In recent years, there is growing interest in the study of cross-national policy convergence+ Yet we still have a limited understanding of the phenomenon: Do we observe convergence of policies at all? Under which conditions can we expect that domestic policies converge or rather develop further apart? In this article, we address this research deficit+ From a theoretical perspective, we concentrate on the explanatory power of three factors, namely international harmonization, transnational communication, and regulatory competition+ In empirical terms, we analyze if and to what extent we can observe convergence of environmental policies across twenty-four industrialized countries between 1970 and 2000+ We find an impressive degree of environmental policy convergence between the countries under investigation+ This development is mainly caused by international harmonization and, to a considerable degree, also by transnational communication, whereas regulatory competition does not seem to play a role+ It became obvious with the fourth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 1 in spring 2007 that the need to combat climate change and to deal with its consequences is one of the world's most pressing problems+ Because the human contribution to climate change is related to a broad range of activities, such as energy use and production, transport, industrial and agrarian production, and tropical deforestation, combating it-through the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions-is not only costly but also requires profound behavioral changes+ Moreover, the global nature of the climate problem underlines the need for inter-

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Past decades have witnessed a shift in international cooperation toward growing involvement of transnational actors (TNAs), such as nongovernmental organizations, multinational corporations, and philanthropic foundations. This article offers a comprehensive theoretical and empirical account of TNA access to IOs. The analysis builds on a novel data set, covering formal TNA access to 298 organizational bodies from fifty IOs over the time period 1950 to 2010. We identify the most profound patterns in TNA access across time, issue areas, policy functions, and world regions, and statistically test competing explanations of the variation in TNA access. The central results are three-fold. First, the empirical data confirm the existence of a far-reaching institutional transformation of IOs over the past sixty years, pervading all issue areas, policy functions, and world regions. Second, variation in TNA access within and across IOs is mainly explained by a combination of three factors: functional demand for the resources of TNAs, domestic democratic standards in the membership of IOs, and state concerns with national sovereignty. Third, existing research suffers from a selection bias that has led it to overestimate the general importance of a new participatory norm in global governance for the openness of IOs.

Once the exclusive preserve of member states, international organizations have become increasingly open in recent decades. Now virtually all international organizations at some level involve NGOs, business actors and scientific experts in policy-making. This book offers the first systematic and comprehensive analysis of this development. Combining statistical analysis and in-depth case studies, it maps and explains the openness of international organizations across issue areas, policy functions and world regions from 1950 to 2010. Addressing the question of where, how and why international organizations offer transnational actors access to global policy-making, this book has implications for critical issues in world politics. When do states share authority with private actors? What drives the design of international organizations? How do activists and businesses influence global politics? Is civil society involvement a solution to democratic deficits in global governance?

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