International Climate Cooperation and the Watershed of Policy Streams

Abstract

This article presents a watershed model of the policy process to examine comparative policy issue contexts associated with global warming and climatic change (GWCC). The watershed model extends the metaphor of policy streams advanced by Lasswell, Kingdon, Howlett et al., and others to characterize the conditions that precede, and sometimes preclude, the effective workings of the policy process. The model considers the confluence of factors that contribute to the formation of policy knots that precede stages of policy agenda setting and policy formation by exploring public trust and public attention as the headwaters that feed the five streams of the policy process. After distinguishing three hydrological zones, the article identifies several critical junctures in the watershed model of the policy process that explore areas where policy “knots” precede intractable conflict.

Keywords:

• comparative policy cycles
• policy streams
• multiple streams models
• policy process

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stephen P. Groff

Stephen P. Groff is an economist and Governor of Saudi Arabia’s National Development Fund. He was previously ranking vice-president of the Asian Development Bank. Groff also served as deputy director for development co-operation at the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and as deputy vice-president for operations at the Washington, DC-based Millennium Challenge Corporation. He has also worked for the US Agency for International Development, the US Refugee Program and as a US Peace Corps volunteer. He is a graduate of Yale College and the Kennedy School at Harvard University.