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Biermann, Frank, and Philipp Pattberg, eds. Global Environmental Governance Reconsidered. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012. xvi + 301 pages. Cloth, $25.00.
This compendium of studies edited by political scientists Frank Biermann and Philipp Pattberg reports the results of the decade-long Global Governance Project, an effort led by the editors and including forty researchers at thirteen European locations. The purpose of the project was to examine the subject of global environmental governance from the standpoint of three new trends: greater participation of non-state actors; increasing public-private partnerships; and more segmentation of the layers of rulemaking. These trends are used to structure the text in three parts.
Part I deals with new actors in global environmental governance and includes chapters on international bureaucracies, global corporations, and science networks. The researchers who investigated international bureaucracies report that structure and internal factors determine the influence of these organizations. Other chapters present case studies detailing the success of global policy on chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and biodiversity. Global corporations are active on environmental issues as lobbyists, communicators, and regulators. These same corporations, however, can be limited by industry conflict and by countervailing...