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Ozone Discourses: Science and Politics in Global Environmental Cooperation , by Karen T. Litfin
While most studies about science and world politics focus on military and economic issues, and some work has been done on science and domestic environmental politics, precious little is available on how scientific knowledge functions in international environmental negotiations. Yet the expanded temporal and spatial perspectives implicit in large-scale environmental problems make the analytical skills of scientists especially important in this area. In general, uncertainty increases as the causal chain of events moves further into the future, thereby empowering a new class of scientific policy elites.
Beyond the environment, scientific culture may be seen as a driving force in the politics of postindustrial society. 1 Indeed, with the end of the Cold War and the emergence of new sorts of challenges to national security, many theorists of world politics are seeking alternatives to the traditional ways of conceptualizing power (Rosenau 1990; Nye 1990). A host of new issues, including the AIDS epidemic, drug trafficking, and the environment, require cooperative endeavors among states while simultaneously involving a diffusion of power away from states to nonstate actors. Technical experts are frequently drawn into the policy process for these issues, becoming important political actors in their own right.
Conventional approaches to international relations tend to depict power as a material resource, a tool wielded by nation-states to further their own interests. The kind of power most clearly relevant for many of the so-called postindustrial issues, including international environmental problems, diverges from conventional definitions in three respects. First, because it is so deeply connected to scientific and technical knowledge, power is not reducible to material resources like wealth and military capabilities. 2 Second, because a nation's interests are often unclear under conditions of scientific uncertainty, knowledge may become a significant source of power as it facilitates the clarification of states' interests. Third, the determination of state interests entails various subnational processes, so structural approaches that "black-box" the state are rendered woefully inadequate in the face of challenges raised by the new issues. Thus, issues that highlight the role of technical expertise require a threefold revision of the dominant theoretical assumptions: power must be conceived in terms broad enough to encompass knowledge-based power; interests must be problematized as arenas of political struggle that should be formulated in light of contending knowledge claims; and the study of domestic political processes must be given greater emphasis.
The two dominant theoretical approaches to the study of international relations in the United States, neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism, are objectivist: they take goals and interests as given. For neorealists, state interests are determined by a state's position in the international system, the structure of which is defined by the distribution of capabilities (Waltz 1979). Neorealist scholars have paid little attention to transboundary environmental problems, perhaps because the relationship of these problems to international military and economic structures is unclear. These new problems, however, may soon increase the level of conflict in the international system, making them more acceptable research topics for neorealists (Homer-Dixon 1991).
Like neorealists, neoliberal institutionalists maintain that states pursue their given interests, but they are more concerned with the institutional factors that temper the effects of anarchy in the international system and facilitate cooperation. Institutions are regularized practices consisting of recognized roles and clusters of rules that constrain activity and shape expectations; changes in them may alter the costs and benefits of cooperation. States modify their preferences and behavior on the basis of the changing institutional context of decision making, a context that is external to the actors' self-identities and mutual understandings. Thus, like neorealists, institutionalists focus on the objective sources of interests and behavior. The institutional approach to international environmental regime formation suggests that states cooperate in order to reduce uncertainty and transaction costs; the question of interest construction is not central (Bucholtz 1990; Young 1989a).
A reflectivist approach, in contrast, focuses on the subjective understandings of state and nonstate actors as the source of interests and action. Like neorealists, reflectivists study social structures, but they insist that structures, constituted by identities and interests, cannot exist apart from process. Even anarchy, the defining feature of the international system, has no inherent logic but is rather "what states make of it" (Wendt 1992). Institutions, reflectivists argue, are expressions of intersubjectively shared norms, ideas, and knowledge (Wendt 1992; Dessler 1989).
Until recently, the dominant theoretical approaches to international relations have downplayed the role of subjective factors, focusing instead on structural and material explanations of state behavior. Norms, ideas, and knowledge have been viewed by both realists and Marxists as epiphenomenal expressions of material interests (Carr 1964; Cox 1987). A new trend, however, highlights the influence of cognitive factors on foreign policy-making and international politics (Goldstein 1989; Hall 1989; Kratochwil 1990). Implicit in this new tendency, and perhaps reflecting the recent major changes in the world system, is the view that the main impediments to cooperation lie in malleable beliefs and conventions rather than in the comparatively solid structures of the neorealists and institutionalists (Jervis 1988:340).
International environmental policy coordination, which typically entails an evolution of perceived interests on the part of state and nonstate actors, is well suited to a reflectivist approach. Environmental policy is heavily dependent on such cognitive factors as scientific knowledge, philosophical ideas, and public opinion. Reflectivist approaches to international environmental politics include the epistemic communities literature (Haas 1989, 1992b), studies of social learning processes (Clark 1990), and negotiation-analytic modeling (Sebenius 1992).
None of these reflectivist approaches, however, makes a concerted effort to analyze the influence and substantive content of discursive practices in international environmental politics. By discourse, I mean sets of linguistic practices and rhetorical strategies embedded in a network of social relations. In particular, the distinctive role of scientific discourse in regime formation has been undertheorized. This work seeks to establish a groundwork for filling that gap.
Reflectivist approaches, including those emphasizing discursive understandings, do not replace structuralism and institutionalism altogether; bureaucratic and interest group politics-institutional and systemic obstacles and incentives to international cooperation-do not disappear once we acknowledge that policy is also driven by subjective factors. These other approaches, however, are often mechanical, focusing on the pushing and pulling of nation-states and their agents around interests. By contrast, reflective approaches understand policy-making as a problem-solving activity with important intersubjective dimensions. They may focus on a range of cognitive factors, including belief systems, ideologies, and consensual knowledge.
The few theoretical frameworks that have focused on the role of expert knowledge in international relations suffer from an implicit assumption that scientific consensus tends to generate political consensus. The prevailing approaches, including variants of functionalism and the literature on epistemic communities, tend to work from a simplistic view of science as standing outside of politics, of knowledge as divorced from power. These approaches are part of the "rationality project" (Stone 1988:4), albeit to a lesser extent than many other methods in political science, a project that attempts to "rescue public policy from the irrationalities and indignities of politics" (Stone 1988:4).
Yet, contrary to the implications of these approaches, the cultural role of science as a key source of legitimation means that political debates are framed in scientific terms; questions of value become reframed as questions of fact, with each confrontation leading to the search for further scientific justification. Paradoxically, the demand for legitimation results in a process of delegitimation. Moreover, facts must be expressed in language, and they require interpretation. Facts deemed relevant are always chosen selectively, depending on the interests of the communicator and the audience. This is where knowledge brokers come in-as intermediaries between the original researchers, or the producers of knowledge, and the policymakers who consume that knowledge but lack the time and training necessary to absorb the original research. 3 The ability of knowledge brokers, who typically operate at low or middle levels of governments or international organizations, to frame and interpret scientific knowledge is a substantial source of political power. Knowledge brokers are especially influential under the conditions of scientific uncertainty that characterize most environmental problems.
The argument that knowledge and interests are mutually interactive is most effectively demonstrated through detailed contextual analysis; an intensive case-study approach is the best way of exploring such complex sets of interactions. Of course, a single case study cannot prove that a given set of dynamics is the rule, but it can provide a heuristic device for exploring possible conjunctions. The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, along with its subsequent revisions, provides an excellent case for contextual analysis because of the pivotal role of science in its framing. Although an agreement was the ultimate outcome, international cooperation was not the straightforward consequence of consensual knowledge.
The Montreal Protocol, negotiated in 1987 under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) as the first international treaty on a global ecological problem, was the result of close collaboration between scientists and policymakers. It was amended in 1990 and then again in 1992. Superficially, this landmark ozone regime appears to have been the result of a rigorous process of risk analysis and adroit diplomacy, with sophisticated atmospheric models serving as the scientific basis of the negotiations. This is essentially the thesis of Ambassador Richard Benedick, the chief negotiator for the Unites States during the negotiations (Benedick 1991). Peter Haas offers a similar but more refined account, based on an epistemic community composed primarily of atmospheric scientists (1992a).
I, too, began my research with the tentative hypothesis that the ozone regime grew out of efforts by an epistemic community to forge a political consensus on the basis of science. International environmental problems, I believed, were inherently science-driven, and scientific knowledge could provide the common ground that was otherwise lacking among competing nations. Knowledge could furnish the means for reorienting actors' conceptions of their own best interests. In short, like others, I was beguiled by a faith in the ability of science to make politics more rational and cooperative. Given the intuitive appeal of the epistemic cooperation thesis and the superficial resemblance of the Montreal Protocol process to the procedures of risk analysis, my delusion is not surprising.
Had my original hypothesis been confirmed, I could have at best told an interesting story with little theoretical value. The Montreal Protocol is a "most likely case," meaning that it would be expected to conform to the epistemic cooperation hypothesis. Consequently, no reliable generalizations beyond this individual case could have been made. My study might have answered the question, "How did an epistemic community operate in this particular instance?" but it would have been of little service in ascertaining whether the application of science to political problems tends to precipitate more cooperative solutions.
Most-likely case studies, a special instance of crucial-case studies, are especially tailored to invalidating hypotheses. The logic is that if a case is most likely to fit a theory and does not, then the theory is probably wrong. Conversely, least-likely case studies, the other form of crucial-case study, are tailored to confirmation. Crucial-case studies are the most apt to produce generalizable conclusions. At the other extreme, configurative-idiographic case studies are descriptive explanations of unique cases couched in idiosyncratic terms (Eckstein 1975; George 1979). These would be the eqivalent of telling an intersting story.
As I interviewed the participants and read the source documents from the international negotiating process, however, I began to suspect that more complicated dynamics than epistemic cooperation were involved. It became increasingly evident that "knowledge" was not simply a body of concrete and objective facts but that accepted knowledge was deeply implicated in questions of framing and interpretation and that these were related to perceived interests. Although the range of uncertainty was narrow, atmospheric science did not provide a body of objective and value-free facts from which international cooperation emerged. Rather, knowledge was framed in light of specific interests and preexisting discourses so that questions of value were rendered as questions of fact, with exogenous factors shaping the political salience of various modes of interpreting that knowledge. In particular, the discourse of precautionary action, not itself mandated by atmospheric science, moved from a subordinate to a dominant position. The disconfirmation of my initial hypothesis required some psychological adjustment on my part, but in the end it gave me a far more theoretically interesting research agenda.
The evidence against the epistemic cooperation thesis in the ozone case study is convincing. Had I stopped at that point, my research would have challenged the dominant theoretical perspectives on the role of scientific and technical knowledge in world politics, but it would not have offered an alternative. I chose to press on with the further question: if the epistemic cooperation thesis is deficient, then what other theoretical tools might be more useful? The study cried out for a more interactive and multidimensional conception of knowledge-based power, one that I have begun to develop through a discursive practices approach. Thus, the purpose of the case study shifted from testing the epistemic cooperation thesis to forging an alternative theoretical approach. In other words, my research began unintentionally as a crucial-case study, with the Montreal Protocol being a most-likely case for an epistemic communities approach, and developed into a heuristic case study tracing the outlines of a discursive practices approach. Heuristic case studies are "used deliberately to stimulate the imagination toward discerning important general problems and possible theoretical solutions" (Eckstein 1975:104).
A word of caution: a discursive practices approach, with its resistance to unidirectional causal explanations, offers little in the way of methodological tidiness. With outcomes dependent upon interdependent variables and idiosyncratic contextual factors, universally applicable generalizations are not to be expected. Sometimes scientists can shape policy, and sometimes they cannot; sometimes consensual knowledge engenders a policy consensus, and sometimes it does not. Only a detailed contextual analysis can explain how a particular discourse comes to be accepted for a given problem.
The Montreal Protocol process, including the ensuing treaty amendment process, provides a rich source of detail for analyzing the complex sets of interactions between science and politics. Precisely because it looks like an example of epistemic cooperation, or consensual knowledge generating political agreement, the ozone case is an excellent vehicle for the study of other, more counterintuitive possibilities. The ozone deliberations offer an opportunity to formulate a multidimensional account of the interaction of science in politics. Finally, because that treaty is widely considered a prototype for future agreements, an understanding of its evolution is important for making any inferences about policy-making under conditions of global ecological interdependence.
Chapter 2 is largely deductive, proceeding from the question, "If knowledge were to be considered as either a source or a kind of power, how would power need to be conceptualized in order to be broad enough to encompass knowledge?" The chapter's purpose is to provide a conceptual background rather than to erect anything resembling a universal theory or model. The chapter, which constitutes the theoretical heart of the book, builds upon the works of a wide range of thinkers in making a case for an interactive conception of power and knowledge. I argue that agent-centered and physicalist conceptions of power, which dominate the international relations literature, ignore or downplay issues of legitimacy, consensus, and interpretation. Because these dimensions are essential to knowledge-based power, conventional accounts must be expanded to include a discursive and productive conception of power.
Poststructuralism, particularly the later works of Michel Foucault on power and knowledge, emphasize the neglected communicative, generative, and systemic dimensions of power. For Foucault, power is generative yet inherently conflictual, and its dynamics tend to be much more subtle that simple domination or repression. His notion of disciplinary power is fundamentally linguistic, not material. Although Foucault and other poststructuralists seem to banish social agents altogether, I reject this move and argue that such a maneuver detracts from a coherent theory of power. The decentering of the subject, however, is a useful strategy in that it highlights the constitution of identity through discursive practices, a key process in knowledge-based power.
In light of the preceding discussion on power, chapter 2 provides a conceptual analysis of scientific knowledge that seeks to avoid the twin epistemological perils of objectivism and relativism. While recognizing that science is an inescapably social process, my approach also grounds scientific knowledge in the world of empirical objects and structures. Science, I argue, is much more closely related to a Foucaultian conception of disciplinary power than it is to conventional notions of power as control by specific agents through material means. As a cornerstone of modernity, scientific knowledge delimits the boundaries of legitimate discourse. Regimes of truth define not only what can be said, but what can be thought: to define is to control. As political problems have become increasingly entwined with questions of scientific evidence and proof, the ability to interpret reality has itself become a major source of political power.
Chapter 2 also takes up the more practical question of how science interacts with politics in light of the preceding theoretical discussion. The dynamics of expert advice dominate the power-knowledge nexus for trans-scientific problems, of which environmental problems are a subset. 4 In many respects, policymakers and technical experts inhabit different worlds and speak different languages. Yet they interact with one another in complex networks of power, with the authority of each group being highly circumscribed by the authority of the other. At various turns, the fact-value distinction, commonly believed to divide the two worlds, breaks down. Knowledge is framed in light of specific interests, so that information begets counterinformation. Interpreting and framing knowledge become crucial political problems as information is mustered to achieve policy objectives.
Many contemporary analyses of science in politics misconstrue the relationship between knowledge and power. In considering the more specific question of science in world politics, with the added dimension of international anarchy, a skeptical attitude seems especially appropriate. Yet the only three theoretical approaches that have specifically taken up the question-functionalism, neofunctionalism, and the epistemic communities literature-have all adopted a rationalistic stance, emphasizing instead science's potential to contribute to global unification.
International environmental problems provide an ideal terrain for tracing the interactional dynamics of science and politics. Particularly as temporal and spatial scales assume global and intergenerational proportions, these problems are characterized by conditions of high risk in the face of scientific uncertainty. Scientists are often important political actors because they are the first to discover the problems and are therefore instrumental in defining both how the problems are conceptualized and what policy options should be addressed. Through such methods as risk analysis, both policymakers and observers have sought to delineate science sharply from politics, with the goal of identifying the objective knowledge from which policy decisions can rationally be made. But such strategies rely on a strict fact-value distinction, a distinction that is suspect in the abstract and of even more dubious practical value for trans-scientific problems. Nonetheless, because science is a primary source of legitimation and because scientists help to define environmental problems, the language of international environmental policy debates can be expected to be flagrantly scientific.
The material in chapters 3, 4, and 5 contains the case study of regime formation around the stratospheric ozone problem. Because of the contemporary nature of the case, many of the actual participants were available for personal interviews, allowing me to ask specific questions that I might not have been able to answer through archival research alone. These interviews were crucial in determining the beliefs and discursive orientations of the participants, information that is not readily accessible through publications and documents. As Paul Sabatier (1987) argues, it is easier to identify beliefs than it is to ascribe interests. In this sense, a reflective approach has some methodological advantages for empirical research over structural and institutional approaches, which base their analysis on interests.
Chapter 3 serves two purposes. First, it provides a technical and historical backdrop for the case study; key terms are defined, and the origins of the relevant scientific and political networks traced. Second, it demonstrates that certain modes of framing the available scientific information had important political implications even before the international negotiations for control measures got under way. The scientific and political networks in place before the Montreal Protocol negotiations, as well as the dominant modes of framing scientific knowledge, were all instrumental in formulating a precautionary discourse, enshrined in principle with the 1985 Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer.
Chapter 4 is a detailed case study of how scientific knowledge and political processes interacted in the international negotiations leading up to the Montreal Protocol. The 1987 agreement called for roughly 50 percent reductions in chlorofluorocarbon and halon consumption by the year 2000. It was immediately hailed as "the first truly global treaty that . . . seeks to anticipate and manage a world problem before it becomes an irreversible crisis" (UNEP 1987c). Clearly, scientific knowledge was a necessary precondition for the treaty's negotiation, and the prominence of scientists at key international meetings attests to this fact. But it was far from being a sufficient condition. It is one thing to focus on how knowledge facilitated cooperation, and another thing entirely to claim that scientists themselves were the precipitating force behind the agreement. Yet the prevailing interpretations dodge this distinction, attributing the political consensus either to a scientific consensus or to the atmospheric scientists themselves (Benedick 1991; Haas 1992b).
My own analysis, based primarily upon original source documents and personal interviews with participants, focuses on the contending discursive practices during the negotiations and seeks to trace how the discourse of precautionary action shifted from a subordinate to a dominant position. The capacity of scientific knowledge to facilitate international cooperation on the ozone layer was mediated by two crucial factors. First, the science was framed and interpreted by a group of knowledge brokers with strong ecological beliefts who were associated with UNEP and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Second, the context of the negotiations, defined largely by the discovery of huge ozone losses over Antarctica, determined the political acceptability of various modes of framing the available knowledge. Science did not offer a set of objective facts from which a policy consensus evolved.
Despite its narrow margins of uncertainty, the international scientific assessment that served as the informational basis for the negotiations (NASA/WMO 1986) was amenable to a wide range of interpretations. Not surprisingly, what was accepted as knowledge was tightly linked to the political and economic interests of the principal antagonists, the USA and the European Communities (EC). Yet the outcomes were not based primarily on either material interests or material power, for scientific discourse, shaped by distinctive contextual factors, was crucial in defining the range of acceptable policy outcomes. The international policy process that led to the Montreal Protocol was not a linear movement from scientific consensus to policy coordination. Typical of trans-scientific problems, the process was far more multidimensional, defined by an interactive relationship between knowledge and power, science and politics.
Chapter 5 extends the analysis of science in politics into the post-Montreal period. The discourse of precautionary action, concretized in the Montreal Protocol, was strengthened and expanded in two sets of treaty revisions, the 1990 amendments in London and the 1992 amendments in Copenhagen. Once the Antarctic ozone hole was definitively linked to anthropogenic sources of chlorine and bromine and once ozone losses were observed over the Northern Hemisphere, a consensus emerged in support of a stronger treaty. Yet, as before, scientific consensus did not automatically beget policy consensus; rather, certain discursive strategies helped to frame the available knowledge in ways that defined the range of policy options.
Chemicals that only a few years before had been considered irreplaceable were now targeted for elimination, precipitating an unprecedented search by producer and user industries for substitute chemicals and alternative technologies. Yet the availability of substitutes and alternatives was not simply dependent on the status of scientific and technical knowledge but was itself associated with discursive practices and psychological proclivities. Without substitutes, parties to the Montreal Protocol would have been extremely reluctant to adopt measures to phase out CFCs, halons, and other ozone-depleting substances. Scientific discourse, based on the alarming findings of the atmospheric scientists, confirmed the desirability of stringent regulations; sensing the air of crisis, industry moved rapidly to develop new technologies; these new technologies, in turn, expedited the international regulatory process for ozone-depleting substances. Thus, atmospheric science, industrial technology, and political decision making were all interconnected.
One important contrast between the deliberations before and after the Montreal Protocol was the enormously expanded role of the developing countries. Despite the differences some developing countries had with industrialized countries, for the most part they did not frame those differences in terms of scientific knowledge-even when the scientific arguments were there to be made. This fact, I argue, testifies to the nearly universal appeal of the discourse of precautionary action. But precautionary action on a global scale required the participation of the developing countries, many of which resisted until they were assured that it would not be economically damaging. Developing countries, framing their arguments in terms of equity and sovereignty, were successful in persuading the parties to establish an innovative mechanism to finance technology transfer from north to south. More than anything else, however, it is technical knowledge (not physical technology) that is being transferred, indicating yet again the extent to which the ozone problem is an informational phenomenon.
The final chapter, chapter 6, examines the implications of an interactive conception of power and knowledge for international relations theory. Conventional theories of regime formation, at either the systemic or the national level of analysis, cannot account for the processes and outcomes in the ozone deliberations. The fundamental problem with all these approaches is that they fail to account for the central role of scientific knowledge in shaping processes and outcomes. Moreover, they overlook the importance of cognitive factors in shaping actors' conceptions of their interests and identities.
Recalling the earlier discussion about knowledge and power, I argue that the epistemic communities literature, which represents the most recent attempt to theorize about the place of scientific knowledge in world politics, represents an important contribution to a reflectivist approach. Yet this literature focuses on scientific consensus as a source of more rational and cooperative political processes. Just as interesting, and perhaps even the norm under the conditions of uncertainty so prevalent in environmental decision making, is epistemic dissension. Epistemic community approaches downplay-almost to the point of neglect-the ways in which scientific information simply rationalizes or reinforces existing political conflicts. Questions of framing, interpretation, and contingency are glossed over in an effort to explain politics as a function of consensual knowledge. In failing to consider the nature of discursive practices and strategies, the epistemic communities approach grasps neither the dynamics nor the full significance of the convergence of intersubjective understandings.
To the extent that the power and perceived interests of social actors are rooted in how they frame and interpret information, then a discursive practices approach can make a valuable contribution. As determinants of what can and cannot be thought, discourses define the range of policy options, thereby functioning as precursors to policy outcomes. A discursive practices approach is sensitive to the interactive dynamics between knowledge and power, as well as the contextual factors that enable certain discourses to prevail in the policy process. An emphasis on discourse, rather than on states, bureaucracies, or individuals, interprets international regimes as loci of struggle among various networks of power/knowledge. Environmental problems may be viewed primarily as informational phenomena or as struggles among contested knowledge forms. The Montreal Protocol process, for instance, is essentially the story of how a dominant antiregulatory discourse was supplanted by a new regulatory discourse. This discursive shift occurred both domestically within the Unites States and internationally during and after the Montreal Protocol negotiations. A discursive practices approach focuses on the contextual factors, such as the discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole, that empowered a subordinate discourse.
More generally, a discursive practices perspective on international regimes provides a valuable alternative to both liberal and realist approaches. Ultimately, both schools of thought tend to reduce power to material factors in the possession of specific agents. Only a discursive practices approach offers an understanding of regimes as crystallized embodiments of power and knowledge. If those scholars who discern a trend toward a postindustrial or informational world order are correct, then this argument has important implications not just for environmental issues but, more generally, for the nature of power in the emergent global system. One trend may be the diffusion of the sovereign power of nation-states to nonstate actors and the proliferation of disciplinary micropowers. Consistent with this diffusion would be the displacement of power toward those actors most proficient at controlling and manipulating informational resources.
There are good reasons to believe that, as environmental pressures become more severe and other international problems become increasingly technical, the terms of political discourse will become ever more scientific. Yet the prevalence of scientific discourse should not delude us into the common misconception that politics will therefore become more rational and less conflict-ridden, whether through functional cooperation or through epistemic communities. A profusion of information may, in fact, lead to greater confusion as the world becomes a ubiquitous market for discourses. The "scientization of politics" may well devolve into the "politicization of science" (Weingart 1982:73).
Note 1: While recognizing the ambiguities of this term, I use it for want of a better one. In my view, "postindustrialism" does not entail the end of industrial society; indeed, the two exist side by side and in various proportions around the globe. Rather, the term refers to a postwar shift in the economic structures of advanced industrialized countries toward a greater prominence of informational, as opposed to industrial, modes of exchange. My own stance on the political implications of this shift is spelled out in the last chapter. Back.
Note 2: Traditional analyses based on military and economic power are of limited value for another reason. In environmental matters, including ozone depletion, states with little military capability and small economies can nullify agreements simply by refusing to or being unable to implement them. Their power is a function of their large and growing populations, their territorial control of internationally valued ecological resources, or their lack of state capacity to enforce agreements. Global environmental politics lends itself to the peculiar phenomenon of the "power of the weak." Back.
Note 3: Knowledge brokers are like epistemic communities in that both are knowledge-based social groups. But I use the former term to emphasize the discursive dimensions of knowledge that are disregarded in the epistemic communities literature. The term also connotes the inherently conflictual nature of knowledge in the policy arena. Back.
Note 4: Trans-scientific problems straddle the line between science and policy; their solutions require input from science, but science alone is not sufficient to resolve them (Weinberg 1972). Back.
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