International Climate Cooperation and the Watershed of Policy Streams

Abstract This article presents a watershed model of the policy process to examine comparative policy issue contexts associated with global warming and climatic change (GWCC). The watershed model extends the metaphor of policy streams advanced by Lasswell, Kingdon, Howlett et al., and others to characterize the conditions that precede, and sometimes preclude, the effective workings of the policy process. The model considers the confluence of factors that contribute to the formation of policy knots that precede stages of policy agenda setting and policy formation by exploring public trust and public attention as the headwaters that feed the five streams of the policy process. After distinguishing three hydrological zones, the article identifies several critical junctures in the watershed model of the policy process that explore areas where policy “knots” precede intractable conflict.