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CIAO DATE: 3/99
Research on the Effectiveness of International Environmental Regimes: A Review of the State of the Art *
PIK - Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
& University of Potsdam
International Studies Association
40th Annual Convention
Washington, D.C.
February 16–20, 1999
Abstract
This paper reviews the current state of research on the effect of international environmental regimes. In particular, the various concepts of regime effectiveness and methods chosen to establish causal regime effects are compared, followed by a summary of the empirical findings on the degree of regime effectiveness and the explanation of its variation. Subsequently, a range of research challenges is outlined which needs to be addressed in order to make substantive progress, esp. in assessing international regimes over longer time horizons. The paper concludes with lessons which the study of the effect of international environmental regimes offers for international political economy.
Acknowledgments
I am indebted to Arild Underdal and Oran Young for sharing unpublished materials with me.
1. Introduction
As Zürn eloquently concludes in a major review of the progress in research on international environmental policy, regime effectiveness has become a “driving force in the analysis of international relations” (Zürn 1998, 649). Martin and Simmons (1998, 742–757) more generally assert that the study of international regime effect serves as a major field of current research in international relations. Much of this research now originates in the environmental field. In a first phase, major efforts concentrated on the conditions which give rise to international regimes (e.g., Gehring 1994; Hasenclever et al. 1996; Keohane 1984; Keohane and Nye 1989; Rittberger 1995; Young 1989a; Young 1989b; Young and Osherenko 1993). In the second phase of research, attention shifted towards regime implementation and compliance (e.g., Chayes and Chayes 1991; Chayes and Chayes 1993; Hanf and Underdal forthcoming; Victor et al. 1998; Weiss and Jacobson 1998). The ultimate question, however, remains if the international regimes formed actually matter (Haas 1989). This paper summarizes the current research on the state of regime effectiveness, compares the various research strategies chosen and briefly explores the implication that the environmental regime literature might have for other issue areas in international political economy.
In a broader sense, regime effectiveness is related to the literature on public policy evaluation (e.g. Mohr 1988). Project evaluation routinely forms part of the standard public policy cycle; it is applied to domestic and comparative political domains (e.g., evaluation of public health care systems, pension plans, military expenditures, etc.). Compared to the progress made in the evaluation literature over the past decades, employing cost-benefit, statistical, simulation and other types of analyses, we witness substantial growth in the evaluation of international (environmental) regimes during this decade. At a time when creating international regimes to combat serious actual or anticipated environmental (and other) problems on the global scale has become a prominent option as opposed to unilateralism, it is time to critically evaluate the accomplishments of our research. For governments, it may be necessary to find out which of the international regulatory regimes they have joined actually yield returns on their investments, where progress has been minute or where accomplishments have been so substantial that further investment seems not to be warranted given the state of knowledge at a particular point in time.
Besides governments, the general public may also be an appropriate audience for evaluations of international regimes. Politicians often, but not universally, derive their mandate from the electorate; in case electorates make informed, rational decisions, evaluative studies of their government’s performance, the contributions by international non-governmental organizations (INGOs), or the international regime at large may be helpful.
Evaluating performance in international policy should certainly not serve as an end by itself. It shall guide the design of international regimes given the state of knowledge. As a consequence, we need to specify and evaluate those factors which account for the degree of regime effectiveness. As we do not live in a static world, regime performance will change over time. Therefore, evaluative instruments have to permit comparisons over time (e.g., the various stages of the life cycle of a regime). This will, however, not suffice as the electorate and governments may be interested to compare international regulatory regimes across substantive domains, e.g., environmental regimes with trade regimes. Thus, it is advisable to aim for rather generic approaches to defining and measuring international regime effectiveness — thus allowing equivalent aspects to be measured and compared.
In combination, the demand for tools to evaluate international regimes leads to the following sequence of questions:
The answers which contemporary research on the effectiveness of international environmental regimes offers will be summarized in Sections 2.1 – 2.4 to be followed by an overview of challenges which are insufficiently addressed by present research (Section 2.5).
2. Research on the Effect of International Environmental Regimes
Reviewing the state of research on the effectiveness of international environmental regimes is considerably assisted by two recent review essays by Jacobeit (1998) and Zürn (1998). This review will build on their findings, extend it to the most recent (and unpublished) research, treat the methodological considerations in more detail, and draw attention to the implication of research on environmental regimes to those in international political economy more broadly.
2.1 Concepts of International Regime Effectiveness
The conceptualization of “regime effectiveness” varies considerably across the literature. In an ideal world, however, there should be some minimal requirements which all of these conceptualizations should honor:
While such requirements may be intuitively appealing, there is even considerable divergence on the very first aspect, namely the definition of regime effectiveness.
In “Institutions for the Earth,” Keohane et al. respond to this challenge by asking the question: “Is the quality of the environment or resource better because of the institution?” (Keohane et al. 1993, 7). For reasons of lack of data, they suggest to “focus on observable political effects of institutions rather than directly on environmental impact” (Keohane et al. 1993, 7). According to Jacobeit (1998), much research has focused on variables of political behavior, spanning either the economic-political domain (Keohane and Levy 1996), the legal-political domain (Victor et al. 1998), the comparative dimension — enhanced by the linkages between domestic and international environmental policy (Schreurs and Economy 1997), or focusing on the processes of international regimes, especially feedback loops over time (Oberthür 1997).
The broadest conceptualization of regime effectiveness has most likely been taken by Young (Young forthcoming-b) by augmenting the problem-solving aspects of regime effectiveness with the (i) legal approach (compliance), (ii) economic approach (economic efficiency), (iii) the inclusion of normative principles such as “fairness or justice, stewardship, participation,” etc., and the (iv) political approach which is geared towards initiating actions which may ultimately lead to the achievement of the far-reaching goals espoused by international framework conventions (see Young and Levy forthcoming, 5-6). As a result of such comprehensive approaches, constructing comparable measures of regime effectiveness may be extremely demanding. Furthermore, the more comprehensive the approach and the more complicated its operationalization (see below), the more difficult it will be to assess covariation between the (i) factors which influence regime effectiveness and (ii) degree of regime effectiveness achieved (Jacobeit 1998, 360).
2.2 The Choice of Method
In assessing the role which international environmental regimes play, counterfactual reasoning, process tracing, quasi-experiments, and the derivation of optimality conditions play important roles. Counterfactual reasoning has become an important tool in international relations research (Fearon 1991; Tetlock and Belkin 1996). In the context of research on regime effectiveness, it is geared to establish the performance score in case of the absence of an international regime. By way of comparison with the performance score in the presence on an environmental regime, the difference in scores is attributed to the effect of the international regime. In practice, too little attention is placed on distinguishing between the existence of a discernible effect and its magnitude — with the former more easily established or rejected as compared to the latter. Furthermore, given the case selection bias in favor of issue areas where we witness international regimes, counterfactuals are often established in an asymmetric way, i.e., the counterfactual for a “no regime” situation is rarely established.
Counterfactuals also run considerable risks in how they are non-arbitrarily established. King et al. remind us that not only the control variable is changing values, but also all variables which are closely connected to it (King et al. 1994, 78) - thereby posing considerable demands on researchers in order to assure comparability of research findings by varying more complex sets of variables simultaneously (Jacobeit 1998, 355-356; Zürn 1998, 639).
Many studies of regime effectiveness in the field of international environmental policy employ process tracing undertaken in a multitude of case studies in order to establish the causal effect of international regimes (e.g., Underdal 1997; Young forthcoming-b). By familiarizing themselves with the subject matter, expert authors try to “verstehen the role which international regimes play across their life cycle. There are, however, a range of challenges to be overcome to establish causal effect by process tracing.
First, as Zürn concludes, “[t]he reader ... wonders whether the method could not be made more systematic” (Zürn 1998, 640). Second, it shares the challenges of “one shot” counterfactuals (see above). If the notion of process tracing is taken seriously, then a third challenge arises in terms of a “multiplicative ‘type one’ error.” By establishing counterfactuals for comparatively short sequences (processes), one runs the risk of erroneously rejecting the null hypothesis of no regime effect for each of the sequences with probability p. Conversely, the researchers correctly judges with (1-p) probability. If such time sequences are patched sequentially, then for n sequences, the correct overall assessment will only hold with (1-p) n probability if we assume that the error probabilities are constant for each process sequence. As a consequence, process tracing over very long time sequences runs considerable risks or arriving at erroneous conclusions.
Given the challenges posed by counterfactuals and process tracing in establishing causal effect to be attributed to a regime, the use of quasi-experimental designs holds great promise (Cook and Campbell 1979). Since experimental designs can rarely be employed in world politics, observations for control groups need to be found with different values on the intervention variable. Simple pre-post tests (i.e., focus on the change of a performance variable before and after an intervention) clearly fail to establish a compelling quasi-experimental design — because they cannot rule out that an unobserved variable caused the change in the performance variable (Cook and Campbell 1979). Using various parts of a country which fall under the same federal jurisdiction (e.g., Russia or the Soviet Union being divided into areas West and East of the Ural mountains) does not meet the need for control cases (for such a misunderstanding, see Young and Levy forthcoming). 2
Much of the research on regime effectiveness is plagued by the absence of cases where an international regime (value of the “intervention” variable) is zero. As a consequence, studying the life cycle of international regimes ranging from their formation to their actual implementation and impact may serve as second best solutions for the absence of proper control cases.
The methodological approaches reviewed so far largely avoid the scaling of regime effectiveness. Two approaches in the problem-solving tradition have taken up the challenge to operationalize the concept in numerical form, namely Underdal (1997) as well as Helm and Sprinz (1998). The logic pursued by both teams follows the conceptual steps suggested by Underdal:
In answering these questions, Underdal (1997) develops ordinal scales for improvement over a (no regime) counterfactual for behavioral and technical optima. 3 Helm and Sprinz (1998) go one step further. Underdal’s triad of questions calls for the specification of three important aspects. First, it has to specified what is to be explained, i.e. regime effectiveness in terms of (environmental) problem-solving. Second, the lower and upper bounds into which such regime performance may fall have to be determined. And third, a practical measure is suggested.
Lower and upper bounds constitute the range into which scores of problem solving will ultimately fall. Since we are assessing international regimes, the lower bound is determined by the counterfactual of a “no regime (exists)” situation (the counterfactual situation referred to further above) - whereas the upper bound is represented by some form of collective optimum, e.g., a collective cost minimum. Both boundaries can be determined in various ways.
The lower bound is represented by the “no regime” counterfactual, i.e., no problem solving would occur which can be ascribed to the international regime . Thus, the actors involved in an international regime can overcome the lower bound (where they do not cooperate) and maximize their joint welfare by way of cooperation. In the case of transboundary or global environmental problems, problem-solving activities undertaken by one country also profit other countries, and vice versa. In economic theory, it can be shown that if the marginal collective costs of using the policy instrument (e.g., emissions reductions) equate its collective benefits, a “collective optimum” has been found (Tietenberg 1992). Alternatives for such a collective optimum could also be derived by way of environmental thresholds such as the absence of exceeding critical loads in the case of transboundary acidification. 4
Evaluations of the degree of problem solving take place along the dimension of instrument use, e.g., emission reductions. 5 The lower bound is determined by the no-regime counterfactual solution (NR) (see Figure 1) which serves as an “anchor” point for reference: Its score reflects the degree of instrument use in the counterfactual situation for a country (or all countries), e.g., the degree to which a country would have reduced its emissions in the absence of the international regime. The upper bound is reflected by the collective optimum (CO) expressed as a score of instrument use. In most instances, countries (or a group of countries) will execute actual policies (AP) along the dimension of instrument use which fall into the interval [NR, CO]. Once the distance of NR to AP is related to the distance of NR to CO, we arrive at a simple coefficient of regime effectiveness, and its score (ES) falls strictly into the interval [0, 1] (see Helm and Sprinz 1998).
Figure 1: Measuring Regime Effectiveness (general concept)
Effectiveness Score ES = (AP – NR) / (CO – NR)
Notes:
Source: Helm and Sprinz (1998).
This procedure can be conducted on the level of each country as well as on the aggregate of all countries, resulting in nested effectiveness scores on both levels! The general solution shows a range of advantages: It is not limited to a particular policy instrument, it can be used by researchers of various methodological orientations (e.g., more qualitatively or more formally oriented researchers), and it is easy to interpret in the applied context by policy-makers. Furthermore, it can be applied to a variety of types of international environmental problems, such as transboundary and global environmental problems (Helm and Sprinz 1998; Sprinz 1998). Given its generic reasoning, it may also hold some promise for being extended to other substantive domains of international political economy.
It should be noted, that the method clearly uses systematic counterfactual scoring for the “no regime counterfactual” degree of instrument use. Since a simple pre-post test design does not generate the no-regime counterfactual, researchers or, preferably, independent external experts will have to score this value. However, any effectiveness score (see Figure 1) is also crucially dependent on the value for the collective optimum. In case economic optimization models or other non-arbitrary mechanisms compute the collective optimum and reasonable precautions are taken to focus on the sensitivity of the effectiveness score, then the determination of effectiveness scores becomes considerably independent of the researcher. 6
2.3 Empirical Findings
A decade ago, Peter Haas asked the pointing question: ”Do regimes matter?” (Haas 1989). Responding to the debate between major schools of thought in the discipline of international relations, Young’s most recent research project concludes
[W]e can say without hesitation at the outset that regimes do matter in international society, so that there is nothing to be gained from perpetuating the debate between (neo)institutionalists and (neo)realists about the “false premise of international institutions” (Mearsheimer) (Young forthcoming-a, 1).
These findings are not entirely generalizable, as Raustiala and Victor summarize their own findings by stating that
In virtually all of our studies, the most important turning points and fundamental pressures that have caused regulatory action have not been institutions (Raustiala and Victor 1998, 698).
As regime effectiveness may be a matter of degree, it seems appropriate to turn to those studies which have explicitly tried to score their cases. In his analysis of 15 cases and a total of about 45 phases, 7 Underdal reports “highly preliminary findings” that, on average, scores of 0.69 (on a scale ranging from 0 to 1) are achieved if a behavioral change concept is employed and 0.41 if progress towards technically optimal solutions are considered. Employing a different technique but the same range of the scale (see Figure 1), Helm and Sprinz find for the cases of regulating transboundary acidification in Europe during the 1980s and early 1990s average values of 0.39 (for sulfur) and 0.31 (for nitrogen oxides) (Helm and Sprinz 1998). Their disaggregation procedure indicates considerable differences in scores across countries and across pollutants (ibid.).
Overall, it seems fair to conclude that at least some international environmental regimes have non-zero effects, but in view of the previous two projects which employ explicit scaling techniques, it is likely that many international environmental regimes presently do not yet exploit their full potential. With a view to considering design elements for decision-makers, it is important to try to explain or account for the variation in regime effectiveness.
2.4 Explaining the Degree of Regime Effectiveness
The perhaps best known explanation for regime effects are the 3 C’s put forward by Levy et al. (1993), namely international regimes acting as
While these perspectives point to major explanatory routes to be found in the empirical domain, it remains to be demonstrated in more systematic and comparable form to which degree they matter. Young & Levy take a cautious approach by stating
We do not claim to have produced a set of empirically-tested generalizations about the sources of regime effectiveness that are valid across a range of issue areas. Our contribution lies in the specification and application of models designed to illuminate the sources of actor behavior and in detailed studies of a set of environmental cases chosen as vehicles for probing the relevance of these models to actual behavior governed by the operation of international regimes (Young and Levy forthcoming, 4-5). 8
The most systematic approach to explaining regime effectiveness is taken by Underdal (1997) who focuses on the (i) benignity of the (environmental) problem and (ii) problem-solving capacity. Under the rubric of the benignity of (environmental) problems, Underdal subsumes the (i) incongruity of cost-benefit calculus for countries which may offer them (dis)incentives to push for and comply with demanding obligations and (ii) issues of problems of coordination. Furthermore, he subsumes under problem-solving capacity the (i) institutional setting in terms of the decision-making procedure, actor capacity, and the role of epistemic communities and (ii) the distribution of issue-specific power in terms of the incentives countries have to push for an international environmental regime - a form of entrepreneurial leadership. 9 In his findings, Underdal (1997) highlights the explanatory power of issue-specific power, esp. in the context of malign problems.
2.5 Unresolved Challenges
This review of the progress in the field of research on the effect of international environmental regimes suggest a proliferation of concepts — with the strongest emphasis being placed on problem-solving. Several projects have scaled the degree of regime effectiveness, and at least one major effort has advanced to a statistical, comparative analysis of the factors accounting for differences in regime effectiveness. While such progress is admirable, there are a range of challenges which may merit attention in the future.
First, regimes are dynamic, i.e., the may go through a life cycle (Underdal 1997). In strict terms, we can only compare equivalent regime phases across substantive regimes. While such a procedure will increase internal validity, it will reduce the number of cases needed for comparative analysis. In addition, any scoring procedure will have to adjust to the challenge posed by longer time horizons in order to make the effectiveness scores comparable across time. A challenge is posed, for example, if the no regime counterfactual degree of instrument use changes on occasion of new, cost-saving technologies which are only available to some countries but not to all of them.
Second, much of the research has focused on substantive domains where international regimes are at least at their stage of formation. The discipline still lacks a good study which explores under which circumstances international regimes do not come into being. The results of such a study would provide the strongest type of control on the findings about explaining regime effectiveness, but it would also help in refining methods used for establishing the counterfactual more precisely.
Third, there is little systematic exploration of the effect of enforcement mechanisms and their impact on regime effectiveness. 10 While it is plausible that enhanced compliance verification mechanisms will improve compliance levels, there may be a selection effect at work which lets countries sign only such international environmental agreements which they are likely to comply with, i.e., we face a serious endogeneity problem (Bernauer 1995). While regime effectiveness avoids some of these problems by focusing on actual performance rather than regime rules, regimes designed with strong enforcement mechanisms may show some bifurcation: In some cases, strong enforcement mechanisms will allow an international regime to achieve high degrees of effectiveness, in other cases, the fear of enforcement may lead countries to strive for the smallest common denominator — which may not be much different from the no-regime counterfactual policy. While many scholars hold that it is difficult to enforce international rules because of the lack of international authority, this may be an overly pessimistic conclusion. Countries can put some of their (most likely financial) resources a priori at the disposal of some international verification and enforcement agency — which adds credibility to the rules they subscribed to earlier. By way of example, the fiscal restraints imposed on EURO-member countries (theoretically) work with a (semi-)automatic enforcement system in case EURO-member countries violate fiscal rules.
3. Lessons for the Study of Regime Effects in International Political Economy
In the early phases of research on international regimes, environmental cases played a minor role (e.g., Keohane and Nye 1989; Krasner 1983); by contrast, research on regime effectiveness has been dominated by the environmental domain. In closing the cycle, it may be worth to draw some tentative conclusion of the contribution which research on the environmental cases could have to the larger domain of international political economy.
First, a clear and operational definition of regime effectiveness would provide a point of departure for the comparison of international regimes. Ideally, such a concept of measurement is generically applicable and open to intercalibration. Preliminary work by Underdal (1997), Helm and Sprinz (Helm and Sprinz ), and Sprinz (1998) offer points of departure, but need refinement to test their applicability beyond the environmental field. The measure summarized in Figure 1 offers the greatest potential for generic application. As a consequence of a generic way to measure regime effectiveness, we could compare specific environmental regimes with those in the field of international trade. For example, in order to investigate efforts to reduce tariff barriers to trade, the dimension of instrument use might be labeled “average tariff on imports” (weighted by value) and be compared with scores developed on the basis of emission reductions of acidifying pollutants. As the score is free of any dimension, only the quality with which collective no-regime counterfactuals and collective optima can be determined will limit intercomparability.
Second, by drawing on a larger substantive domain, focused comparisons can be undertaken between transboundary (or regional) with global regimes. For example, we could pool (i) regional trade regimes and transboundary pollution cases and compare them with (ii) a pool created of global financial and global environmental regimes. Thus, we could answer the question whether the geographical scope of regimes has effects on the degree of regime effectiveness.
Third, there is considerable scope of “correlated regimes,” i.e., a cluster of regimes simultaneously exist and we wish to partition their effects. For example, both the European Union and UN European Commission for Europe (UNECE) simultaneously regulate the emissions of acidifying pollutants in Europe. In order to control for the effect of the European Union vis-à-vis the (residual) effect of its member countries within the UNECE, effects of the EU efforts at policy coordination and EU-wide regulation have to be controlled for in order to arrive at effectiveness scores for the UNECE regime. As environmental regulation has more and more economic implications and vice versa, we will need to devise much more carefully nested, multiple counterfactuals in order to separate regime effects. 11
Research on the effect of international environmental regimes has advanced considerably during this decade. Expansion to large-N studies is a likely option in the foreseeable future (Breitmeier et al. 1996). The greatest challenge lies in trying to apply the lessons learnt in the environmental field to the larger issue area of international political economy — and reap the benefits of comparative institutional inquiry: for academia, decision-makers, and the informed public alike.
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Endnotes
*: Prepared for the 1999 Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, Washington, D.C., February 16–20, 1999. Back.
Note 1: For a more extensive list of ideal requirements, see Helm & Sprinz (1998). Back.
Note 2: Federal power applies to both areas and, therefore, the “cases” are not independent. Back.
Note 3: For scoring results, see Section 2.3 Back.
Note 4: See Sprinz and Churkina (1998) for a method to generally derive environmental thresholds. Back.
Note 5: Jacobeit (1998, 348) and Zürn (1998, 830) find emission-based approaches to the measurement of international regime effectiveness particularly promising. Back.
Note 6: This author was particularly struck by his own experience during empirical investigations, esp. when he expected close to zero effects for some countries and actual results substantively deviated from these expectations. In conclusion, it is hard to anticipate the effectiveness scores for particular countries. Back.
Note 7: The phases constitute the unit of analysis for the statistical evaluation. Back.
Note 8: In particular, they refer to the behavioral pathways encompassing regimes as (i) utility maximizers, (ii) enhancers of cooperation, (iii) bestowers of authority, (iv) learning facilitators, (v) role definers, and (vi) agents of internal realignments (Young and Levy forthcoming, 26-38). Back.
Note 9: The latter aspect appears to be an extension of Sprinz & Vaahtoranta (1994). Back.
Note 10: For the impact of enforcement on compliance with the rules of regimes, see Downs et al. (1996), Mitchell (1998; 1994) and Victor et al. (1998). Back.
Note 11: Some readers may wish to think of an “interacting dummy (regression) counterfactual design.” Back.
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