The emergent network structure of the multilateral environmental agreement system

Abstract

The conventional piecemeal approach to environmental treaty-making has resulted in a 'maze' of international agreements. However, little is known empirically about its overall structure and evolutionary dynamics. This study reveals and characterizes the evolving structure of the web of international environmental treaty law. The structure was approximated using 1001 cross-references among 747 multilateral environmental agreements concluded from 1857 to 2012. Known network analysis measures were used to answer the following questions: has a complex system of international environmental treaty law emerged? If so when, and what does it look like? What are its topological properties? To what extent is the institutional complex fragmented? The network analysis suggested that multilateral environmental agreements have self-organized into an interlocking system with a complex network structure. Furthermore, the system has defragmented as it coevolved with the increasing complexity and interconnectivity of global environmental challenges. This study demonstrates the need to approach multilateral environmental agreements in the context of a complex networked system, and recommends against assuming the overall institutional structure is fragmented. Proposals for global environmental governance reform should pay attention to this network's emergent polycentric order and complexity and to the implications of these features for the functioning of the multilateral environmental agreement system.

Multilevel embeddedness: The case of the global fisheries governance complex

“…Like any complex document, multilateral treaties are linked in many interesting and meaningful ways, including shared authors, location, and date. However, one of the distinct features of multilateral treaties is that, more than bilateral treaties, they are responsible for the creation or codification of much international customary law and its normative evolution (Carr and Scott, 1999;Chalamish, 2009;Kim, 2013). The normative structures in which such treaties are embedded are important for it is through their normative interlinkages that multiple agreements complement or come into conflict with one another (see e.g.…”

“…As with academic citations, there can be multiple motivations for such referencing practices, including association with more popular treaties, validation for normative arguments, as part of a process of cumulative law-making, or as an amendment or addition to contemporary international law. A similar network was used by Kim (2013). Unlike Kim however, we follow Mitchell (2013) in including all treaty types and rely in part on their classification of treaties into distinct normative lineages with clear sequencing to construct an agreement-amendment-addition hierarchy to the citation structure of these treaties.…”

Legal prerequisites for ecosystem-based management in the Baltic Sea area: The example of eutrophication

“…The international law system is increasingly complex and multileveled, due to an increasing amount of international agreements being adopted (see for example Kim 2013). In the Baltic Sea area, this development is seen in the parallel application of the fundamental UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the Helsinki Convention, the BSAP, and a large number of EU directives.…”

Global nanotechnology regulatory governance from a network analysis perspective

“…Overall, they argue that, over time, “normative conflicts and regulatory competition drive the institutions towards an accommodation even in the absence of a coordinating institution” (Morin and Orsini 2013, p. 44), and, thus, regime complexes tend to become denser and more integrated. Similarly, when studying the evolution of the multilateral environmental agreement system, Kim (, pp. 983–4) found that the system has defragmented as it has coevolved.…”