We have witnessed a remarkable acceleration of scholarship on North American environmental policy during the past half-decade, all the more notable for the concordance in approaches used by researchers. Drawing on developing literatures in IR and public administration on collaborative networks and governmental organizations as interactive bureaucracies,1 recent studies underscore the role of network participants in sharing knowledge and developing, coordinating, and implementing policy.2 In doing so, scholars focus on the network and organizational properties likely to bring about successful outcomes. They identify a place for subnational and federal government agencies, binational and trinational organizations, scientists, and economic stakeholders in governance arrangements facilitating mutual learning and adjustment, so that complex environmental problems can be managed in an integrative and inclusive way.
As fruitful as this approach has been, its utility remains less clear. Transboundary environmental issues in North America, like those in other regions, are a heterogeneous assortment,...