scholarly journals Transboundary Pollution

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helena Varkkey
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
International System ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Northeast Asia ◽  
Science Research ◽  
State Regulation ◽  
Transboundary Pollution

Transboundary pollution problems have become increasingly important issues on the agenda of politicians, economists, and natural scientists. Transboundary pollution is defined legally as pollution that originates in one country but can cause damage in another country’s environment, by crossing borders through pathways like water or air. The problems of transboundary pollution include issues like the acidification of soils and lakes through acid rain, transboundary air pollution (known variably as smog, haze, or smoke), and downstream river or ocean pollution due to upstream activities. The traditional Westphalian approach that forms the cornerstone of the modern international system is based on the notion of geopolitical units, with borders indicating the limits of state jurisdiction. However, a distinctive characteristic of transboundary pollution problems is that pollution does not remain within political boundaries. Thus, this fluid nature of the environment has posed a challenge for environmental governance within this system. This article provides a bibliographic review of the literature on transboundary pollution as an international relations problem. This review is limited to works analyzing the problem of transboundary pollution through a mainly qualitative lens, mainly using works coming from international law, international relations, and public policy disciplines. After a brief discussion of some general works and issue-based journals, the first substantive section focuses on literature discussing the challenges of single-state regulation of transboundary pollution issues. Due to these difficulties, regulatory authority has gradually shifted from national to more international levels of governance. This is the focus of the second section, which compiles works that focus on developments in international law toward the regulation and governance of transboundary pollution at the international level. This section is broadly divided in two, firstly discussing literature looking at developments in customary international law, and secondly proceeding to look at more formal means through international environmental agreements (IEAs), conventions, and treaties. The third and final section of this bibliography compiles case studies on transboundary pollution governance arranged according to environmental pathways: air and water. While these case studies are not exhaustive, they are those that are most widely covered in the literature, covering regions like North America, Europe, Asia, and to a lesser extent Northeast Asia and Latin America. This work was partially supported by the Singapore Social Science Research Council (SSRC) grant on Sustainable Governance of Transboundary Environmental Commons in Southeast Asia, grant code MOE2016-SSRTG-068.

Of What is This a Case?: Analytical Movements in Qualitative Social Science Research

2014 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 224-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Lund
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research

Case studies are often presented as self-evident. However, of what the material is a case is actually less evident. It is argued in this article that the analytical movements of generalization, specification, abstraction, and concretization can make us more conscious of what our work might be a case, and that the same data have the potential to make different cases depending on these analytical movements. An analytical matrix is developed, and the four movements and various pitfalls are discussed.

International Relations as a Prismatic System

1961 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 144-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred W. Riggs
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
International System ◽  
Well Being ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
State System ◽  
American Society ◽  
State 1 ◽  
Executive Body ◽  
Inter State

Conventional theories of international relations assume, implicitly, the model of an “inter-state system.” According to this model, individually states possess a set of characteristics which differ fundamentally from the characteristics of a system of those states interacting with each other. On this basis we can construct theories about the behavior of component states in the system, and more general propositions about the nature of the inter-state system viewed as a whole. Some of the difficulties of this model will be noted here, and an alternative model proposed.Before pointing to these difficulties, however, we need a clear image of the inter-state model. A classic formulation is contained in a speech given by former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles at a meeting of the American Society for International Law. In it Mr. Dulles identified six characteristics of the nation-state: (1) laws which “reflect the moral judgment of the community”; (2) political machinery to revise these laws as needed; (3) an executive body able to administer the laws; (4) judicial machinery to settle disputes in accord with the laws; (5) superior force to deter violence by enforcing the law upon those who defy it; and (6) sufficient well-being so that people are not driven by desperation to ways of violence. The international system, Mr. Dulles pointed out, in large part lacks these characteristics. He went on to assess the limited success of attempts, ranging from the League of Nations and Kellogg-Briand Pact through the United Nations, to create such a “state system” or “order” at the international level. Mr. Dulles sadly reported that, despite notable progress in the development of international law and judicial machinery, the desired international order does not, as yet, exist.

The Palestine Liberation Organization in the United Nations: Implications for International Law and Relations

1977 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanford R. Silverburg
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
International System ◽  
World Order ◽  
Palestine Liberation Organization ◽  
New Era ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Political Units

The end of the Second World War seemed to signal to many observers the onset of a new era of international relations and international law. The appearance of former colonial entities as independent and sovereign political units led both diplomats and academicians to divine a new world order for international relations. At the same time the consequent significant increase in the number of political actors in the international system changed not only its complexion but also its manner of interaction. It appears that there are still further developments in the offing whose full significance cannot as yet be fully documented. One aspect, however, which we can examine is the increasing importance of the transnational actor in international forums. Our intention in this paper is to examine several features of this development in international relations, law and organization as evidenced by the continually increasing participation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the chambers of the United Nations.

scholarly journals International Law

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
MJ Peterson
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Legal System ◽  
International System ◽  
State Regulation ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Law And Politics ◽  
Indigenous Groups ◽  
Independent States ◽  
Standards Of Conduct ◽  
Political Economic

International law can be defined as the substantive norms and rules and related procedural codes that govern relations among states, and the conduct of transactions and relationships across national borders. It is one of the fundamental institutions of the international system, simultaneously reaffirming the organization of the world into autonomous states and providing their governments and other international actors with a set of publicly expressed common standards of conduct and procedures, organizing the provision of governance for an increasingly interconnected world. Initially addressing only relations among sovereign (independent) states, its reach expanded during the period 1860–2000 to include interactions of states with intergovernmental organizations and humans (as peoples, ethnic, racial, religious, or indigenous groups, or as individuals) and state regulation of human conduct within the natural environment. Two broad debates in legal philosophy—one focused on whether the term “law” should be defined as a body or rules or as the set of interactions through which rules are made, amended, and applied; and the other on whether “law” denotes commands backed by centralized force or social norms treated as obligatory for all members of a society—continue to influence how scholars approach international law, as will be elaborated in later sections. Given the continuing decentralization of global-level governance, it appears more useful to use the term “international law” to denote a body of rules, procedures, and related doctrines for interpreting them, and the term “international legal system” to denote two sets of related activity, the highly political processes of making, amending, and occasionally discarding rules, and the more rule-bound processes of applying the existing rules to behavior and using them to resolve particular disputes. Though the political and the legal sometimes intertwine, distinguishing between the two helps make sense of the expansion of the rules to cover more issue areas and the expansion of rule-making to include not only the non-Western states returning to independence after European colonial domination but also the activities of nonstate actors. Distinguishing between law and politics also highlights the effects of legal rules as they encourage some possible courses of action while discouraging others. Thus the study of international law today involves three distinct activities: (1) understanding international law as a distinct legal system; (2) understanding the potentials and limits of using it as a technique for organizing and conducting governance; and (3) drawing on it as an intellectual resource for advancing political, economic, social, and moral goals.

scholarly journals From International Law and International Relations to Law and World Politics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher A. Whytock
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Science Research ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Private International Law ◽  
Direct Role ◽  
Law And Politics ◽  
Interdisciplinary Scholarship ◽  
Private Actors

Political scientists—primarily in the discipline’s international relations subfield—have long studied international law. After considering how political scientists and legal scholars define international law, this article identifies five stages of political science research on international law, including the current interdisciplinary international law and international relations (IL/IR) stage, and it reviews three trends in political science research that constitute an emerging sixth stage of interdisciplinary scholarship: a law and world politics (L/WP) stage. First, moving beyond the “IL” in IL/IR scholarship, international relations scholars are increasingly studying domestic law and domestic courts—not only their foundational role in supporting international law and international courts but also their direct role in core areas of international relations, including international conflict and foreign policy. Second, moving beyond the “IR” in IL/IR scholarship, political scientists are adapting their research on international law to the broader world politics trend in political science by studying types of law—including extraterritoriality, conflict of laws, private international law, and the law of transnational commercial arbitration—that govern the transnational activity of private actors and can either support or hinder private global governance. Third, moving beyond the domestic-international divide, political scientists are increasingly rejecting “international law exceptionalism,” and beginning to take advantage of theoretical convergence across the domestic, comparative, and international politics subfields to develop a better general understanding law and politics.

19. International law

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Reus-Smit
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
Real Effect ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Neoliberal Institutionalism

This chapter examines debates surrounding the nature and efficacy of modern international law. It begins by discussing the reasons why international societies construct institutions, and why different sorts of institutions have emerged in different historical contexts. It then considers the nature and origins of the modern institution of international law, its relationship with the practice of multilateralism, and the recent cosmopolitanization of the global legal order. It also explores the laws of war and concludes with an overview of different theoretical approaches to international law such as realism, neoliberal institutionalism, and constructivism. Two case studies are presented: the first is about whether international law is an expression of Western dominance and the second is about individual criminal accountability in non-Western countries. There is also an Opposing Opinions box that asks whether international law has any real effect on the nature and conduct of international relations.

Pacific unions: a reappraisal of the theory that ‘democracies do not go to war with each other’

1994 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 207-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond Cohen
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Causal Mechanism ◽  
Empirical Social Science ◽  
The Status ◽  
The One ◽  
Industrial Societies ◽  
Considerable Support ◽  
Comprehensive Study

Considerable support has emerged over recent years among scholars of international relations for the theory that ‘democracies do not go to war with each other.’ Bruce Russett and Harvey Starr note that over the last two centuries ‘Democracies were very unlikely to fight each other.’ This finding is supported, R. J. Rummel argues, by both ‘Historical studies and empirical social science research’. Some authors hail it as a law—perhaps the only one we have—of international relations. References in the literature suggest that the theory has acquired the status of a received truth. It is ‘the one argument that all the analysts agree on’, concludes Robert Rothstein. ‘Scholars of contemporary international relations are nearing consensus, suggest the Embers and Russett. In the latest, most comprehensive study of the phenomenon, Russett even finds evidence for it in non-industrial societies. Believing the facts of the matter to have been established, theorists have moved on to seek the causal mechanism generating the phenomenon.

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