The effective management of transnational environmental problems is a current challenge for states. The difficulty and complexity of the problem requires international cooperation to deal with transboundary problems. States are often blamed for the failure to establish effective environmental regimes, while civil society actors (CSOs) are playing a more critical role in environmental management areas. However, although cooperative activities in forming environmental management among states and civil society actors can be obviously found in developed countries, especially in the EU, cooperative efforts are seldom seen in Southeast Asia, where resource are poorly protected and unsustainably exploited. Many studies that
examine environmental governance in Southeast Asia propose why environmental governance in the region cannot be effective in terms of problem-solving. This research also explores those reasons, but with the aim of finding out possible answers to how ineffective governance can be eased by cooperative attempts between states and non-state actors. To answer the question of the extent to which policy networks facilitate Southeast Asian states to improve the effectiveness of the environmental regime, this research applies a case study approach to explain the progress of the regime in Southeast Asia.
The methodological choice and research design are determined by the nature of the research question (Van Evera, 1997: 55; Vromen, 2010: 249). Epistemological realism in the debates between positivism and interpretivism – which is different from the realism approach in the field of international relations – is an appropriate framework to find the answer for this research. This is because the purpose of this research is to find a causal explanation for the development of an international regime seen as an interventionist instrument of international cooperation in achieving international outcomes on specific issues (Krasner, 1983: 5). Marsh and Furlong (2002) note that realists, who see that ‘there is a real world “out there”, but [emphasize] that outcomes are shaped by the way in which that world is socially constructed’ (2002: 31), seek causal relationships between social phenomena; they also recognize the existence of a power in the social structure that is unobservable but important for any explanation of social behaviour. Thus, realists provide a quantitative method for directly observable data and a qualitative one for unobservable data. In addition, influenced by interpretivist critiques, contemporary realists contend that causal statements and explanations of reality can be made even though not all social phenomena are directly observable, since the ability to observe may not always offer the right picture of the phenomena influenced by the unobservable structure (Marsh and Furlong, 2002: 20–31). The contemporary realist approach, which tends to place more emphasis on the qualitative method, is more in line with this research because the focus of the research is to find specific explanations for the relationships between the role of policy networks and the effectiveness of the international environmental regime in a specific context. The qualitative method offers a more practical means by providing a case study approach to form a ‘causes-of-effects’ explanation in a
particular context (Mahoney and Goertz, 2006: 230, cited in Vromen, 2010: 255). Regarding to the complexity and infrequency of the international phenomena which has constrained the testing of political generalization (Hopkin, 2010: 290), studies in political science and international relations are likely to generate particular explanations and understandings of how and why the outcomes and events occurred at particular places and times (Van Evera, 1997: 255–256). These kinds of questions require in-depth analysis and a holistic account to understand the complicated interdependencies in the issue at hand (Creswell, 2014: 186; Vromen, 2010: 257). Moreover, since this research attempts to find the causal relationships between the cooperative efforts of policy networks and their effects on the improvement of regimes, the realist epistemology fits with the research purpose in the sense that causal relations can be identified by empirical evidence by which the validity and reliability of obtained data can be assessed through the application of multiple methods including document analysis, qualitative questionnaires and interviews. The purpose is not to create any law-like, scientific statements for explaining social phenomena, but rather to find a causal relationship of those variables in a particular social context. Therefore, statistical evidence and quantitative analysis appearing in this thesis are parts of the information supporting an interpretation in observing and assessing those selected case studies.
A qualitative strategy of inquiry is important in international relations research since this allows a case study approach, which allows researchers to examine complex phenomena (Bennett and Elman, 2007: 171). This notion works well with Creswell’s argument that the real value of the qualitative method lies in the particular description in a specific context (Creswell (2014: 204). Therefore, to answer the particular research question of how policy networks improve the effectiveness of regimes, the qualitative method offers a case study, which is worth examining in detail to demonstrate the hypothesized mechanisms (Vromen, 2010: 256; Bennett and Elman, 2007: 186). The case study method is useful for this research because it tests the explanation of how the independent variables cause the dependent variables (Van Evera, 1997: 54). In this thesis, cases are selected to find out whether collaborative efforts in the form of policy networks can make any difference for international cooperation on environmental issues through the improvement of the
effectiveness of the relevant international regimes. To identify the causal relationship, the comparative method is also applied in this research.
The comparative method is about ‘observing and comparing carefully selected cases on the basis of some stimulus being absent or present’ (Burnham et al., 2004: 60). Hopkin points out that the comparative method has more of a role to play than creating social scientific generalizations because the approach functions to develop, test and refine causal relationships and other social causal claims in social research (2010: 286). In addition, the term ‘comparative method’ in cross-societal comparison, according to Warwick and Osherson (1973), is referred to ‘social scientific analyses involving observations in more than one social system, or in the same social system at more than one point in time’ (Warwick and Osherson, 1973: 8). In addition, according to them, since social scientists’ interest in discovering the conditions (independent and intervening variables) that determine certain directions of something (dependent variable), a hypothesis is proposed to identify the relationships between variables. The comparative method helps an investigator to test the hypothesis by suggesting holding particular conditions constant while letting others vary. ‘The essential analytic task is to identify similarities in the relationship between two variables … under different conditions … with other condition held constant’ (Warwick and Osherson, 1973: 7). This enables the investigator to find empirical relationships between two or more variables (Burnham et al., 2004: 69). A comparative case study is often applied to find out the relationships between an international institution and its consequences. For example, in finding the causal impacts explaining how international institutions and causal mechanisms affect behavioural change, Stokke (2007: 14) compares a small number of cases to trace a sequence of events and particular processes that mediate between an institution and its consequences. Therefore, comparing two case studies which possess differences in their network features and the effectiveness of regimes not only helps to identify the causal relationships between policy networks and the effectiveness of regimes; it also allows an examination of the conditions under which policy networks can better contribute to the effectiveness of regimes.