International norms and the policy process in Mexican environmental planning

This dissertation sets out address how international norms come to matter in domestic politics and what impact the norms may have on policy processes. A principal aim of the study is to demonstrate how norms may act as causes, specifically by addressing a gap in the literature that has not traced the effects of norms on local and regional politics in a systematic manner. The analysis of issues is organized around existing models of international and domestic political interaction.; The specific international norms investigated are environmental norms, specifically those dealing with the specification of domestic actors and their involvement in and access to the policy process. The development and specification of the norms are traced, paying particular attention to the United Nations environmental conferences held in Stockholm in 1972 and Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The specific case studies of domestic policy-making concern environmental planning processes in the state of Quintana Roo in Mexico. From the analysis of this study, it is demonstrated that norms in these particular cases had constitutive effects that resulted in the creation of nascent policy or issue networks, despite the fact that actors did not necessarily comply with the norms. In the conclusion, a new model of international and domestic interaction is formulated and discussed.