The Law of the Atmosphere: Explaining a nonregime.

The idea for a Law of the Atmosphere was introduced to the world in 1988 as an institutional approach to atmospheric problems as a whole, and for a brief period there was a high level of interest in the idea. But a Law of the Atmosphere was never established. In this thesis, I seek to answer the question: Why did a Law of the Atmosphere fail to become a regime during its 1988 to 1992 window of opportunity? I created a method designed to answer this question based on a comprehensive table of factors influencing establishment of international environmental institutions that were derived from the literatures on regime formation, commons governance, and international environmental cooperation. Using document analysis and interviews, I determined which factors from this table inhibited the Law of the Atmosphere from becoming a regime. High influence factors were available solutions, leadership and issue characteristics. Moderate influence factors were policy area, resource-user characteristics, knowledge, and context. --P. ii.