Many of the major environmental challenges facing governments and societies today are collective problems, calling for joint solutions. However, even when effective solutions can be found only through joint efforts, international cooperation is often hard to establish and maintain. This makes it all the more important to understand the conditions for success' and the causes of failure'.
This book examines some of the political mechanisms at work in the formation and operation of international environmental regimes. What are the major factors that shape the national...

Why are some international regimes more effective or more successful than others? This book presents sophisticated studies of regime effectiveness, and a sophisticated analysis of the range of techniques available for the conduct of research in this area. One useful feature of the book is the consideration of broader consequences of regimes as well as their performance in addressing the specific problems that lead to their creation.

This volume has a long and distinguished pedigree. It is the product of an effort to devise clear and unambiguous methods for demonstrating that international regimes make a difference stretching back at least to the early 1990s. What has transpired in the meantime is the development of a suite of useful techniques of analysis rather than the creation of a single, correct methodology for use in this field of study. Our assumption is that we can be relatively confident regarding assessments of the consequences of individual regimes when those employing a variety of methods converge on the same...