부산대학교 도서관

Almost two decades have now passed since the publication of Peter Haas' Saving the Mediterranean in 1990, in which he employed the concept of "epistemic communities" for his analysis of the "low politics" negotiations on environmental issues for the Mediterranean Action Plan since 1975. A number of similar regional initiatives were launched throughout Europe since then and, for instance, the Barcelona Convention on coastal areas and the UNEP Regional Seas Programme, as well as the Alpine and Carpathian Conventions on mountain regions were developed. As in the case of the Mediterranean Action Plan analyzed by Haas, UNEP played an active role in the development of most of these initiatives, while the EU maintained a certain distance from these initiatives. This submission proposes an appraisal of the Alpine Convention after decades of activity, as well as it sketches an evaluation of the respective roles of UNEP and the EU in the development of this initiative. It also examines the effects on the long run of "low interest" levels, few spillover effects, and loose epistemic communities on overlapping international organizations. Functionalism revisited. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]