CRAFTING ORDER IN AN INTERDEPENDENT WORLD: Governance, Regimes and Climate Change International Relations Tutorial

Crucial to the determination of humanity's future at the dawn of the new millennium will be our capacity to manage global interdependence. Initial attempts at managing global interdependence have been undertaken in response to global environmental concerns. Transnational environmental problems derive from, at a fundamental level, an incapacity to manage interdependence. The foremost global environmental problem, with accordingly the most developed political response, is climate change. There is the possibility that an analysis of the international political response to climate change may reveal a basis for managing global interdependence. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the political response to global climate change. My further purpose is to determine if the norms and institutions relating to regulation of climate change might enable management of interdependence. Managing interdependence entails the establishment of order. Order derives from a given society’s capacity, in the words of Hedley Bull, "to establish a conformity of conduct."1 Identifying norms and institutions that can establish a conformity of conduct in environmental affairs is a pressing consideration, owing to the magnitude of environmental threats such as climate change