From Historical Institutionalism to the analysis of the evolution of APEC's green issues
Date Issued
2011
Date
2011
Author(s)
Tien, Ni-Ling
Abstract
Abstract
APEC was established for negotiation and conversation in response to the trend of global integration of economic regions and to the need of a channel to reasonably settle trading disputes resulting from frequent trading among countries in the region. APEC began as a relatively loose regional economic forum, whose daily operation was based on “consensus” decisions and “voluntary” ones. Due to the absence of clear norms and institutions, the resolutions lack constraint forces. Therefore, APEC is often perceived as a forum without practical constraint forces, suspected that it will fall into hollowing-out. In recent years, with the change of APEC issues, the evolution and differentiation of APEC’s functions, the organization constantly adjust itself to accommodate new functions.
This paper will first introduce the organization characteristics of APEC, its decision-making model, and the evolving process of the issues over the years. Then the paper will analyze the evolution of the green issue of APEC with historical institutionalism, supposing that the green issue does not appear out of thin air but is formed through the generation of two key points which correct the path.
Through the analysis of the issues over the years, we will discover without much difficulty the origin of energy issues: it gradually evolved from the green energy stemming from the discussion of how to reduce the impact on the environment and the green issue gradually formed under the influence of climate change.
Since 1995, green energy and environmental issues have increased over the years with the development of ECOTECH projects. In 2007, the green issue is included in the discussion of Leaders’ Meeting.
We start from ECOTECH, one of the three pillars of APEC: in the time of T0, ECOTECH aims at the reduction of member countries’ differences, economy balance, and sustainable development. Evolving to the time of T1, the issue is combined with energy issues, changes its contents with the temporal evolution to T2 and T3, and eventually becomes the green issue. From a long-term perspective, the institution will change in a stable, cyclical way, instead of abandoning completely the design of original institution and creating a new way; therefore, it is but a moderate amendment of the original institution.
Subjects
Historical Institutionalism
APEC
Path Dependence
ECOTECH
Green Issue
SDGs
Type
thesis
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