Abstract
The United States has been an important actor in multilateral negotiations on stratospheric ozone depletion and climate change. In the mid-1970s it was responsible for about half of all emissions of ozone-depleting substances, and at the beginning of the climate negotiations in 1991 it was producing about one-quarter of the anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs). However, in 1975 the United States was one of the first countries to recognize the environmental dangers of emissions of ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and was an early advocate for international action.1 In climate change the United States initially opposed substantive international action. Neither issue has evinced the same political interest as environmental problems closer to home or nearer the pocketbook. However, in both issues U.S. foreign policy has responded to domestic political constraints and opportunities.
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Notes
The two-level games metaphor was introduced by Robert D. Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games,” International Organization 42, no. 3 (Summer 1988): 427–60. The preferred term in the relevant international relations literature is “Chief of Government”: that decider, person, group, elite, or institution that selects between conflicting positions based in different interests and beliefs. In the United States, the foreign policy elite may change over time and between issues, as will become clear in this chapter, but almost always includes the president. The decisionmaking group may represent a very small cabal that supports policies opposed to the views of the majority of members of the executive branch.
Examples from a huge literature include Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics;” Barry B. Hughes, The Domestic Context of American Foreign Policy (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1978);
James N. Rosenau, ed., International Politics and Foreign Policy (Toronto: The Free Press, 1969);
Rosenau, “Pre-Theories and Theories of Foreign Policy,” in Approaches to Comparative and International Politics, edited by R. Barry Farrell (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966);
Rosenau, Along the Domestic-Foreign Frontier: Exploring Governance in a Turbulent World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
On decision making see Richard C. Snyder, H. W. Bruck, and Burton Sapin, Decision-Making as an Approach to the Study of International Politics (Princeton: Monograph No.3 of the Foreign Policy Analysis Series, The Foreign Policy Project, Princeton University, 1954);
Richard C. Snyder, “A Decision-Making Approach to the Study of Political Phenomena,” in Approaches to the Study of Politics, edited by Roland Young (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1958);
Graham T. Allison and Morton H. Halperin, “Bureaucratic Politics: A Paradigm and Some Policy Implications,” World Politics 24 (Spring 1972): 40–79;
and Graham T. Allison, The Essence of Decision (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971).
For the images and perceptions of decisionmakers see Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976);
Irving Janis, Groupthink (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982);
and Ole R. Holsti, “The Belief System and National Images: A Case Study,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 6 (1962): 244–252.
The description of the two-level games metaphor in this section is based on Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics,” and Peter B. Evans, Harold K. Jacobson, and Robert D. Putnam, eds., Double-Edged Diplomacy: Institutional Bargaining and Domestic Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), especially the chapter by Andrew Moravcsik, “Introduction: Integrating International and Domestic Theories of International Bargaining.”
A lead state is a state that other states will follow. A lead state has some direct influence over the choices made by the chiefs of government of follower states. For example, it may be able to persuade other chiefs of government to try to expand their domestic win-sets by using strategies appropriate to their domestic structures and political conditions. Bernard M. Bass, Stogdill’s Handbook of Leadership: A Survey of Theory and Research (New York: The Free Press, 1981).
On benevolent leadership as a form of hegemony, but suggesting the importance of moral ascendancy, see: Charles P. Kindleberger, “Dominance and Leadership in the International Economy,” International Studies Quarterly 25 (June 1981): 242–54;
Peter F. Cowhey, “Domestic Institutions and the Credibility of International Commitments: Japan and the United States,” International Organization 47, no. 2 (Spring 1993): 299–326;
Duncan Snidal, “The Limits of Hegemonic Stability Theory,” International Organization 39, no. 4 (Autumn 1985): 579–614.
Leonard J. Schoppa, “Two-Level Games and Bargaining Outcomes: Why Gaiatsu Succeeds in Japan in Some Cases but Not Others,” International Organization 47, no. 3 (Summer 1993): 353–386.
Ernst B. Haas, “Why Collaborate? Issue-Linkage and International Regimes,” World Politics 32 (1980): 357–405; Wayne Arthur Sandholtz, “Crisis and Collaboration on European Telematics” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1989).
The uses of side payments in manipulating the domestic win-set is discussed in Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics;” Moravcsik, “Introduction,” 25; and H. Richard Friman, “Side Payments Versus Security Cards: Domestic Bargaining Tactics in International Economic Negotiations,” International Organization 47, no. 3 (Summer 1993): 387–410.
About principled beliefs see Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane, “Ideas and Foreign Policy: An Analytical Framework,” in Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change, edited by Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993): 3–30. Shared principled beliefs compare with the administration’s “ideology.”
James G. Titus, ed., Effects of Changes on Stratospheric Ozone and Global Climate (Washington, DC: United States Environmental Protection Agency, 1986).
To sell newspapers, publishers respond to the interests of their readers. Don Munton, “Policy-Makers, Public Records, and Reality: A Contest Validation Test of Public Sources of Events,” in Measuring International Behavior: Public Sources, Events, and Validity, edited by Don Munton (Halifax, Nova Scotia: Centre for Foreign Policy Studies, Dalhousie University, 1978). The New York Times published nine articles on stratospheric ozone depletion in 1974, 53 in 1975, and 19 in 1976. This indicates a considerable public concern during 1975.
Carroll Leslie Bastian, “The Formulation of Federal Policy,” in Stratospheric Ozone and Man, vol. 2, edited by Frank A. Bower and Richard B. Ward, (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 1981): 174.
National Academy of Sciences, Early Action on the Global Environment Monitoring System (Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1976).
Lydia Dotto and Harold Schiff, The Ozone War (New York: Doubleday, 1978). This also indicates the level of public awareness of the suspected connection between CFC aerosol propellants and stratospheric ozone depletion and public concern about a loss of stratospheric ozone.
Interview with Steven Seidel, the Deputy Director of the Global Change Division, Office of Atmospheric and Indoor Air Programs, Office of Air and Radiation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 4 September 1991 (hereafter EPA-4); Peter M. Morrisette, “The Evolution of Policy Responses to Stratospheric Ozone Depletion,” Natural Resources Journal 29 (Summer 1989): 793–820; “U.S. Does not Support International Action,” International Environment Reporter, 8 December 1982: 538; and “Cooling Since Reagan,” International Environment Reporter, 12 January 1983: 9.
Interview EPA-4 September 1991; “New Models Predict Greater Ozone Depletion from Increased CFC Emission, Scientists Say,” International Environment Reporter, 11 July 1984: 219; “NRDC Seeks to Force EPA to Issue Rules for Further Reductions in CFC Emissions,” International Environment Reporter, 12 December 1984: 394; and Richard Elliot Benedick, Ozone Diplomacy: New Directions in Safeguarding the Planet (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991): 23.
James K. Hammitt, Timing Regulations to Prevent Stratospheric-Ozone Depletion (Rand Corporation, April 1987): 41.
The New York Times published nearly 40 articles on the ozone issue in both 1986 and 1987, indicating the level of public interest. The photographs in popular magazines of the Antarctic ozone hole were a vivid image of damage to the stratospheric ozone layer. See, for example, Richard S. Stolarski, “The Antarctic Ozone Hole,” Scientific American 258 (January 1988): 30–36.
National Academy of Sciences, Climate Research Board, Assembly of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Toward a U.S. Climate Program Plan: Report of the Workshop to Review the U. S. Climate Program Plans (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1979): vii;
The Executive Office of the President, “Global Energy Futures and the Carbon Dioxide Problem” (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, January 1981).
Stephen H. Schneider, Global Warming: Are We Entering the Greenhouse Century? (New York: Vintage Books, 1989).
J. B. Smith and D. Tirpak, The Potential Effects of Global Climate Change on the United States: Draft Report to Congress, 2 vols. (Washington, DC: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Policy, Planning, and Evaluation, Office of Research and Development, October 1988);
D. Lashof and D. Tirpak, Policy Options for Stabilizing Global Climate (Washington, DC: U.S. EPA, 1989). Interviews in the UK with Mark Hammond, Global Atmosphere Division, Department of the Environment, and J. F. Moss, Deputy Head of the International Unit, Ministry of Energy, confirmed that the UK government, at least, had no useful estimates and had only begun the calculate the effects of climate change and the costs of alternate policies.
Executive Office of the President, Council on Environmental Quality, Environmental Quality: Twentieth Annual Report (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1991).
Hansen was chief climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. See Schneider, Global Warming, 194–96 and 211–12, and Robert C. Balling, Jr., The Heated Debate: Greenhouse Predictions Versus Climate Reality (San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, 1992): 11. The cracked earth conditions may have been a result of reduced soil moisture from the harsh 1987 summer and winter.
Interviews in 1991: State 26 August; and CEQ 26 August. Also see Alan D. Hecht and Dennis Tirpak, “Framework Agreement on Climate Change: A Scientific and Policy History,” Climatic Change 29 (1995): 371–402. Both authors were senior officials at the EPA during the time analyzed.
Matthew Paterson, Global Warming and Global Politics (London: Routledge, 1996).
Department of Justice, Report of the Task Force on the Comprehensive Approach to Climate Change (Washington, DC: Department of Justice, February 1991).
See Don E. Kash and Robert W. Rycroft, “Energy Policy: How Failure was Snatched from the Jaws of Success,” Policy Studies Review, 4 (February 1985); Michael Grubb et al., Energy Policies and the Greenhouse Effect, 2 vols. (Aldershot, UK: Dartmouth, 1991);
John G. Ikenberry, Reasons of State: Oil Politics and the Capacities of American Government (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1988).
Al Gore, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and Human Spirit (New York: Penguin, 1992).
John W. Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies (Boston: Little, Brown, 1984).
Paul Wapner, Environmental Activism and World Civic Politics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996).
On social construction see Alexander Wendt, “Anarchy Is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics,” International Organization 6, no. 2 (Spring 1992): 391–425;
and Andreas Hasenclever, Peter Mayer, and Volker Rittberger, Theories of International Regimes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
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© 2000 Paul G. Harris
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Harrison, N.E. (2000). From the Inside Out: Domestic Influences on Global Environmental Policy. In: Harris, P.G. (eds) Climate Change and American Foreign Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137120809_5
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