Negotiating the terrain of global climate change policy in the Soviet Union and China: Linking international and domestic decision-making pathways.

This thesis examines the evolving positions of China and the former Soviet Union in the four year long international scientific and political negotiations on global climate change. The thesis argues that a formal international agreement is only one, and perhaps not the most important, outcome of a protracted negotiating process. The negotiating process involves not only the interactions among participating states and International Governmental Organizations at the international level but also developments within the participating states that arise as a result of, and in response to, international developments. The outcomes of the process include the changes that the process has engendered in the domestic institutions and policies of the participating countries. The Chinese and Soviet cases are structured to reveal the range of domestic institutional and policy changes that may emerge as a result of the negotiating process. These changes may extend to all dimensions of the policy process: (1) changes in knowledge; (2) an altered capacity to absorb information; (3) the creation of new institutions and policy communities; (4) altered elite perceptions; and (5) adjustments in the policy and the formation of informal alliances or alignments with portions of the international community. In some respects, the domestic changes wrought by the negotiating process are more important than the international agreement itself; these changes will affect the capacity of the participating countries to implement the agreement. Over the long run, it is plausible that the cumulative effect of these domestic changes not only in China and Russia but also in other countries will alter the agreement at the international level (the way it is interpreted and subsequently amended) thereby creating a feedback loop. This hypothesis, however, could not be tested by the data; it is a topic for further research.PhDAsian historyEnvironmental scienceHealth and Environmental SciencesPolitical scienceSocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/129441/2/9513346.pd