Question on using "international regime" in class....

[Charles Chester]

Hi gep-eders,

I’m at that point in the semester where I give my undergraduates a fairly in-depth treatment of the terms “international regime” and “international environmental regime.” I tell them that they need to know the basics of how this terminology came about since I’ll be using the word “regime” for the rest of the semester….

…but then it occurred to me that for the past few years, I’ve really not been using the word regime at all. It just sort of faded away from my in-class vocabulary in more of a fizz that a puff…not sure if this is good, bad, or meaningless, but it made me wonder about how important it is for me to be teaching “international regimes” (including elaboration of the consensus definition, etc.) in a course on global environmental politics. I have some nascent thoughts…but half of them lie in direct contradiction with the other half….so I thought it would be helpful to get some general feedback on this. Here’s my question: How much time do you spend teaching regime theory in your GEP classes, and does the amount of time you give it reflect on the importance of the concept? Apologies if I’m rehashing a previous conversation on gep-ed that I missed. 

All best,

Charlie Chester

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EarthWeb.info • Native Land • he·him·his

BCI • Y2Y • TGMS • Brandeis • Fletcher

[Susan Park]

Hi all,

 

Good question Charlie! Yes, most the literature now is on global environmental governance, including fragmentation, overlap, and orchestration. Although the literature in development finance is about regime complexes building on Raustiala and Victor (2004) on plant genetic resources. I think regimes is still an important concept for breaking down what constitutes activity (norms, rules and decision-making procedures) and how the separate parts comprise the whole compared with non- regimes, regime complexes, and global environmental governance.

 

Best,

Susan   

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[Kate O'NEILL]

I definitely use it but stopped explaining it in a really detailed way, just the basics or very much linked to empirics. The students would get so hung up on the difference between norms and principles and so on. I think it’s a very helpful concept still for saying governance isn’t just about treaties, states, and organizations (and the readings break it down).  

Best, 

Kate 

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On Oct 10, 2021, at 6:10 PM, 'Susan Park' via gep-ed <gep...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



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[Hang Ryeol Na]

Dear Charlie and all, 

When teaching Environmental Policy, I spend at least one week during the entire semester discussing the theories and examples of international regimes. To me, the theories are useful in two different ways. First, they help my students to better understand how theories in general work in social science. In that most of the international regime theories focus on identifying the factors for success and/or failure of regimes, they help teach the students how to question and find answers about whatever happens to human societies in an explanatory, rather than descriptive way. By extension, we discuss dependent/independent variables along with the concept of function in math. 

Second, they are useful to see the different forces behind environmental policy-making processes. When I summarize the theories with three major categories - realism (hegemon), liberalism (cooperation) and cognitivism (knowledge), for example, the cognitivist approach is really effective to show how the role of science, e.g. epistemic community of Haas is crucial particularly in environmental policy.

Sincerely,

Hang Ryeol    

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