Complex Global Governance and Domestic Policies

Complex global governance and domestic
policies: four pathways of influence
STEVEN BERNSTEIN AND BENJAMIN CASHORE *
In the immediate aftermath of the first (1992) Rio Summit, a surge of optimism
about multilateral environmental treaties led to a burst of scholarship on
‘regime’ compliance and effectiveness.1 Until then, the literature on interna-
tional regimes2—which had already dominated the study of international insti-
tutions for a decade—had largely focused on explaining their rise, maintenance/
stability and fall, or debating their importance vis-à-vis formal organizations on
the one hand or broad structural features of the system on the other. Environ-
mental regimes became an especially fruitful laboratory for exploring questions
of compliance and effectiveness because the newer generation of treaties—in areas
such as protection of endangered species, regulation of chemicals or emissions,
or protection of biodiversity—was notably and increasingly focused on attempts
to influence domestic practices, policies and policy-making processes rather than
simply to constrain or modify the external behaviour of states.
Environmental scholarship came to the forefront of asking whether regimes
‘matter’; and ‘effectiveness’ became the ultimate litmus test.3 The next 15 years
saw a series of productive debates over what effectiveness meant, how to measure
* With those listed below, in their capacity as lead and contributing authors to the following expert panel review,
from which we draw liberally for empirical examples: Steven Bernstein and Benjamin Cashore (coordinating
lead authors), ‘Examination of the influences of global forest governance arrangements at the domestic level’,
in Jeremy Rayner, Alexander Buck and Pia Katila, eds, Embracing complexity: meeting the challenges of international
forest governance. A global assessment report prepared by the Global Forest Expert Panel on the International Forest Regime
(Vienna: International Union of Forest Research Organizations, 2011), pp. 111–35. Richard Eba’a Atyi, Ahmad
Maryudi and Kathleen McGinley (lead authors); and Tim Cadman, Lars Gulbrandsen, Daniela Goehler, Karl
Hogl, David Humphreys, Shashi Kant, Robert Kozak, Kelly Levin, Constance McDermott, Mark Purdon,
Irene Scher, Michael W. Stone, Luca Tacconi and Yurdi Yasmilead. We also thank Hamish van der Ven
for valuable research assistance, and the guest editors of this issue, an anonymous reviewer and Alexander
Ovodenko and John Volger for helpful comments.
1
Arild Underdal, ‘The concept of regime “effectiveness”’, Cooperation and Conflict 27: 3, 1992, pp. 227–40; Peter
M. Haas, Robert O. Keohane and Marc A. Levy, eds, Institutions for the Earth: sources of effective international
environmental protection (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993); Abram Chayes and Antonia Chayes, The new
sovereignty: compliance with international regulatory agreements (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995);
David Victor, Kal Raustiala and Eugene Skolnikoff, eds, The implementation and effectiveness of international
environmental commitments: theory and practice (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998); Oran Young and Marc Levy,
eds, The effectiveness of international environmental regimes: causal connections and behavioral mechanisms (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1999).
2
Definitions vary, but generally International Relations scholars characterize regimes as sets of norms and rules
that define and regulate appropriate behaviour of a set of defined actors in an issue area. They often centre
on international legal agreements.
3
Peter M. Haas, ‘Do regimes matter? Epistemic communities and Mediterranean pollution control’, International
Organization 43: 3, 1989, pp. 377–403.
International Affairs 88: 3 (2012) 585–604

© 2012 The Author(s). International Affairs © 2012 The Royal Institute of International Affairs. Published by Blackwell Publishing
Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford ox4 2dq, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
Steven Bernstein and Benjamin Cashore
it, and the conditions under which institutions, treaties and organizations could
induce compliance. In the course of these debates research has variously set out to
measure the ‘collective optimum’ (the point at which no actor can benefit more
without harming another actor),4 relative improvement over the state of affairs in
the absence of an agreement, or simply compliance with the stated goals of the
agreement.5 Ultimately, though, what motivated this literature was the attempt
to establish whether regimes—or other international or transnational efforts that
constituted ‘governance’—influenced behaviours towards solving the problems for
which they were established. This goal suggests the need to move beyond static
evaluations of compliance,6 yet much of the compliance and effectiveness litera-
ture in practice remains focused on hard law treaty provisions.7
Twenty years after Rio, that approach seems less and less tenable. The model
of single-issue regimes based on comprehensive multilateral treaties no longer
captures governing arrangements for many of the most pressing global environ-
mental problems. Moreover, states no longer have a monopoly on governance (if
indeed they ever did). Climate change, forest degradation and biodiversity loss
are but three prominent examples of issues governed by an array of mechanisms
that include legal, non-legal, governmental and non-governmental arrangements.
A shift from a focus on ‘compliance’ and ‘effectiveness’ to ‘influence’ facilitates
analysis of the combined effects of these international and transnational efforts
on domestic or firm policies and practices. This shift is especially important
because complex global environmental governance arrangements may contain
both elements that make strong authority claims clearly demarcated as law and
means and mechanisms that can influence domestic policies or behaviours but fall
short of such claims. However, in all cases the starting point for an examination
of such influences is a focus first on purposeful efforts of institutions and actors,
by whatever means or mechanisms, to steer policy and behaviour; and second on
some claim of authority, exercised either directly or indirectly by actors or institu-
tions that draw on soft law or international norms recognized by targeted actors
as having a significant basis in legitimacy.8 Thus, we aim specifically to open up
space for a broader approach to understanding the influences of explicit efforts at
‘governance’ as opposed to just any influence on domestic policy. It is our interest
in ‘governance’ that led us to take the effectiveness and compliance literatures and
their limits as our jumping-off point.
4
Underdal, ‘The concept of regime “effectiveness”’, p. 233. In practice, the difficulty of modelling the optimum
led those influenced by his work to turn instead to expert evaluations of optimum solutions and attempts to
measure distance from them to evaluate effectiveness.
5
These debates are reviewed in Ronald B. Mitchell, International politics and the environment (Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage, 2010), pp. 146–80.
6
Mitchell, International politics and the environment, p. 150; Jon Birger Skjærseth, Olav Schram Stokke and Jørgen
Wettestad, ‘Soft law, hard law, and effective implementation of international environmental norms’, Global
Environmental Politics 6: 3, 2006, p. 105.
7
e.g. Helmut Breitmeier, Arild Underdal and Oran R. Young, ‘The effectiveness of international environmental
regimes: comparing and contrasting findings from quantitative research’, International Studies Review 13: 4,
2011, pp. 579−605.
8
Steering and authority are the constitutive elements of governance, according to James N. Rosenau,
‘Governance in the twenty-first century’, Global Governance 1: 1, 1995, p. 13–43.
586
International Affairs 88: 3, 2012
Copyright © 2012 The Author(s). International Affairs © 2012 The Royal Institute of International Affairs.
Complex global governance and domestic policies
To facilitate the shift from ‘effectiveness’ to ‘influence’, we develop a frame-
work that distinguishes four pathways of influence, each with its own causal logic:
international rules (the traditional focus of regime effectiveness literature); inter-
national norms and discourse; creation of or interventions in markets; and direct
access to domestic policy processes.9 By disaggregating analytically the pathways of
influence, this framework allows the development of propositions, or conditions
under which action along each pathway is likely to produce change in domestic or
firm practices—and to what ends, since the various sources of influence may not
share a unified set of goals. For this task, we draw on scholarship on transnational
relations, international norms, policy diffusion and policy learning, in addition to
extant work on effectiveness.10 Our goal is neither to suggest the superiority of
one set of literature over the other, nor to review each set in its entirety. Rather,
we seek to provide the broader framework required under contemporary complex
global governance that draws from existing strands of both sets of literature to tease
out the multiple causal logics and pathways of influence to reach their common
analytic goal: to explain the domestic effects of global environmental governance.
Our central argument is that domestic influences cannot be studied simply by
looking at the international rules pathway, even if one takes into account the
fragmentation and institutional complexity of many issue areas to identify different
sets of rules. Significant effects also occur along the three other pathways as well as
through their interaction. We pay particular attention to the direct access pathway,
which is largely unexplored in the current literature. Moreover, in the forestry
case with which we illustrate our approach, it shows the most widespread effects,
both directly and through interactions with activities along other pathways.
We apply the framework to the case of forestry, a prototypical example of
complex global environmental governance. While we believe that the pathways
can apply equally to single-issue regimes because they too frequently contain
elements relevant to all pathways, cases of complex governance pose the greatest
challenge to the traditional compliance and effectiveness literature. The empirical
examples draw from the authors’ original research and from an extensive review,
overseen by the authors, of international influences on domestic forest policies
9
For an early articulation of these pathways, see Steven Bernstein and Benjamin Cashore, ‘Globalization,
four paths of internationalization and domestic policy change: the case of eco-forestry in British Columbia,
Canada’, Canadian Journal of Political Science 33: 1, 2000, pp. 67–99.
10
Peter A. Gourevitch, in ‘The second image reversed: the international sources of domestic politics’, International
Organization 32: 4, 1978, pp. 881–911, first articulated this wider research agenda. Related early work on the
environment focused on policy diffusion from major states, especially via market and coercive power (e.g.
sanctions) and domestic coalitions: see e.g. Elizabeth R. DeSombre, Domestic sources of international environmental
policy: industry environmentalists and U.S. power (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000). Recent policy diffusion
literature tends to focus on explanations of policy convergence through imitation, learning and competition,
usually in the absence of direct attempts to influence domestic policies (our focus here), although it also
identifies ‘harmonization’ with international law, coercion or ‘imposition’, which are closer to intentional
attempts at governance. See Covadonga Meseguer and Fabrizio Gilardi, ‘What is new in the study of policy
diffusion?’, Review of International Political Economy 16: 3, 2009, pp. 527–43; Katharina Holzinger, Christoph
Knill and Thomas Sommerer, ‘Environmental policy convergence: the impact of international harmonization,
transnational communication, and regulatory competition’, International Organization 62: 3, 2008, pp. 553–87;
Beth Simmons, Frank Dobbin and Geoffrey Garrett, ‘Introduction: the international diffusion of liberalism’,
International Organization 60: 4, 2006, pp. 781–810; Per-Olof Busch and Helge Jörgens, ‘International patterns
of environmental policy change and convergence’, European Environment 15: 2, 2005, pp. 80–101.
587
undertaken for the 2010 report of the International Union of Forest Research
Organizations Expert Panel on the International Forest Regime.11
The problem: complex governance

The regime effectiveness literature recognized limits to strict analyses of compli-
ance relatively early on, in acknowledgement that international agreements might
contain multiple goals and purposes. While some goals might entail relative
improvements to an environmental problem, others might reflect a lowest common
denominator or agreement not to commit to strong action; or goals might be in
tension with one another. This recognition led some researchers to disaggregate
provisions or components of regimes and investigate their effects separately.12
However, these limitations of strict compliance analysis created difficulties not
only of measurement and evaluation, but in discerning whether similar conditions
would lead to outcomes along multiple dimensions or from multiple provisions
or mechanisms. While various creative attempts to overcome these limits in the
literature remain relevant and productive—including significant advances in the
use of quantitative methods to measure the influence of international law13—
the existing focus on regime effectiveness still assumes discernible binding rules
among states to be behind even these disaggregated mechanisms. While single-
issue agreements and regimes still exist, the overall structure of environmental and
sustainable development governance and of particular pressing global problems is
widely recognized to be fragmented, complex and often lacking in coherence.14
Studies on effectiveness have started to recognize complexity, but have diffi-
culty addressing it. A recent study on the relative effectiveness of ‘soft law’
norms is typical: it argues that effectiveness is ultimately achieved only if norms
strengthen hard law rules and/or encourage states to sign up to hard law treaties.15
That assumption truncates the possible influence of norms via other pathways,
which remain poorly understood. Indeed, that study found that while hard law
may be more enforceable, its substance may be significantly watered down from
its soft law origins, and that ‘the structures for intrusive verification and review
that provide part of the explanation [for effectiveness] can also be created for soft
law norms’.16
11
Bernstein and Cashore, ‘Examination of the influences of global forest governance’.
12
e.g. Helmut Breitmeier, Oran R. Young and Michael Zurn, Analysing international environmental regimes: from
case study to database (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006).
13
e.g. Beth Simmons, Mobilizing for human rights: international law in domestic politics (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008).
14
UNEP, ‘The environmental dimension of IFSD: fragmentation of environmental pillar and its impact on
efficiency and effectiveness’, Issues Brief 2 (Nairobi: UNEP, Division of Environmental Law and Conventions,
2011); Frank Biermann, P. Pattberg, H. van Asselt and F. Zelli, ‘The fragmentation of global governance
architectures: a framework for analysis’, Global Environmental Politics 9: 4, 2009, pp. 14–40; Tadanori Inomata,
Management review of environmental governance within the United Nations system, JIU/REP/2008/3 (Geneva: UN
Joint Inspection Unit, 2008); Kal Raustiala and David G. Victor, ‘The regime complex for plant genetic
resources’, International Organization 58: 2, 2004, pp. 277–309; Kenneth W. Abbot, ‘The transnational regime
complex for climate change’, 2011, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1813198, accessed 23 Feb. 2012.
15
Skjærseth et al., ‘Soft law, hard law’, p. 105.
16
Skjærseth et al., ‘Soft law, hard law’, p. 119.
588
At least two other considerations further complicate the picture. First, multiple
channels of influence may be synergistic, or they may overlap, perhaps with contra-
dictory authorities and mandates: these possibilities have different implications
for effectiveness. One important goal of research on influence and effectiveness
may therefore be to find ways to increase coherence and synergies among gover-
nance mechanisms. Second, complex global governance interacts with ‘complex
sovereignty’:17 that is, the boundaries between global and domestic politics and
policy can be blurred, which means that evaluating influence and effectiveness is
not a one-way relationship of regime to implementation.
The framework: four pathways of global influences on domestic and

firm-level policy change
Below we identify four pathways of influence and spell out their basic logic.
This framework distinguishes the actors and institutions involved in governance
arrangements that attempt to influence domestic policy from the pathways of
influence themselves. The framework further helps analysts to distinguish trans-
national actors—ranging from corporations and business associations to activist
groups, scientific associations and individuals—as agents of change, from the rules
and norms that institutions embody, in order to illustrate how agents interact
with rules and norms to influence domestic policy. In so doing, it also allows a
greater focus on process and agency than is common in much of the effectiveness
literature.
The propositions developed under each pathway are designed to specify condi-
tions under which intentional governance efforts are likely to influence policy
decisions and, ultimately, behaviours. Many derive from scholarship on transna-
tional relations, effectiveness, policy diffusion, and international market pressures.
However, some, especially under the fourth pathway, have been developed and
modified abductively, that is, by going back and forth between inferences identi-
fied in the literature on domestic policy change and research findings in the forest
case on how influence occurred. The propositions, by focusing on conditions
for influence along particular pathways rather than on conditions for particular
actors or institutions to have effects, also highlight that transnational actors and
international institutions play multiple roles. For example, institutions provide
fora for governmental, subgovernmental and transnational actors to interact that
facilitate rule creation along path one, but also learning about and promotion of
new norms of appropriate behaviour along path two, or coalition-building which
may be important along paths three and four. Although many international insti-
tutions play multiple roles, the distinctions among different paths highlight the
varying degrees to which different institutions play these roles. These distinctions
also allow comparisons across cases with different problem structures,18 which
17
Edgar Grande and Louis Pauly, Complex sovereignty: reconstituting political authority in the twenty-first century
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005).
18
Ronald B. Mitchell, ‘Problem structure, institutional design, and the relative effectiveness of international
environmental agreements’, Global Environmental Politics 6: 3, 2006, pp. 72–89.
589
might lead to further refinements of conditions under which influence can occur
or the appropriateness of particular mechanisms for different problems. This kind
of disaggregation avoids conflating effects or missing them altogether in what
might otherwise appear as a muddle of influences under complex governance
arrangements.
The four pathways we identify may not be the only ones, and space limitations
prevent us from exploring all the hypotheses that might be generated. Neverthe-
less, these pathways, and the associated propositions, are offered as a useful start
to illustrate the benefits of our approach.
International rules
The ‘international rules’ pathway highlights the influence of issue-specific treaties
and the policy prescriptions of powerful international organizations (e.g. the
World Bank), whether perceived as resting on consent (what the diffusion litera-
ture refers to as ‘harmonization’) or on coercion.19 The identification of rules as
only one of four (or more) pathways of influence at once recognizes the utility
of the existing regime effectiveness literature for analysing and identifying condi-
tions under which rules will produce policy and behavioural change, while also
highlighting that the logic of rules may differ from other logics at play in complex
governance arrangements.
The logic of this pathway is that rules are binding and create a ‘pull toward
compliance’,20 because they came into being by generally accepted rules of right
process, regardless of whether they are enforced (a host of institutional design,
domestic and political factors can influence implementation and compliance, but
the obligation exists nonetheless). Sometimes even non-governmental organiza-
tions (NGOs) or institutions that include non-state representation (such as the
International Organization for Standardization and forest certification systems)
can be authoritative sources of rules to which states or firms commit.21 Gover-
nance systems that are not mandated by states or intergovernmental agreements
exhibit the logic of the international rules pathway when their standards gain
broad recognition and come to be understood as binding by firms or other targeted
actors that sign up to them.22 Focusing on the logic of rules rather than starting
from an issue-specific regime highlights the point that even when an issue—such
as forests—lacks a comprehensive regime, influence along this pathway may occur
from rules in related hard and soft law arrangements.
19
Similar logics of coercion are explored by Simmons, Dobbin and Garrett, ‘Introduction’, and Busch and
Jörgens, ‘International patterns’, who label it ‘imposition’.
20
Thomas Franck, The power of legitimacy among nations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
21
Steven Bernstein and Benjamin Cashore, ‘Can non-state global governance be legitimate? An analytical
framework’, Regulation and Governance 1: 4, 2007, pp. 347–71; David Vogel, ‘Private global business regulation’,
Annual Review of Political Science 11: 1, 2008, pp. 261–82; Errol Meidinger, ‘The administrative law of global
private public regulation: the case of forestry’, European Journal of International Law 17: 1, 2006, pp. 47–87.
22
Vogel, ‘Private global business regulation’.
590
Propositions
1(a) International agreements influence domestic policy to the extent that they create binding
obligations on states through international law. This baseline proposition emphasizes
that binding rules carry their own logic of influence. While we recognize that an
extensive literature already exists on an enormous range of conditions for compli-
ance, some of those conditions are addressed along other pathways owing to their
logic of influence.
1(b) Transnational and/or domestic coalitions for change can activate rules in cases of
non-compliance. This proposition focuses on agency through which the pathway is
activated, especially when enforcement is weak. The logic of rules can be a resource
on which transnational and/or coalitions of domestic actors draw when govern-
ments do not comply, although the ability to mobilize may vary across domestic
settings. When mobilization is possible, groups can publicize non-compliance, put
pressure on governments to live up to their commitments, or press governments to
launch disputes against other countries that do not fulfil their obligations.
1(c) For countries dependent on trade or foreign capital under conditions of increasing global-
ization, fear of losing market share and investor confidence acts as an added incentive to comply
with international rules.
1(d) Agreements on international rules with strong compliance mechanisms are more likely
when such agreements reflect rules or processes already under way domestically owing to
interaction with other pathways.
International norms and discourse

International norms and discourse, whether embodied in institutions or consti-
tuted by broader practices of global governance, can define and regulate appropriate
domestic behaviour. Thus they operate through both a logic of appropriateness
(norm-guided without regard to consequences) and a logic of consequences (which
rests on utilitarian calculations).23 Although these two logics can be difficult to
differentiate when investigating norm-guided behaviour in practice, to the degree
that norms operate like regulatory rules with consequences for violations, a logic
of consequences prevails when actors calculate the consequences of obeying or
disobeying the prescribed or proscribed behaviour. To the degree that norms
define appropriate practices, they operate more according to a logic of appropri-
ateness. While rules also have elements of both logics, the non-binding nature of
international norms (when not entrenched in hard law) means influence along this
pathway relies more heavily on a logic of appropriateness. Thus the difference
from the rules pathway is one of degree more than kind.
While discourse can operate through productive power,24 we are especially
interested in deliberate efforts by transnational actors to diffuse or implement
23
James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, ‘Institutional perspectives on political institutions’, Governance 9: 3, 1996,
pp. 247–64; James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, ‘The institutional dynamics of international political orders’,
International Organization 52: 4, 1998, pp. 943–69.
24
Productive power is at work when “socially existing and, hence, historically contingent and changing understand-
ings, meanings, norms, customs, and social identities … make possible, limit, and are drawn on for action’: Michael
Barnett and Raymond Duvall, ‘Power in international politics’, International Organization 59: 1, 2005, p. 56.
591
norms. In this regard, Keck and Sikkink outline a series of strategies that trans-
national actors can undertake to encourage states to follow norms—the politics of
information, symbolism, leverage and accountability.25 According to their model,
domestic policy-making structures or networks matter only to the degree that they
cause a ‘boomerang’ effect: that is, when they are closed or resistant to influence
from agents of change, they induce domestic actors to resort to the international
level to seek allies and bring scrutiny to bear.26 However, others have argued that
global norms can be mediated by domestic structures27 or, as Acharya finds, by the
ability of local actors to reconstruct international norms to fit with local norms or
to reinforce local beliefs or institutions.28 This idea of fit is consistent with a logic
of appropriateness, though the degree to which domestic factors change norms
remains a matter of some debate. Acharya’s view, for example, differs slightly from
Keck and Sikkink’s argument that ‘dynamic’ factors in domestic politics—such as
how proposals for change ‘fit’ with other related policies, the changing positions
of government, and the dominant ideologies or cultural discourse and practices—
account for the success of transnational campaigns for change. Learning gained
through interaction in transnational networks, explicit efforts at dialogue, and/or
participation in formal and informal international gatherings or conferences and
transgovernmental networks29 also seems relevant for the dissemination of, and
possible transformation of, norms.
Propositions
2(a) Norms agreed to in international fora and promoted by powerful or influential organiza-
tions influence the direction of policy change when governments or firms face external pressures
to change policies.
2(b) Strategies for change based on international norms and discourse depend on the moral
vulnerability of the target state or firm (i.e. how sensitive it, or its brand, is to challenges
to its international reputation).
2(c) Success depends on resonance with domestic ideology, culture and broader policy goals, not
on targeting particular actors or domestic policy networks.
2(d) The importance of learning networks suggests success along this pathway is more probable
when the fourth pathway (direct access) is also travelled.
25
Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists beyond borders: advocacy networks in international politics (Ithaca,
NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1998).
26
Keck and Sikkink, Activists beyond borders.
27
Thomas Risse-Kappen, ed., Bringing transnational relations back in: non-state actors, domestic structures and
international institutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
28
Amitav Acharya, ‘How ideas spread: whose norms matter? Norm localization and institutional change in
Asian regionalism’, International Organization 58: 2, 2004, pp. 239–75.
29
Holzinger et al., in ‘Environmental policy convergence’, group learning processes under the heading of
‘transnational communication’, and use mutual membership in international organizations as a proxy
explanation for it. Here we are able to focus more explicitly on the mechanisms through which learning
occurs, and the conditions under which they are effective. See also Anne-Marie Slaughter, A new world order
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).
592
Markets
The markets pathway encompasses processes or tactics that attempt to manipulate,
work with or leverage markets to create domestic policy change. It includes direct
action such as boycott campaigns that target foreign export markets to put pressure
on exporters, indirect action such as certification systems that attempt to regulate
markets or otherwise embed them in social and environmental values or goals
directly without state mediation, and the use of market mechanisms in general.
Direct and indirect action may also be combined. For example, certification
systems with established standards may influence behaviour by means of carrots,
such as the provision of market access, firm recognition and price premiums, as
well as sticks, such as the conferring of negative attention on non-joiners.
Propositions
3(a) Relative dependence on foreign markets and the success of transnational actors in persuading
consumers to exercise preferences are key determinants of policy influence.
3(b) Boycott strategies give the appearance of short-term success, but long-term efforts require
more enduring forms of non-state authority, such as certification. Normative change is unlikely
as a result solely of direct market pressure.
3(c) Use of market mechanisms is more likely to produce policy change when combined with
elements of other pathways, especially when institutions are able to generate their own legiti-
mate authority, as in the case of some third-party certification systems.
Direct access to domestic policy-making processes

Influence along this pathway can occur through direct funding, education,
training, assistance and capacity-building, and possibly even through attempts at
co-governance via partnerships between domestic and international public and
private actors and authorities. Any attempts at influence along this pathway must
navigate concerns about sovereignty and the risk of being viewed as foreign or
international intrusion. Thus, non-domestic actors should avoid direct lobbying
or other perceived challenges to state autonomy in favour of strategies that alter
the balance of power among existing domestic organized interests or their partici-
pation in policy networks. Transnational actors may accomplish their mission by
sharing resources, ideas, knowledge and expertise with existing groups, or by
facilitating the creation of new groups or coalitions.
Apart from a general concern with capacity-building—mainly with reference
to facilitating implementation in developing countries rather than influencing
policy—the current effectiveness literature has for the most part neglected this
pathway, which leads us to focus on it more. Moreover, in the forests case (and
we suspect in other cases) our review of global sources of domestic policy change
suggests it is the most important avenue of influence.30
30
Bernstein and Cashore, ‘Examination of the influences of global forest governance’.
593
Propositions
4(a) Influence can operate through the provision of financial resources to assist existing civil
society organizations or to help create new organizations. These efforts can help shift the balance
of power in domestic policy processes and provide access to often marginalized or disempowered
organizations. However, broader questions of democracy, transparency, openness
and accountability are prerequisites for the successful use of this strategy. Meeting
such preconditions may take time, since they are not sector-specific (for example,
it may be hard to democratize forest policy-making in isolation).
4(b) Direct influence on the domestic policy process can result from international efforts to build
learning fora and training about how to produce improved environmental, social and economic
performance ‘on the ground’. Learning is often promoted through multi-stakeholder
networks, which diffuse their knowledge via network members involved in
government, firm and community decision-making. Policy learning is influential
when it uncovers win–win opportunities that otherwise would fail to emerge
owing to perceived conflicts.31
4(c) Policy learning is likely to have influence when it addresses specific questions that improve
particular practices (e.g. forest management practices) rather than larger issues, such as
economic demands to convert natural forests to plantations.
4(d) Interventions aimed to help governments enforce or implement their own laws are more
likely to succeed than attempts to directly influence the passing of new legislation. Direct access
through enforcement/implementation strategies can yield swift and immediate results, as long
as international actors and organizations do not make additional requirements to which the
domestic government does not agree. The potential impact of this strategy is significant
because—unlike other strategies—it reinforces policy objectives of the national
government which, owing to a lack of capacity and resources, it is unable to
enforce or implement. The corollary is that transnational groups require detailed
knowledge of policy networks to be effective on this path.
Illustrative application to forest governance

We chose forests to illustrate the utility and plausibility of this framework for
two reasons. First, the primary goal of forest governance is to influence domestic
policy-making processes rather than simply to constrain or modify the external
behaviour of states. The reason is simple: while the consequences of forest use,
preservation or degradation have global implications ranging from biodiver-
sity loss to effects on the carbon cycle, forest resources lie within state borders.
Thus, any governance of forest lands or practices must also take account of local
consequences and needs. Second, as described by a recent international expert
31
Paul Sabatier, ed., An advocacy coalition lens on environmental policy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999); Peter Hall,
‘Policy paradigms, social learning, and the state: the case of economic policy-making in Britain’, Comparative
Politics 25: 3, 1993, pp. 275–96; Michael Howlett and M. Ramesh, ‘The policy effects of internationalization:
a subsystem adjustment analysis of policy change’, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis 4: 3, 2002, pp. 31–50;
Michael Howlett and Jeremy Rayner, ‘Globalization and governance capacity: explaining divergence in
national forest programs as instances of “next-generation” regulation in Canada and Europe’, Governance: An
International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions 19: 2, 2006, pp. 251–75.
594
panel on forest governance, ‘the current set of international forest governance
arrangements is best seen as a complex hybrid mix of international law, soft law,
and non-government performance-based measures. Some are forest focused and
others forest related.’32 It thus offers a prototypical example of the complex
governance arrangements that increasingly characterize global environmental
governance.
In applying the framework, we are interested first in whether the evidence
supports the argument that policy change can occur via each pathway. In terms
of government policy, we focus mainly on decisions (statutes, regulations and
policy statements that carry the force of the state) that conform to the goals or
values promoted internationally. Although formal policies are just one element
of the policy-making process, anything less fails to indicate the actual choices of
governments. The effects of policy change on behaviour ‘on the ground’ and on
performance (for example, reducing environmental degradation) are also impor-
tant, but often more difficult to demonstrate. Similarly, for firms, we are inter-
ested in whether they adopt a norm or standard, and ultimately whether they
comply with a standard or change a practice.
The four pathways

International rules In the absence of a comprehensive forest treaty, the interna-
tional agreements that most fit the logic of the rules path (particularly in accor-
dance with proposition 1(a)) are non-forest treaties with provisions that directly
or indirectly target forests. Examples include the Convention on Biological
Diversity, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild
Fauna and Flora (CITES) and, less directly, World Trade Organization treaties
and regional trade agreements. CITES best displays this logic. It monitors and
restricts the trade in species facing extinction by, among other things, identifying
and listing species in which international trade is banned (in Appendix I) or may be
conducted only with a CITES export permit (Appendix II). The impacts of CITES
are often region-specific, determined by the location of the protected species. In
Latin America, for example, several important timber species, including bigleaf
mahogany (listed in Appendix II in 2003),33 have been listed following concerns
over illegal harvesting and research by international scientific and conservation
bodies.34 Such listings have led many producer countries to establish national
CITES management authorities, often by adapting legislation.35
While trade agreements are primarily designed to promote liberalization and
frequently face criticism from environmentalists for ignoring trade impacts or
32
Rayner et al., Embracing complexity, p. 15.
33
Timber species listed in Appendix I include Brazilian rosewood (Dalbergia nigra) and Guatemala fir (Abies
guatemalensis). Those listed in Appendix II include Pacific coast mahogany (Swietenia humilis), Caribbean
mahogany (S. mahogoni) and bigleaf mahogany (S. macrophylla).
34
James Grogan and Paulo Barreto, ‘Big-leaf mahogany on CITES Appendix II: big challenge, big opportunity’,
Conservation Biology 19: 3, 2005, pp. 973–6.
35
Ivan Tomaselli and Sofia R. Hirakuri, ‘Converting mahogany’, ITTO Tropical Forest Update 18: 4, 2009, pp.
12–15.
595
limiting domestic regulation, they increasingly incorporate environmental provi-
sions. The best example in forestry is the 2009 United States–Peru Trade Promo-
tion Agreement.36 An accompanying annex (annex 18.3.4) requires Peru to increase
its administrative, monitoring and enforcement staff; implement specific measures
to reduce corruption; provide criminal and civil liability for a range of activities
that undermine the sustainable management of Peru’s forest resources; implement
provisions to combat illegal logging; adopt and implement specific policies to
protect tree species listed in the CITES appendices; promote capacity-building;
and ensure that the views of indigenous groups and other stakeholders are consid-
ered in decision-making.37 Annex 18.3.4 also includes a series of measures for
compliance, joint monitoring and enforcement, among them third-party audits
of producers to ensure compliance with laws, regulations and verification proce-
dures, as well as penalties for non-compliance (e.g. banning of exports) and a
dispute resolution process. The United States–Peru Trade Promotion Agreement
has already ‘been a driving force to change the Peruvian Forest Law, as well as to
introduce other changes that are generally in line with CITES requirements’.38
However, explicit language on forests is still the exception in trade agreements.
Consistent with proposition 1(d), of all the trade agreements between the United
States and Latin American countries, the only one with strict rules on forests
involves Peru, which had initiated reforms in the early 2000s in advance of the
treaty.
For forest-related agreements, the closest fit to the rule path are initiatives to
build regional forest law enforcement and governance (FLEG) agreements and
international commitments on forests within the climate change regime. Although
neither is strictly speaking treaty-based or binding, both are evolving in that direc-
tion. For example, the ‘reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation’
(REDD) concept may lead, eventually, to one of the first sets of rules in interna-
tional forest governance to have a binding impact on domestic practices such as
land-use change and logging.
FLEG agreements and processes emerged initially as co-hosted by producer and
consumer countries and the World Bank. Many of the FLEG processes focused on
building greater capacity for the enforcement of existing laws,39 reducing contra-
dictory legal regimes, enlisting NGOs to monitor on-the-ground activities, and
reducing high levels of illegal logging through labelling and market access arrange-
ments.40 While many FLEG processes relied on soft agreements, the EU intro-
duced EU FLEGT (forest law enforcement, governance and trade) to effectively
36
http://www.ustr.gov/countries-regions/americas/peru, accessed 23 Feb. 2012.
37
http://www.ustr.gov/sites/default/files/uploads/agreements/fta/peru/asset_upload_file953_9541.pdf,
accessed 23 Feb. 2012.
38
Tomaselli and Hirakuri, ‘Converting mahogany’, p. 13.
39
Luca Tacconi, ed., Illegal logging: law enforcement, livelihoods and the timber trade (London: Earthscan, 2007).
40
David Brown, Kate Schreckenberg, Neil Bird, Paolo Cerutti, Filippo Del Gatto, Chimere Diaw, Tim Fomete,
Cecilia Luttrell, Guillermo Navarro, Rob Oberndorf, Hans Theil and Adrian Wells, Legal timber: verification
and governance in the forest sector (London: Overseas Development Institute, 2008); FAO and ITTO, Best practices
for improving law compliance in the forest sector (Rome: FAO, 2005); World Bank, ‘FLEG: forest law enforcement
and governance’, FLEG News (Washington DC: World Bank, 2005).
596
harden the requirements owing to scepticism that regional voluntary cooperative
efforts would address the causes of corruption and forest degradation. The EU has
negotiated FLEGT ‘voluntary partnership agreements’ with exporting countries
in Africa and South-East Asia. The ‘voluntary’ feature accommodates WTO rules
that trade restrictions are permitted when importing and exporting countries
agree. However, once signed, these agreements amount to de facto binding law.
Perhaps most interesting is that the success of FLEGT has largely depended on
domestic support, and thus the direct access pathway (discussed below).
Forest certification—despite being a process directed largely by non-state
actors—is also showing signs of affecting policy along an international rules
pathway, in two ways. First, some systems are seeking recognition for their
standards as equal in status to other international standards recognized under
international trade law.41 Second, there are signs that support for forest certifi-
cation may not just be a result of market pressure such as boycotts; it may also
be based on the perception that certification systems themselves are a legitimate
authority through which to develop appropriate standards.42
International norms and discourse A strong consensus prevails within academic and
policy circles on three procedural principles that define good forest governance:43
inclusiveness,44 transparency45 and accountability.46 Equity is also emerging as a
substantive global norm in resource47 and forest governance.48 A closely related
and increasingly salient norm of ‘subsidiarity’ prescribes granting greater access
to forest resources to indigenous and forest-dependent communities, although
41
Steven Bernstein and Erin Hannah, ‘Non-state global standard setting and the WTO: legitimacy and the need
for regulatory space’, Journal of International Economic Law 11: 3, 2008, pp. 575–608.
42
Bernstein and Cashore, ‘Can non-state global governance be legitimate?’.
43
For general overviews see World Bank, Guidelines for formulating and implementing national action plans to combat
illegal logging and other forest crime (draft) (Washington DC: World Bank, 2006); Benjamin Cashore, ‘Key
components of good forest governance in ASEAN’, Exlibris, no. 6, 2009, ASEAN–German Regional Forest
Programme.
44
e.g. Jill M. Belsky, ‘Forest policy and politics in the Philippines: the dynamics of participatory conservation’,
Journal of Asian Studies 62: 3, 2003, pp. 1027–8; Arnoldo Contreras-Hermosilla, Hans M. Gregersen and Andy
White, Forest governance in countries with federal systems of government: lessons and implications for decentralization
(Bogor, Indonesia: Center for International Forest Research, 2008); Jesse C. Ribot, ‘From exclusion to
participation: turning Senegal forestry policy around’, World Development 23: 9, 1995, pp. 1587–99; Luca
Tacconi, Marco Boscolo and Duncan Brack, ‘National and international policies to control illegal forest
activities’, report prepared for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Government of Japan (Bogor, Indonesia:
CIFOR, 2008).
45
e.g. Daniel C. Esty, ‘Toward good global governance: the role of administrative law’, Yale Law Journal 115: 7,
2006, pp. 1490−562.
46
David Held and Mathias Koenig-Archibugi, Global governance and public accountability (Oxford: Blackwell,
2005).
47
Joseph E. Aldy, Randall A. Kramer and Thomas P. Holmes, ‘Environmental equity and the conservation of
unique ecosystems’, Society and Natural Resources 12: 2, 1999, pp. 93–106.
48
Michael Asch, ed., Aboriginal and treaty rights in Canada: essays on law, equity, and respect for difference (Vancouver:
University of British Columbia Press, 1997); Esteve Corbera, Katarina Brown and Neil W. Adger, ‘The
equity and legitimacy of markets for ecosystem services’, Development and Change 38: 4, 2007, pp. 587–613;
Patricio Meller, Raul O’Ryan and Andres Solimano, ‘Growth, equity, and the environment in Chile: issues
and evidence’, World Development 24: 2, 1996, pp. 255–72; Calvin Nhira, Sibongile Baker, Peter Gondo,
J. J. Mangono and Crispen Marunda, Contesting inequality in access to forests: policy that works for forests and
people (Harare, Zimbabwe: Centre for Applied Social Sciences and Forestry Commission, 1998); Madhu
Sarin, ‘Regenerating India’s forests: reconciling gender equity with joint forest management’, Institute of
Development Studies, IDS Bulletin 26: 1, 1995, pp. 83–91.
597
implementation remains a challenge.49 Finally, the broader normative trend to
view environmental protection as compatible with liberal economic goals also
prevails in forestry. It translates into support for market-based policies and instru-
ments, public–private partnerships, privatization, open markets and free trade.50
The most prominent example of norm diffusion is the promotion of Sustain-
able Forest Management (SFM),51 which in practice captures many of the norma-
tive trends just noted. While (as with ‘sustainable development’) its exact meaning
is contested, it can be characterized generally as the suite of practices that aim to
ensure goods and services derived from forests meet present-day needs while at the
same time securing forests’ continued availability and contribution to long-term
development. It is now supported in virtually every country in which forests play
a key role.
The pathway of influence is complex because it involves formal and informal
processes. For example, the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO),
created by the International Tropical Timber Agreement, has played a major
role in the development of criteria and indicators (C&I) for SFM. Unlike hard
law, however, C&I processes aim to define and assess rather than mandate SFM.
The hope is that such processes will help states to develop internal standards. In
addition, a series of UN-sponsored initiatives since 1992 have promoted high-level
commitment to the monitoring, reporting and assessment of SFM;52 currently
there are nine such processes, encompassing 150 countries and nearly 90 per cent
of the world’s forests.
To take just one regional example of the effects, in Africa, Eba’a Atyi et al.
report in a comprehensive review that, following the 1992 Earth Summit, ‘all of
the Central African countries have embarked on a revision of their forest laws
in order to make them compatible with the needs of sustainable forest resources
management’.53 The raising of awareness and reporting of corruption in the subre-
gion by international NGOs such as Transparency International, Global Witness
and Resource Extraction Monitoring have been also been key drivers, supporting
the proposition on the importance of moral vulnerability. The results in practice
are muted, however, because such initiatives focus mainly on the formal forest
industry, which is usually the smallest part of the sector. Moreover, the influ-
49
Shashi Kant and Doug Brubacher, ‘Aboriginal expectations and perceived effectiveness of forest management
practices and forest certification in Ontario’, Forestry Chronicle 84: 3, 2008, p. 389.
50
Steven Bernstein, The compromise of liberal environmentalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001);
David Humphreys, ‘The politics of “avoided deforestation”: historical context and contemporary issues’,
International Forestry Review 10: 13, 2008, pp. 433–42.
51
Benjamin Singer, ‘Putting the national back into forest-related policies: the international forests regime and
national policies in Brazil and Indonesia’, International Forestry Review 10: 3, 2008, pp. 523–37.
52
David Humphreys, Logjam: deforestation and the crisis of global governance (London and Sterling, VA: Earthscan,
2006); Constance L. McDermott, Benjamin Cashore and Peter Kanowski, ‘Setting the bar: an international
comparison of public and private forest policy specifications and implications for explaining policy trends’,
Journal of Integrative Environmental Sciences 6: 3, 2009, pp. 217–37; Don Wijewardana, ‘Criteria and indicators
for sustainable forest management: the road travelled and the way ahead’, Ecological Indicators 8: 2, 2008, pp.
115–22.
53
Richard Eba’a Atyi, Didier Devers, Carlos de Wasseige and Fiona Maisels, ‘State of the forests of Central
Africa: regional synthesis’, in Carlos de Wasseige, Didier Devers, de Paya Marcken, Richard Eba’a Atyi, Robert
Nasi and Philippe Mayaux, eds, The forests of the Congo basin: state of the forest 2008 (Luxembourg: Publications
Office of the European Union, 2008), p. 24.
598
ence of international normative discourse may be limited in countries where there
is widespread poverty. In such cases, short-term measures to ensure subsistence
may demand a higher priority on both ethical and sustainability grounds. Caution
is therefore warranted in attributing too much power to norms and discourse
relative to pressures of economic need.
Markets Three trends characterize efforts along the markets pathway over the past
30 years.
(1) Boycott/targeting campaigns: Transnational environmental advocacy groups have
had some success in creating negative impressions of tropical timber products.54
Wong, for example, found that ‘no-buy’ pleas helped reduce timber exports from
Indonesia to Japan and subsequently helped account for an Indonesian government
decision to review the performance of logging companies and withdraw their
concessions if their forest operations were below a certain standard.55 Boycotts
have also targeted countries with temperate forests, most notably Canada. They
put pressure on British Columbia in the early 1990s to end clear-cut logging by
targeting European and US markets,56 and contributed to a series of agreements
in the last decade to conserve Canada’s boreal forests, including the biggest forest
conservation deal in history, signed in May 2010.57
However, the body of research on targeting and boycotts shows very uneven
success overall. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, for example, transnational actors
attempted to use global markets to force policy responses in Latin America and
other tropical forested regions by threatening boycotts of tropical timber. These
attempts largely failed, owing in part to their ‘limited latitude for action’ within
the international trade regime and the subsequent threat of trade sanctions from
producer countries.58 Without direct evidence from political leaders that boycotts
have affected their decision-making, it is also difficult to know if they are neces-
sary or sufficient for policy change, since the same changes may be the result
of domestic dynamics or action taken along other pathways that coincided with
market campaigns.
(2) Certification: While certification first met with resistance from tropical
producers, it has since gained in influence. It tapped into emerging normative
support for win–win solutions by simultaneously championing markets, the
protection of environmental functions in the world’s forests, poverty alleviation,
indigenous rights and community participation. This normative underpinning
may explain the longstanding World Bank support for certification through the
Forest Stewardship Council, which represents an opportunity to support socially
54
Art W. Klassen, ‘Reduced impact logging: the tropical forest foundation experience in Indonesia’, paper
presented to meeting on Sustainable Production of Wood and Non-Wood Forest Products, March 2003,
Rotorua, New Zealand, in Proceedings of IUFRO Division 5 Research Groups 5.11 and 5.12.
55
A. Wong, ‘The anti-tropical timber in Japan’, in A. Kalland and G. Persoon, eds, Environmental movements in
Asia (Richmond: Curzon, 1998).
56
Bernstein and Cashore, ‘Globalization, four paths of internationalization and domestic policy change’.
57
Christopher Pala, ‘Pact protects Canadian forests’, Nature 465: 7296, 2010, p. 279.
58
Steven Bass and Stéphane Guéneau, ‘Global forest governance: effectiveness, fairness and legitimacy of market
driven approaches’, in Sophie Thoyer and Benoît Martimort-Asso, eds, Participation for sustainability in trade
(Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007), p. 170.
599
and environmentally responsible practices in ways that are consistent with the
Bank’s broader neo-liberal goals. While most industrialized countries in North
America and Europe gradually came to embrace third-party certification such as
that operated by FSC, many supported competitors initiated by forest owners’ or
industry associations. The standards of the latter are generally more flexible and
their governance structures have tended to downplay, relative to the FSC, the role
of environmental groups. Many now come under the umbrella of the Programme
for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC).59
Despite individual cases of success, aggregate data reveal that, after more than
a decade, less than 5 per cent of the global area of certified forests is found in
the tropics, initially the target of many proponents of certification.60 Efforts to
provide additional incentives to companies in the tropics suggest this pathway
intersects with both market incentives and direct access and learning, and requires
active agency for success (consistent with proposition 3(c)). For example, the
Tropical Forest Trust works with and gives companies access to FSC markets in
return for a commitment from companies to become certified.
(3) Legality verification: Recently the focus has shifted from certification to
promoting baseline governance through the verification of legality, in which
third-party auditors assess forest practices to determine whether they meet
baseline legality requirements. Legality verification largely reinforces sovereignty
rather than bypassing it as certification has attempted to do. We discuss this option
in more detail under the direct access pathway to illustrate how three pathways
towards policy change have intersected to produce innovative effects.
Direct access to the domestic policy process Although the least studied of the four
pathways, direct access of international forest institutions and transnational actors
to domestic policy processes has arguably had the biggest impact.
This pathway captures those processes by which non-domestic financial
resources, technical knowledge, expertise, training and learning can dramatically
shape domestic politics. It works by mobilizing and funding societal interests,
generating new coalitions or confronting existing ones, and providing resources
for effective and enduring impacts on domestic governance and policy networks.
As Singer’s assessment of the impacts of global forest governance in Cameroon,
Indonesia and Brazil finds, ‘What makes the strength of the IFR [international
forest regime], therefore, is not its formal framework or the official negotiations
… but rather its informal aspects. In particular, principles and policy networks …
have transcended spheres and contributed to shaping Brazilian, Cameroonian and
Indonesian FRPs [forest-related policies], and vice-versa.’61 Similarly, informal
policy networks, such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN)
regional knowledge network, seem to be particularly effective in Asia because
of ‘a cultural aversion to formal institutional arrangements and a reflection of an
59
Humphreys, Logjam.
60
Richard Eba’a Atyi and Markku Simula, Forest certification: pending challenges for tropical timber (Kuala Lumpur:
ITTO, 2002).
61
Singer, ‘Putting the national back into forest-related policies’, p. 363.
600
Asian style of governance and diplomacy’.62 A range of international aid agencies,
NGOs and educational institutions have travelled this pathway in the last 20 years
under the rubric of capacity-building, which often works to reinforce, rather than
to directly challenge, domestic sovereign authority.
One of the most intriguing sources of influence along this pathway is the use
of resources from external foundations, environmental NGOs, companies and
government agencies to leverage or otherwise augment resources and staff for
existing domestic organizations and/or to create new domestic organizations or
coalitions.63 For example, foundations and environmental NGOs in the United
States influenced Canadian forest policy beginning in the 1980s. Working first in
British Columbia and then expanding to include the Canadian boreal forests, these
groups combined market-based and direct access approaches. The latter included
the granting of financial resources to environmental NGOs and marginalized
groups, including First Nation groups, which provided them with the staff, time
and expertise to become active in the domestic policy-making process.64
Similarly, in Indonesia, a range of non-domestic groups took advantage of
the fall of the Suharto regime to strengthen civil society with a view to fostering
new ideas and interests within domestic policy-making. Organizations such as
the Nature Conservancy successfully became involved in policy networks, partly
because of the fragmentation of authority that followed the decentralization of
the government administration.65 In addition, donor agencies, including the UK
Department for International Development and Norway’s Partnerships, as well as
transnational environmental NGOs, have actively sought to promote social and
environmental values in forest management in Indonesia. Initially, the focus was
on forest practices, illegal logging, democratic decision-making and forest gover-
nance, poverty alleviation among forest-dwellers, resolving tenurial problems and
increasing local forest management. Recently, many donors have begun to focus
on climate change mitigation and adaptation.
However, owing to the dynamic nature of these efforts in Indonesia, and
the broader market forces of economic globalization, which have resulted in
the significant conversion of natural forests to plantations, the results achieved
through this direct access pathway have been mixed. Although these influences
succeeded in building NGO and academic coalitions that influenced the content
of a new Indonesian forest law, significant implementation challenges, including
the fragmentation of authority, have limited impact on the ground. The private
sector remains highly influential, and disentangling the interests of business and
62
Helen Nesadurai and Diane Stone, ‘Southeast Asian research institutes and regional cooperation’, in Diane
Stone, ed., Banking on knowledge: the genesis of the global development network (London and New York: Routledge,
2000), p. xx.
63
Cristina Balboa, When non-governmental organizations govern (New Haven, CT: Yale Graduate School of Arts
and Social Sciences, 2009).
64
Irene Scher, Internationalization and the Canadian boreal campaign (New Haven, CT: Yale University Environ-
mental Studies Program, 2008).
65
Christopher Barr, Ida A. P. Resosudarmo, Ahmad Dermawan and Bambang Setiono, ‘Decentralization’s
effects on forest concessions and timber production’, in Christopher Barr, Ida A. P. Resosudarmo, Ahmad
Dermawan and John McCarthy, eds, Decentralization of forest administration in Indonesia: implications for forest
sustainability, economic development and community livelihoods (Bogor, Indonesia: CIFOR, 2006).
601
government is often difficult. Domestic challenges in the implementation of new
laws, and the short attention spans of international donors—who move quickly
from one instrument (such as forest certification) to the next (such as REDD)—
have placed sometimes confusing and conflicting demands on government policy-
makers.
To be sure, not all these intersecting pathways produce uniform results across
time or space. The EU’s efforts on illegal logging a decade ago can be seen as a
reaction to the market pressure (including attempted boycotts) exerted by NGOs.
However, this outcome stands in contrast to the limited public policy impact of
similar market campaigns in Japan and China. Likewise, public policy responses
in Indonesia to EU market pressure were ‘paper’ edicts only.66 These limited
effects provided a major impetus to legality verification through the FLEG and
FLEGT processes. While these are no panacea, and can have the unintended effect
of increasing unsustainable legal logging,67 the combination of the markets, inter-
national rules and market access pathways appears to hold promise in ways that a
single pathway may not.
Fostering learning across domestic coalitions is also a major mechanism of
influence along this pathway. For example, the C&I processes dominant in the
1990s focused NGOs, governments and industry organizations on ‘how things
work’, which led to a realization of the importance of collaborative learning,
especially on such complex issues as forest management. For example, through
its support of FLEG processes, the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) agency
funds numerous local agencies in Indonesia to research the impacts of different
logging practices, while another organization, the Tropical Forest Founda-
tion, helped to provide the government of Indonesia with a scientifically sound
foundation for reduced impact logging, leading to the development of guidelines
for better forest practices.68 Meanwhile, across ASEAN, the 2001 Bali Declara-
tion promoted region-wide deliberations in which member states committed to
building and fostering cross-national ties to promote FLEG, combat corruption
and improve enforcement, which led to new initiatives and experiments within
and across countries.69
These efforts linked transnational and domestic networks focused on helping
governments meet their own domestic standards and norms, even though these
may have had international roots. They drew on notions of sovereignty and self-
interest, avoiding confrontation that could be exploited by oppositional forces
decrying ‘foreign’ influence. In this case, international NGOs were enlisted to
help train and foster learning about ‘on the ground’ auditing. Meanwhile, EU and
US legislation banning imports of illegally harvested wood from these countries
created synergies between the ‘international rules’ and ‘direct access’ pathways,
66
Environment Investigation Agency and Telepak, ‘Timber trafficking: illegal logging in Indonesia, South East
Asia and international consumption of illegally sourced timber’, Environmental Investigation Agency and
Telepak Indonesia, Sept. 2001; Tacconi, Illegal logging.
67
Sam Lawson and Larry MacFaul, Illegal logging and related trade indicators of the global response (London: Chatham
House, 2010).
68
Klassen, ‘Reduced impact logging’.
69
Brown et al., Legal timber.
602
reinforcing grand global coalitions of ‘bootleggers and Baptists’ in which most
government, business and NGO actors were united around reducing illegal
logging.70 These efforts created better supply chain tracking on the one hand, and
the emergence of global networks on the other hand. We expect these outcomes
to reinforce progress on other pathways, including markets (as a result of more
efficient tracking) and norms (through generation of new global communities
rooted in redefined interests and changing identities of actors previously situated
in opposing coalitions).
Conclusions
This article has attempted to make the argument for opening up the scholarship
on effectiveness to take account of how global governance of the environment
has actually evolved. To state the issue bluntly, approaches to the influence and
effects of global environmental governance have not kept pace with changes in
how governance is actually done. The purpose of separating the pathways is not
to suggest a choice between them in terms of institutional design or strategy,
especially because in practice all or most of the pathways are active in attempts
to address any given environmental problem. Rather, it is to isolate the logics
of influence in order to better identify causal processes that condition desirable
policy change.
The framework further suggests that simple comparisons of governance
mechanisms are of limited value. Rather, it is often the interaction of mecha-
nisms and processes, sometimes along multiple pathways, that create collective
influence. Further research—within and across other issues—could help reveal in
particular cases the contradictions and synergies of complex institutional arrange-
ments through which policy change occurs. Influences and interactions along the
direct access pathway in the forests case were particularly revealing in this respect.
Along those lines, one major concern across many areas of complex global
governance is growing fragmentation, which militates against effectiveness. The
resultant desire for greater cohesion in the institutional framework for sustain-
able development is also one of the main drivers of the institutional reform
agenda of the Rio+20 conference.71 Examining cohesion from the dual perspec-
tive of identifying how particular mechanisms and processes influence outcomes
and ways in which pathways are often simultaneously travelled may offer some
clues on how to improve cohesion across multiple institutions and processes.
For example, analyses of this kind can assess whether different influences along
different pathways reinforce one another, interact in productive ways to increase
70
DeSombre, ‘Domestic sources of international environmental policy’ also notes the possible impact of
‘Baptist and bootlegger’ coalitions, but in her case with a greater focus on the internationalization of US
environmental policy than the reverse.
71
Steven Bernstein with Jutta Brunnée, ‘Consultants’ report [for the UN Conference on Sustainable
Development Secretariat] on options for broader reform of the Institutional Framework for Sustainable
Development (IFSD): structural, legal, and financial aspects’, http://www.uncsd2012.org/rio20/index.php?
page=view&type=400&nr=211&menu=45, accessed 23 Feb. 2012; UNEP, ‘The environmental dimension of
IFSD’.
603
effectiveness, or, conversely, produce fragmentation or work at cross-purposes.
In addition, findings regarding learning and its conditions may offer insight into
creating greater coherence at multiple levels in complex institutional environ-
ments—working with complexity rather than against it. Attention to learning
and how pathways interact may be just as important as, if not more important
than, heroic attempts to simplify or streamline the intergovernmental institutional
architecture, a strategy that pays insufficient attention to the complex governance
arrangements that reflect how global environmental and sustainable development
is actually conducted in the twenty-first century.
604

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Complex global governance and domestic

policies: four pathways of influence

STEVEN BERNSTEIN AND BENJAMIN CASHORE *

International Affairs 88: 3 (2012) 585–604

The problem: complex governance

The framework: four pathways of global influences on domestic and

International norms and discourse

Direct access to domestic policy-making processes

Illustrative application to forest governance

The four pathways

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