Browsing by Author "Myint, Tun"

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Democracy and Sustainability: How does the Democratic Process Affect Sustainability?
(2014) Myint, Tun; Lambert, Brian J.
"The idea of democracy defined the 20th century as democratic movements spread across the globe. Similarly, one of the defining ideas of the 21st century is the idea of sustainability as the effects of societal development continue to impose ecological changes at the unprecedented rate. In this paper we explore the relationship between democracy and sustainability at the national level. We ask: how does democracy affect sustainability? To answer this question, we develop indices for both democracy and sustainability using national data of 192 countries deposited at the Europa World Yearbook and the World Bank between 1972 and 2005. Then we perform a series of regression analysis to investigate the relationship between democracy and sustainability. The results of the study were illuminating, as it revealed that sustainability was largely falling during the period of study on a per capita basis, yet it was rising on per unit of GDP basis. Of particular noteworthy results were the relatively strong performances of democracies, which tended to perform the best across all groups in terms of per unit GDP figures and also tended to have the highest average sustainability (except for medium income countries) in per capita terms. Our analysis was also revealed that autocracies tended to perform the worst in these measurements, both in per capita and per unit GDP terms. The results of this study show that government type has a discernible impact on the sustainability of a country. On average, democracies tend to outperform autocracies and semi-democracies across the study period."
Strength of 'Weak' Forces in Multilayer Environmental Governance: Cases from the Mekong and Rhine River Basins
(2005) Myint, Tun
"Studies of the international relations have focused mainly on states and their relations as the center of governance processes in the international affairs. Consequently, the dominant theories lack insights to explain the role of non-state actors in practices of international environmental affairs. The emerging power of non-state actors is a challenge for scholars and practitioners in the field. The central puzzles this dissertation addresses are: What is the origin of the power of non-state actors? How and why do they influence institutional transformation of transnational environmental regimes in some cases? "To explain this puzzle, I develop the Issues, Interests, and Actors Network (IAN) framework using theoretical insights from the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework and the Policy Sciences (PS) approaches. Through IAD and PS lens, I view issues, interests, and actors as institutional drivers as they interdependently shape each other in governance processes. Using IAN framework, I unpack and explain governance processes of the Pak Mun Dam in Thailand in the Mekong River Basin and four cases of pollution cleanup in the Rhine River Basin. "The theoretical insights that I learned from my dissertation research are: (1)the origin of power of non-state actors can be explained by analyzing actors' knowledge, their assets, and the degree of political freedom they have; (2)institutional adaptation can be explained by analyzing evolution of actors' preferences which are shaped by the three above clusters of variables; and (3)greater focus for further research has to be on actors' worlds of value production and utilization to understand multilayer governance. Concerning policy, I learned that (1)capacity building of actors has to pay attention to whether the capacity being built will be applied due to lack of assets or lack of political freedom; (2)linkages between issues, interests, and actors at a local layer and issues, interests, and actors at a transnational layer are crucial linkages to achieve objectives of transnational regimes; and (3)successful institutional transformation of transnational regimes is likely to occur when relevant issues, interests, and actors are linked across multiple layers."