Enforcement versus Management : Comparing Two Analyses of Compliance in and Effectiveness of International Environmental Regimes

Within the literature on international environmental regimes, there are diverging views on the need for enforcement. The enforcement school emphasizes the need for strong enforcement mechanisms in order to induce the member states to comply with regime requirements, whereas the management school stresses the need for capacity building and other facilitative mechanisms to accommodate compliance. In the book by Breitmeier et al (2006), Analyzing International Environmental Regimes, two authors analyze compliance and regime effectiveness. Despite the similarities of the analyses with regard to data, analytical technique and to some extent variables, their conclusions differ. One author’s conclusions favor the enforcement school, while the other author’s conclusions favor the management school. In this thesis I examine the two analyses using both qualitative and quantitative techniques to find out why the two authors’ conclusions differ. My qualitative analysis does not provide any clear answers but nevertheless shows that the different conclusions of the two authors relates to less than fully satisfactory construct validity and differing interpretations of results. My quantitative analyses show that using more relevant independent variables and multivariate analytical techniques instead of bivariate techniques leads to more robust results. In particular, I conclude that if the two authors would have included all relevant independent variables and performed multivariate analyses (providing controlled effects), their results would have become more robust, and their conclusions possibly more similar. Finally, my results support both the enforcement school, and the management school, and thus favor a mixed approach to compliance