What's up with academics putting all this interesting stuff into their introductions and then not following up? Sprinz and Vashtoranta (1994) introduce their paper on domestic interests in international environmental negotiation by doing a bunch of talking about various possible applications of domestic interests. Some of this is cool and close to my thinking. For instance, they write, "...a country may promote regulations that would benefit it by increasing international demand for its pollution abatement technology and its substitute compounds" and "If the environment of a country is affected by domestic emissions, it is expected to favor international harmonization of environmental policies in order to avoid disadvantages in international competitiveness." (78-79)
But in the end, they boil all this down to a two-by-two that cross-references costs (expected expense of abatement, high or low) and vulnerability (expected impact of environmental degradation, high or low), and postulates country interest based on that. Boring.
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