the very center of the study of American politics.
Recent developments in the fields of chemistry, molecular biology, computer science, and communications promise to transform the way that many things will be done in the near future in diverse fields of scientific R&D. Fortunately for less developed countries (LDCs) some of the technologies involved are user friendly and safe, avoiding the need for radioactive precursors, large machines, or expensive reagents. For instance, tissue culture, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), dideoxi-sequencing, and recombinant DNA techniques have already invaded clinical laboratories, agricultural field stations, and natural history museums, even in some developing nations. Somatic cell culture for plant biotechnology and immunologic techniques for diagnosis have had wide applications for over a decade in all countries in the Central American Isthmus. More recently, recombinant DNA techniques, including PCR, have been introduced for diagnostic purposes and research at the two largest universities in Costa Rica and at other public institutions and are also used in Guatemala and Panama. Honduras and Nicaragua are only now acquiring these technologies for diagnostic purposes. Biotechnological applications in industry seem to be lagging behind, and presently no good links exist between research laboratories and industry for advanced applications. The application of biotechnologies in environmental problems is slowly underway, with molecular studies of natural wildlife populations and primary forest trees. A major effort is needed to create safe and effective ways of dealing with environmental degradation, wastes, and byproducts of tropical agriculture and industry. The creation of the National Biodiversity Institute (INBio) in Costa Rica to elaborate an inventory of flora and fauna and to prospect for useful substances provides a unique opportunity for biotechnological applications. In addition, government policies to promote biotechnological development are supported by CONICIT (National Research Council), the Ministry of Science and Technology, the newly established Costa Rican Academy of Science, and the national universities. Other countries in the region are beginning to take similar action. At the Cell and Molecular Biology Center (CIBCM) our strategy is to obtain the key components and infrastructure to handle nucleic acids and manage genetic information in databanks. Training has been an important priority during the last decade, with over 20 Central American students receiving graduate degrees in virology, molecular biology, genetics, and immunology, with support from German and Swedish governmental institutions. Diagnosis of viral diseases in cultivated plants and animals was done initially at CIBCM for research and later on a contractual basis for both the public and private agricultural sectors. DNA hybridization and PCR techniques are now replacing or being used concurrently with immunologic techniques.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Revisions to the European Treaty of Union require some form of environmental appraisal – primarily risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis – of regulatory initiatives by the European Commission. A retrospective look at the emergence of environmental appraisal also shows that, while the Commission has made great advances in introducing cost-benefit or cost-effectiveness appraisals in recent years, past environmental decisions and overall environmental policy have not been informed by systematic appraisal techniques. Nor is it clear what role is now being played by risk assessments. While it is impossible to gauge the extent to which systematic appraisal procedures will save on regulatory and compliance expenditures, some indications are provided of the costs of past neglect of these procedures. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1998
The rise in the importance of nonstate actors in generating new norms in world politics has been documented by scholars, but the literature has focused predominantly on nonsecurity (“new”) issue areas. Conversely, although recent constructivist work in international relations has examined the security policies of states, typically it is the state that is doing the constructing of interests. I bridge these two literatures by examining the hard case of transnational civil society working through issue networks to teach state interests in security policy. I analyze the campaign by transnational civil society to generate an international norm prohibiting antipersonnel land mines and trace the effects of several techniques through which states can be said to be socialized. Through generating issues, networking, “grafting,” and using a transnational Socratic method to reverse burdens of proof, the campaign has stimulated systemic normative change through two processes: norm adoption through the conversion of persuaded moral entrepreneurs and emulation resulting from social pressures of identity.
International relations theorists have in recent years shown an interest in international norms and rules not equaled since the interwar period. This contemporary literature is, of course, quite different—i.e., better—than that of the 1920s and 1930s: it has greater intellectual depth, empirical backing, and explanatory power. The promise of this research, bolstered by the opportunities of the post–cold war era, is that norms encouraging free trade, protecting the environment, enhancing human rights, and controlling the spread and use of heinous weapons may have a substantial impact on the conduct and structure of international relations. But pessimists also exist. Some have taken up the stick E. H. Carr skillfully shook at idealists in an earlier period, arguing that the anarchic power-shaped international arena is not so malleable and that international norms and institutions have relatively little influence. On the one hand, we are pointed to the centrality of international norms; on the other, we are cautioned that norms are inconsequential. How do we make sense of these divergent claims? Which is right?
the family farm in Europe has consciously been protected against the potentially devastating effects of the world market under the auspices of the EU's Common Agriculture Program. continued in the 107th Congress with the introduction of 50 bills
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Additionally, to a much greater extent than is true in the U.S., the family farm in Europe has consciously been protected against the potentially devastating effects of the world market under the auspices of the EU's Common Agriculture Program. continued in the 107th Congress with the introduction of 50 bills (for a detailed listing of the bills see Thomas, 2000).
Biotech Corn Protein Found in 2nd Variety
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KAUFMAN, M. (2000) Biotech Corn Protein Found in 2nd Variety. Washington Post, Nov. 22, A2.