THE STRUCTURING OF A WORLD ENVIRONMENTAL REGIME, 1870-1990

World society is not organized around a single state, and the separate national states took up environmental concerns only very belatedly. D uring the past century, the spread of a scientific culture and thr cre ation of an international associational system-most prominently around the United Nations-helped structure a world environmental regime by o ther means. The development of this world-level regime took a course d ifferent from the one that would be predicted by state-based theories. International nongovernmental associations, rooted in expanding scien tific discourse, grew earliest, followed by a spate of environmental t reaties among governments. Then, after 1945, the United Nations system facilitated a dramatic expansion in the number and scope of intergove rnmental environmental organizations. Only late in the process did env ironmental concerns become structured as major components of national state organizations. We provide qualitative and quantitative descripti ons, and report results of longitudinal analyses, elucidating the proc esses involved. The larger point is that different sectors of world so ciety become structured through more variable processes than are usual ly considered.