1993: Institutions for the Earth
For day 26, Clay Morgan, Senior Acquisitions Editor, Environmental Studies, Political Science, Bioethics, looks back on Institutions for the Earth: Sources of Effective International Environmental Protection edited by Peter M. Haas, Robert O. Keohane, and Marc A. Levy:
One of the first books to study the effectiveness of existing institutions in protecting the environment, Institutions for the Earth remains a seminal and widely used text for courses and in the policy community. The book contributed greatly to social scientists’ understanding of international institutions, and it has inspired a good deal of research and many books on international institutions in subsequent years, a number of which have been published by the MIT Press. Institutions for the Earth was one of the first books to study international environmental governance systematically, through a qualitative, comparative, focused approach to international environmental regimes. It developed a nuanced and eclectic theoretical framework for identifying three social mechanisms that contribute to international environmental cooperation: cooperative environment, capacity building, and concern. These approaches combine theoretical insights from institutional and constructivist analysis.