U.S. Presidential Decisions on Ozone Depletion and Climate Change: A Foreign Policy Analysis.

The question this paper addresses is whether and, if so, to what extent can existing IR theories of high politics decision making be applied to low politics issue areas, specifically international environmental policy. The paper considers three individual level theories: Prospect Theory, Political and Policy Risk Theory and Poliheuristic Theory. Each is applied to two case studies, The Montreal Protocol and The Kyoto Protocol, to test its ability to explain the decision-making processes of United States presidents. The climate change case study is most illustrative, either for or against the applicability of a theory, as the risks presidents faced were greater. The paper concludes that none of the applications lend full support to any of the theories. At the same time, none of them completely invalidate the theories either. Of the three, Political and Policy Risk Theory shows the most promise, while the analysis of Prospect Theory reveals some weaknesses in its applicability and the results of the application of Poliheuristic Theory fall somewhere in between. The findings suggest that foreign policy analysis theories may be best able to explain international environmental policy choices if they can capture the complexity of the issue, better define risk and allow for more human agency in terms of personal preferences and belief systems. In general, the applications to environmental policy suggest that the three theories could be adjusted or amended to become better generalizable to different policy areas. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]