The Nation State and Responses to Global Environmental Change

随着气候变化、生物多样性丧失、臭氧消耗和其他全球环境问题成为国家和国际政策辩论的中心议题，国家的作用变得越来越决定性。这个项目研究民族国家在塑造导致全球变化的力量和人类对此做出反应的过程中扮演的关键角色。国家环境政策的宏观社会指标数据被用来发展和检验国家环境政策的宏观比较理论。该模型包括公民富裕、经济增长率和资本存量、世界经济秩序中的依附地位、经济结构、人口压力、阶级结构和教育、国家环境运动的力量、科学资源、民主水平以及文化和制度历史等因素。由于到目前为止还没有关于环境运动强度和环境科学界力量的衡量标准，本研究项目通过将二级来源的客观指标与专家小组的评估相结合来填补这一空白，以便制定这些措施。该项目通过严格审查一个国家在世界政治经济中的地位作为国家对环境保护控制程度的决定因素的重要性，增加了比较政策和国际关系领域。它有助于对是什么导致各国为了保护环境而接受对其自治的各种限制的新理解。

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.