Power and Relationships in International Environmental Policies
“Latent influence networks in global environmental politics” by Campbell et al. 2019
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0213284
The article above is an analysis of the networks between countries that are involved in international environmental treaties and policies, with a comparison of the influence of more powerful states on the action or inaction of related nodes. Overall conclusions include: nodes (states) are less likely to ratify an environmental policy if their neighboring nodes do not ratify; nodes with similar levels of economic development tend to follow each other’s decisions; and certain nodes, such as the United States, tend to exert more power over other nodes in decision-making and heavily influence the probability of related nodes in ratifying treaties. The authors of the paper utilized historical data from previous environmental treaties and corresponding states to generate a series of network graphs to visually depict the node relations.
Figure 2 from the paper, shown below, depicts an example of a positive state influence network, where the positive link entails the influence of one country on getting other countries to ratify a treaty that may not otherwise join. For example, the United States shows positive influence on Mexico. This graph does not show strongly connected components, and most node clusters are directed in one direction only.
I think that the paper reflects some key concepts that we have learned in class, such as power of specific nodes, directed graph relationships, positive and negative ties, direct-benefit effects, cooperation, graph structures, collectivism/cooperation, and social welfare. One major result from the study I found most interesting was that influence is not as strong between geographically close nodes, but rather stronger ties exist between countries with similar economic states. It is interesting to note how network theory is pervasive globally and applicable to many facets of daily life- like politics and international relations as discussed in the paper.