Institutions, Policy and Outputs for Acidification by Lawrence J. O'Toole Jr

Author:Lawrence J. O'Toole, Jr [Lawrence J. O'Toole, Jr]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138322127
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2018-09-18T00:00:00+00:00

9 The Hungarian approach to LRTAP

The involvement of Hungary in the international acidification regime that is centered on the Convention on Long Range Tranś-boundary Air Pollution (CLRTAP) of the Economic Commission of Europe has stretched from the earliest agreements initiating the Convention down to the present day. Through both the older and newer domestic political systems, and despite dramatic social and economic changes spanning two decades, the nation has not wavered in its public commitments to the CLRTAP and its subsequently negotiated agreements, which have included international adoption of a standard monitoring system and a series of chemical-specific protocols stipulating quantitative targets for emission controls or reductions.

Nor has Hungarian involvement been restricted to the formal negotiating table. Representatives from the country have occupied leadership positions in LRTAP's working groups, cooperative international elements of the international regime; and-as this chapter and the one following document-the negotiated protocols have been treated seriously in domestic decision making and subsequent Hungarian efforts to participate in international efforts. Despite, and in part because of, the domestic disruptions in Hungarian social and economic life, the nation has thus far complied with all the stipulations of the CLRTAP and its protocols; and short-term projections indicate this pattern is unlikely to change in the near future.

The summary, and necessarily superficial, view must be, then, that Hungary's involvement in LRTAP signals a successful set of national-international linkages in the interests of environmental protection and transboundary cooperation. There is truth in this assertion. There are also, nonetheless, misleading elements to this generalization. Hungary's involvement in the acidification regime is both more complex and more interesting than any such straightforward conclusion.

The influence of an international regime like LRTAP on the perspectives and actions of a signatory country like Hungary can take place through a number of routes and via any combination of several causal paths. For instance, regimes like this one can place international pressure and attention on acidification objectives, help to stimulate trust and support among participants both domestically and internationally, encourage consideration for productive policy initiatives, provide information helpful in grappling with the problem, and render coordination among interdependent actors and nations easier and less tendentious. (For a review of some of the functions of such international regimes, see Helm and Sprinz 1995.)

The channels and possibilities are sufficiently complicated and numer-ous that it would be an impossible and largely unproductive task to seek here to separate out these multiple strands of influence for the Hungarian case. And, in a single-case analysis, especially one with a time horizon as short as that of LRTAP, there is no effective manner of conducting rigorous analysis to assess the relative importance of the several channels of possible influence from the international level.

The approach used here, therefore, is to assume that some combinations of these routes to influence domestic behavior on acidification are indeed facilitated or encouraged by LRTAP. (Some evidence for these influences along certain causal paths is presented where appropriate.) What follows, consequently, is an effort to trace the behavior and other

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