Post-Treaty Politics: Secretariat Influence in Global Environmental Governance - Sikina Jinnah Talk

Sikina Jinnah from American University will be giving a talk on her forthcoming book, Post-Treaty Politics: Secretariat Influence in Global Environmental Governance, this Wednesday 12/4 at 10:30am in ASY 1101 for the final Program for Society and the Environment workshop of the semester. Her abstract can be found below. 

Please join us!

This book explores how international bureaucracies - secretariats - matter in global environmental governance.  Largely ignored by scholars of international relations, the book explains how secretariats influence politics, and the conditions under which such influence is likely to occur. It argues that, although secretariats may not have the coercive power to dictate their will against state preferences, they influence political outcomes in ways that reflect constitutive forms of power. The book illustrates how secretariats can shape power relations between states by: designing governance architectures and institutions (institutional power); restructuring relationships between states by redistributing capabilities between them (structural power); and shaping state preferences by constructing shared norms and ideas (productive power). By shaping power relations between states in these ways, the book shows how secretariats themselves become powerful actors in international affairs.