INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGY, COMPETITIVENESS, AND POLICY CHOICES AT INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL NEGOTIATIONS (GREAT BRITAIN, FRANCE, GERMANY, JAPAN, UNITED STATES)

This study seeks to explain the foreign environmental policy choices of five industrialized countries—Britain, France, Germany, Japan, and the United States—during international negotiations on two global environmental issues—the Ozone layer and Biodiversity. After these five countries agreed on strict international environmental standards governing Ozone, they were unable to coordinate their policies regarding Biodiversity. This study suggests that different constellations of economic interests among firms in the affected industries accounted for the different levels of support among countries for the Ozone and Biodiversity standards. Key to understanding these economic interests, this study claims, is examining how firms may utilize their innovative capabilities to benefit from environmental regulations.; There are two parts to the argument. The first part explores the impact of international environmental standards on firm competitiveness within the industries the standards target: for Ozone, the chemical industry, and for Biodiversity, the biopharmaceutical industry. In doing so, it highlights how scientific knowledge and innovative technology determine firm preferences regarding the standards, as well as how prior domestic regulations can foster or inhibit the development of this innovative technology. The second part examines how this impact on competitiveness limits country policy choices regarding these standards. Here, it compares among five industrialized countries the relationships between industry and government with respect to policy-making, as well as explores whether firms within an industry can overcome collective action problems in having their preferences realized.; The analysis, which examines standards proposed throughout the length of the respective negotiations, suggests four general conclusions. First, the distribution of innovative technology among firms in an industry determines patterns of preference divergence among firms in that industry. Second, foreign environmental policy choices of countries are constrained by their firms' competitiveness concerns. Third, collective action problems do not restrict the realization of firm preferences. Fourth, domestic political institutions help shape the preferences of firms, but they do not play an observable role in the process through which these preferences are realized in a country's foreign environmental policy. More complex analyses incorporating other domestic political actors and international institutions may yield greater insight into the limits of these conclusions.