Producers, Trade Groups, and the Design of Global Environmental Regimes

Abstract

The chapter provides a macro-level analysis of the legalization, standardization, and integration of global environmental rules. The statistical tests rely on two new datasets on global treaty regimes and business stakeholders in those regimes. The results demonstrate that treaty regimes that regulate oligopolistic industries tend to become integrated over time with protocols, amendments, and similar agreements that add new rules or institutions to the international regime. They also consist of legally binding agreements, not soft law commitments by parties, and standardized rules applicable to all member states or categories of member states. By contrast, treaty regimes that regulate competitive markets tend to become more disintegrated (or unintegrated) over time. These international regimes are also legal hybrids because they consist of hard and soft law, and often give countries the responsibility to make nationally specific commitments. Producer-level concentrations significantly constrain the design of global environmental treaty regimes.