Cooperation Across Boundaries: The Role of Political Entrepreneurs in Environmental Collaboration

Abstract

This paper links disparate scholarship in cross-border environmental institutions from local and global policymaking literature. We explore the ability of political entrepreneurs to broker deals across borders utilizing game theory as a metaphor for the strategic agency of the policymaking entrepreneurs. Our intent is to understand why collaboration occurs across jurisdictional boundaries in some situations and not in others and when cross-border governance works. Based on the literature, we propose and examine the explanatory power of three conditions for successful cross-border environmental negotiations: i) a skilled entrepreneur, ii) costs and benefits that are perceived as equitable, and iii) veto players' preference points (the desired end goals of the governments that the entrepreneurs represent) that are close. We use two cases to demonstrate that policy change literature can be integrated with game theoretic literature to understand game switching by political entrepreneurs in the pursuit of cross-border collaborative governance.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity and the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University for their funding and support in this research. Dr. Schoon would like to thank the National Science Foundation (Award Number 0620381) for their support. Both authors thank colleagues at Indiana University's Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis for their comments and critiques of previous versions.