| This study begins the task of identifying the patterns, explaining the causes and exploring the processes of compliance with the G7s environment and development commitments from 1988--1995. It provides the first systematic review of the record of compliance with G7 decisions in the post-cold war globalizing system of the 1990s and in regard to the environment and development issues that have flourished in this period. It offers the first attempt to explain compliance with, rather than the creation of, G7 commitments by exploring the impact of those variables asserted to be important in the existing literature on the G7. It draws on explanatory factors from several bodies of theory---regime, concert and institutional theory---to provide a synthetic explanation of compliance with G7 commitments. It attempts to trace the process by which commitments are translated into national policy adjustment by exploring how G7 obligations affect and are affected by salient institutions and actors within national governments' policy making processes.;The results of the findings suggest that during its third seven-year cycle, there was rising overall positive compliance with summit resolutions as the G7 produced a large number of specific and ambitious environment and development commitments. Positive compliance with summit commitments is the result of a number of factors, the most salient being the direct involvement in, and dominance of, the G7 by democratically-elected heads of state and government as well as the effects of important national and international institutional variables. Domestic political factors matter as well, for commitments are complied with when the leaders who made them enjoy credibility as well as popular and party support have demonstrated a strong tendency toward multilateralism and have also shown a strong personal commitment to the G7 and the issues themselves. Significant variations in compliance do appear, however, by country, across issue area and over time. Factors accounting for such variations in summit compliance are assessed and analyzed within this study. |
