Isabella Alcañiz – författare

The study of environmental politics in Latin America and the Caribbean expands as conflicts stemming from the deterioration of the natural world increase. Yet this scholarship has not generated a broad research agenda similar to the ones that emerged around other key political phenomena. This Element seeks to address the lack of a comprehensive research agenda in Latin American and Caribbean environmental politics and helps integrate the existing, disparate literatures. Drawing from distributive politics, this Element asks who benefits from the appropriation and pollution of the environment, who pays the costs of climate change and environmental degradation, and who gains from the allocation of state protections.

For decades, expert bureaucrats have been moving regularly across borders, from their home institutions to international organizations, and forging collaborative networks with peers. Analyzing over twenty years of environmental and nuclear technology projects data for 150 countries, this book provides a comprehensive study of international cooperation among elite bureaucrats in developing states. An empirical study that will interest researchers, undergraduate, and graduate students of political and social sciences, this is the first book to explain the causes of transnational cooperation in the Global South and find a link between domestic level of skills and international cooperation. The author methodically illustrates how state experts with high skills can reap the benefits of international technical cooperation. In contrast, bureaucrats with low skills cannot forge stable collaborative ties with foreign peers and gain little from participating in these transgovernmental networks.