Climate Change Policy Implementation: A Cross-Sectional Analysis

Why would countries invest resources to protect the global atmosphere, a global common‐pool resource? After all, this is an open‐access resource with no restrictions on appropriating its benefits. Furthermore, why would they do so under the aegis of a weak global regime (the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC) that has virtually no provisions for sanctioning noncompliance and when the largest contributor to the problem is not participating in the regime? This article examines why a number of countries have implemented the UNFCCC. I hypothesize that countries implement UNFCCC because they corner domestic environmental benefits, namely reduction in local pollution. In my empirical analysis of 127 countries, employing an ordinal logistic regression model, I find that local air pollution is associated with higher levels of implementation of the UNFCCC. Thus, I conclude that the incentives to implement a relatively weak global regime can be found in the domestic political economy.     

污染区居民如何扭转环境不正义——美国北卡罗来纳州华伦郡多氯联苯掩埋场个案分析

环境不正义的决策过程与结果,使社会弱势聚居之小区更容易受到环境污染的伤害,而环境污染为小区所带来的各种影响,又使得小区居民更加弱势。环境正义运动的主要诉求之一,就是要使民众有意识地参与环境政策过程。本文以此为基础,观察美国北卡罗来纳州华伦郡多氯联苯掩埋场抗议事件的发生,与其後二十几年的发展。本文从四个方面观察华伦郡这段抗议与矫正环境不正义的历史,分别是诉求观点、专业能力、政治结盟以及政策回应。研究结果得出四点结论：首先,能够引起广泛共鸣的环境正义诉求,是帮助小区内外联盟的重要基石;其次,小区居民专业知识与态度的培养,有助于提升居民与政府部门沟通的层次与地位;再次,弱势居民政治力的提升与政治结盟,是提高居民受害事实与基本权益能见度的重要管道;最後,政府的正面响应提升了民泉与政府共同合作解决小区污染问题的可能性。     

空间碎片现状的国际法思考

空间碎片是指位于地球轨道上的非功能性人造物体,近年来其对人类的外空活动构成重大威胁。目前,关于空间碎片的立法尚不完善。文章对空间碎片问题的现状、涉及空间碎片致害的国际责任问题和空间碎片造成的空间环境污染问题的现行法律规定进行了探析,认为有必要明确空间碎片的概念界定,并从现行国际条约的局限性入手,对空间碎片作出系统的法律规制。     

Vote Blue,Go Green? Cameron's Conservatives and the Environment

How genuine is the Conservative party's rediscovery of the environment? Would a Conservative government led by David Cameron implement a wide‐ranging and progressive environmental policy? This article explores why Cameron has embraced the environment so enthusiastically when Conservative governments have had a poor record of environmental protection and the Conservative party has traditionally shown little interest in the issue. It assesses the impact of Cameron's strategy both on his own party and on the wider world of environmental politics and it evaluates the continuing commitment of the Conservatives to the issue by assessing what kind of policies a future Conservative government might implement. Although Cameron remains committed to the issue and he has already had a positive impact on Labour government policy, he has not yet convinced his party or its supporters, so a future Conservative government would probably represent continuity rather than significant change in environmental policy.     

论科学发展观视野下环境行政决策之因应

科学发展观“以人为本、全面协调可持续发展”的要求与环境行政决策的合法化、科学化、民主化的诉求并行不悖、相互促进。环境行政决策应响应科学发展观的要求,进行体系上的重构,顺应环境法治的时代要求。具体因应对策为：环境行政决策应以“以人为本”为核心,进行必要的法律规制（实体规制与程序规制）和行政三分体制（决策、执行、监督）的创新,形成决策的合法、科学、民主与决策效率和谐互动的理想状态。     

The Greening of the Americas

ABSTRACT

This paper evaluates global capital’s ecological management and extends the assessment to the “green economy,” as developed in the first “green” neoliberal project, in Costa Rica. Costa Rica has been an important “laboratory” for experimentation in environmental governance mechanisms using debt-for-nature financial exchanges and other instruments of the Kyoto Protocol. I explore how “greening” can be understood as a new phase of capital accumulation, as I go into its five main aspects.     

‘Animals first!’ The rise of animal advocacy parties in the EU: a new party family

‘Euro Animal 7’ is the name given informally to 7 animal protection parties which represent voters in Cyprus, Germany, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and United Kingdom. These parties contested in the 2014 European Parliament (EP) election and gained representation in Germany and the Netherlands. Animal advocacy parties are also represented in the national parliaments of Portugal and the Netherlands.

Animal protection is an emergent issue in international politics and this research offers an account of the political positioning of these animal advocacy parties, analyzing their manifestos and the election results. While acknowledging that some parties have distinct ideological traits and some are still reclusive in the form of a single-issue party, this article argues that animal advocacy parties constitute a new party family in European politics.     

Seal the Deal: Bargaining Positions,Institutional Design,and the Duration of Preferential Trade Negotiations

Multilateral negotiations at the World Trade Organization have stalled. This has contributed to a steep rise in preferential trade agreements (PTAs). At the same time, negotiations for PTAs have not always proven quick and painless: While some treaties are sealed within a few months or days only, other agreements are preceded by protracted bargaining processes in trade and trade-related issue areas. In this article, we provide a theoretical explanation for this empirical variation. More specifically, we argue that PTA negotiations take longer the greater the distance between the prospective partners’ initial bargaining positions. Moreover, we contend that negotiation processes become more protracted the higher the relative ambition of the prospective PTA. Due to the limited links to the domestic political arena in autocracies, we expect this latter effect to play out for groups of democratic bargaining partners only. We test these two hypotheses for 198 preferential trade negotiations using novel measures for bargaining templates and the ambition of PTA clauses. In our two-stage survival models, we find support for our argument. In line with qualitative evidence from recent preferential trade initiatives, our models indicate that services, investment and intellectual property rights are particularly sticky agenda items for democratic leaders at the international bargaining table.     

State Capacity,Regime Type,and Sustaining the Peace after Civil War

About half of the nations that experience civil war eventually relapse into renewed conflict within a few years after the original war ends. This observation has motivated a stream of research into the factors that affect the risk of peace failure in the aftermath of civil war. While the outcome of the previous civil war—for example, military victory versus peace agreement—structures the post-war environment in ways that affect the risk of peace failure, the capacity of the post-war state to enact and implement policies that affect the incentives for and capacity of groups to undertake armed violence as a means of advancing their interests should also affect the risks of peace failure. Using Geddes’ categories of nondemocratic regime types, we will present a theory of how different regime types have varying capacities to repress and/or implement accommodative policies that affect the risk of peace failure. We test propositions derived from this theory with a series of event history models. Our findings suggest that while peace agreements significantly increase the duration of post-civil war peace, peace agreements involving some types of nondemocratic regimes actually increase the risk of post-civil war peace failure.