Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
analysis, compliance was increased by setting a one-year timetable and, far more
weakly, by specifying an implementing agent. Using summit-adjusted compliance
scores, the impact of a one-year timetable is much reduced (to the point of
disappearance), but the use of international organisations other than the wHo again
exerts the same negative effect on compliance. a more detailed look at the effect of
individual international institutions used as catalysts suggests no G8 or non-G8 body
has an impact at accepted levels of probability (see appendix 14-6). but the wHo
comes closest, again with a positive impact on compliance. In all, these findings are
consistent with the results of the initial 30-case analysis. but a larger study of more
cases is clearly needed to confirm these causes with confidence and to specify
more precisely how much and how individual international institutions and other
catalysts exert their compliance enhancing or corroding effects.
Institutionalisation
a second potential cause of compliance is the conscious collective action of the
ministers involved in G8 governance. even when the leaders at the summit do not
specifically embed in their commitment an instruction to a G8 institution to help
implement their will, G8 institutions may autonomously seek to help. the most likely
to act productively are the long-established G8 ministerial institutions with proud
records of performance, often with popularly elected politicians as members, dense
meeting schedules, and comprehensive, interconnected agendas. In the field of finance
and development, compliance does indeed rise when the G8 finance ministers, in the
oldest and the most powerful of the G8 ministerial institutions, act supportively (by
remembering and repeating essentially the same commitment during the six months
before and six months after the summit year, but letting the leaders do their own thing
during the summit year itself (Kirton 2006b; bergsten and Henning 1996).
while G8 health ministers have only met once (in the spring of 2006), the G8
finance ministers have been active on health almost continuously since 1998. They
were particularly engaged in 2000 and 2003, and the year after those two peaks.
In 2000, 50 percent of the six finance ministerials dealt with health. In 2003, 75
percent of the four ministerials did. both 2000 and 2003 had a higher than average
number of compliance catalysts embedded in their health commitments (although
2001, 2004, and 2005 did as well). It is suggestive that 2000 and 2003 coincide
with the same two years in which health compliance peaked. Yet a systematic look
at whether the G8 finance ministers address the same issue as contained in their
leaders' health commitments shows that doing so has no effect on compliance, either
before, during, or after the summit year. G8 leaders must look outside their current
G8 institutional system for reinforcing help on the compliance front.
