The Politics and Governance of the Global Plastics Crisis

Abstract

Plastics are everywhere and everlasting. They permeate every human and natural system such that they have come to structure political, economic, and social life. Despite increasing evidence of plastic pollution’s adverse effects on human health and the environment, few studies to date have systematically tried to understand who is governing the global plastics crisis (GPC) and how. Individual actors and institutions with idiosyncratic attributes, attitudes, and interests generate collective behaviours informed by their norms, values, and shared ideas. Examining these aspects of the institutional landscape is essential for understanding how patterned interactions constitute governance. Based on a constructivist perspective, this thesis employs network science to operationalise a systems approach to international regime theory. Interviews with 84 professionals in multi-level and multi-sectoral institutions are analysed using visualisations, a social network analysis, and a qualitative analysis of the interview content to reveal the composition of the governance landscape, patterns of institutional linkage, and intersubjective understandings. In doing so, this PhD thesis identifies the elemental institutional building blocks; international regimes at the micro-level; regime complexes at the meso-level; and governance architecture at the macro-level of GPC governance. Based on this original empirical research, this thesis argues that the GPC is governed by two partially overlapping regime complexes for the emerging global plastics treaty and evolving hazardous waste trade within a governance system that perpetuates the unmitigated and accelerating proliferation of plastic pollution. This lays the foundation for ongoing analysis of the evolution of the politics and governance of the GPC.