Regulating the environment: The battle over the Kyoto Protocol for Global Climate Change in advanced industrialized nations (Japan, United States, Netherlands)

This dissertation studies the roles of different actors and institutions in the international environmental policy-making. In particular, I focus on the often-overlooked domestic side of the process of environmental regime formation. Within this study, I address the varied responses of three post-industrial societies to international environmental regulation. Using the Kyoto Protocol for Global Climate Change as a case study, I analyze the processes of domestic environmental policy-making under the threat of global governance. The theoretical framework adopted for the project is derived from the sociological theories of the society/environment relationship. The project combines quantitative analysis of social, economic and environmental data for the member-states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, with an analysis of qualitative case studies of three particularly important countries: the United States, Japan, and the Netherlands. Within the case studies, I focus my attention on the roles that industry, science, civil society, and state actors have played in determining these countries' respective responses to the Kyoto Protocol for Global Climate Change. The analysis includes data collected from interviews with international organizations as well as participant observation of the two sections of the recent Conference of the Parties-6 round of the negotiations regarding the formation of a climate change regime. My research supports the simple notion that to understand domestic environmental policy-making of a global environmental issue, it is imperative to understand what is playing on the international stage. Conversely, in order to understand international environmental policy-making outcomes, one must look to the domestic policy-making of the various international players. Therefore, my dissertation concludes that the current sociology and international relations literatures, which look only to the international level for a complete understanding of international environmental regulation, are incomplete, and that the domestic debates within states and the subsequent policy formation have a significantly larger role in international environmental regime formation than these literatures predict. In addition, I find that international environmental policy outcomes are the result of debates among domestic social actors within the public sphere that are mediated through domestic policy decisions.