Soft Law, Hard Law, and Effective Implementation of International Environmental Norms

Abstract

The article compares the interplay between soft law institutions and those based on hard law in international efforts to protect the North Sea, reduce transboundary air pollution, and discipline fisheries subsidies. Our cases confirm that ambitious norms are more easily achieved in soft law institutions than in legally binding ones, but not primarily because they bypass domestic ratification or fail to raise concerns for compliance costs. More important is the greater flexibility offered by soft law instruments with respect to participation and sectoral emphasis. Second, ambitious soft law regimes put political pressure on laggards in negotiations over binding rules, but this effect is contingent on factors such as political saliency and reasonably consensual risk and option assessment. Third, hard-law instruments are subject to more thorough negotiation and preparation which, unless substantive targets have been watered down, makes behavioral change and problem solving more likely. Finally, although most of the evidence presented here confirms the implementation edge conventionally ascribed to hard law institutions, the structures for intrusive verification and review that provide part of the explanation can also be created within soft law institutions. (c) 2006 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Mandatory Targets and Environmental Performance: An Analysis Based on Regression Discontinuity Design

“…To direct the officials' attention to environmental governance, the MTS tries to adopt a series of rewards and punishment measures pertinent to the mandatory targets. Many scholars, however, still hold doubts on the effectiveness of this regulatory command-and-control method, which employs mandatory targets (rigid index) for either the local government officials or the energy companies [32,33].…”

Compliance with International Norms: Implementing OECD DAC Principles in South Korea

“…As such, divergent interests among different domestic coalition partners can impact levels of implementation through national policies (Hass, 1998;Mbaye, 2001). In other words, international norms are 'located in the twilight between law and politics' (Skjaerseth et al, 2006). At the same time, it has been argued that a lack of political will in the domestic system can limit response efficiency regarding the international requirements.…”

Effectiveness of international environmental regimes: Existing knowledge, cutting-edge themes, and research strategies

“…What we need to know here is more about the sources of compliance (74). Because the emphasis must be on governance without government for the foreseeable future, we have a particular need to deepen our understanding of mechanisms that can produce compliant behavior in the absence of the sorts of sanctions that we generally associate with the idea of enforcement (75).…”