The Nation State and Responses to Global Environmental Change

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As issues of climate change, loss of biodiversity, ozone depletion and other global environmental problems come to center stage in national and international policy debates, the role of the state becomes increasingly decisive. This project studies the nation state as a critical actor in shaping both the forces that cause global change and human response to it. Macro-social indicator data on nation states are used to develop and test a macro-comparative theory of state environmental policy. The model includes such factors as citizen affluence, economic growth rates and capital stock, position of dependency in a world economic order, structure of the economy, population pressure, class structure and education, the strength of the national environmental movement, scientific resources, level of democracy, and cultural and institutional history. Because measures of the strength of the environmental movement and the strength of the environmental science community were heretofore unavailable, this research project fills that gap by combining objective indicators from secondary sources with assessments of a panel of experts in order toy develop those measures. This project adds to the comparative policy and international relations field by examining rigorously the importance of considering a nation's position in the world political economy as a determinant of the degree of state control of the protection of the environment. It contributes new understanding of what leads nations toward accepting various restrictions on their autonomy for the sake of protecting the environment.