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Annotation This systematic investigation of the interaction among international and European institutions provides both a theoretical framework for analysis and the first broad overview of this largely uncharted field of research. By offering detailed case studies and a systematic analysis of results, the book examines the effects of institutional interaction on environmental governance and explores the ways in which international and European Union policies can either reinforce or undercut one another. After a conceptual overview in which Oberthür and Gehring identify three causal mechanisms by which institutional interaction can affect environmental governance, ten case studies apply this theoretical approach. Six cases use an international institution as their starting point and four begin with a European Union legal instrument. The international regimes examined include the widely known Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES), Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and World Trade Organization and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The EU instruments analyzed include lesser-known directives on the protection of habitats, the deliberate release of genetically modified organisms into the environment, and air quality. The studies show that although conflict and interference among different regimes and institutions do take place, synergistic interactions are common. The findings on the importance of, and mechanisms behind, these outcomes offer valuable insights for both scholars and policymakers. Contributors:Beatrice Chaytor, Clare Coffey, Andrew Farmer, Thomas Gehring, John Lanchbery, Sebastian Oberthür, Alice Palmer, G. Kristin Rosendal, Jon Birger Skjærseth, Olav Schram Stokke, Ingmar von Homeyer, Jacob Werksman, Jørgen Wettestad.

1. Internationale Regime als Steuerungsinstrumente der Umweltpolitik -- 2. Entstehung und Wandel des globalen Regimes zum Schutz der Ozonschicht -- 3. Das internationale Regime über weiträumige grenzüberschreitende Luftverschmutzung -- 4. Die internationale Kontrolle des grenzüberschreitenden Handels mit gefährlichen Abfällen (Baseler Konvention von 1989) -- 5. Routinemäßige Ölverschmutzung durch Tanker (OILPOL/MARPOL) -- 6. Das internationale Regime zur zivilrechtlichen Haftung für Ölverschmutzungsschäden -- 7. Abfallentsorgung auf See: Die Londoner Konvention von 1972 -- 8. Das Regime zum Schutz der Ostsee -- 9. Internationale Bemühungen zum Schutz des Rheins -- 10. Das Washingtoner Artenschutzabkommen (CITES) von 1973 -- 11. Das Regime über die biologische Vielfalt von 1992 -- 12. Das internationale Regime zum Schutz des Klimas -- 13. Fazit: Internationale Umweltpolitik durch Verhandlungen und Verträge -- Abkürzungsverzeichnis -- Autorinnen und Autoren.

AbstractA peculiar treaty management organization operates under the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement that does not fit established categories of international law and political science. Unlike traditional international organizations (IOs), it lacks the formal status of an IO, comprises only a limited secretariat with predominantly servicing functions, and is not even denominated as an organization. We argue that it has nevertheless become an international actor, mainly due to activities of its Conference of the Parties and several specialized organizational schemes. Theoretically, we develop an analytical framework that shows how even heavily member-dominated IOs can become international actors and what this means for global environmental governance. IOs gain the capability to influence international politics by their own action if authorized to make decisions with external effects. They gain autonomy if organizational rules and procedures shape organizational decision-making and create specific organizational rationales. Empirically, we demonstrate that the organizational component of the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement has acquired both considerable action capability and autonomy. It is authorized to flesh out the skeletal provisions of the constituent treaties through far-reaching COP decisions and to decide continuously in several specialized organizational schemes, especially on climate funding, cooperation mechanisms, and compliance management. Organizational decisions are heavily influenced by autonomy-creating organizational factors, such as path dependence, fundamental organizational norms and dense sets of decision criteria. We conclude that this organization, and the organizational components of other multilateral environmental agreements, point at important organizational effects, which merit further attention.

This article introduces an innovative theoretical conception of the corporate agency of international organizations (IOs). Existing rationalist and constructivist accounts attribute IO agency to the influence of intra-organizational agents. Drawing on general conceptions of corporate agency in International Relations, sociology, and philosophy, we elucidate how IOs can develop corporate agency, even if the member states prepare and adopt all organizational decisions themselves. In line with recent studies on international political authority, we replace the IO-as-bureaucracy model with the more comprehensive concept of IOs-as-governors. To establish the micro-foundations of IO agency, we adopt a bottom-up perspective and outline how, and under which conditions, IO agency arises from the interaction of constituent actors. Irrespective of any specific institutional design, IOs become actors in their own right whenever they gain action capability and autonomy. They acquire action capability whenever their members pool governance resources like the right to regulate certain activities or to manage common funds and authorize IOs to deploy these resources. IOs gain autonomy whenever they affect organizational decisions. Both dimensions of IO agency are variable and open to empirical enquiry. To illustrate our argument, we refer to the United Nations Security Council and other IOs with member-driven decision processes.

This article explores the heterogeneous and uneven EU response to the COVID-19 pandemic across policy fields and examines how integration theories can contribute to explaining the presence (or absence) of new integration steps and their varying nature. To analyse European activities in three policy fields, namely fiscal policy, centralised European vaccine procurement, and border politics, we develop a 'Domain of Application' approach (DOA). Instead of testing integration theories against each other, DOA allows bridging different theoretical traditions by making use of their complementary explanatory power to derive better explanations of complex empirical issues. We find that Liberal Intergovernmentalism and Neofunctionalism offer complementary explanations for several empirical puzzles, which together provide a more compelling picture of the effects of the pandemic on European integration. In addition, DOA advances our understanding of the scopes of both theories.

This paper examines conceptual issues of the emergence and effects of collective agency. Collective agency seems to challenge the methodological individualist assumption that only individuals can act, but treating group actors, such as parliamentary committees or court chambers, as mere shortcuts for complex interactions among group members raises important theoretical, empirical, and normative issues. First, the paper discusses some fundamental issues of collective agency. We argue that analyses of collective agency must provide generative mechanisms that demonstrate how it arises from the interaction of group members. Second, the paper introduces major approaches to collective agency from analytical philosophy and sociology. They locate the source of collective agency in the formation of collective intentions through the adjustment of group members' attitudes, in the organization of group decision processes, or in the transfer of resources to the group level, which empowers a collective actor to act in its own right. Against this backdrop, this paper offers an integrative concept of collective agency characterized in terms of the degree of autonomy and the level of resources controlled by a collective actor. Third, this paper introduces the contributions to this special issue, which tackle a broad variety of issues, including the formation and consequences of collective intentions in small and unorganized groups, collective agency issues of institutionalized groups and organizations, collective agency of large and unorganized groups without defined memberships, and normative issues of collective agency.

AbstractThis article introduces an innovative theoretical conception of the corporate agency of international organizations (IOs). Existing rationalist and constructivist accounts attribute IO agency to the influence of intra-organizational agents. Drawing on general conceptions of corporate agency in International Relations, sociology, and philosophy, we elucidate how IOs can develop corporate agency, even if the member states prepare and adopt all organizational decisions themselves. In line with recent studies on international political authority, we replace the IO-as-bureaucracy model with the more comprehensive concept of IOs-as-governors. To establish the micro-foundations of IO agency, we adopt a bottom-up perspective and outline how, and under which conditions, IO agency arises from the interaction of constituent actors. Irrespective of any specific institutional design, IOs become actors in their own right whenever they gain action capability and autonomy. They acquire action capability whenever their members pool governance resources like the right to regulate certain activities or to manage common funds and authorize IOs to deploy these resources. IOs gain autonomy whenever they affect organizational decisions. Both dimensions of IO agency are variable and open to empirical enquiry. To illustrate our argument, we refer to the United Nations Security Council and other IOs with member-driven decision processes.

We examine how analogy-based collective decision-making of member states contributes to the endogenous emergence of informal rules and the incremental change of international organizations (IOs). Decision-making by analogy is an important characteristic of day-to-day decision-making in IOs. Relating current decisions to previous ones through analogies drives incremental change and simultaneously reinforces organizational resilience. Whereas the foreign policy analysis literature shows that analogies can be used as cognitive shortcuts in fuzzy and complex foreign policy situations, we focus on their use to overcome social ambiguity (indeterminacy) of coordination situations in IOs. Drawing on psychological conceptions, we develop two micro-level mechanisms that elucidate the effects of analogy-based collective decision-making in member-driven IOs. Analogy-based collective decisions emphasizing similarity between a current situation and previous ones follow an established problem schema and produce expansive and increasingly well-established informal rules. Collective decisions that are analogy-based but emphasize a crucial difference follow different problem schemas and trigger the emergence of additional informal rules that apply to new classes of cases. The result is an increasingly fine-grained web of distinct organizational solutions for a growing number of problems. Accordingly, an IO can increasingly facilitate collective decision-making and gains resilience. Empirically, we probe these propositions with a documentary analysis of decision-making in the Yugoslavia sanctions committee, established by the United Nations Security Council to deal with a stream of requests for exempting certain goods or services from the comprehensive economic embargo imposed on Yugoslavia in response to the War in the Balkans.

Based upon the current debate on international practices with its focus on taken-for-granted everyday practices, we examine how Security Council practices may affect member state action and collective decisions on intrastate conflicts. We outline a concept that integrates the structuring effect of practices and their emergence from interaction among reflective actors. It promises to overcome the unresolved tension between understanding practices as a social regularity and as a fluid entity. We analyse the constitutive mechanisms of two Council practices that affect collective decisions on intrastate conflicts and elucidate how even reflective Council members become enmeshed with the constraining implications of evolving practices and their normative implications. (1) Previous Council decisions create precedent pressure and give rise to a virtually uncontested permissive Council practice that defines the purview for intervention into such conflicts. (2) A ratcheting practice forces opponents to choose between accepting steadily reinforced Council action, as occurred regarding Sudan/Darfur, and outright blockade, as in the case of Syria. We conclude that practices constitute a source of influence that is not captured by the traditional perspectives on Council activities as the consequence of geopolitical interests or of externally evolving international norms like the 'responsibility to protect' (R2P).

AbstractBased upon the current debate on international practices with its focus on taken-for-granted everyday practices, we examine how Security Council practices may affect member state action and collective decisions on intrastate conflicts. We outline a concept that integrates the structuring effect of practices and their emergence from interaction among reflective actors. It promises to overcome the unresolved tension between understanding practices as a social regularity and as a fluid entity. We analyse the constitutive mechanisms of two Council practices that affect collective decisions on intrastate conflicts and elucidate how even reflective Council members become enmeshed with the constraining implications of evolving practices and their normative implications. (1) Previous Council decisions create precedent pressure and give rise to a virtually uncontested permissive Council practice that defines the purview for intervention into such conflicts. (2) A ratcheting practice forces opponents to choose between accepting steadily reinforced Council action, as occurred regarding Sudan/Darfur, and outright blockade, as in the case of Syria. We conclude that practices constitute a source of influence that is not captured by the traditional perspectives on Council activities as the consequence of geopolitical interests or of externally evolving international norms like the 'responsibility to protect' (R2P).