SHIFTING GROUNDS: SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE ANDINTERNATIONAL REGIMES FOR THE OCEAN AND OUTER SPACE

International Relations;Global Governance;Global Commons;International Regimes;Political Science

Mendenhall, Elizabeth AnnLeslie, Stuart W. ;

Johns Hopkins University

关键词: International Relations;    Global Governance;    Global Commons;    International Regimes;    Political Science;   

Others  :  https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/bitstream/handle/1774.2/44711/MENDENHALL-DISSERTATION-2017.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: JOHNS HOPKINS DSpace Repository

【 摘 要 】

Emerging planetary-scale environmental problems, such as climate change and space debris, indicate a growing need for effective governance regimes for domains beyond the borders of territorial nation-states. This dissertation addresses the basic question: what explains patterns of success and dysfunction in regimes for non-terrestrial spaces? Under what conditions can global commons regimes function to achieve their goals? The answer depends in a fundamental way on scientific knowledge and technological capability, which create, define, and describe the problems, interests, and practices that shape the formation and features of governance regimes, and thus create the conditions for their effective functioning. This project employs and extends recent revivalist geopolitical approaches examining the influences of material factors (geography, ecology, and technology), and applies them to explain important features of regimes for the ocean and orbital space. This approach claims that geography, ecology, and technology together constitute an influencing context, which creates specific problem structures and constrains possible solution sets, and thereby sets conditions for regime performance. In contrast, recent post-modernist and constructivist approaches discount the importance and influence of material contexts in shaping politics, and are incapable of explaining important aspects of regimes. Rationalist (interest-centered) approaches to theorizing regimes employ thin treatments of the material context, limiting their ability to explain regime content and effectiveness. The explanatory traction of material-contextual factors is demonstrated by a detailed examination of regime formation, content and effectiveness over four periods of ocean governance across five centuries, and orbital space over the last sixty years. These cases demonstrate that successful regime formation must foreground scientific uncertainty, ecological dynamics, and the balance of technological capability. To the extent that global commons regimes ignore the existence and dynamism of these material structures, they are more likely to fail to achieve their goals. Greater consideration of material contexts produces a strengthened International Relations theory of regimes. These findings also suggest ways to improve regime design, outlined in the concluding chapter.