Do international institutions “beat” domestic veto-players? An analysis the interacting role of international institutional integration and national institutional constraints for states’ environmental policy adoption and changes between 1970 und 2005

Do international institutions “beat” domestic veto-players? An analysis the interacting role of international institutional integration and national institutional constraints for states’ environmental policy adoption and changes between 1970 und 2005 Christoph Knill, Stephan Heichel, Kai Schulze University of Konstanz/Germany Paper Proposal for Workshop at the 2012 ECPR Joint Sessions, University of Antwerp International Institutions and Policy Diffusion: Sources – Mechanisms - Impact Abstract A nowadays almost “classical” argument claims that international institutions promote policies or function as a policy learning environment and that, hence, membership in (relevant) organizations at the international stage should foster the diffusion of policies at the national level (i.e. across units). Several studies have indeed found empirical support for this proposition in various policy fields and across different samples of countries as well as for different time frames. Theories of national policy change however focus more on factors that constrain policy changes in general and hence also the adoption of policies. The most relevant theory in that regard is the veto-players theory, first proposed in a loose form by institutionalists and later developed in a more rigorous manner by George Tsebelis. According to this theory, as the major argument goes, more veto-players at the national level result in less policy change (including policy adoptions). Numerous studies have found empirical support for this argument even though confutative results do also exist. So far, these two major driving forces have been mostly looked at separately. What remains rather unexplored then, is the question how these two forces interact. Put differently, only little is known about how fostering and constraining variables for national policy change go along. How important are domestic veto-players given that states are (increasingly) integrated institutionally at the international level? Which factor prevails when it comes to adopting a policy? Or looked at from a different perspective: Do international institutions condition the impact of veto-players or is it rather vice versa? Can we observe a rather gradual interaction or one where only extreme values of respective variables seem to be relevant? In this paper, we strive to answer these questions. To this end we conduct a macro-quantitative analysis where we not only look at the adoption of 22 environmental policies but also take into account major subsequent changes of those policies in 24 OECD and transition countries between 1970 and 2005. Our policy sample covers 22 environmental policy sub-fields across all major environmental media (air, water, climate). In that regard, our inquiry is not susceptible to specifics of certain environmental policies. In a first step, we will take a broader view by aggregating all policy adoptions and subsequent changes into one dependent variable (while a disaggregation is envisioned for later studies). We first aim to explore the role of domestic veto-players and international institutions as explanatory factors for national adoptions and later changes of the 22 policies. In a second step, we will study the interaction of these two factors in more detail using both descriptive and causal analyses. Our goal is to show how both factors interact, ultimately providing us with a better understanding of the interaction of international and domestic determinants of policy adoption and change at the national level.