Instructor: Martin Sampson
This course explores a topic that has become a major element of the global agenda for states and for non governmental groups. The subject is relatively new. Just as the world of the natural sciences a generation ago had few ecology departments, the world of the social sciences paid very little attention to the effects of human activity on the natural environment. This course looks at the late 20th century beginnings of the international politics of the environment, whose outcome depends extensively on organizations of states and peoples.
Organization of the course. The course is designed to facilitate people helping one another to understand the readings and the lectures and do well on the tests. What the course seeks to cover is as follows.
The first two books support a single objective of acquainting you with international environmental cooperation and the theorizing about how it works. These readings combine nitty gritty of illustrative cases with conceptual, theoretic ideas about the nature of international environmental cooperation. Haas's Saving the Mediterranean focuses on a single, path-breaking case and asks about three possible lines of interpretation as they apply to that case. Wapner's Environmental Activism and World Politics looks at a set of cases, argues that each illustrates a distinctive NGO strategy, and provides a conceptual understanding of why efforts of non-commercial, non-governmental organizations can be effective. By the end of this part of the course you will have an appreciation of the international politics of environmental issues, ideas about what is pushing cooperation on environmental problems, and a glimpse of what has been accomplished by these endeavors. There is a test at the end of this section.
This work that you do early in the course will facilitate your understanding of Lorraine Elliott's new book, The Global Politics of the Environment. Elliott's study is a discussion of the international effort, launched only a generation ago at the 1972 Stockholm conference, to address the problems of environmental stress and degradation. Beginning with an overview of the precedents and themes established at the 1972 Stockholm and 1992 Rio conferences on the environment, the book provides information on the major institutions that have emerged since 1972, the array of arenas in which these institutions operate, and a set of core environmental issues including sustainability, security, and questions of who pays. Taken together, the first three books of the course will provide you an articulate awareness of international environmental cooperation.
At this point the course shift gears. Young's International Governance asks what we can learn about international cooperation from the few decades of experience of an international environmental regime (described by Elliott and Haas and Wapner.) More specifically, Young wants to know what seems to work and what seems not to work in regard to international environmental cooperation. This quest of his book is evident in his "institutional bargaining" and "effectiveness" chapters. There is a test at the end of this section, which covers Elliott and Young and the lectures since the previous test.
The final book in the course also asks what is actually happening in the realm of international environmental cooperation. Newly published, International Environmental Commitments is an intensive study of specific international environmental endeavors from the perspective of how they are carried out and whether they are effective. By this point in the course you are prepared to relate the discussion of this new book to prior events and understandings of international environmental cooperation. In addition, the cases that you choose to read in this book will deepen your understanding of the subject of the course and social science concerns about that subject.
The course meets once a week. Typically part of the class meeting will be devoted to informed discussion in small groups about the assigned readings (see below.)
Objectives. By end of the course
You should be able to apply various concepts from the study of international organizations to the realm of international environmental policy.
You should have greater awareness of the diversity and complexity of "environmental issues" as construed and understood in the late 1990's.
You should have a better sense of how changes in scientific understandings of the environment and changes in political factors can interact with one another.
You should have opinions (and reasons for those opinions) on the likely effectiveness of international governmental organizations in regard to environmental issues.
You should have a detailed grasp of efforts to address environmental problems in a selected set of cases; you should also have a detailed awareness of contrasts among these specific cases.
Books. The following have been ordered at Smith Bookstore on the West Bank of the campus. These books will also be on reserve at Wilson Library.
Elliott, Lorraine (1998). The Global Politics of the Environment. New York: New York University Press.
Haas, Peter (1990). Saving the Mediterranean. New York: Columbia University Press.
Wapner, Paul (1996). Environmental Activism and World Civic Politics. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Victor, David, Kal Raustiala, Eugene Skolnikoff, eds. (1998). The Implementation and Effectiveness of International Environmental Commitments: Theory and Practice. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Young, Oran (1994). International Governance. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
All the books are paperback. An effort has been made to choose books whose ratio of information to cost is as high as can be expected given the appalling price of books in 1998.
Course requirements.
| DATE |
ITEM |
% OF COURSE GRADE |
| October 20 |
Test #1 |
30% |
| November 17 |
Test #2 |
30% |
| December 1 |
Paper due |
25% |
| Various times |
Discussion groups |
15% |
Discussion groups. The premise is that informed adults sometimes learn more from talking with each other about the course materials than by listening to the course professor talk at them.
The discussion groups will operate as follows. One week in advance you will receive an assignment to write a short (1 page) summary or exercise on part of the readings assigned for next week. The summary should require no more effort on your part than the normal requirements of taking notes on a reading assignment. At the beginning of the class when the summary is due your summary will be collected. On the basis of the collected summaries students will be assigned to small discussion groups that include people who have summarized differing aspects of the reading assignment. Each group will discuss and answer a set of questions that pertain to those readings. If the instructor does a good job of concocting questions, the discussion will bridge the various parts of the reading assignment in ways that will help the entire group to better understand the assigned readings. Your summary will be graded pass/fail. Your group's answer to the questions will also be graded pass/fail.
The composition of the groups will change each week; there is no assignment of people to a particular group for the entire quarter. The discussion exercise will comprise 15% of your course grade. Note: late summary papers will not be accepted. The summaries are the device to encourage people to bring some relevant awareness of the assigned readings to the discussion group. Post-group discussion summaries do not do that.
To accomplish these activities it is not necessary to have a flamboyant personality or have some special talent for discussion groups. It is simply necessary to do the work and participate. Also, everyone can miss one discussion group and one of the 1 page writing assignments without damage to their discussion grade.
In the past these discussion groups have had important payoffs for their participants. As people analyze questions akin to questions that appear on tests, they become better prepared for the tests. Discussion groups may help you meet people with whom you can set up study groups to prepare for the tests. Finally, the assigned readings are a crucial part of the course. An opportunity to discuss them with others is an important learning experience.
Tests. This is not a course in which it is possible to obtain satisfactory grades by writing down random somethings that are pertinent to the course title but do not answer the test questions.
The tests will have essay and short answer or multiple choice questions.
To help you prepare for the tests, a study guide will be distributed approximately a week in advance of each test. The tests will be closed-book; you may not use notes, books, etc. during the tests.
Test grades will not be curved. The instructor's chronic objection to curving grades is that curves may push some excellent student performances into the B and C range if too many people are learning and doing well in a class. Similarly, mathematical curves find A performances in classes in which no one is learning much. If no one is learning much, there should be no A grades. If lots of people are working hard, learning, thinking, growing intellectually, and excelling in their work in the course, it seems odd to limit the number of such people who actually get good grades.
This course prefers to reward people for how well they do in the course, period. If many people are doing well on the tests and assigned paper, there will be many high grades. If no one is doing well, there will be no high grades.
In other words, you are competing against the tests, not against each other. Your grade will not improve because others in the class do poorly. Helping some one else to study for a test accordingly should not disadvantage you in this course. More likely, discussing the course materials with other students prior to a test will be advantageous for you.
Make-ups and Incompletes. Tests will be rescheduled only in cases of illness or personal tragedy; in such circumstances it is your responsibility to notify the professor prior to the start of the test. It is not anticipated that anyone will take an incomplete in this course. If some unforeseen calamity necessitates an exception for you, talk with the professor as soon as possible.
Paper. A 8-10 page paper is required at the end of the quarter. More information about this assignment will be distributed in late October. The paper must have references to the sources you use, in the form of footnotes or endnotes. Papers must be typed, double space with normal size fonts and margins. Late papers will be penalized one letter grade.
Office Hours. Office hours are part of what your tuition buys. They are not a replacement for or an alternative to going to class (e.g., if you miss class, get the lecture notes from another student). They can be an important mechanism for understanding something that puzzled you in the readings or lectures. Students who are doing the work required by the course but are having difficulties are particularly encouraged to seek help during office hours.
If the scheduled office hours are infeasible for you, talk with the professor after class and make an appointment for a different time.
Reading Assignments
