Faith, Institutional Participation And International Cooperation

The US participation in the UN Climate Change Regimes,including the United Nation Framework of Climate Change Convention,Kyoto Protoacl and Paris Agreement,is administration-dependent,in which the underlying and decisive variation is US decision makers' beliefs.Starting from this judgement,this dissertation attempts to answer how particular decision makers' beliefs influence their states' participation in international institutions.International institutions can be one of the most important manifestations of the international system's structural characteristic.Once established,international institutions exert independent forces to constrain what states do,and even to construct what states are.However,such constrain and construction by the international institutions cannot always be brought into play.In particular,major countries with more options in international actions have greater autonomy in their participation in international institutions.In a nutshell,why can cooperation be achieved in some case but cannot in others under certain international institutional environment?This disseration hypothesises that policy makers' beliefs filter the influence of international institutions during the process of the country' s potential participation in the institutions.The result of the filtration is to transfer the constraining and constructing function of the institutions to the national level,or to block such function from acting on the country.Finally,it leads to the country's active or passive participation in the international system.The beliefs of foreign policy decision makers are the cultural-psychological characteristics of them on how to perceive and congnize the causal relationships,norms,and intersubject relations in the international community.Beliefs,as a sytem of structural and stable private ideas,is the represention of the shared ideas formed in the process of social interaction.Decision makers' beliefs influence the state's participation in certain international institution through three mechanisms.First,to identify the state's role that is allocated by the institution.Second,defining the interests that the state can obtain by implementing the institution,including defining both relative gains and absolute gains by participation,and the cost-benefit calculation.Third,framing the core issue of the institution to gain or lose salience and legitimacy on the domestic political agenda.US participation in the UN climate change regime is administration-dependent.The Clinton administration promoted the Kyoto Protocol,yet the Bush administration announced the US withdrawal from the Protocal.The Obama administration made a high profile to promote the Paris Agreement and the Trump administration announced withdrawal.The variation did not result from changes of the structure of the UNFCCC.Also,there was no major change in the US domestic institutions of.Therefore,there is an underlying variation that has led to the varation of US participation in the UN climate institution.On the surface,administration shifts have caused changes,but the essence is that with the administration shifts,the beliefs of policymakers have changed.As the three presidents-Clinton,George W.Bush,and Obama-their personal belief system will not change drastically,but they will be the decision makers when they are presidents,and they will no longer be the main decision makers when they are not presidents.This dissertation argues that the beliefs of policymakers have changed in this sense.This dissertation focuses on big countries' participation in international institutions and enriches the research agenda of international institution theory.Drawing on the pragmatism and eclecticism methodology,this dissertation developes the concept of "belief" as a cultural-psychological feature,studing the participation of successive US governments in international climate change cooperation.Trump administration's high-profile announcement that the United States withdraws from the Paris Agreement is highly compatible with the theoretical hypothesis of this dissertation.We can see the implications for future US climate policy and international climate cooperation.