ENV222H1 Lecture : Institutions

• School: UTSG
• Department: School of Environment
• Course: ENV222H1
• Professor: Mairi Mac Donald

Document Summary

Note the relationship to power the most effective form of power comes from internalization, when active enforcement is not needed. Power comes from the barrel of a gun, but even more from the minds of the powerless: institutions and environment. Our interest is in rules which do or do not influence behaviour which is environmentally destructive. In large part, this means we are interested in rules governing market behaviour extraction of raw materials, production, transport and sale of goods (reader p. 165 top rules of property, exchange and regulation ). That in turn brings us back to state-market interdependence (jan. 26 lecture notes) and the fact that the market needs the state to solve its collective-action problems (tragedy of the commons reader pp. 357-358), by putting in place rules respecting common-property resource extraction and externalities. Market failure (reader p. 165 bottom) is the term applied to the need for such rules: neoclassical economics and environment.