ABSTRACT
Governance is a social function centered on the development of mechanisms to steer societies toward socially desirable outcomes and away from socially undesirable ones. The growing body of global environmental governance studies addressing this subject, supported actively by the earth system governance community and reflected prominently in the contents of journals such as Global Environmental Politics and International Environmental Agreements, draws attention to several interrelated but distinct substantive themes. Initially, the research community focused on the determinants of success or failure in efforts to form environmental governance systems or regimes as they are often called. Cross-cutting these analytical concerns are an interest in improving our ability to design successful governance systems rather than simply treating regimes as a focus for research. The field of global environmental governance studies is eclectic with regard to methodology. The mainstream consists of theoretically grounded but qualitative case studies.
