Synopses & Reviews
Secretariats -- the administrative arms of international treaties -- -would seem simply to do the bidding of member states. And yet, Sikina Jinnah argues in
Post-Treaty Politics, secretariats can play an important role in world politics. On paper, secretariats collect information, communicate with state actors, and coordinate diplomatic activity. In practice, they do much more. As Jinnah shows, they can influence the allocation of resources, structures of interstate cooperation, and the power relationships between states.
Jinnah examines secretariat influence through the lens of overlap management in environmental governance -- how secretariats help to manage the dense interplay of issues, rules, and norms between international treaty regimes. Through four case studies, she shows that secretariats can draw on their unique networks and expertise to handle the challenges of overlap management, emerging as political actors in their own right.
After presenting a theory and analytical framework for analyzing secretariat influence, Jinnah examines secretariat influence on overlap management within the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), two cases of overlap management in the World Trade Organization, as well as a case in which the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) secretariat failed to influence political outcomes despite its efforts to manage overlap. Jinnah argues that, even when modest, secretariat influence matters because it can establish a path-dependent dynamic that continues to guide state behavior even after secretariat influence has waned.
Review
Post-Treaty Politics sheds much-needed light on the role that international secretariats play in shaping the preferences of the states involved in international environmental institutions and the relationships among those states. Jinnah's systematic and rigorous theoretical framework makes a major contribution to our understanding of when and how secretariats influence global environmental governance. The MIT Press
Review
Jinnah demonstrates -- in theory and in practice -- that treaty secretariats and the civil servants inhabiting them shape global politics. Her framework reveals that such influence varies across issues, organizations, and time, laying the foundations for many years of research and knowledge building. Ronald B. Mitchell, Professor of Political Science, University of Oregon; author of < i=""> Intentional Oil Pollution at Sea: Environmental Policy and Treaty Compliance <>
Review
In this pioneering book, Sikina Jinnah adeptly explores the independent roles that treaty secretariats play in international relations. Her sophisticated analysis of how and when secretariats influence policy-making, and the ways in which this matters, is essential reading to anyone interested in bureaucratic politics, international organizations, and global environmental governance. Stacy D. VanDeveer, Professor of Political Science, University of New Hampshire
Review
Post-Treaty Politics by Sikina Jinnah is a wonderful new monograph about the nitty-gritty details of everyday life in global governance. Henrik Selin, The Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University
Synopsis
An argument that secretariats -- the administrative arms of international treaties -- are political actors in their own right.
Secretariats -- the administrative arms of international treaties -- -would seem simply to do the bidding of member states. And yet, Sikina Jinnah argues in Post-Treaty Politics, secretariats can play an important role in world politics. On paper, secretariats collect information, communicate with state actors, and coordinate diplomatic activity. In practice, they do much more. As Jinnah shows, they can influence the allocation of resources, structures of interstate cooperation, and the power relationships between states.
Jinnah examines secretariat influence through the lens of overlap management in environmental governance -- how secretariats help to manage the dense interplay of issues, rules, and norms between international treaty regimes. Through four case studies, she shows that secretariats can draw on their unique networks and expertise to handle the challenges of overlap management, emerging as political actors in their own right.
After presenting a theory and analytical framework for analyzing secretariat influence, Jinnah examines secretariat influence on overlap management within the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), two cases of overlap management in the World Trade Organization, as well as a case in which the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) secretariat failed to influence political outcomes despite its efforts to manage overlap. Jinnah argues that, even when modest, secretariat influence matters because it can establish a path-dependent dynamic that continues to guide state behavior even after secretariat influence has waned.
About the Author
Sikina Jinnah is Assistant Professor of International Relations in the Global Environmental Politics Program at American University's School of International Service.Oran R. Young is Professor and Codirector of the Program on Governance for Sustainable Development at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, and Chair of the Scientific Committee of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change, sponsored by the International Council Of Science (ICSU), the International Social Science Council (ISSC), and the United Nations University (UNU). He is the author of The Institutional Dimensions of Environmental Change: Fit, Interplay, and Scale (2002) and coeditor (with Leslie A. King and Heike Schroeder) of Institutions and Environmental Change: Principal Findings, Applications, and Research Frontiers (2008), both published by the MIT Press.