This chapter reviews two sets of interrelated literature that are relevant to this book; the rapidly expanding literature on global environmental politics; and, more specifically, the literature on the politics of global warming. Finally it looks at how the concept of power is addressed in these bodies of literature, and outlines alternative notions of the concept that may be useful to a project on non-state actors.

Existing approaches to explaining global environmental politics

Most analysis of global environmental politics emanating from the discipline of international relations remains firmly rooted in a state-centric paradigm (Paterson 1996a; Saurin 1996; Willetts 1993). In other words, it takes as given the preeminent status of the nation-state as the key point of reference in seeking to account for the way in which issues unfold on the global agenda. The principal theoretical tools are derived from various versions of liberal institutionalism in international relations (Paterson 1996a; Saurin 1996; Smith 1993). The use of existing paradigms is particularly ironic given the repeated emphasis by writers from this discipline upon the way in which environmental issues transform our understanding of world politics (Rowlands 1992; Saurin 1996). For most scholars of international relations, global warming is one of a series of collective action problems following in the trail of issues such as ozone depletion. Ward's (1996:850) depiction of the issue highlights this: ‘Global climate change is characterised as a collective-action game played by nations through time. The conditions under which conditional cooperation can occur are explored.’ Given such a construction of the environmental problematic – as one of inter-state cooperation and institution building – its capture by liberal institutional perspectives was almost inevitable.