For day 26, Clay Morgan, Senior Acquisitions Editor, Environmental Studies, Political Science, Bioethics, looks back on Institutions for the Earth: Sources of Effective International Environmental Protection edited by Peter M. Haas, Robert O. Keohane, and Marc A. Levy:
One of the first books to study the effectiveness of existing institutions in protecting the environment, Institutions for the Earth remains a seminal and widely used text for courses and in the policy community. The book contributed greatly to social scientists’ understanding of international institutions, and it has inspired a good deal of research and many books on international institutions in subsequent years, a number of which have been published by the MIT Press. Institutions for the Earth was one of the first books to study international environmental governance systematically, through a qualitative, comparative, focused approach to international environmental regimes. It developed a nuanced and eclectic theoretical framework for identifying three social mechanisms that contribute to international environmental cooperation: cooperative environment, capacity building, and concern. These approaches combine theoretical insights from institutional and constructivist analysis.
Our 50 influential journal articles are listed here. The articles are in chronological order and will be freely available through the end of 2012.
For information about the MIT Press’ history, check out our 50th anniversary page.