Debate continues among scholars in a variety of disciplines over the impact (positive, negative, or neutral) of transboundary environmental problems on the sovereignty of nation-states, especially in the developing world (see, for example, Karen Litfin, ed., The Greening of Sovereignty in World Politics, 1998). Expanding this debate to “economically advanced or postindustrial nations,” sociologist Dana Fisher addresses three important questions in her book. First, what is the role of the nation-state relative to other actors (civil society, market, and scientific) in negotiating international agreements when transnational environmental issues are involved? Second, how best can the disparate reactions of governments to the development of these international environmental pressures be explained? Third, how does the interaction of international and national factors affect the substance of international agreements?

Using the policy debate since 1997 over the Kyoto Protocol as a “policy window,” Fisher addresses these questions with a research design combining quantitative analysis and qualitative case study research in Japan, the Netherlands, and the United States. She begins the book by offering an analytical framework for studying international environmental policymaking that challenges two competing sets of theoretical perspectives in the sociology literature: “theories of the environmental state” and “theories of environmental sociology.” The former offers an optimistic (she says European) perspective (grounded in postmaterialist, ecological modernization, and reflexive modernization theories) that portrays economic growth as advancing environmental quality. In contrast, the environmental sociology perspective is a decidedly more pessimistic (she says American) perspective: As economic growth occurs, the use of natural resources expands and environmental quality suffers apace.

Applying regression analysis to data from 29 (of 30) Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations to test the assumptions of these theories, Fisher begins by finding little support for the idea that success in reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHGEs) is a function of top-down state-driven, bottom-up civic-driven, or economic prosperity–driven factors. Next, she offers and tests, with her three comparative case studies, a more robust analytical framework that she calls the “governmental environmental system” (GES). Variations in national responses to the Kyoto Protocol, she argues, are a function of reciprocal influences between domestic forces (specifically, the political interaction of the state, the market, the scientific community, and civil society) and international pressures (e.g., pressures by the European Union on other nations to adopt higher GHGE reduction targets). She concludes from her archival research and semistructured interviews with 80 key policy actors in Kyoto negotiations in Japan, the Netherlands, and the United States that the GES framework usefully accounts for differences in their approaches toward Kyoto, and that domestic debates among state, market, civil society, and scientific actors are significantly more important than is commonly recognized.

National Governance and the Global Climate Change Regime has several strengths. For example, the book offers a clear and concise discussion of the science that informs global change policy, concluding that the question is not whether humankind's activities are contributing to global warming, but how much, how quickly, and where. It also offers an excellent overview of the regulatory issues (e.g., carbon sinks and joint implementation), regimes created, and negotiating processes that animated international debates over the Kyoto Protocol (although the book ends before Russia signed the treaty putting it into effect). Moreover, by extending analysis of the environmental protection–national sovereignty nexus to economically advanced nations like Japan, the Netherlands, and the United States, the book both improves our understanding of the politics related to Kyoto in these three nations and affords a basis for comparing these dynamics with those in the developing world. The book also offers additional evidence challenging the “erosion of sovereignty” thesis, corroborating the reciprocal nature of national–international influence, and buttressing impressions that the power of domestic politics remains strong (at least in advanced or postindustrial societies). In the process, Fisher's case studies suggest the utility of thinking “beyond” the state to view its interactions with market, civic, and scientific sectors. Finally, and relatedly, the book further occasions skepticism about the role (positive or negative) of economic determinism in predicting environmental policy choices and impacts.

These contributions notwithstanding, the book also disappoints in several ways. Substantively, while the sociological perspectives offered may marginalize the role of domestic politics in international environmental decision making, environmental policy scholars will hardly be surprised at either their import or the specified interrelationships among actors in state, scientific, market, and civil society. Indeed, many of these scholars will infer a straw man argument in the book's claims that the role of domestic actors has not been widely recognized. In addition, a more precise and systematic comparison of the causal mechanisms across nations among these domestic forces, as well as between domestic and international pressures, would have better advanced theory building in this policy arena. Moreover, the book's failure to relate its findings to this broader comparative policy literature, as well as to ongoing debates over the role of the state in transboundary environmental issues, means that a major opportunity to address this important question is missed.

Methodologically, the book disappoints in its specification and operationalization of the quantitative model used to test the environmental sociology and environmental state perspectives. For example, the measures of ecological efficiency (e.g., motor vehicle travel per capita), environmental institutionalization (e.g., percentage of national park and protected areas to total land area), and environmental impact (e.g., the Sustainability Index of the Global Leaders of Tomorrow Environment Task Force and Ecological Footprint of Nations measure) are largely cross-sectional and are sometimes controversial (namely, the Sustainability Index). Moreover, the measures of top-down state action that are used to operationalize the state environmentalism thesis are largely indirect measures of state commitment that might have been affected by other factors (e.g., municipal waste in kilograms per person and energy supply per capita can be affected, as in the Netherlands, by economic and energy infrastructure factors). The study would have benefited from more direct operationalization of such variables as administrative regulatory capacity created or commitment to environmental regulation (e.g., size of environmental budgets per capita or as a percentage of gross domestic product).

Finally, some interpretive issues also present problems. For example, the ordinary least squares regression model predicts that a positive relationship will exist between a nation's prior efforts to deal with environmental problems (e.g., in reducing industrial waste) and its commitment to reduce carbon dioxide. As the book's discussion of the complex science of global climate change reveals, however, global climate change is what Edward Carmines and James Stimson (“The Two Faces of Issue Voting,” APSR 74 [March 1980]: 78–91) call a “hard” policy issue that puzzles the public. Moreover, as the book's discussion of Japan's approach to Kyoto indicates, the immediacy of risk that has prompted citizens to seek regulatory protection from potential harms (e.g., the health risks of various toxic pollutants) is absent when global climate change is involved. In turn, the free-rider problem that is always acute in the international environmental policy arena increases when, as with global climate change, the timing, location, and magnitude of risks are problematic. Also, while the case analyses show how the interaction of domestic actors affected their approaches to Kyoto, the link to international pressures is less clearly documented. To be sure, EU pressure pushed both the Japanese and the Clinton administration into major concessions, but they did not have a similar impact on the Bush administration. Accounting for these dynamics would have improved the book substantially.