The U.s. Construction, With The Global Environmental System

America's inactiveness and resistance in the building of global environmental institutions attract much attention from the academic circles. This dissertation analyzes the factors that can make US assume the responsibility of building international environmental institutions. It conducts a research on US action in the field of international environmental institutions, and analyzes the factors that the US will take into consideration when it is confronted with responsibility to play the role of the leader in some relevant environmental areas. Regarding methodology, this dissertation employs that of the non-mathematical game. It sees the global environmental institutions as the result of gaming, integrating"power","interests"and"norms"into the framework of the non-cooperative game theory.This dissertation, unlike realism, liberalism, and constructivism, has raised such a question: If there is no common interest, can international institutions be established without a hegemony? In fact, global issues do not necessarily have a structural feature as"the tragedy of the commons"and"the prisoner's dilemma"does. If the game of"common interests"advocated by liberalists does not exist in the field of global environment issues, then the normal situation is the"deadlock game."In such a situation, where the collective action based on common interests does not exist, the establishment of international institutions depends very much upon the role of the leader. How the leader weighs the interests such a role can bring determines whether it is willing to take the responsibility. Such calculation includes the benefits the leadership role can bring the leader at the domestic level, as well as the cost it has to pay for bringing other countries into the process of building international environmental institutions. In other words, the leader makes the decision to lead out of consideration based upon both its capabilities and its willingness.Two cases are selected for the analysis: global ozonosphere protection and global forest conservation. The former is a case where institutions are successfully established while the latter is a failure. They represent two different game payoff structures and the major players are different, too. The cases provide us with a broad background against which we can make a comparative study of the role of the US government in the post-Cold War era, discuss the causes for the different strategies the US has taken, and make it clear that US environmental policies are based upon a continuous rather than discontinuous calculation of the national interest.This dissertation argues that heterogeneity of the game players and the asymmetry of their interests are the normal features of the global environmental field. Under such circumstances, the role of the leader is crucial for institutional building. Also, norms can promote significantly such building. It is necessary to point out that in the analytical framework of the non-mathematical game, the role of the leader and the shared understanding of the game rules can promote the building of global environmental institutions, but this type of collective action, based upon national interests, cannot solve effectively the environmental problems the humankind faces. The change of the way of life would be a must if human being should go out of ecological crises. Before that there should be a fundamental change of human ideas about the forms of civilization.