Environmental Politics and Foreign Policy Decision Making in Latin America

Environmental Politics and Foreign Policy Decision Making in Latin America
Author: Amy Below
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2014-12-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1134474970

Although the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to address global climate change, has been regarded by many as an unsuccessful treaty both politically and environmentally, it stands as one of the world’s few truly global agreements. Why did such a diverse group of countries decide to sign and/or ratify the treaty? Why did they choose to do so at different times and in different ways? What explains their foreign policy behavior? Amy Below’s book builds off the increasing significance of climate change and uses the Kyoto Protocol as a case study to analyze foreign policy decision making in Latin America. Below’s study takes a regional perspective in order to examine why countries in Latin America made disparate foreign policy choices when they were faced with the same decision. The book looks at the decisions in Argentina, Mexico, and Venezuela via a process-tracing method. Below uses information obtained from primary and secondary documents and elite interviews to help reconstruct the processes, and augments her reconstruction with a content analysis of Conference of the Parties speeches by presidents and country delegates. The book complies with convention in the field by arguing that systemic, national and individual-level factors simultaneously impact foreign policy decisions, but makes the additional claim that role theory most accurately accounts for relationships between variables. Environmental Politics and Foreign Policy Decision Making in Latin America considers a variety of factors on individual, national, and international levels of analysis, and show that the foreign policy decisions are best viewed through the prism of role theory. The book also draws conclusions about the value of role theory in general and about environmental foreign policy decisions in developing countries, which will be of value to both policy-makers and academics.

Environmental Governance in Latin America

Environmental Governance in Latin America
Author: Fabio De Castro
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 347
Release: 2016-03-24
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1137505729

This book is open access under a CC-BY license. The multiple purposes of nature – livelihood for communities, revenues for states, commodities for companies, and biodiversity for conservationists – have turned environmental governance in Latin America into a highly contested arena. In such a resource-rich region, unequal power relations, conflicting priorities, and trade-offs among multiple goals have led to a myriad of contrasting initiatives that are reshaping social relations and rural territories. This edited collection addresses these tensions by unpacking environmental governance as a complex process of formulating and contesting values, procedures and practices shaping the access, control and use of natural resources. Contributors from various fields address the challenges, limitations, and possibilities for a more sustainable, equal, and fair development. In this book, environmental governance is seen as an overarching concept defining the dynamic and multi-layered repertoire of society-nature interactions, where images of nature and discourses on the use of natural resources are mediated by contextual processes at multiple scales.

Role Theory, Environmental Politics, and Learning in International Relations

Role Theory, Environmental Politics, and Learning in International Relations
Author: Sandra Engstrand
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2021-05-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000393194

In this book, Sandra Engstrand uses role theory to study learning processes in environmental policy negotiations in the Arctic Council. Owing to rapid ice-melting in the Arctic region, and more accessible commercial opportunities, there is a greater need for environmental protection. However, large sections of the Arctic fall under state jurisdiction, often causing tensions to arise that prevent any cooperation from achieving fully efficient environmental protection. To enhance our understanding on how states learn about environmental norms, Engstrand examines negotiation processes on environmental protection for the prevention of Arctic marine oil spills and the reduction of short-lived climate pollutants. Through interviews with state representatives and through text analyses of nearly twenty years of meetings between Senior Arctic Officials from each of the eight Arctic states, Engstrand suggests that learning on environmental norms runs firstly through a learning of roles in international relations. She demonstrates how member states develop through self-reflection and by considering the expectation of others, concluding that states’ wishes to preserve their social role in a group and to be perceived as Arctic ‘cooperators’ are drivers for a social education on environmental norms. A timely and unmatched volume Role Theory, Environmental Politics, and Learning in International Relations will engage students and academic researchers in international relations, environmental governance, and Arctic politics.

South American Policy Regionalism

South American Policy Regionalism
Author: Leslie Elliott Armijo
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2024-09-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1040130259

“Regional cooperation exists, but looks different in the global South than in the European Union,” claim the contributors to South American Policy Regionalism, which offers novel theory, methods, and Latin American case studies of joint governance efforts in nine international policy arenas, ranging from illegal drugs to artificial intelligence. Contrasting three major schools of thought in international relations (highlighting power, institutions, and ideas), this book introduces the idea of international policy regionalism as a framework for informed debate about international policy-sector interactions in a regional space. Beginning with a conceptual approach applicable to any world region, it includes a brief history of Western Hemisphere regionalism to aid in future cross-regional comparisons. An international group of contributors constructs rich narratives of the politics of Latin American policy sector evolution since the Cold War. Besides the aforementioned, included sectors span regional development banking, infrastructure planning, electricity distribution, migration governance, climate action, neglected tropical diseases, and food policies. This volume equips readers from various academic disciplines and the policy world to understand the relevance of core international relations theory for the analysis of policy sectors that cross national borders, both within Latin America and elsewhere, and especially throughout the global South.

Contemporary Cases in U.S. Foreign Policy

Contemporary Cases in U.S. Foreign Policy
Author: Ralph Carter
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 413
Release: 2021-03-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1538141426

This engaging case study approach brings together a diverse set of contributors to help students question motives, consider alternatives, and analyze outcomes in many of the most controversial foreign policy issues now confronting the United States. Many actors―from the president and members of Congress to interest groups, NGOs, and the media―compete to shape U.S. foreign policy. While previous editions of this popular text focused more on national security issues in the wake of 9/11 and the War on Terror, the 13 case studies in this edition deal with a wide range of policy areas: national security, homeland security, diplomacy, trade, immigration, epidemics, climate change, and Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Many reflect how the demarcation between foreign and domestic policy has become even more blurred and polarization has come to plays a significantly increased role in American foreign policy.

International Organizations Amid Global Crises

International Organizations Amid Global Crises
Author: Diana Panke
Publisher: Policy Press
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2024-10-23
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1529242967

International Organizations (IOs) have been at the forefront of responding to crises in the 21st century, and yet there is little comparative research on how, and how effectively, they have done this. This book fills this gap by exploring what roles IOs take in response to global crises and to what effect. Bringing together a range of international contributors, the book examines a vast array of international and regional organizations, including the International Organization for Migration, World Health Organization, African Union and European Union. Aiming to answer key questions about IO behaviour, the book investigates these IOs’ responses to pressing issues including the global COVID-19 pandemic, the liberal order and security, and the climate crisis.

Role Theory in the Middle East and North Africa

Role Theory in the Middle East and North Africa
Author: Yasemin Akbaba
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 129
Release: 2019-05-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1351661671

Since December 2010, a series of uprisings, revolutions, coups and civil wars have shaken up the Middle East and North Africa region. In this chaotic political environment, several countries have been trying to influence this regional transformation. The implications of this transformation are of great importance for the region, its people and global politics. Using a rich combination of primary and secondary sources, elite interviews and content analysis, Yasemin Akbaba and Özgür Özdamar apply role theory to analyze ideational (e.g. identity, religion) and material (e.g. security, economy) sources of national role conceptions in Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The authors take a closer look at the transformation of these four powers’ foreign policies since the beginning of Arab uprisings, with a specific focus on religion. Each case study is written to a common template allowing for clear comparative analyses. Written in a clear and accessible style, Role Theory in the Middle East and North Africa offers a thought provoking and pioneering insight into the usefulness of role theory in foreign policy making in the developing world. The perfect combination of theoretically oriented and empirically rich analysis make this volume an ideal resource for scholars and researchers of International Relations, Foreign Policy, Middle East Politics and International Security.

Rising Powers and Foreign Policy Revisionism

Rising Powers and Foreign Policy Revisionism
Author: Cameron G Thies
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2017-11-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0472123289

In Rising Powers and Foreign Policy Revisionism, Cameron Thies and Mark Nieman examine the identity and behavior of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) over time in light of academic and policymaker concerns that rising powers may become more aggressive and conflict-prone. The authors develop a theoretical framework that encapsulates pressures for revisionism through the mechanism of competition and pressures for accommodation and assimilation through the mechanism of socialization. The identity and behavior of the BRICS should be a product of the push and pull of these two forces as mediated by their domestic foreign policy processes. State identity is investigated qualitatively through the use of role theory and the identification of national role conceptions. Both economic and militarized conflict behavior are examined using Bayesian change-point modeling, which identifies structural breaks in time series data, revealing potential wholesale revision of foreign policy. Using this innovative approach to show that the behavior of rising powers is governed not simply by the structural dynamics of power but also by the roles that these rising powers define for themselves, they assert that this process will likely lead to a much more evolutionary approach to foreign policy and will not necessarily generate international conflict.

Environmental Politics and Foreign Policy Decision Making in Latin America

Environmental Politics and Foreign Policy Decision Making in Latin America
Author: Amy Below
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2014-12-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1134475047

Although the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to address global climate change, has been regarded by many as an unsuccessful treaty both politically and environmentally, it stands as one of the world’s few truly global agreements. Why did such a diverse group of countries decide to sign and/or ratify the treaty? Why did they choose to do so at different times and in different ways? What explains their foreign policy behavior? Amy Below’s book builds off the increasing significance of climate change and uses the Kyoto Protocol as a case study to analyze foreign policy decision making in Latin America. Below’s study takes a regional perspective in order to examine why countries in Latin America made disparate foreign policy choices when they were faced with the same decision. The book looks at the decisions in Argentina, Mexico, and Venezuela via a process-tracing method. Below uses information obtained from primary and secondary documents and elite interviews to help reconstruct the processes, and augments her reconstruction with a content analysis of Conference of the Parties speeches by presidents and country delegates. The book complies with convention in the field by arguing that systemic, national and individual-level factors simultaneously impact foreign policy decisions, but makes the additional claim that role theory most accurately accounts for relationships between variables. Environmental Politics and Foreign Policy Decision Making in Latin America considers a variety of factors on individual, national, and international levels of analysis, and show that the foreign policy decisions are best viewed through the prism of role theory. The book also draws conclusions about the value of role theory in general and about environmental foreign policy decisions in developing countries, which will be of value to both policy-makers and academics.