McKeown 9311618 This doctoral dissertation research support improves our understanding of international regimes and international environmental relations by examining the creation and expansion of the "Ozone Regime" - the series of international agreements designed to protect stratospheric ozone. Although widely recognized as an historic case of environmental cooperation, there has been little in-depth analysis of the ozone regime. The first part of the study examines the development of "international regime" as an analytical concept, assesses its strengths and weaknesses, and delineates how the dominant theories of regime creation and change would attempt to explain the ozone regime. The second part of the research uses a comprehensive, process-tracing case study of the origins, creation, and expansion of the ozone regime to examine the accuracy of these expectations. Then, the investigators examine the importance of three factors that are largely ignored by existing regime theory but which preliminary research indicates may be of primary importance in explaining the ozone regime: 1)international economic competition; 2)the influence of pre-exisiting international institutions; and, 3)the "structure" of the negotiations themselves. The research concludes by arguing for synthesizing the consideration of these types of factors with the strengths of exisiting theory to obtain a fuller understanding of international regimes and international environmental relations. The study is significant in three important ways: First, it provides the first comprehensive, theoretically informed case study of the ozone regime. Second, it critiques exisiting regime theory by comparing its expectations to this important case. Third, it expands our understanding of international regimes by identifying, analyzing and generating hypotheses concerning important but previously ignored causal factors. ***
