Written for Brown's Watson School under Dr. Jennifer Hadden, this paper compares two international environmental regimes that share nearly identical structures; both address pollutants that cross borders, both rely on near-universal country participation, yet one has driven the near-total elimination of its target chemicals while the other continues to fall short of its goals.
The paper argues that existing scholarship overweights institutional design (how treaties are written, how compliance is enforced) and underweights a more basic material question: whether affordable substitute technologies actually exist at the scale a treaty demands. Where clean substitutes are commercially viable, treaties succeed quickly; where they aren't, even well-designed agreements stall against the limits of what industry can deliver.
Download the complete comparative analysis.