POL101Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Collective Action, Existential Crisis, Nationstates
● Why Treaties and Regimes?
○ Climate change is a collective action problem that requires action by lots of
nation-states (and that we have to try and avoid free-riding).
○ Sovereignty is the key organizing principle, so there is no one to make states
address the collective action problem
○ Therefore states need to figure out how to come to an agreement on how to take
action collectively.
○ Key instruments of international cooperation
○ Coordination problems vs. cooperation problems
■ Coordination problems:
● ex: domestic train systems, had to coordinate internationally so
the trains would be running across borders. So the countries want
a solution to running train systems across the border, not caring
whether the track sizes are a meter or larger or smaller.
● Have common interests
● People have common goal caring more about having a common
solution rather than having their particular choice
● Relatively easy to solve because everyone has common interests
● Tend to generate treaties that are self enforced
■ Cooperation problems (climate change):
● Having common goal but divergent interests
● Different states have different interests in climate change
○ Ex: Fossil fuel producing state has different interests than
non fossil fuel producing states
● Rely on compromise, lots of enforcement and compliance issues
○ Carrots and sticks: either pay off countries that don’t like
agreements, or pay them to like it more, etc.
○ Road to Treaties/Regimes
■ Climate change regime includes all treaties and organizations made for
climate change
■ Process to making treaties:
● Agenda setting
○ Define the problem and set the parameters for
action/cooperation
○ Creates order, defines what cooperation is going to look
like
○ Set goals, which idea of emissions/responsibility is
important, who gets to decide what we’re going to say this
problem is, etc.
○ States want to make sure what they summarize fits what
they want to do
● Bargaining
○ Different states bring different proposals of what they’re
willing to do, trying to find rules that everyone can agree to
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
○ Ideas, Interests, and power shape bargaining
■ Ideas: scientific ideas, different countries have
different ideologies, different ideas about values,
how much they care about climate change, etc.
● Shape a lot of what interests and power do
■ Interests: economic interests: do you have cold
winters, do you need lots of heating, do you have
long distances so need lots of transportation, do
you produce cars/consume cars, lots of
manufacturing and consumption, etc.
■ Power: the more powerful tend to get more of what
they want in international treaties, power doesn’t
always mean the same thing in every treaty
● What counts as being powerful in a climate
change negotiation is your level of
emissions
● Having major emissions is essentially the
power to wreck the agreement
○ The two major emitters (china and
US) pulled out of Kyoto Protocol so it
didn’t work out
● If more countries want you to play, your
interests would dominate the substance of
the agreement
● Implementation
○ States take solutions and implement it into national policy
○ Treaties layout what nation states pledge to do and set up
rules (top down action) within the state (domestic policy) to
carry out those obligations
● monitoring/enforcement
○ Monitoring: Seeing if the states are doing what they're
supposed to do and if it’s working
○ Who? sovereignty, some monitoring from international
organizations (UNCCC, UN environment program, NGOs),
monitoring depends on how much you want to be
monitored and how much you care about the problem
○ How?
○ Self-enforcement (the goal)
■ Want to have states living up to the treaty
obligations because they recognize that as being in
their interest
● Revision
○ Continually in motion
○ Figure out which parts are working/not working, etc.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Climate change is a collective action problem that requires action by lots of nation-states (and that we have to try and avoid free-riding). Sovereignty is the key organizing principle, so there is no one to make states address the collective action problem. Therefore states need to figure out how to come to an agreement on how to take action collectively. Ex: domestic train systems, had to coordinate internationally so the trains would be running across borders. So the countries want a solution to running train systems across the border, not caring whether the track sizes are a meter or larger or smaller. People have common goal caring more about having a common solution rather than having their particular choice. Relatively easy to solve because everyone has common interests. Tend to generate treaties that are self enforced. Different states have different interests in climate change. Ex: fossil fuel producing state has different interests than non fossil fuel producing states.
