With its emphasis on shared beliefs and the advocacy use of knowledge within policy subsystems, the advocacy coalition framework (ACF) is ideally suited to the study of environmental policy. Yet the ACF has generally been applied in a domestic context. This article argues that the twin phenomena of economic globalization and the internationalization of environmental affairs are blurring the distinction between some policy subsystems and the international arena. Thus, advocacy coalitions should be understood as operating increasingly along “the domestic‐foreign frontier.” In the case of Canada's efforts to develop a coherent climate change policy, the boundaries between political levels have been blurred as local and provincial actors come to understand themselves as players in a global game. This dynamic is exacerbated by Canada's unique constitutional division of authority, which delegates significant autonomy to the provinces on natural resource and energy issues.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Wiley and The International Studies Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Mershon International Studies Review.Over the last three decades, the number of international environmental agreements into which states have entered has proliferated enormously. In the 1970s it was commonly assumed that the cumulative impact of such agreements would be to undermine the institution of state sovereignty. Recent evidence, however, suggests that the trend toward international cooperation in the face of "the seamless web of nature" has resulted in something more subtle but perhaps equally profound: a shift in the practices and norms of sovereignty. This essay looks at the impact of international environmental problem solving on state sovereignty. As a prelude, it reviews recent literature from international relations theory that substantiates a more differentiated view of sovereignty, separating it into three components: authority, control, and legitimacy. With this more complex notion of sovereignty as a backdrop, the review argues that the proliferation of environmental agreements has in fact led to a complex web of "sovereignty bargains" through which states have increased their sovereignty vis-a-vis certain dimensions even as they have suffered losses of sovereignty vis-a-vis others. Although more research remains to be done, environmental cooperation appears to have indeed altered the nature and practice of sovereignty in the contemporary world.A tacit assumption pervades the literature on international environmental issues: increased levels of global ecological interdependence are undercutting the institution of state sovereignty-or will do so in the future-perhaps decisively. With "the seamless web of nature" standing in apparent contradistinction to the manmade system of territorial states, efforts to cope with international environmental degradation are generally construed as presenting a challenge to state sovereignty. Although few writers have directly investigated the relationship between environment and sovereignty, many have made contributions that touch upon the question obliquely. An analysis of that literature can help us answer two closely IThe author is grateful to Ronnie Sovereignty in World Ecopolitics linked questions regarding the sovereignty-environment nexus. The first question addresses the impact of sovereignty on prospects for achieving environmental protection; the second involves the impact of international environmental responses on sovereignty as a political institution.The first question is empirical, but it also has strong normative implications. Does sovereignty inhibit environmental protection? If so, should pract...

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