Un manuel qui met l'accent sur les méthodes et méthodologies propres à la science politique, avec des conseils pratiques pour mener à bien un travail de recherche.

Une initiation à la recherche en science politique à travers :

• une présentation pédagogique des méthodes de collecte et d’analyse des données
• des conseils pratiques pour mener à bien un travail de recherche
• des exemples concrets extraits de la littérature récente
• des tableaux de synthèse, des mises en situation et des définitions des termes clés

Pour apprendre à :

• réaliser un travail scientifique
• élaborer une stratégie de recherche
• choisir et collecter les données pertinentes
• analyser et interpréter les résultats
• identifier les forces et les faiblesses de chaque méthode

Avec exercices interactifs en fin de chapitres pour intégrer et réviser la matière

Table des matières

• Chapitre 1 : La science politique, une mosaïque de postures
• Chapitre 2 : Les approches théoriques
• Chapitre 3 : Les grandes options méthodologiques
• Chapitre 4 : Les étapes de la construction d’une stratégie de recherche
• Chapitre 5 : Enquêtes et bases de données
• Chapitre 6 : Les méthodes expérimentales
• Chapitre 7 : Les entretiens
• Chapitre 8 : L’analyse de discours et de contenu 
• Chapitre 9 : L'analyse des réseaux sociaux
• Chapitre 10 : Le traçage de processus dans une étude de cas
• Chapitre 11 : L’observation empirique

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Manuel mettant en évidence les méthodes et méthodologies propres à la science politique, avec des conseils pratiques pour mener à bien un travail de recherche.

Une initiation à la recherche en science politique à travers : 
- des conseils pratiques pour mener à bien un travail de recherche 
- une présentation pédagogique des méthodes de collecte et d’analyse des données 
- des exemples concrets extraits de la littérature récente 
- des tableaux de synthèse, des mises en situation et des définitions des termes clés

Pour apprendre à : 
- élaborer une stratégie de recherche 
- choisir et collecter les données pertinentes 
- analyser et interpréter les résultats 
- identifier les forces et les faiblesses de chaque méthode

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Pourquoi les pays occidentaux versent-ils davantage d’aide au développement aux autocraties qu’aux démocraties ? Pourquoi le Danemark réussit-il à exercer une influence disproportionnée au sein de l’Union européenne ? Pourquoi le Canada a-t-il fait du maintien de la paix la pierre angulaire de sa politique étrangère ? Ce manuel propose une introduction aux théories et aux méthodes de l’analyse de la politique étrangère. Il passe en revue les principales approches, des classiques aux plus récentes. Plus qu’une simple synthèse, il identifie les courants émergents, les lacunes qui doivent être comblées, les données qui peuvent être mobilisées, les pièges à éviter et les références bibliographiques à creuser. C’est le point d’entrée incontournable pour tous les étudiants, les doctorants et les chercheurs qui entament un projet de recherche sur la politique étrangère.

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Aligning global governance to the challenges of sustainability is one of the most urgent international issues to be addressed. This book is a timely and up-to-date compilation of the main pieces of the global environmental governance puzzle.

Essential Concepts of Global Environmental Governance synthesizes writing from an internationally diverse range of well-known experts. Each entry defines a central concept in global environmental governance, presents its historical evolution and related debates, and includes key bibliographical references. This new edition takes stock of several recent developments in global environmental politics including the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the UN Global Pact for the Environment attempt in 2017, and the 2018 Oceans Plastics Charter. More precisely, this book:

• offers cutting-edge analysis of the state of global environmental governance;

• presents an up-to-date debate on sustainable development at the global level;

• gives an in-depth exploration of current architecture of global environmental governance;

• examines the interaction between environmental politics and other policy fields such as trade, development, and security;

• provides a critical review of the recent global environmental governance literature.

Innovative thinking and high-profile expertise come together to create a volume that is accessible to students, scholars, and practitioners alike.

"Essential Concepts of Global Environmental Governance is an incredibly useful resource for students. It provides short introductory entries for students new to the field or from a related field. The authors compiled an impressive and cohesive list of entries that provides an excellent foundation for all students of global environmental governance." -- Gabriela Kuetting, Professor of Global Politics, Rutgers University, USA

"This volume provides an essential glossary of critical terms and concepts in the field of international environmental politics for diplomats, analysts and students. The interdisciplinary array of expert authors provides terse and authoritative overview of the key concepts and debates that have defined the field of international environmental governance over the years. The entries carefully survey the intellectual ecosystem of the concepts applied to understanding and managing our global environmental crisis." –Peter M. Haas, Professor of Political Science, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA

"This volume is an indispensable resource for distilling what is most important for understanding the vast terrain of global environmental policy. Written by leading scholars, this book offers an authoritative lexicon to which one can turn for a quick, in-depth, and reliable reference. I wish this book was around when I was a student. I’m glad it is around now that I’m a professor." – Paul Wapner, Professor of Global Environmental Politics, American University, USA　

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By focusing on the wider process of negotiations, this novel volume presents the first systematic analysis of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The authors include scholars and practitioners from across disciplines and various academic institutions around Europe and North America, but also from outside of the transatlantic basin. While presenting a thorough examination of the process of TTIP negotiations, the volume is divided into four parts with each part examining a broader theme and offering three or four shorter exploratory chapters that are accessible to academics, students, policy-makers and a wider audience.

The volume explores historical and theoretical aspects of TTIP (with chapters by Gamble, Keohane and Morse, Telò), the beginnings of the TTIP talks and the role of individual actors (Mayer, Novotná, Dür and Lechner, Strange), TTIP’s possible knock-on effects and consequences for third parties (Aggarwal and Evenett, Duchesne and Ouellet, Zhang, Ponjaert) as well as impact on multilateral institutions and regimes complexes (Mavroidis, Mortensen, Meunier and Morin, Pauwelyn).

Endorsement:  

"This volume addresses a crucial issue of global and interregional trade governance by including an international team of   leading scholars from a variety of disciplines and viewpoints. Collectively the authors identify the major stakes and provide a comprehensive and highly competent overview of the main political implications of the ‘Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership’ negotiations from both sides (North America and Europe), while keeping in mind the controversial interplay with global governance and emergent economies. Highly recommended for students, scholars, practitioners and informed citizens looking for critical and solid orientation in a very sensitive and uncertain matter."

- Pascal Lamy, Honorary President of Notre Europe, former Director general of the WTO and European Commissioner for Trade 

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Why does the European Commission continue to sign onto unstable international data flow agreements with the United States? After two agreements were struck down by the European Court of Justice, and clear signals that a new one could meet a similar fate, the European Commission agreed to the Data Privacy Framework. To make sense of this behavior, we connect traditional work on veto points with work on historical institutionalism to highlight an international negotiation strategy – running out the clock. While traditional veto points literature suggests multiple institutions with varying preferences will limit the set of potential policies or their adoption, we highlight how these dynamics change when considering veto points in time. We showcase our argument by building three historical narratives detailing the negotiation of the successive data flow agreements. Our findings have important implications for the future of the transatlantic privacy regime as well as negotiation dynamics.

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The constitutive organisations of governance systems tend to multiply and diversify over time. In parallel, a tendency toward homophily favours the creation of clusters of homogeneous organisations. Yet, few systems drift to the point of disconnection or dislocation. Several remain sufficiently cohesive to allow adaptation and other complex properties to emerge. To maintain equilibrium between order and chaos, some organisations must create bridges between otherwise homogeneous groups. This paper argues that hybrid organisations are ideally suited for this role. By their nature, hybrids share characteristics with different types of organisations in global governance, allowing them to overcome strict homophily and create bridges across clusters. Hybrids benefit from acting as brokers and in doing so, they facilitate the exchange of material and ideational resources across the governance system. Even if it is not their intention, they contribute to holding governance systems together and counterbalance the effect of homophily. We illustrate this argument by examining the space governance system and the hybrid nature, bridging activities, and brokerage role of the European Space Agency.

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This article examines the influence of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, known as the Rio Summit, on the design of subsequent international environmental agreements (IEAs). In particular, it investigates the extent to which the principles outlined in the Rio Declaration were integrated into IEAs concluded in the following years. We focus our investigation on three principles: the precautionary principle, common but differentiated responsibilities, and the polluter pays principle. Analyzing a collection of 2,211 IEAs and their 509 amendments, we find that the Rio Summit catalyzed the dissemination of these principles. However, our study also reveals that the Rio Conference was an inflection point, wherein weaker expressions of these principles became more prevalent. Stronger expressions, which were included in some IEAs prior to the Rio Summit, became relatively less common thereafter. We call this evolutionary process the “survival of the weakest”.

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Creating intergovernmental environmental clubs is a prominent policy proposal for addressing global environmental problems. According to their proponents, environmental clubs provide an incentive to join them and accept their environmental obligations by generating exclusive “club goods” for their members. Yet, the existing literature considers environmental clubs as a theoretical idea that still has to be put into practice. This article asks whether, in fact, the numerous international environmental agreements (IEAs) containing trade-related provisions provide club goods to their parties. It does so by investigating the effects of these provisions on trade flows among parties compared to flows with non-parties. We introduce an original dataset on 48 types of trade provisions in 2,097 IEAs that we make available with the publication of this article. Based on this new data and a panel of worldwide bilateral trade flows, we find evidence that existing IEAs and their trade-liberalizing content are associated with increased trade among their parties relative to trade with non-parties. We conclude from this finding that systems of IEAs provide club goods to their parties. Uncovering the existence of environmental clubs has significant methodological and policy implications. It is an important first step for future research on the actual effectiveness of clubs in attracting participation and raising environmental standards.

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Treaty amendments constitute a critical but under-researched aspect of international law. In this article, we present a comprehensive survey of 491 amendment procedures across 691 multilateral environmental agreements. We use this data collection to build a typology of amendment procedures based on various combinations of control, adaptability, and flexibility. We introduce the property space reduction method as a valuable tool for building typology and analysing international law. We find a clear trend towards the inclusion of amendment procedures, which makes treaties increasingly adaptable. This adaptability is generally coupled with flexibility to avoid infringing on consent. As a result, amended treaties risk being increasingly fragmented into differentiated bundles of obligations split among subsets of members. We also examine how key features of treaty membership, such as power distribution, correlate with the occurrence and types of amendment procedures.

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This article assesses the structural power of the United States and China in the field of space governance. While much of the literature on space power focuses on their technologies and capabilities, we take a complementary approach and explore their capacity to shape the regulatory landscape. Possessing structural power has far-reaching implications for global power projection as well as for various industries, such as telecommunications, transportation, and remote sensing. To assess structural power, we gathered and analyzed three types of data: a dataset featuring 1,709 space organizations, a second dataset comprising 1,764 international space arrangements connecting them, and insights from fifty-two interviews with key space actors. Our findings indicate that the United States holds significant structural power thanks to its thriving commercial space sector and extensive international network. This has enabled the global diffusion of its preferred norms while simultaneously constraining China’s space cooperation network. Despite its remarkable technological capabilities, China has not been able to translate them into substantial global structural power. To encourage further exploration in this domain, we make available our original dataset of 1,764 space arrangements, including 970 in full-text format, inviting fellow researchers to investigate other facets of outer space governance.

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The designation of outer space as a global commons is a contentious issue. Some argue that officially recognizing it as such could discourage private investment, while others claim that it would not sufficiently promote sustainability. To address these debates, this article examines how space actors use a global commons framework in their institutional arrangements. Based on a collection of 1042 space arrangements, we characterize a subset of arrangements that explicitly reference concepts related to the notion of global commons. We observe that this framework is seldom used in bilateral arrangements and is mostly absent from recent agreements made by influential players. Furthermore, we find that employing principles related to global commons in arrangements does not result in significantly different operational rules. As a result, we conclude that a clearly defined global commons perspective has yet to be articulated and institutionalized. 

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The governments of Canada and Denmark signed a historic agreement on Hans Island on 14 June 2022. Although most of the agreement was devoted to the resolution of the Hans Island dispute, it also settled other issues. We argue that provisions on mobility and the continental shelf in the Labrador Sea give rise to interesting precedents that could have far-reaching effects for northerners. The agreement on enhanced mobility could represent a first step in a more ambitious process of facilitating Inuit mobility across Nunavut and Greenland, while the settlement on the continental shelf illustrates how states could collaborate on other continental shelf cases, including the continental shelf in the Central Arctic Ocean.

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Although most international agreements are concluded for indefinite periods, the issues they address and parties’ preferences are constantly evolving. In some cases, parties seek to close any growing gaps between negotiators’ expectations and the changing context by updating their original agreement to its new circumstances. States have several formal tools at their disposal to do so, such as protocols, amendments, and addenda. We refer to this process as institutional adaptation. This paper seeks to explain why some agreements are adapted numerous times during their lifetime while others are not. It argues that state parties are more likely to adapt their international agreements when they acquire new information about their partners’ behavior, preferences, or the state of the environment. We focus on two key elements facilitating this process. The first consists of unexpected variation in treaty participation, and the second concerns the design features of the agreement. Relying on event history analysis and an original dataset of design features and membership of 371 multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), we find that low levels of ratifications, high levels of accessions, highly institutionalized MEAs, and anticipatory design features are associated with more frequent institutional adaptation. These findings provide important lessons for the design of dynamic treaties.

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How do discursive fields influence support for climate policies? The European Green Deal (EGD) has gained media attention in part because it was presented as a cross-sectorial strategy aiming to ‘transform the European economy’. Our analysis focuses on two specific policy proposals of the EGD: the carbon border adjustment mechanism and the reform for a greener Common Agricultural Policy. By comparing their discourse network structure, we aim to understand policy (dis)continuity introduced with the EGD. We use an original longitudinal dataset and discourse network analysis to map framing dynamics over time and understand how particular frames can gather support in policy networks. Our study shows that two elements favor policy change, namely the resonance of new frames with the discursive field and the presence of brokers connecting previously disconnected actors or coalitions. This paper is relevant for scholars interested in the discursive layer of policy networks as well as (dis)continuity in policy debates

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The existing literature underestimates the contribution of federated entities to international environmental agreements. This research note introduces a novel dataset on the role of federated entities in 2,077 environmental agreements. We demonstrate the value of this dataset by revisiting common assumptions that stem from the literature. According to conventional wisdom, 1) federated entities’ participation in environmental agreements is a recent phenomenon; 2) this phenomenon is led by federated entities in Western democracies; 3) it has accelerated as a response to the climate crisis; and 4) it is driven by the same movement that favors the participation of diverse stakeholders. This research note questions these preconceived ideas and illustrates how the new dataset sheds light on the role of federated entities in environmental governance.

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The crises that cities face—such as climate change, pandemics, economic downturn, and racism—are tightly interlinked and cannot be addressed in isolation. This paper addresses compound urban crises as a unique type of problem, in which discrete solutions that tackle each crisis independently are insufficient. Few scholarly debates address compound urban crises and there is, to date, a lack of interdisciplinary insights to inform urban governance responses. Combining ideas from complex adaptive systems and critical urban studies, we develop a set of boundary concepts (unsettlement, unevenness, and unbounding) to understand the complexities of compound urban crises from an interdisciplinary perspective. We employ these concepts to set a research agenda on compound urban crises, highlighting multiple interconnections between urban politics and global dynamics. We conclude by suggesting how these entry points provide a theoretical anchor to develop practical insights to inform and reform urban governance.

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This paper investigates linkages between trade and climate policies by examining commitments made in preferential trade agreements (PTAs) and Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement. While environmental protection and economic growth are often perceived as conflicting policy goals, PTAs and NDCs have the potential to encourage mutually supportive approaches to climate and trade governance. Building upon three recent datasets, the paper locates a sample of 21 countries in a typology of four issue-linkage strategies across both types of instruments: policy integration, policy silos, asymmetry in favor of trade policy, and asymmetry in favor of climate policy. It finds that countries that reveal a preference for strong linkage with climate in their PTAs typically do not reveal a preference for strong trade linkage in their NDCs, and vice versa. No state from the sample favors strong policy integration. After sketching out possible explanations for this observation, the paper concludes that policy-makers have significant room for enhancing synergies between trade and climate commitments and that scholars have a role to play in this endeavor.  

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Next to artificial intelligence and big data, blockchains have emerged as one of the most oft-cited technologies associated with the digital economy. Leading technology companies have recently contributed to making the technology used more widely by developing integrated blockchain offerings. The emergence of such services yet strikingly clashes with the original stated goal of the technology to remove any form of central political authority, such as the one companies behind these new services can represent. How should we then understand the embrace of blockchains by companies that this technology was notably supposed to displace? Using the concept of infrastructure from Science and Technology Studies, we argue that these companies are not merely adopting the technology but actively promoting a new assemblage of socio-technical devices to reassert their authority over how information is exchanged online. Based on a comparative analysis of the technical documentation of Ethereum and Amazon Web Services (AWS) blockchain services, we highlight how actors contributing to building digital infrastructures regulate their users' behavior by affording them different capacities and constraints. We moreover show how by pursuing its commercial interest, AWS supported a corporate form of governance historically promoted by the United States to oversee the digital economy.

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In 2017, the Polar Code, negotiated under the auspices of the IMO, came into force. Later that same year, Canada issued new regulations applicable to navigation in the Canadian Arctic. In this paper, we investigate how this new legal environment is perceived by shipping companies. We conducted a survey, asking companies, both active and not active in the Arctic, how they assess the impact of the legal changes on their operations. Using a qualitative methodology, we coded and analysed 99 questionnaires. Our research shows that companies not active in the Arctic are, as could be expected, largely unaware of the Polar Code and often unwilling to respond to our survey, showing a limited interest in the Arctic shipping market. Companies active in the Arctic and well aware of the issues of safety of navigation and environmental protection generally welcomed the Polar Code. Respondents were less familiar with the new Canadian regulations, arguably corroborating findings according to which the Northwest Passage is not currently considered a potential regular shipping route.

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Negotiating parties to an environmental agreement can manage uncertainty by including flexibility clauses, such as escape and withdrawal clauses. This article investigates a type of uncertainty so far overlooked by the literature: the uncertainty generated by the creation of a Conference of the Parties (COPs) in a context of sharp power asymmetry. When negotiating an agreement, it is difficult for powerful states to make a credible commitment to weaker states, whereby they will not abuse their power to influence future COP decision-making. Flexibility clauses provide a solution to this credibility issue. They act as an insurance mechanism in case a powerful state hijack the COP. Thus, we expect that the creation of a collective body interacts with the degree of power asymmetry to make flexibility clauses more likely in environmental agreements. To test this argument, we draw on an original dataset of several specific clauses in 2,090 environmental agreements, signed between 1945 and 2018. The results support our hypothesis and suggest that flexibility clauses are an important design feature of adaptive environmental agreements.

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Oceans, especially in polar regions, and outer space, are today considered to be the “last frontiers.” These spaces where states project power are also spaces where states face several specific challenges, which are of an environmental nature in particular. They invite us to rethink the modes of political action. How, then, do states deal with these non-traditional spaces, and how do they structure their action there? In this paper, through several concrete examples, we seek to initiate a process of reflection by highlighting certain logics that underlie the organization of international political action in these spaces. We consider their nature and what the notion of “conquest” implies. The international community has managed to frame potential desires within international conventions. But if legal frameworks do exist, that does not mean that they have the capacity to appease all the tensions created by the desire to control these spaces. The questions raised by current events also highlight complex issues of a different nature, sometimes relating to sovereignty (as in Antarctica, for example), whilst at others relating to sovereign rights, when we speak of extended continental shelves, or the right to place satellites in orbit . . . . These questions also gain a new dimension in connection with the presence of new players, be they state or private. How do these actors conceive of these non-traditional spaces?

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Climate-related Transnational Municipal Networks (TMNs) have gained prominence. Scholars have discussed their effects, including their capacity to generate novelties. Yet, some confusion remains in this area. Focusing on the governance instruments generated by TMNs, this article asks: why do some TMNs generate more novelties than others? The research conducted for this article involved a social network analysis supported by qualitative data, using data compiled by the author on TMN memberships, partnerships and governance tools. Findings suggest that the most central TMNs, which also have diverse contacts, can draw on huge volumes of diverse information to generate novel governance instruments and evolve. Other variables, e.g. organisational age, are also involved. This article contributes to the literature by offering an explanation for the capacity of some actors to generate novelties in global climate governance. It also provides a better understanding of the ways in which TMNs seek to steer their numerous city members towards climate action.

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Digital technologies are often described as posing unique challenges for public regulators worldwide. Their fast-pace and technical nature is viewed as being incompatible with the relatively slow and territorially bounded public regulatory processes. In this paper, we argue that not all digital technologies pose the same challenges for public regulators. We more precisely maintain that the digital technologies’ label can be quite misleading as it actually represents a wide variety of technical artifacts. Based on two dimensions, the level of centralization and (im)material nature, we provide a typology of digital technologies that importantly highlights how different technical artifacts affect differently local, national, regional and global distributions of power. While some empower transnational businesses, others can notably reinforce states’ power. By emphasizing this, our typology contributes to ongoing discussions about the global regulation of a digital economy and helps us identify the various challenges that it might present for public regulators globally. At the same time, it allows us to reinforce previous claims that these are importantly not all new and that they often require to solve traditional cooperation problems.

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This article introduces a new dataset on the intellectual property (IP) provisions included in preferential trade agreements (PTAs) and makes it available for research and policy communities alike. Several PTAs include IP commitments that go well beyond the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs). A sound knowledge of these TRIPs-plus commitments is essential in order to improve our understanding of what drives them and of their legal, social and economic consequences. Yet, until now, these provisions have not been mapped in a comprehensive and systematic way. The T+PTA dataset fills this gap by documenting the existence of 90 types of IP provisions in 126 agreements signed between 1991 and 2016. We show that, even for like-minded countries, significant variations exist in their reliance on TRIPs-plus provisions, their degree of consistency across PTAs, and their preferences for some IP rights. We also find that strong TRIPs-Plus provisions are correlated with the depth of PTAs, the asymmetry between trade partners, and the strength of their domestic IP law. By making the T+PTA dataset available, we hope to create the opportunity for a new generation of research on TRIPs-plus agreements.

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When do parties introduce novel clauses to a system of contracts or treaties? While important research has investigated how clauses diffuse once introduced, few empirical studies address their initial introduction. Drawing on network theory, this paper argues that novel clauses are introduced when agreements are concluded in certain structures of earlier agreements and the clauses they include. This paper demonstrates this argument using the example of 282 different environmental clauses introduced into the trade regime complex through 630 trade agreements concluded between 1945 and 2016. We find that trade agreements are more likely to introduce novelties when they involve parties with a diversity of experience with prior environmental clauses, and introduce more novelties when more parties are less constrained by prior trade agreements between them. Contrary to prevailing wisdom, power asymmetry between the negotiating parties is not statistically significant.

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Since the 1980s states have sought to harmonise economic standards to aid the flow of goods, services and finance across borders. The founding agreements of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), for example, harmonised standards on services, intellectual property and investment. However, mutlilateral trade negotiations in the WTO have since stalled. In response, the United States (US) has engaged in forum shopping, using preferential trade agreements at the bilateral, regional and multinational level to harmonise international standards. This article argues that through forum shopping the US has been able to export standards that support the commercial interests of US-based industries more than they encourage economic exchange across borders. Furthermore, because power asymmetries are starker in preferential trade negotiations smaller and middle power states should not enter trade agreements, which include regulatory harmonisation. This is illustrated with the case of the US-Australia free trade agreement, looking specifically at a copyright standard known as technological protection measures (TPMs). It was clear before, during and after the agreement was signed that Australia’s existing standard on TPMs was more popular than the US-style standard. Nevertheless, a US-style standard is in effect domestically because of the trade agreement.

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The prolific literature on the relationship between the trade and environmental regimes suffers from three shortcomings. First, it myopically focuses on multilateral institutions while the vast majority of trade and environmental agreements are bilateral. Second, when studies consider preferential trade agreements’ (PTAs) environmental provisions, they are often limited to US and EU agreements. Third, it examines how the trade and environmental regimes negatively affect each other, leaving aside their potential synergies. Conversely, this article assesses the potential contribution of PTAs to international environmental law. Several PTAs include a full-fledged chapter devoted to environmental protection and contain detailed commitments on various environmental issue areas. One possible scenario is that countries that are dissatisfied with traditional settings for environmental lawmaking engage in a process of “regime shifting” toward PTAs to move forward on their environmental agenda. The alternative is that PTAs’ environmental provisions are the result of “tactical linkages” and merely duplicate extant obligations from international environmental law to serve political goals. We shed light on this question by building on two datasets of 690 PTAs and 2343 environmental treaties. We investigate four potential contributions of PTAs to environmental law: the diffusion of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), the diffusion of existing environmental rules, the design of new environmental rules, and the legal prevalence of MEAs. The article concludes that the contribution of PTAs to the strengthening of states’ commitments under international environmental law is very modest on the four dimensions examined.

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The renegotiation of what US President Trump called “the worst trade deal ever” has resulted in the most detailed environmental chapter in any trade agreement in history. The USMCA mentions dozens of environmental issues that its predecessor, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), overlooked, and in line with contemporary US practice, brings the vast majority of environmental provisions into the core of the agreement, and subjects these provisions to a sanction-based dispute settlement mechanism. It also jettisons two controversial NAFTA measures potentially harmful to the environment. However, this paper argues that the USMCA only makes limited contributions to environmental protection. It primarily replicates most of the environmental provisions included in prior agreements, and only introduces three new environmental provisions. Moreover, it avoids important issues such as climate change, it does not mention the precautionary principle, and it scales back some environmental provisions related to multilateral environmental agreements.

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Background

Recent work in international relations theory argues that international regimes do not develop in isolation, as previously assumed, but evolve as open systems that interact with other regimes. The implications of this insight’s for sustainable development remains underexplored. Even thought environmental protection and health promotion are clearly interconnected at the impact level, it remains unclear how global environmental governance interacts with global health governance at the institutional level. In order to fill this gap, this article aims to assess how environmental treaties contribute to global health governance.

Methods and results

To assess how environmental treaties contribute to global health governance, we conducted a content analysis of 2280 international environmental treaties. For each of these treaties, we measure the type and number of health-related provisions in these treaties. The result is the Health and Environment Interplay Database (HEIDI), which we make public with the publication of this article. This new database reveals that more than 300 environmental treaties have health-related provisions. 

Conclusions

We conclude that the global environmental regime contributes significantly to the institutionalization of the global health regime, considering that the health regime includes itself very few treaties focusing primarily on health. When reflecting on how global governance can improve population health, decision makers should not only consider the instruments available to them within the realm of global health institutions.  They should broaden their perspectives to integrate the contribution of other global regimes, such as the global environmental regime.

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New international agreements often recycle language from previous agreements, using boilerplate solutions alongside customized provisions. The presence of boilerplate in international agreements has important implications for understanding how international rules are made. The determinants behind boilerplate in interna- tional agreements have not previously been systematically evaluated. Using original data from a sample of 348 preferential trade agreements (PTAs) adopted between 1989 and 2009, we combine novel text analysis measures with Latent Order Logistic Graph (LOLOG) network techniques to assess the determinants behind boilerplate in labor and environmental provisions commonly found in PTAs. Our results indicate that whereas boilerplate can be used for both efficiency and distributive purposes, international boilerplate is used primarily for efficiency gains while power-distribution considerations are not systematically important.

This collection of essays brings together scholars from various disciplinary backgrounds, based on three continents, with different theoretical and methodological interests but all active on the topic of complex systems as applied to international relations. They investigate how complex systems have been and can be applied in practice and what differences it makes for the study of international affairs. Two important threads link all the contributions: (i) To which extent is this approach promising to understand global governance dynamics? (ii) How can this be implemented in practice?

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While policymakers often make bold claims on the positive impact of intellectual property (IP) rights on both developed and developing country economies, the empirical literature is more ambiguous. IP rights have both incentive and inhibitory effects that are difficult to isolate in the abstract and dependent on economic context. To unravel these contradictory effects, this article introduces an index that evaluates the strength of IP protection in 124 developing countries for the years 1995 to 2011. We illustrate the value of this index to economics study and show evidence that is consistent with IP leading to increased growth. Our results are further consistent with two causal pathways highlighted in the literature: that IP leads to greater levels of technology transfer and increased domestic inventive activity. Yet, other aspects of our study fit uneasily with this simple story. We find, for example, evidence suggesting that increased levels of growth lead to greater levels of IP protection, contradictory evidence in the literature linking IP with growth, a lack of evidence that increased levels of IP protection lead to actual use of the IP system and problems with what IP indexes measure. Because of this, we suggest another – and so far undertheorized – explanation of the links between IP and growth: that IP may have few direct effects on growth and that any causality is due to belief rather than actual deployment of IP.

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In May 2011, the PROTECT Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) was introduced to the United States Senate boasting 31 sponsors from both the Democratic and Republican Party. By January 2012 PIPA, along with counterpart in the House of Representatives known as
the Stop Online Piracy Act was indefinitely shelved. Many have attributed this dramatic shift to the widespread backlash against the bills from online activists. The case thus suggests that the Internet has emerged as a powerful tool in allowing ordinary citizens to displace the entrenched power of special interests groups. However, given the role of activists and their rhetorical framing strategies in the defeat of the bills, the case also has theoretical implications for historical institutionalism. Namely, how can historical institutionalism, which favours institutions over agency, especially when explaining continuity, account for this? Can historical institutionalism account for agency, institutions, continuity and change in a unified way? This article responds in two ways. First, it argues that internet companies, not activists, were crucial in explaining the defeat of the bills. Second, it proposes a unified historical institutionalist approach to research, capable of explaining agency within institutions in institutional continuity and change.

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Greening projects lead by civic actors at the urban scale spur transformation through example and through gradual adjustment of processes. Questions remain on how such projects are put into action and on what make them work. How do civic experiments reflect the ongoing change in urban governance and practices? We focus on a qualitative study of two greening initiatives lead by civic groups in Quebec City (Quebec, Canada). The case studies are analysed through the lens of theories that approach civic action and climate experiments as new modes of urban governance. We conclude that civil society groups have the capacity to intervene directly on the urban environment in order to enhance its quality. Findings reveal that informal greening initiatives contribute to a civic narrative in favour of adaptation to climate change at the local scale.

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The regulatory contribution that Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) make to global climate governance is assessed through an analysis of climate-related provisions found in 688 PTAs signed between 1947 and 2016. Provisions are analyzed along four dimensions: innovation, legalization, replication, and distribution. Innovative climate provisions are found in several PTAs that are in some cases more specific and enforceable than the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. Nonetheless, these climate provisions offer limited progress because they remain weakly ‘legalized’, fail to replicate broadly in the global trade system, and were not adopted by the largest greenhouse gas emitters. Despite the inclusion of innovative climate provisions in a number of PTAs, their poor design and weak replication position them as some of the weakest environmental provisions within PTAs.

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The United States (US) and the European Union (EU) include several environmental clauses in their respective preferential trade agreements (PTAs). Building on an exhaustive and fine-grained dataset of PTAs environmental clauses, this article makes two contributions. First, it show that the US and the EU have initially favored different approaches to environmental protection in their PTAs. US concerns over regulatory sovereignty and level playing field have conducted to a legalistic and adversarial approach, while EU concerns for policy coherence have led to a more procedural and cooperative approach. Second, this article provides evidence that European and American trade negotiators have gradually converged on a shared set of environmental norms. Although the US and the EU initially pursued different objectives, they learned from each other and drew similar lessons. As a result, recent American agreements have become more European-like, and European agreements have become more Americanized. This article concludes that US and EU approaches, far from being incompatible, can usefully be combined and reinforce each other.

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In the 1990s, a discourse emerged within global environmental change research underlining the need to go beyond previously held boundaries between science and society. While not entirely new, this discourse has however reached the highest levels of scientific cooperation embodied among others in the Future Earth (FE) platform and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Using the concept of (anti)-boundary work developed in Science and Technology Studies (STS), we trace shifts in discourses about the boundaries between social and natural disciplines; between scientists and societal actors; and finally, between the definition of problems and the provision of solutions. We do so analyzing the emergence of global sustainability and solution-oriented science in the discourses of scientific and political actors involved in FE and the IPCC. We conclude with a discussion of challenges connected to the implementation of solution-oriented research and assessment. This article is part of a special issue on solution-oriented GEAs.

Highlights

• Solution-oriented research and assessment are transforming the role of science in society.

• It challenges boundaries between social and natural disciplines; experts and social actors; problems and solutions.

• Illustrations of anti-boundary discourses are given in Future Earth and IPCC.

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This article synthesizes the results of two analyses, one at a macro and the second at the micro level, to shed new light on the process of international socialization. More particularly, the first analysis examines the seeming adoption of intellectual property norms at the state-level while the second looks at the internalization of similar norms at the individual decision-maker level. Both pay special attention to foreign education and capacity building courses as carriers of US norms to developing countries. By triangulating the results of these analyses, we gain a more precise picture of international socialization processes than analyses centered at only one level. It becomes possible to distinguish between socialization types (acculturation or persuasion) and idea types (causal or normative beliefs).

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Regime complexes are arrays of institutions with partially overlapping mandates and memberships. As tensions frequently arise among these institutions, there is a growing interest geared to finding strategies to reduce them. Insights from regime theory, science and technology studies, and social network analysis support the claim that “boundary organizations” – a type of organization until now overlooked in International Relations – can reduce tensions within regime complexes by generating credible, legitimate and salient knowledge, provided that their internal networks balance multiple knowledge dimensions. Building on this argument, this article offers an ex ante assessment of the recently created International Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). Results from our network analysis of IPBES point to clear improvements compared with similar organizations, although major deficiencies remain. The contribution of this article is threefold. Methodologically, it introduces new conceptual and technical tools to assess the “social representativeness” of international organizations. Theoretically, it supports the claim that international organizations are penetrated by transnational networks and, consequently, that the proliferation of institutions tends to reproduce structural imbalances. Normatively, it argues that a revision of nomination processes could improve the ability of boundary organizations to generate salient, credible and legitimate knowledge.

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The first section of this introduction arranges the four theoretical approaches and methods presented in the special issues – namely interpretative constructivism, post-structuralism, discursive institutionalism (DI) and critical discourse analysis (CDA) – along two dimensions: a) the role of discourse in the constitution of the world, depending on whether approaches perceive social structure as being constitutive of or constituted by discourse; and b) interpretation of the weight of material and ideational elements in discourses. This model helps us make sense of the profound theoretical diversity that characterises analytical approaches to International Relations discourse. The second section tackles the question of ‘who does the speaking.’ It identifies the different voices that converge in the EU's international choir and problematises the discursive environment that forges international discourses through the theoretical lenses of selected approaches. In the last section, the contributions to this special issue are presented

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This introduction to the special section on European liberal discourses discusses three themescovered by all contributions: (i) the co-existence of several market liberal discourses in the European public sphere; (ii) interactions among these various discourses; (iii) and discursive changes resulting from these interactions.

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This forum presents innovative concepts and insights emanating from Global Environmental Governance (GEG) that could be enlightening for IR in general. It brings together scholars from various disciplines, based on three continents, with different theoretical and methodological orientation, but all active in the subfield of GEG. Together, they review recent conceptual innovations from GEG, hypothesize on the reasons why GEG played a pioneer role for them, and assess their external validity for other IR subfields. They successively discuss (1) law making techniques, (2) institutional interactions, (3) scaling and vertical linkages, (4 )private authority, (5) boundary organizations at the interface of science and politics, (6) openness and disclosure, (7) and regime effectiveness.

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This article looks at regime complexes from a state policymaking perspective. It develops a theoretical model in which regime complexes become denser over time while governmental policymaking becomes more coherent. Under this model, interactions between global regime complexes and national policymaking are twofold. On the one hand, greater policy coherence generates negotiated mandates asking for regime connections and complex density. On the other hand, regime-complex density creates more cohesive audiences, which increase incentives for national policy coherence. This coadjustments model brings states into the discussion of institutional interactions and critically questions the desirability and feasibility of recent calls for joined-up government and whole-of-government approaches. KEYWORDS: regime, complexity, policy coherency, substantive coherence, procedural coherence, political audience, life cycle.

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It is a vast understatement to say that the problem of access to medicines in developing countries is complex. Access is limited by a range of factors including inability to pay, a lack of infrastructure, and corruption in some countries. Surrounding and exacerbating these structural and technological problems is the layer of legal rights created by patents and their licensing that complicate and render more expensive the preparation and delivery of needed medicines, particularly those that need to be adapted to the social, health and cultural environment of developing countries. This article provides a survey of innovative strategies that aim at maximizing the potential of patents to facilitate the development and delivery of medicines against diseases, the burden of which falls principally on developing country populations. To understand the context in which these strategies are being proposed and implemented, the article reviews the battles over access to medicines beginning in the late 1980s. It then surveys some of the principal suggestions put forward to better direct innovation systems in addressing the critical health needs of the world’s majority including advance market commitments, patent buy-outs, prize funds, public–private partnerships and patent pools.

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Why some developing countries adopt US-style IP rules that go beyond those required by the TRIPs agreement.? With this paper, we contribute to the disentanglement of this puzzling situation in two manners. First, we explore one often neglected reason for the adoption of US-style rules, i.e. the socialization of decision-makers in the adopting country through interaction with experts in US IP law. Second, we rely on a more systematic conceptualization and measurement of variables than has been adopted in many previous studies. Overall, we bring forward strong quantitative evidence that socialization is a significant force in the export and import of IP rules.

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This article focuses on the intersection of health and one of the main drivers of the global economy, intellectual property. It is widely recognized that IP is an inter-sectoral issue with linkages to many other important public policy areas, such as health, agriculture, the environment, and education. In inter-sectoral issues such as IP, there is discussion on the need for governments around the world to achieve policy coherence not only across their various departments, but also between their domestic and international positions in important fora. To appreciate better the complexity of achieving policy coherence, this article first gives a multidisciplinary view of policy coherence and then provides the Canadian context for the debate. Next, it describes three examples at the border of public health and intellectual property in Canada and internationally: (1) health innovation and access to medicines in developing countries; (2) traditional knowledge (medicinal); and (3) pandemic influenza preparedness. Finally, the article discuses international experiences with a variety of mechanisms for achieving policy coherence in IP and health, including the practice of advisory groups, multi-stakeholder dialogue, inter-departmental coordination mechanisms, broad delegations for international meetings, and white papers. From this review, a few observations can be made. First, effective coordination requires two main factors: leadership and a permanent institution that can build trust. While inter-ministerial coordination is a widely used process for policy coherence, it is not always successful. Indeed, the lack of leadership in inter-ministerial coordination has strongly constrained policy coherence.

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The rapid emergence of transnational networks in world politics calls for an analysis of their power dynamics. By combining the advocacy network literature and the two-level game theory in an innovative manner, this paper provides a theoretical conceptualization of the interplay between intra- and inter-network interactions. It argues that the strength of networks as agent springs from their force as a structure. A network win-set is determined by its internal games, thereby affecting both its bargaining power and its chance to reach a consensual agreement with other networks. The issue of access to medicines is used as a factual background to illustrate how the flow of influence within networks affects influence among networks.

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Canada was the first country to implement the WTO Decision of August 30, 2003, authorizing the export of generic drugs manufactured under a compulsory license to developing countries in response to a proposal brought forward by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that now claim dissatisfaction with the Canadian legislation. This empirical case study examines what success means for an NGO campaign. It contrasts interviews, documents, media coverage, and public statements of stakeholders, using quantitative and qualitative analyses. It concludes the NGO network experienced a shift from a mobilizer of public sentiment at the international level to a policy adviser at the domestic level. This shift crystallized a change in leadership toward local, rather than transnational NGOs, and a shift in strategy from being radical to more reformist. While this process of institutionalizing the outcomes of international campaigns is necessary for the implementation of international norms into domestic policy, it required NGOs to compromise their ideal positions, producing some objective successes in legislative reform but subjective dissatisfaction of the NGOs in the failure of Canada’s domestic regime to enhance access to medicines on the ground in developing countries.

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Due to scientific uncertainties and political problems, policymakers rely on socially constructed norms when drafting what they hope to be an efficient patent system. At the international level, ethical discourse is often used by stakeholders to promote their favoured norms and thus causing a “rhetorical war” in the international patent regime. This article introduces the evolution of key discourses in the history of the international patent regime, especially in regard to the biodiversity and the access to medicines debates. It leads to concluding remarks on the effectiveness of some discourses over others in framing international patent debates.

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Access to medicine is at the forefront of multilateral debates surrounding the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs). This paper argues that bilateralism allows the United States to circumvent these debates and to set standards that serve and protect the pharmaceutical industry. In addition to the TRIPs requirements, recentlyconcluded US Free Trade Agreements (FTA) prescribe the patentability of new uses of known medicines, strengthen the protection of undisclosed data, extend the term of protection to compensate administrative procedures, prohibit some exceptions to the conferred rights, define circumstances for compulsory licensing, proscribe the doctrine of international exhaustion, and restrict the grounds for revocation. Although these “TRIPs-plus provisions” are not incompatible with the Doha Declaration on Public Health, they are additional barriers for the entry of generic medicines.

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The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) of the World Trade Organization (WTO) is no longer the «new frontier» of theinternational patent regime. Indeed, the United States and other developed countriesnegotiate bilateral «TRIPs-plus» treaties with developing countries. Arguably,bilateralism allows to bypass the dead-end debates at the TRIPs Council and to build alliances for upcoming multilateral negotiations at the World Intellectual PropertyOrganization. This article compares patentability provisions of the recently-concluded U.S. Free Trade Agreements with the TRIPs Agreement. Although most of the provisions of the TRIPs Agreement are integrated in bilateraltreaties, we identify five significant changes: 1) bilateral treaties provide a 12 months grace period to inventors; 2) the industrial application requirement isdefined has a «specific, substantial, and credible utility»; 3) a ceiling to thedisclosure requirement is introduced; 4) the plant protection regime is reinforced; 5) the non-discrimination rule is omitted.Our comparative analysis shows that bilateralism allows the US to consolidateexisting multilateral treaties, such as the TRIPs Agreement and the UPOV Conven-tion, and to fortify its negotiating position for future multilateral treaties, such as theWIPO Substantive Patent Law Treaty. The new features of bilateral treaties indicatethat the international patent regime is still oriented through the US patent law model.

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La Convention sur la diversité biologique vise, entre autres, à favoriser le partage des avantages découlant de l’utilisation des ressources génétiques. L’application du principe de partage des avantages doit notamment contribuer à la conservation de la biodiversité. Toutefois, l’analyse de quelques contrats de bioprospection permet de croire que le partage des avantages, tel que mise en oeuvre jusqu’à présent, ne contribue généralement pas à l’atteinte de cet objectif. En effet, les avantages monétaires et technologiques qui sont partagés ne sont que rarement réinvestis dans la conservation de la biodiversité. Ils sont davantage utilisés pour le développement économique local, pour mousser les relations publiques des utilisateurs ou pour mieux intégrer les fournisseurs aux industries biotechnologiques. Afin d’améliorer la portée environnementale du partage des avantages, il faudrait influencer les modalités négociées entre les fournisseurs et les utilisateurs. Les Lignes Directrices de Bonn sur le partage des avantages représentent un premier pas en ce sens.

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The political science literature often assumes that policymakers rationally design governance systems according to the underlying problem structures they aim to address. This chapter argues that the problem structures of pandemics and environmental crises are similar on several accounts. Yet their governance systems differ in significant ways. The chapter explains this incongruity by pointing to systemic perceptions biases and structural power differentials. Addressing these biases and establishing new linkages could improve the global governance of both issue areas

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Who regulates the global economy? This fundamental question has been puzzling many authors for quite some time now. As national and international markets get more integrated than ever, regulators all around the world are under increasing pressure to harmonize their regulations. The choice of the regulations around which they will is however not without consequences as it can have important distributive effects. The literature thus far has in the main analyzed this question by looking at the role of public actors. While recent work on the “Brussels’ effect” have highlighted that private actors can play a role in the export of European rules, the main explanatory variables of this approach remain attributes of the European Union (i.e. market size and regulatory capacity). As such, it does not really explain when and why private actors actually decide to actively promote rules created in a foreign jurisdiction. In this chapter, I argue that adopting a network approach can help fill this gap by giving more attention to the interactions between private actors. Looking at the case of data protection, I more precisely maintain that private regulatory networks involving both European and non-European private associations helped the EU export its rules across the Atlantic. While supportive of a functionalist extension explanation of how rules travel, I show that the EU also acted as a ‘classical foreign policy’ actor when it used its legal authority to shape the structure of the private regulatory network here at play.

The international community has acknowledged that international trade can be an effective means of helping to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Traditionally, preferential trade agreements (PTAs)  ere designed to promote trade flows. PTAs have become more comprehensive and now also cover non-economic policy areas, such as the environment. This chapter examines whether the inclusion of environmental provisions in PTAs changes the observed overall positive contribution that PTAs make to economic outcomes and thereby to the economic objectives of the SDGs. Specifically, we ask whether the inclusion of environmental provisions in PTAs reduces export flows between PTA partner countries. Using a novel data set on environmental provisions in PTAs, we estimate gravity type panel regressions. We find that membership in PTAs including more environmental provisions is associated with less trade among trade partners compared to PTAs that include less or no environmental provisions. This negative effect of environmental provisions is fully driven by the negative effect on South-North trade flows, i.e. exports from developing to high-income countries.

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Comparativists have long demonstrated that corporations are ‘produced’ through a process of national institutional embedding. However, the globalisation of markets is said to be creating global corporations that no longer have allegiance to their home states. They become as global in their outlook as their interests, and take on an increasingly autonomous existence that is both institutionally as well as physically disembedded from their home states.  In fact, they are seen as proactively attacking national institutional variations.  A key reason for this is that most major industry sectors are oligopolistic. Therefore, global corporations have come to control, rather than compete in, global as well as national markets. Freed from the both the ‘shackles’ of market competition and their home states’ institutions, the result produced is said to be a convergence on neoliberal policies, and a ‘race to the bottom’ as states compete to bid down social and environmental protections to serve the interests of highly mobile capital. The impacts are said to be felt universally, though most acutely in the case of institutionally weaker developing states.

Are the interests of global corporations as homogeneous as often claimed, and is the result the neoliberalization of developing states’ political economies? To consider these questions we look at the case of investment in South Africa by Ford and Volkswagen, two of the world’s major automotive corporations. Using insights from the comparative capitalism literature, an analysis of South Africa’s political economy, and a content analysis of these corporations’ reporting, we demonstrate that rather than abandoning the management-labor relations of their home states, these corporations have instead sought to retain them. In fact, they have attempted to reproduce their home states’ institutions in their South African operations. From a corporate perspective, their manufacturing operations in South Africa thus represent a case of proactive rather than passive institutional path dependence. From a South African perspective, the management-labor relations they have sought to establish reflect a process of attempted neo-colonisation, and resistance to it, as much as globalisation. The result is that as global corporations become physically disembedded from their home states when they invest and operate abroad, it does not necessarily follow that they become institutionally disembedded as well. Nor does it follow that the states in which they invest ‘surrender’ their institutional differences. As such, foreign investment is a medium for institutional competition between states, rather than annihilation. 

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Ce chapitre porte sur les liens entre l’analyse de la politique étrangère (APÉ) et les théories des relations internationales (RI). À travers une synthèse historique des moments forts qui ont animé ces champs d’études, ce chapitre fait la démonstration que si l’APÉ et les RI ont évolué en vase clos pendant quelques décennies, elles se sont considérablement rapprochées au cours des dernières années pour devenir des vases communiquants. Alors que la frontière entre ce qui est interne et externe à l’État est remise en question, il en va de même pour celle qui sépare l’APÉ des RI. Même si ces champs d’études ont longtemps entretenu une relation complexe due à l’absence de consensus sur leur démarcation, les échanges entre eux sont maintenant plus fructueux que jamais. C’est en combinant les théories de l’APÉ et celles des RI dans un bricolage théorique original que les chercheurs contemporains peuvent s’attaquer de la façon la plus fructueuse possible aux questions de notre époque.

La doctrine énoncée par Paul Gérin-Lajoie en avril 1965 n’a pas vocation à s’étendre au commerce international ni à la protection des investissements. En effet, la seule lecture de la Loi constitutionnelle de 1867 suffit pour convaincre qu’il est difficile de prétendre que ces deux domaines d’activité relèvent des compétences internes ou externes des provinces canadiennes. Pourtant, force est de constater que l’expansion qu’a connue l’activité internationale du Québec ces cinquante dernières années, conjuguée à l’élargissement des thèmes couverts par les accords d’intégration économique, a amené le Québec à jouer un rôle significatif dans les arènes économiques et commerciales internationales. Par le pouvoir de mise en œuvre du contenu des accords internationaux qui découle des compétences législatives qui lui appartiennent, le Québec a pu être impliqué à divers titres dans la négociation d’importants accords de partenariat économique tel que l’Accord économique et commercial global (AECG) signé entre le Canada et l’Union européenne. Le Québec fut aussi associé de près au règlement d’importants différends commerciaux auxquels le Canada était partie devant l’Organe de règlement des différends de l’Organisation mondiale du commerce ou devant des instances créées par l’ALENA. De la même façon, il fut consulté au premier chef dans le règlement de plaintes portées par des investisseurs étrangers dans le cadre d’arbitrages investisseur-État. L’activité internationale du Québec en matières économique et commerciale s’est aussi manifestée par la signature d’ententes intergouvernementales en matière de marchés publics ou pour la création d’un marché nord-américain du carbone. Le Québec a pu, au fil du temps, développer puis augmenter son influence sur l’élaboration et l’application des accords de commerce. Il est à souhaiter que les négociations du Partenariat transpacifique, pendant lesquelles les provinces canadiennes ont été largement reléguées aux coulisses, ne sont pas annonciatrices d’un recul à cet égard.

The doctrine Paul Gérin-Lajoie launched in April 1965 is not intended to extend to international trade nor to the protection of investments. Indeed, the reading of the 1867 Constitutional Act convinces its readers that it is difficult to claim that these two fields fall under the internal or external jurisdiction of the Canadian provinces. However, it must be recognized that the expansion of Quebec’s international activity during the past 50 years, combined with the broadening of the themes covered by economic integration agreements, have brought Quebec to play a significant role within the international economic and commercial arenas. Through its implementation powers for the contents of international agreements, derived from the legislative jurisdiction it holds, Quebec has been involved in numerous manners in the negotiation of important economic partnership agreements, such as theComprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) signed between Canada and the European Union. Quebec was also closely involved in the resolution of important commercial disputes to which Canada was a party before the Dispute Settlement Body of the World Trade Organization or before bodies created under NAFTA. Similarly, the province was consulted for the resolution of complaints brought by foreign investors in the framework of investor-state arbitrations. Quebec’s international activity in economic and commercial matters has also manifested itself through the signature of intergovernmental agreements on public markets or the creation of a North American carbon market. Quebec has progressively developed and increased its influence on the elaboration and implementation of commercial agreements. Hopefully, the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, during which Canadian provinces were largely relegated to the sidelines, do not herald a setback in this respect.

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Two states can have several bilateral agreements between them, some legally binding and others not. Is there a discernible pattern to how states structure the chronological sequence of binding and non-binding agreements governing a specific issue area? For example, do states prioritize a binding treaty to establish the foundation of their cooperation and later iron out details in non-binding instruments? Or do they first experiment with a low-commitment memorandum of understanding before eventually settling on a more permanent treaty? This paper explores these questions using the example of space governance, which is characterized by a high number of bilateral agreements. Examining space agreements between 287 state dyads, it finds evidence that a combination of power asymmetry and trust levels shapes the sequence of binding and non-binding agreements. These findings are of particular relevance to the literature on informal governance, regime complexes and space politics.

In 2019, Nautilus Mineral hoped to become world’s first company to mine the deep seabed in the waters off Papua New Guinea. A few months later, the company filed for bankruptcy after the government of Papua New Guinea decided on a moratorium on deep-sea mining, mainly out of environmental concerns. Yet, the government did not entirely close the door to future mining activities: the idea behind the moratorium was to ask for more guarantees regarding sustainability. In the last few years, several studies have indeed raised concerns over the consequences of deep-sea mining on marine biodiversity and the environment in general - and how complex it may be to anticipate them. As any unprecedented human activity, deep-sea mining comes with a set of new challenges that need to be considered and anticipated, especially now as sovereign states are negotiating to establish rules guiding deep-sea mining in international waters. These rules are likely to have repercussions for Arctic resources present in the Central Arctic Ocean, including in continental shelves. The international negotiations are pitting different perspectives on sustainable development and sustainability against one another.

This communication analyses if the discourses around sustainability at these negotiations mark a break with previous sustainability discourses. Then, we focus on Arctic states to inquire if they share similar narratives and conceptions of sustainability in these negotiations. These positions will be tied in with the positions of non-Arctic states to better understand how Arctic conceptions of deep-sea mining may fit with global developments.

Two states can have several bilateral agreements between them, some legally binding and others not. Is there a discernible pattern to how states structure the chronological sequence of binding and non-binding agreements governing a specific issue area? For example, do states prioritize a binding treaty to establish the foundation of their cooperation and later iron out details in non-binding instruments? Or do they first experiment with a low-commitment memorandum of understanding before eventually settling on a more permanent treaty? This paper explores these questions using the example of space governance, which is characterized by a high number of bilateral agreements. Examining space agreements between 287 state dyads, it finds evidence that a combination of power asymmetry and trust levels shapes the sequence of binding and non-binding agreements. These findings are of particular relevance to the literature on informal governance, regime complexes and space politics.

Rules about assigning continental shelves to coastal states are detailed in the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The process is one rooted in science diplomacy where science can at times support diplomatic processes while at others diplomatic activities can facilitate scientific collaboration: both roles can be observed when it comes to continental shelves. While coastal states can submit scientific evidence to the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) and in turn the CLCS issues recommendations, coastal states can also share their geological evidence and negotiate together if they have competing claims. Some states have already employed this latter possibility to resolve disputes: the agreement signed between Canada and Denmark in 2022 is a good example of such avenue. This communication will focus on these cases to understand the commonalities that these successful cases share. Then, we will explore if such possibility can be used to resolve competing claims on the continental shelf present in the Central Arctic Ocean.

How do states’ positions across multiple and interconnected economic networks affect their power? Globalization was not the great equalizer that some either hoped or argued it would be. Instead of becoming flat, the world is in many ways more asymmetrical than ever. As highlighted by the recent literature on weaponized interdependence (WI), many economic activities have indeed become concentrated in a few geographical hubs, creating bottlenecks and chokepoints that some states can use for coercive purposes. To understand how states gain, wield, and maintain power, WI argues we need to consider the topology of global economic networks, along with domestic institutional capacity. Yet, most research in this emerging literature has examined case studies of examples where WI has been used, with support from qualitative data to establish asymmetry. The effect of the topology of global networks on states’ capacity to weaponize economic hubs remains open to debate. In this paper, we start answering this question by looking at how centralities across multiple networks shape state power. We use network methodology to map the semiconductor supply chain and showcase that more than representing one network, it represents multiple interconnected networks. We then highlight how states’ centrality vary across these networks and how it shapes their respective capacities to coerce others. In so doing the paper makes three contributions. First it demonstrates how network analysis can detect potential (ab)uses of WI, enabling analysist to identify both opportunities and vulnerabilities. Second the paper highlights how ‘layers’ of multiple networks interacting with each other help to determine the ability of states to use WI and how centrality in some networks can provide greater influence than others. Last it contributes to other literature which recently used network analysis to analyse structural power on the global stage.

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In this essay, I advocate for the use of an integrated approach to study networks as both structures and actors. The study of networks has gained a lot of interest in global environmental governance studies and related fields. Witnessing transnational processes that might influence world politics, scholars have looked at a variety of phenomena, among which epistemic communities, transnational advocacy networks or public-private partnerships (Bouteligier 2013, Andonova et al. 2009, Keck and Sikkink 1998, Haas 1992, 1990). Recently, they have also applied the network lens to global environmental governance. However, there is still room for investigation. Indeed, scholars of global environmental governance have often thought of networks as structures (e.g. Bansard et al. 2016, Giest and Howlett 2013) or as actors (Hakelberg 2014, Andonova et al. 2009). Few studies have analysed them as both. How can an integrated perspective of networks as structures and actors improve our understanding of the influence of networks in earth system governance?

To answer this question, the example of Transnational Municipal Networks (TMNs) engaged in climate action proves interesting. As structures, TMNs influence the behaviour of their city members, guiding them toward climate action and resilience. Some cities find themselves in better positions than others in the network and become more powerful. As actors, TMNs develop strategies to gain weight in the system of global climate governance. I elaborate on the case of 100 Resilient Cities (100RC), a TMN founded in 2013 by The Rockefeller Foundation to work on urban resilience. In five years, 100RC has managed to become a prominent actor of the system. Inside its network of cities, it has oriented the behaviour of its members towards the design and implementation of resilience projects and the use of specific governance tools. Outside of it, it has partnered with major TMNs and non-TMN actors and become part of global initiatives dealing with climate action. To understand its rise, we must consider both the capacity of 100RC to connect to specific external actors and its internal structure of cities.

This essay thus joins the social sciences agent-structure debate by focusing on the integrated perspective of networks. Furthermore, it seeks to bring new insights on TMNs, a rather recent phenomenon whose influence we are still trying to measure. Finally, as it focuses on one entity of global climate governance, it hopes to offer an innovative contribution to questions dealing with agency and architectures of earth system governance.

Despite the global call for action, international actors have seemed unable to provide effective solutions to the ‘wicked problem’ of climate change. Overall, the global climate
governance system initiated at the end of the 1980s has hardly evolved and is often described as locked. Recently, however, distinct actors have started to offer new answers to the governing of climate. Among them, Transnational Municipal Networks (TMNs) claim that ‘while nations talk, cities act’ and promote the role of local actors at the global level. Although their direct effect on mitigation has been questioned, I argue that TMNs may have an indirect effect on the system through the creation of governance tools of new generation. This paper thus tackles the general question of how a system may change.
In that sense, I use a theoretical framework based on complexity approaches and network theory that gives an understanding of the emergence and diffusion of innovation. I
then conduct a case study of 100 Resilient Cities, a recent TMN that has rapidly become a central actor within the network of TMNs. Finally, I present some prospects of the emergence of these actors that lack legal authority and financial resources in global climate governance.

Over the last decades, the interest in networks in International Relations has dramatically increased. Witnessing a variety of transnational processes in world politics, scholars have studied epistemic communities, transnational advocacy networks or intergovernmental policy networks, among others. Recently, they have also applied the network lens to global climate governance, looking at different entities as structures or as actors. However, few studies have analysed them as both. This paper argues that networks can be seen simultaneously as constraining structures and purposeful and influential agents. In that sense, the case of Transnational Municipal Networks (TMNs) engaged in climate action proves interesting. As structures, TMNs successfully connect cities together and with other actors in complex arrangements where power logics are at play. As actors, they also develop strategies to reach and influence distinct international and transnational actors. The example of 100 Resilient Cities shows these processes result from well-thought strategies aimed at influencing global climate governance. It also underlines how the network as a whole affects its members which in turn shape it through their decisions and actions. Entering the agent-structure debate in an innovative way, this paper overall seeks to engage in a fruitful reflection on networks in IR.

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Lors de cette table ronde intitulée "COP23: Regards Croisés sur les négociations climatiques2 organisée par l'Institut Hydro-Québec en Environnement, Développement et Société, j'ai évoqué le rôle des villes dans la gouvernance climatique mondiale. Plus spécifiquement, j'ai évoqué la présence et les objectifs des réseaux municipaux transnationaux aux Conférences des Parties organisées par la Convention-Cadre des Nations Unies sur les Changements Climatiques. J'ai aussi mis en avant le rôle des autres acteurs non-étatiques lors de ces négociations et le déroulement de ces dernières dans ses espaces officiels et non-officiels. 

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While the expanding network of preferential trade agreements has already been well documented, we still lack a convincing explanation for the driving forces fueling the diffusion of specific provisions. This paper contributes to the growing literature on the design and diffusion of international treaties but introduces two key innovations: Firstly, our level of analysis is the provision-level rather than the agreement- or dyad-level. Secondly, we are not just investigating how provisions diffuse but also what provisions are more likely to diffuse than others. Conducting empirical analysis of count data, we obtain robust results indicating that provisions introduced by intercontinental agreements diffuse more often. Provisions introduced by environmentally credible countries seem to be more successful than provisions introduced by economically powerful countries. We also find evidence that provisions that safeguard countries’ policy space diffuse more successfully than others. Our findings contribute to the diffusion literature by substantiating the view that learning plays a key role as mechanism for the diffusion of environmental provisions in preferential trade agreements.

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Paper presented at the Stockholm Conference on Organizing Markets, SCORE, Stockholm School of Economics. 

This paper reviews the literature on the political economy of regulation, and argues that increased attention to the roles of professions and time can bring greater analytical strength to the study of innovation. In particular, this paper is interested in the impact of disruptive innovations on regulatory capacity and process. This reverses the causal arrow generally assumed in the literature that deals with how regulation can support or foster innovation. The first part of the article reviews the literature on regulation, identifies some of its assumptions and clarifies how it deals with the concept of innovation. The second part of the article explains what is meant by disruptive innovations and how the current literature is ill equipped to investigate their regulatory impact. The third and final part of the article proposes a theoretical framework that is suited to redress some of the shortcomings identified by drawing on the ideas of linked ecologies and time horizons.

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• No fewer than 107 preferential trade agreements (PTAs) include provisions on copyright protection.
• Some PTAs refer to multilateral copyright agreements or replicate their requirements, but an increasing share of them also provide obligations that go beyond multilateral requirements.
• The most active proponents of copyright provisions in PTAs are the United States, the European Union and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).
• There is a strong correlation between the propensity to include copyright provisions in PTAs and a country’s interest in copyright protection.

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Bilateral and regional trade deals frequently include patent provisions that go beyond the minimum requirement of the multilateral Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs). They extend the scope of patentability and provide additional rights to patent holders. This paper systematically maps these “TRIPs-plus” agreements. Exploiting a new dataset, 52 TRIPs-plus agreements are found to have been concluded between 1990 and 2017. The major proponents of these TRIPs-plus agreements on patents are the United States, followed by the European Union and the European Free Trade Association. Other technology-rich countries, such as Japan and Korea, have surprisingly few TRIPs-plus provisions on patent protection in their trade agreements. Few South-South trade agreements include TRIPs-plus provisions, but some include TRIPs-extra provisions on genetic resources and traditional knowledge. Having a clear picture of these TRIPs-plus agreements is essential as they can have important social and economic consequences, including for the development of innovations and access to technologies.

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This briefing paper discusses how provisions on environmental cooperation in trade agreements can contribute to better environmental outcomes. It is frequently assumed that the more enforceable environmental commitments are, the more likely governments are to take action to protect the environment. This assumption leads several experts to argue in favour of strong sanction-based mechanisms of dispute settlement in order to ensure the implementation of trade agreements’ environmental provisions. Nevertheless, there is evidence to suggest that softer provisions can result in increased environmental cooperation, which can in turn favour domestic environmental protection. To shed light on this debate, this paper examines the design and the implementation of cooperative environmental provisions of trade agreements. 

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Trade agreements contain an increasing number of environmental provisions. Some of these provisions now relate to precise environmental issues, such as biodiversity or hazardous waste management. Certain trade agreements even devote entire chapters to environmental protection. However, the rate of innovative environmental clauses per agreement has declined over the years. This paper draws attention to some of the lesser-known provisions encountered in five agreements or fewer. These “legal one-hit wonders” do not often reach the billboard, despite their uniqueness and creativity. The objective of this paper is to put the spotlight on them in the hope of contributing to the diffusion of best practices, providing negotiators with ideas to emulate in future trade agreements. It also reveals some of the weak spots in the interplay between trade and environment.

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A growing number of trade agreements include provisions related to access to genetic resources and the sharing of the benefits that arise out of their utilization. This paper  maps the distribution and the diversity of these provisions. It identifies a great variety of provisions regarding sovereignty over genetic resources, the protection of traditional knowledge, prior informed consent, the disclosure of origin in patent applications and conditions for bioprospecting activities. It also finds that some recent trade agreements provide specific measures designed to facilitate the implementation of access and benefit-sharing (ABS) provisions, including measures related to technical assistance, transparency and dispute settlements. Thus, it appears that trade negotiations can become vectors for the implementation of ABS obligations stemming from the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization. The integration of ABS commitments into trade agreements, however, varies greatly, depending on the countries involved. While Latin American countries have played a pioneering role, Canada and the United States still lag behind. The most exemplary ABS standards are not yet widely used, perhaps because they remain little known. These provisions deserve greater attention and should be integrated more widely into international trade agreements. 

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L’analyse détaillée de 660 accords commerciaux conclus depuis 19471 permet de relever des dispositions particulièrement novatrices sur une série d’enjeux environnementaux. La question plus spécifique des changements climatiques, en revanche, apparaît encore sous-développée. Cet Issue Brief présente la portée et les limites de l’action européenne sur le climat dans les négociations commerciales.

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This paper examines an overlooked yet critical dimension of global IP governance: where do IP ideas and beliefs originate and how are they transmitted? This is the first empirical study that seeks to answer these questions presenting the findings of a survey completed by more than 1600 IP professionals, and drawing some policyrelevant implications. In this regard, the study shows that IP debates, often pictured as opposing those holding anti-IP views in the South to those supporting pro-IP maximalist views in the North, are in reality more complex and nuanced. IP professionals appear loosely organized in transnational networks where professional affiliation is more important in shaping views on IP than country of birth. The study also emphasizes the important role of higher education and capacity building in the transmission of IP ideas and beliefs. It finds that university education in a developed country is more likely to result in stronger support for a more balanced approach to IP protection and it suggests that capacity building programs might be more effective if they are supported by empirical evidence.

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Cette recherche étudie l’allocation des prêts de la Banque mondiale à l’aide de données de panel couvrant 115 États au maximum et trois périodes : guerre froide (1973-1990), post-guerre froide (1991-2000) et post-11 septembre (2001-2013). Parmi nos découvertes, nous trouvons que plus un État reçoit un montant élevé de prêts, plus il se rapproche de la politique étrangère des États-Unis. Cependant, peu importe la période, les récipiendaires des prêts de la Banque mondiale sont en moyenne plus près de la politique étrangère de la Russie que de la politique étrangère des États-Unis. Nous soutenons que ces résultats impliquent que les prêts de la Banque sont utilisés pour acheter et récompenser des appuis ou des abstentions aux Nations unies pour quelques résolutions seulement et non pas pour l’ensemble des résolutions votées au cours d’une session.

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Dans cet article, je présente le rôle que peuvent avoir les villes, au travers des réseaux transnationaux de villes en puissance, dans la gouvernance climatique mondiale. J'affirme que, si ces réseaux de villes peuvent apporter au système complexe de gouvernance climatique, ils ne peuvent avoir un impact réel sans l'aide conjointe des Etats.

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Alors que les pays importateurs de technologie auraient intérêt à n’offrir qu’une protection minimale aux brevets et droits d’auteur étrangers, certains reproduisent dans leur droit national les normes les plus élevées des économies les plus avancées. Comment expliquer ce phénomène qui va à l’encontre des prédictions économiques classiques? Cet article passe en revue cinq processus politiques : l’émulation, la compétition, la coercition, la contractualisation et la socialisation. Après avoir comparé leur pouvoir explicatif respectif, il conclut que c’est dans leur interaction particulière que se trouve une clé essentielle d’explication.

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Strengthening intellectual property rights in the Asia Pacific is a priority for both the European Union and the United States. This is for good reason: They together received more than 70 percent of all international revenue for the use of intellectual property worldwide, according to World Bank data. Jean-Frédéric Morin of Université Laval in Québec, Canada, and Madison Cartwright at the University of Sydney in Australia examine the relationship between EU and US regulatory initiatives on Asia-Pacific IPR – and their apparent unnecessary duplication.

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Sur les enjeux du commerce et du climat, les deux politistes Noémie Laurens et Jean-Frédéric Morin invitent, dans une tribune au « Monde », à mieux choisir ses batailles, par exemple, à s’attaquer aux subventions octroyées aux énergies fossiles, plutôt qu’à remettre en cause le CETA.

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 L’ACEUM est aux antipodes de ce que représente Trump.

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La ratification de l’Accord économique et commercial global (AECG ou CETA en anglais) par les députés de l’Assemblée nationale française a été précédée de débats houleux dans l’Hexagone, portés par les interventions fort médiatisées de Nicolas Hulot et de Greta Thunberg. Mais l’AECG omet-il réellement de dûment tenir compte de considérations environnementales, comme les débats entourant ces deux interventions pourraient le laisser croire ?

L’AECG s’illustre dans le palmarès des 10 accords commerciaux présentant la plus grande diversité de dispositions environnementales depuis 1947. Il contient 126 différents types d’engagements et traite donc d’une large variété de sujets liés à l’environnement. Par ailleurs, l’AECG prévoit un nombre considérable de 380 références à l’environnement, ce qui le place à la 13e position des accords abordant le plus fréquemment cette question. L’AECG s’inscrit ainsi dans la tendance globale de multiplication des engagements environnementaux dans les accords de commerce, et l'analyse comparative dans l’historique des accords commerciaux permet difficilement de conclure que l’environnement est insuffisamment pris en considération par le gouvernement canadien actuel lors de la négociation de traités de libre-échange.

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CAMR has failed to live up to its promise and is essentially a nightmare of red tape, political pandering and missed opportunities, putting lives and Canada’s international reputation on the line.

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In recent years, cities have become visible in the realm of global climate governance. While they sometimes talk in their own name, they are often represented by Transnational Municipal Networks (TMNs). TMNs are structures in which cities discuss and exchange information and good practices, and collaborate on a variety of urban issues. They can also be considered actors promoting the interests of cities at the global level. Scholars have looked at the emergence of TMNs, their functions, and their effects. There is some confusion regarding the latter, especially the capacity of TMNs to generate novel practices and the way in which these might emerge. This study focuses on governance instruments as novelties generated by TMNs. Considering the fact that not all TMNs generate novel instruments, it asks: why do some TMNs generate more novel governance instruments than others? To answer this question, this research uses a network and complex system framework, seeing interactions as the main enabling condition for the emergence of novel instruments. It also uses some insights from organisational theories to study TMN age and organisational resources as possible variables explaining the emergence of novelty. This study then conducts an empirical analysis on the interactions and governance tools emerging in a system comprising of 15 TMNs. A social network analysis and cross-case analysis show that the combination of centrality, diversity, and age explain TMN novel instruments. A comparative case study of C40 and 100RC underline that, in the absence of high centrality, diversity, and age scores, the presence of a governance entrepreneur and high organisational resources might also explain the rise of novel governance instruments. This research contributes to studies on the influence of TMNs in environmental and climate governance by showing how novel governance instruments emerge. Accordingly, it answers wider concerns about the need for a diversification of tools in order to govern cities as well as other transnational actors of global climate governance.

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