of change. Although liberal theory emphasises the role of scientific and technical
knowledge in enhancing interdependence and cooperation, (and therefore welfare),
neither knowledge nor learning need be inherently progressive or benign.
42. The so-called ‘second image’ and the ‘second image reversed’.
43. A point that is often overlooked is that while a multilateral agreement (that is, an agreement to cooperate) is made between states, it often establishes rules that impact upon private entities, for example, mining or fishing companies, telecommunications companies, or industrial enterprises. Giving effect to a regime (compliance) may involve domestic legislative or regulatory initiatives and therefore require the support of domestic coalitions. This level of analysis supports the proposition that the willingness of a government to adopt and comply with cooperative policies (in other words, defining its national interests in terms of cooperation, or learning to cooperate) is linked to domestic factors.
44. Transnational defines interactions across national boundaries where the actors are not agents of the state. Non-govemmental actors may, however, interact with national governments in an international setting. I have continued to use the term ‘international’ for non-govemmental organisations which are established at the ‘non-national’ level (for example, Greenpeace International or WWF-Intemational).
45. That new knowledge may be consensual or contested, and it may be nationally or internationally generated, or both.
Learning occurs at the level of the state or at the level of the regime (institutional learning). It is the process which gives rise to the demand for cooperation on an issue- area. Ernst Haas suggests (1980:390) that "we know that learning has taken place when actors adopt new rules and behaviour that make use of new information and knowledge, or adopt ways to search for such knowledge".
Knowledge, according to Ernst Haas (1980:367-8) is
the sum of technical information and of theories about that information which commands sufficient consensus at a given time among interested actors to serve as a guide to public policy designed to achieve some social goal.
More recently he has defined it as
no more than the temporary consensus of a group of practitioners that a "problem" should be defined in a certain manner, the causes and effects arranged in a certain pattem ... (Emst Haas 1990a:219)
These are general definitions. The important component is that information does not of itself constitute knowledge: there must be agreement on the meaning attached to that information (the interpretation or ‘theory’ that surrounds it) amongst a group of people to whom that information is professionally relevant. Without agreement, knowledge can have little impact on regime development, as Krasner (1983b:20) observes, nor on learning in a world o f sovereign states. This is important with respect to environmental politics where scientific uncertainty, that is a lack of agreement about the meaning of scientific information, is often used by states as a justification for inaction.
Knowledge is relevant to the process of learning, and cooperation only when it is accepted by decision-makers.46 Knowledge in this case is power only when it informs policy. Learning by states in response to new knowledge is, therefore, a political process whereby those who ‘have’ knowledge seek to influence decision-makers, sometimes in contest with competing ‘knowledge’.
The definition of knowledge must be flexible enough to include new values. This is relevant to international environmental politics in which non-governmental organisations, as well as contributing to the flow of information, bring to the debate competing interpretations o f scientific information, and new values and beliefs on what is environmentally acceptable and how we should view our relationship with the natural world.
46. Haggard and Simmons (1987:510) draw attention to the fact that "cognitive approaches cannot predict at what point consensual values and knowledge will produce cooperation".
29 The norms and rules, and the information provided by a regime, once established, also constitute ‘knowledge’. Liberal approaches to cooperation suggest that national interests and policy objectives come to be defined in a way that is congruent with the norms and rules of a regime. Learning therefore goes to the heart of compliance and is at the crux of the liberal argument that states ‘learn’ to cooperate under a regime (in other words, that regimes do matter).
Transgovernmental and transnational actors: inside and outside the state
As Puchala and Hopkins observe (1983:63) "each regime has a set of elites who are the practical actors within it".47 Bureaucratic elites contribute to the definition of a state’s national interest, that is its policy objectives, although this is often in response to particular interests within the state. These elites are also crucial to the implementation and maintenance of the regime. Their ‘knowledge’ is likely to predominate over that of other actors (domestic and international) once the regime is in place although the degree to which this is so is conditioned by the salience and politicisation of the issue area.
International environmental issues have come to be highly politicised topics on national and international agenda. At both a domestic and international level we might expect, therefore, to see bureaucratic actors competing with other "knowledge based" communities for influence over these issues. Bureaucratic elites have an advantage in this contest in that their location within the formal decision-making apparatus offers some advantages in setting the terms of the debate.
Zacher (1990:153) suggests that ”[t]he integration of domestic political systems into a study o f the evolution o f general patterns of international collaboration should examine how ... linkages among ... elites impinge upon the occurrence and form of regimes" (my emphasis). National elites establish a network of communication with other national elites through the decision-making procedures and rules of the regime.48 Keohane (1984:101) talks about "informal coalitions of like-minded officials" which develop to achieve common purposes and establish networks of acquaintance and friendship. Officials form transgovemmental bureaucratic coalitions with some degree of commitment to a regime and to maintaining their own positions of influence within it. This has been a persistent and influential feature of the Antarctic regime.
47. These elites are most likely to be from within foreign ministries and possibly other government departments with expertise in the issue area. Foreign ministries, charged with the carriage of diplomacy, are often reluctant to relinquish policy control to actors within other departments. 48. Keohane and Nye (1977:34) note that contacts between governmental bureaucracies charged
with similar tasks may not only alter their perspectives but lead to transgovemmental coalitions on particular policy questions.
Participation in a regime (that is, experience of cooperation) may alter the way key participants in the state understand that state’s interests, although as Nye suggests (1987:381) individual learning is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for the more complex process of organisational learning.
Bureaucrats and policy-makers in participant states in a regime become attuned to the pattern of that regime as it structures decision-making on the relevant issue-area. Their socialisation into its norms and rules is reinforced by interaction with their counterparts in other regime countries. This process may be described as a form of cognitive congruence (Ernst Haas 1980:368). We might expect, therefore, that such elites will continue to be supportive of the regime in contest with other interests within the state as well as outside the state. Nevertheless, bureaucratic elites continue to be agents of the state in a way that, for example, bureaucrats in intergovernmental organisations are not. Therefore while they may seek to maintain the regime, they will also be seeking to advance the interests of the state they represent.
Clearly the role of national bureaucratic elites is central not only to the formation of states’ policies but also to the way regimes are managed and how they "acquire" knowledge. But bureaucratic elites do not learn and act in a vacuum - they have to interact with, and possibly compete with non-state actors.
In line with the key features of international environmental politics outlined in the introduction to this thesis, the analytical framework developed here needs also to consider the role of those non-state actors.
Realist theory does not adequately account for the influence of non-state actors.49 Thus it sheds no light on how actors within societies can use partners in transnational coalitions or transnational institutions to advance (or retard) the learning of new interests by their own governments (Nye 1987:373). However, in line with Young (1989b:364) it would be a "serious mistake to overlook the role of transnational alliances among influential interest groups in developing and maintaining regimes" at an international level, or their role in influencing the definition (and redefinition) of national interests.
49. Holsti (1985:137) suggests that while "[n]onstate actors may well influence the course of international politics ... ultimate decisions on war, peace, security and order depend solely upon the public authorities of states". New models, he argues, are therefore not necessary. There is an internal contradiction in this assertion. If non-state actors may well influence the course of international politics, then they must be accounted for in the models. Holsti makes the mistake of assuming that challenges to the state-centric model o f international relations and the need to extend it to include non-state actors is equivalent to an argument that states are no longer the most important actors in international politics or that non-state actors have surpassed states as the new decision-makers in international politics. Waltz (1979:95) makes a similar mistake.
31
Non-governmental organisations