1993: Institutions for the Earth For day 26, Clay Morgan, Senior
Acquisitions Editor, Environmental Studies, Political Science,
Bioethics, looks back on Institutions for the Earth: Sources of
Effective International Environmental Protection edited by Peter
M. Haas, Robert O. Keohane, and Marc A. Levy: One of the first
books to study the effectiveness of existing institutions in
protecting the environment, Institutions for the Earth remains a
seminal and widely used text for courses and in the policy
community. The book contributed greatly to social scientists’
understanding of international institutions, and it has inspired
a good deal of research and many books on international
institutions in subsequent years, a number of which have been
published by the MIT Press. Institutions for the Earth was one
of the first books to study international environmental
governance systematically, through a qualitative, comparative,
focused approach to international environmental regimes. It
developed a nuanced and eclectic