About this Book

International environmental regimes--institutional arrangements thatgovern human-environmental interactions--are dynamic, changing continuously overtime. Some regimes go from strength to strength, becoming more effective over theyears, while others seem stymied from the beginning. Some regimes start strong, thendecline; others are ineffective at first but become successful with the passage oftime. In Institutional Dynamics, Oran Young offers the first detailed analysis ofthese developmental trajectories. Understanding the emergent patterns inenvironmental governance and how they affect regime effectiveness, he argues, is animportant part of solving environmental problems. Young proposes a framework foranalyzing patterns of institutional change based on the alignment of internal, endogenous factors--which include flexibility, monitoring procedures, and fundingmechanisms--with such external, exogenous factors as the attributes of environmentalproblems, the political and economic contexts, and technological innovations. Heoffers five case studies of environmental regimes, governing environmental problemsranging from climate change to the protection of the Northern Fur Seal, each ofwhich exemplifies one of the emergent patterns he has identified: progressivedevelopment, punctuated equilibrium, arrested development, diversion, andcollapse.