Policy Studies Journal, Vol. 24, No. 2,1996 (201-214)

The Unsheltering Sky: China, India, andthe Montreal Protocol

Holly Sims

The cooperation of China and Iridia in replacing chemicals thatdamage the stratospheric ozone layer is critkal to the success of theworld's first environmental agreement, the Montreal Protocol. China'sleaders accepted the agreement more readily than did their Indiancotmterparts. These divergent responses are attributed to the nattire ofthepolicy isstte in qttestion, the impact of regime type upon state leaders'environmental policies, and dissimilar linkages between international anddomestic actors and forces.

As nations in the industrialized world halt production of chemicals thatravage the stratospheric ozone layer, China and India have claimed center stage inhumankind's longstanding struggle with its capricious technology. Both hadopposed the landmark 1987 Montreal Protocol to Protect the Stratospheric OzoneLayer until 1990. To some observers (e.g. Benedick, 1991), Asia's giants appearedas retrograde twins, who championed the South's right to pursue short-termeconomic growth without regard to ecological costs. Then, suddenly, China brokewith India, to announce its acceptance of the world's first environmental agreement,and it quickly devised strategies to replace chemicals in such technologies asrefrigerators, air conditioners, and electronics. When India's preliminary action planwas presented later, it seemed sketchy and ambivalent. This paper seeks to explaindifferences in the two countries' initial approach to an unprecedented global threat

A common impression' that policy differences reflect a greaterenvironmental consciousness and sense of global responsibility on the part of theChinese leadership is superficial. This paper offers an explanation that relates statepolicies to dissimilar political and economic structures and strategies, and also tolinkages between international and domestic actors and forces. The analysishighlights contrasting ways in which sweeping economic and political changes haveplayed out in two key nations in the erstwhile Third World. In the process, ithighlights significant changes in patterns of relationships between nations in theindustrialized and nonindustrialized worlds (Stubbs & Underhill, 1994) thatunderscore an increasingly compelling need to integrate domestic and internationalpolicy and politics (Rosenau, 1967).

A major objective is to support Ashford's view that policy studies mayserve as a lens through which to analyze the state (Ashford, 1992). To do so, thepaper draws upon Hall's use of institutional analysis, but it aims to fulfill hispromise to investigate explicitly the impact of political factors as well as economicones (Hall, 1986).

The ensuing discussion of divergent responses to the Montreal Protocol in1990 is centered upon, first, the nature of the policy issue in question, and, second,the impact of regime type upon state leaders' respective approaches to the challengefacing their policy processes. The replacement of ozone-depleting substances (ODS)is more a technical and economic question than a "typical" global environmentalissue. As such, its controversial political implications are deflected more readily byan authoritarian policy system than by a democratic one.

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A shift from abstract categories of regime type to concrete state structureshighlights ambiguities surrounding the concept of state boundaries (Barrow, 1993).Nevertheless, the concept is used for analytical purposes to differentiate three levelsof a state's political and policy realms. One is concemed primarily with foreignpolicy, and is the preserve primarily of senior policymakers. Empirical evidencesuggests this is particularly true in China. In India, domestic arenas concemed withforeign policy are monitored by various constituencies, particularly the media; thusthey are not esoteric sanctuaries for officials and expert consultants. As a result, therigid boundaries between domestic and international politics that scholars oncemaintained (Evans, Jacobson, & Putnam, 1993; Hentz, 1994) may be more visiblypermeable in India than in China.

The second tier of domestic politics and policy may include key societalconstituencies, such as industrial and business interests, as well as political forces.This level is attuned largely to domestic issues, although economic globalizationblurs distinctions that once were defined clearly.2 Boundaries between political andeconomic interests also may be hazier in India than in China. In China, divergentstate policies of economic liberalization and political control accentuate analysts'distinctions between economic and political arenas (White, 1993).

Administrative agencies associated with the policy issue in questioncomprise a third arena. In both China and India, the key institutional actors arerelatively new official agencies that face the difficult task of reconcilingenvironmental protection with immediate and compelling imperatives of economicgrowth, although they lack the authority and financial and human resources to do so(Khator, 1991; Lieberthal, 1995).

Chinese and Indian officials representing the administrative tier were amajor source of information for this study. Interviews with domestic environmentalagency officials were carried out in Montreal, New Delhi, and Beijing betweenApril, 1993, and July, 1995. Indian interviewees also included present or formeractors in the first and second political and policy arenas, among them formerEnvironment Minister Maneka Gandhi, who agreed to the Montreal Protocol onIndia's behalf. Gandhi was the only official identified by name in this study, tohonor others' requests for anonymity. To the extent possible, the informationprovided was corroborated in interviews with other intemational and national agencyofficials contacted as part of a larger project on Chinese and Indian environmentalpolicy, and checked against scholarly and documentary materials.^

ODS Phaseout as a Policy Issue in China and India

The replacement of ODS largely has been accomplished in industrializedcountries, but the Montreal Protocol gave less developed countries a 10-year "graceperiod" because they faced financial, technical, and institutional difficulties thatwealthy nations did not share. The burdens of technical change were magnified inChina and India, which, unlike most low-income countries, had significant ODSproduction capacity and enormous demand for commodities containing discreditedsubstances, particularly the widely-used coolant chlorofiuorocarbons (CFCs).

Even preliminary estimates of costs to implement the Montreal Protocolwere high: $1.4 billion for China (China National Environmental ProtectionAgency, 1993) and $1964 million for India (India Ministry of Environment andForests, 1993). Once state leaders agreed to honor intemational restrictions on theproduction and use of ODS, officials in technical agencies faced difficult decisions

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regarding substitutes that ideally would be assuredly benign, competitively-priced,and accessible. Those requirements were difficult to meet; further, the decision wascomplicated by rapid technological development that made costs unpredictable.

Both stakes and uncertainties were magnified in such large and complexnations as China and India. They also faced crosscurrents of economic liberalizationand environmental regulation that cast into doubt the capacity of official institutionsto mandate and orchestrate technological change. The Chinese leadership's boldsteps to address the problem may be linked, first, to the particular characteristics ofODS replacement as a policy issue, and, subsequently, to the nature of its policysystem and its interaction with intemational forces.

Ozone depletion differed from other "celebrity" global issues such asbiodiversity and global climate change (Ungar, 1992), because prevailing scientificknowledge suggested it was relatively easy to isolate causes and effects of theproblem and to propose technological solutions. Restoration of the ozone layer didnot require recurrent sacrifices. Consumers were not asked to forgo privatetransportation or to pay higher gasoline prices. Nor did the problem inevitably pithuman ambitions against such humble tenants of the biosphere as spotted owls orsnail darters. Instead, ozone depletion was a technical issue, and substitutetechnology to address it was available for many of the various categories of ODS.Thus, the moral questions that had made ozone depletion a political issue in theUnited States during the 1970s were superseded in the 1980s by an "industrialprotocol'"* that exchanged one set of chemicals for another. As the ensuingdiscussion suggests, actors in China's foreign policy domain accepted thisdevelopment more readily than did their Indian counterparts because theirassessments of the emerging post-Cold War order differed, as did their political andeconomic goals.

The Unsheltering Sky: Chinese and Indian Perspectives

In 1990, many observers in industrialized countries shared the hope of thechief United States negotiator for the Montreal Protocol, Richard Benedick, thatCold War-era competition and ideological polarization had been superseded by a"new wave of ecological consciousness [that] was uniting populations andgovernments from every region in a common concern for protecting theenvironment" (Benedick, 1991). The short-lived surge of "green consciousness" thatcompelled political attention to ODS replacement in the United States played onlyan indirect role in Chinese and Indian decisions to accept and then implement theProtocol. Some observers in nonindustrialized countries perceived global greenconsciousness as a distraction from an accelerating wave of global economicintegration that was obliterating boundaries between politics and markets atdomestic and intemational levels of policy.

Thus, the characterization of ozone depletion as a global problem for whichthe solution required cooperation and sacrifices from low-income countries drewskeptical reactions from some representatives of nations in the South. FCM" example,an Indian commentator countered that, far from being a global problem, ozonedepletion was a regional problem, largely affecting the 25% of the world'spopulation that had used 88% of its CFCs (Benedick, 1991). By "globalizing" aregional problem such as CFC production, some critics said industrial nationssimply were creating a "moral basis for green imperialism, which shifted blamefrom CFC manufacturers such as DuPont to millions of poor CFC users in China

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and India" (Shiva, 1993). The latter would pay higher prices for refrigerators and airconditioners using virtually the only available chemical substitutes—hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs)—^which couldnot be produced immediately in China and India.

The original 1987 version of the Montreal Protocol gave nonindustrializedcountries with relatively low CFC use a 10-year grace period beyond the 2000deadline for a 50% cutback of the discredited chemicals that had been set forindustrialized nations. Before the 1990 meeting in London held to enlist globalcooperation against ozone depletion, industrialized countries' major concession tothe South—the 10-year extension—was rejected as woefully inadequatecompensation for disrupted economic development plans. India's fiery formerEnvironment Minister, Maneka Gandhi, was instrumental in eliciting a moresubstantive concession of financial and technical assistance for ODS phaseout. TheLondon amendment to the Protocol set phaseout deadlines of 2000 for industrializedcountries and 2010 for nonindustrialized countries, and promised financial andtechnical assistance to the latter.

Some of Gandhi's domestic critics contended that India could have used theSouth's potential leverage to strike a harder bargain with the North, but there wereindications at the London meeting that China's support was uncertain. In a 1994interview in New Delhi, Gandhi attributed her Chinese counterpart's silence at themeeting to his weak command of English: "I told him, go have a nice holiday inLondon, I'll speak for both of us."^

China's delegation nevertheless maintained a low-profile presence inmeeting sessions until it abruptly signaled impatience with India and announced itsdecision to sign the agreement (Benedick, 1991).^ The ensuing discussion seeks toexplain why Chinese representatives moved to support the agreement, whereas theirIndian counterparts approached it with reservations. Before considering political andinstitutional interests concemed directly with the question of ODS replacement,contextual factors such as the timing and nature of economic change are discussed.Variations may help to explain state leaders' divergent approaches to the emergingglobal political order, and such specific linkages to it as international aid andtechnology transfer.

Domestic Economics and Global Perspectives

Chinese and Indian experiences with economic liberalization may becontrasted on three dimensions: timing, duration, and the extent of extemalinvolvement (Callaghy, 1993). The timing of economic change in the twocountries may have been a critical factor infiuencing their leaders' positions on theMontreal Protocol in 1990. China was a pioneer in a global movement towardeconomic liberalization (Suleiman & Waterbury, 1990). China's reform was agradual process, which arose in the years following Mao Zedong's death in 1976.As in India, policy initiatives toward liberalization required that coalitionschampioning the key value of equity were neutralized, at least temporarily, by thosewho placed top priority on economic growth. When the Deng Xiaoping regimeofficially reconciled conflicting pressures and values of socioeconomic equity andeconomic growth in favor of the latter during the 1980s, it set the stage for boldmeasures toward economic reform. Yet state leaders sought to maintain politicalcontrol over the scope of change, which allowed them to insulate policy processesfrom both domestic societal and extemal infiuence (White, 1993; Callaghy, 1993).

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In India, 1991 was the watershed year with respect to economicliberalization. Successive state leaders had tinkered with various initiatives to reducethe public sector's role in the economy during the 1970s and 1980s, but theprotectionist "license-permit raf faced no serious challenge until early 1991, whenforeign exchange reserves almost evaporated as India veered toward a default on its$72 billion debt (Callaghy, 1993).

When the Intemational Monetary Fund extended emergency loans, its deusex machina role raised public concem about a loss of sovereignty and a betrayal oflongstanding Indian values, particularly equity, which threatened to sacrifice theinterests of the poor (Nayak, 1991; Callaghy, 1993). But such dangers still wereonly theoretical possibilities for Maneka Gandhi and her associates attending theLondon meeting during the summer of 1990. Their more immediate concems wereoverall political domination and economic exploitation by the industrialized Northand by multinational corporations.

The timing and extent of external involvement in Chinese and Indianprocesses of economic liberalization may shed light on their respective state leaders'differing perspectives on relationships with pivotal forces in the emerging post-ColdWar order. The preceding discussion has suggested that China's early moves towardeconomic liberalization and its emphasis on export-led growth gave it an edge in thepost-Cold War marketplace. This is not to argue that economic factors held the keyto foreign policy, for political factors came into play as well.

In 1990, Chinese leaders' evident interest in graduating from regional toglobal power status was considerably stronger than was that of their Indiancounterparts (Ganguly, 1994). Chinese leaders' ambitions vis-k-vis the intemationalarena may help to explain their acceptance of a world view that was gaining supportin industrialized countries. A key concept was global "interdependence," rather thanthe North-South polarization of the Cold War era. China's leaders appeared morewilling to accept tradeoffs of interdependence, and to yield a measure of autonomousdecisionmaking authority in the interest of intemational consensus than did India'srepresentatives to the London meeting (Kim, 1994), perhaps because Chinese leadersfelt less vulnerable to a loss of sovereignty.

Two structural political factors help explain why this would be so. Thefirst is regime type. In China's authoritarian system, the political leadershipcontrolled the window it had opened to the world. The opening was kept narrow,and the regime could set its own terms in international negotiations (Chandra,1995). Some issues that related to a sector of low priority to the regime, such asenvironmental policy in the early 1990s, were negotiable (Whitcomb, 1992); thusextemal forces could place the ODS phaseout on China's policy agenda. Yet theregime reserved the right to set its terms on such crucial issues as economic policy.

The second factor relates to strategic considerations. While China's breakwith India at the London meeting symbolized the fragility of alliances representingthe erstwhile Third World, in competitive, yet increasingiy integrated global arenas(Stubbs & Underhill, 1994; Harris, 1987), some Cold War-era alliances persisted.Two key examples are the Sino-United States alliance bom of China's strategic andeconomic importance, and the precarious relationship between the United States andIndia. The latter lost its major great power advocate when the Soviet Uniondisintegrated.

The relative autonomy of the Chinese state vis-^-vis powerful intemationalpolitical forces was noted with admiration in the Indian media. One commentatorcontended that, while other low-income countries had been compelled to surrenderpolitical and economic sovereignty to the dominant dinosaur in a global Jurassic

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Park, only the Chinese state managed to define and defend its own turf (G.P.D.,1994)."'

Chinese leaders' ability to reconcile trends and practices that others saw asmutually exclusive fascinated some Indian observers (Chandra, 1995). Dependingupon the issue at hand, the Chinese leadership simultaneously spoke and/or acted asa great power and as a developing country. Thus, while castigating the South forfailed policies, China aggressively competed with it for aid and technology (Kim,1994). In the meantime, Chinese representatives could pursue strategic alliancesboth with industrial nations and with others such as India that championed the causeof the South in intemational fora.

The technical character of the policy issue of ODS phaseout highlights thequicksilver aspects of Chinese policy processes, combining pragmatism withopportunism. Both China and India had declined to sign the Montreal Protocol untilit affirmed in 1990 that equity demanded efforts to minimize shocks to low-incomecountries. As a former senior official in India's Ministry of Environment andForests (MOEF) observed, it was grossly unfair to expect low-income countries to"adopt policies and spend money to solve problems created by other countries."*

Once equity claims were addressed in London, the amended MontrealProtocol served Chinese leaders' interests in promoting efficiency through growth inindustry and technology. Along with agriculture and defense, industry andtechnology constituted the "Four Modemizations" named as official priorities.Acceptance of the treaty could yield retums in exports of commodities, such asrefrigerators, which could not be sold abroad if CFCs were used. Furthermore, ifeconomic efficiency, rather than equity, was a key criterion for the distribution ofmultilateral funds for ODS phaseout, China stood to gain a significant share becauseit was the largest ODS consumer in the South; also, its industrial structure wouldfacilitate phaseout. The threat of dependence upon foreign technology that figuredso prominently in Indian debates was not a major source of official concem in China(Simon, 1989; Bhalla, 1992).

For key Indian officials and many members of the country's attentivepublic, the concentration of research and development capacity for profitable ODSsuch as CFCs in fewer than a dozen giant chemical companies based in theindustrialized world was the major stumbling block in the Montreal Protocol. BothIndia and China had the capacity, and increasingly an incentive, to developsubstitutes for ODS, but the Montreal Protocol's Multilateral Fund would notsupport research and development efforts for altematives. Low-income countrieswere advised instead to acquire technology approved as replacements by technicalexperts advising intemational agencies, such as the World Bank, who would assistin ODS phaseout. Indian misgivings were expressed by former EnvironmentMinister Gandhi, who told delegates to the 1990 London meeting, "We have aproblem [about] tuming into a client state" (Benedick, 1991).

The preceding discussion suggested that contrasting experiences witheconomic liberalization and political goals may have influenced state leaders'perspectives on foreign aid and imported technology. The ensuing section proposesthat divergent political and industrial structures also help to account for the twostates' different approaches to the Montreal Protocol.

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Chinese and Indian Domestic Politics and the Ozone Layer

ODS replacement claimed a slot on Chinese and Indian policy agendasthrough extemal, rather than domestic, pressures. The limited available evidencedoes not suggest that domestic constituencies played a direct role in domestic policyformulation, as in the United States and Germany.' Like their contemporaryAmerican counterparts, many Chinese and Indian shoppers probably had littleknowledge of altemative refrigeration technology, and their relative impact upon thestratosphere (Sims, 1995). Preliminary steps to implement the agreement weretaken in a top-down manner.

Both countries submitted their required country programs for ODS phaseoutto the Executive Committee of the Multilateral Fund of the Montreal Protocol in1993. They included sobering preliminary estimates of phaseout costs that could farexceed the $240 million earmarked for their use by the Multilateral Fund. China'sprogram for ODS phaseout reflected its leaders' commitment to ODS replacement.The program won praise and quick approval from the Interim Multilateral Fund.The Chinese leadership's bullish approach to the task of phaseout illustrates the wayin which it sought to enter the post-Cold War intemational order, which contrastedsharply with their Indian counterparts' stance that combined bearish caution withdefiance.

On the specific issue of ODS phaseout strategy. Multilateral Funddelegates from industrial countries were irritated particularly by India's assertion ofits rights to a 10-year grace period, to allow for technological development and widerchoices. They also were disconcerted by the country program's frank admission thatit could not offer a detailed action plan since two-thirds of India's ODS were used inthe small-scale and informal sector, about which little was known. Potentialdismption in that sector constituted a political, economic, and social problem for thedomestic policy system, and a challenge to interests of the rising middle class(Dubey, 1992).

Particularly in low-income countries, the middle class is pivotal but oftenunpredictable, because its composition may be undergoing rapid change in responseto volatile economic trends. At different moments of the policy process, the middleclass may respond in altemative ways. In the late-1980s, India's traditionally well-informed, largely urban middle class public probably represented a potential sourceof opposition to official policy, rather than an active one. Yet because ODSphaseout could be linked to unwelcome extemal intervention on behalf of Northeminterests, questions raised in India's lively legislative bodies threatened to embarrassofficials and to place the ODS issue under a public spotlighL

By contrast, Chinese officials enjoyed much greater insulation fromsocietal pressures, because social forces had few if any formal institutional channelsfor articulating their interests. The state had quashed debate even on suchcontroversial environmental issues as the Three Gorges dam project, which threatensto displace 1.3 million people and expose many others to serious environmentalrisks (Dai, 1994).

The most pivotal constituency in both societies is the industrial-businesscommunity, whose interests are affected most directly by decisions regarding thetechnology they use. Its political behavior is of particular interest, butunfortunately there is a dearth of such information. Instead, there has beenconsiderable speculation that economic liberalization would sow the seeds of

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democracy in civil society (Rueschemeyer; Stephens, & Stephens; 1992; Womack,1991).

A recent study argues persuasively that in recent years, the Chinese statehas strengthened its ties with the country's industrial and business sector, repeatinga recurrent cycle in China's history. The symbiotic relationship between state andsociety allows the regime to count on business support in the pursuit of its interests(Solinger, 1992). If so, the Chinese state may enjoy considerable political supportfrom one key constituency and a free rein from the general public.

Indian officials faced not only potential public opposition but alsounpredictability from the business and industrial sector, which traditionally hadmaintained a low political profile (Kochanek, 1974). Intemationalization and tie-ups with multinational corporations promoted new pattems of alliances thatsuperseded some govemment-business ties with new ones, or simply broke them inothers. As a result, the Montreal Protocol prompted diverse reactions beyond acommon denominator of frustration. Some business leaders said they believed thegovernment needed to act more quickly to commit to the phaseout of ODS, andthereby to safeguard India's future export prospects; others complained that thegovemment was moving too quickly, and risked further unpleasant surprises as newand perhaps safer technologies entered the marketplace. As one official notedapprovingly, "It is better to drive slowly than to have an accident."'^ Industryrepresentatives' ambivalence about the technological road ahead was refiected in thesmall number of proposed projects submitted by India to the Executive Committeeof the Multilateral Fund during 1994. The country's record stood in sharp contrastwiththatofChina.il

In sum, during the first half of the 1990s, the Chinese state weatheredchallenges arising from economic liberalization on both the international anddomestic fronts. Challenges unleashed by looser state control and uneven capitalisttransformation were offset partially by new sources of state infiuence arising fromdomestic and intemational support.

Indian officials were caught between confiicting pressures and the lack of asolid base of support from intemational and domestic interests. The most critical ofthose domestic constituencies is the small-scale and informal sector that uses mostof India's ODS. The categorization suggests a degree of homogeneity that does notexist, since it covers a very dynamic export-oriented sector and a range of domesticservices that is more vulnerable to shifting economic currents. Still, at theinternational level, the sector embodies the precarious position of equity in arelentlessly compelling drive for competitiveness. Within India, the small-scalesector carries somewhat more weight, by virtue of its numerical strength, if not dueto its public visibility or political clout.

Institutional Interests

The Montreal Protocol did not specify guidelines to assist states that wereasked to promote and guarantee technical change. This refiected both its architects'lack of knowledge about institutional mechanics and a widely shared"conventionalist" perspective (Grafstein, 1992) that assumed institutions'adaptability to new purposes. The decline of state control accompanying economicliberalization was not acknowledged, although it made official mandates all the moredifficult to enforce.

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China's acceptance of the Montreal Protocol was supported by institutionalinterests that perceived the proverbial opportunities underlying crisis. Just asChinese leaders had initiated and managed adroitly economic change earlier thanmany other low-income countries, key coalitions in China's relatively weakenvironmental agency—the National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA)—perceived and availed themselves of a chance to overcome challenges arising fromdecentralization and initiatives to shrink the public sector.

China's ODS phaseout bridged changes from the country's old command-and-control system to newer, market-oriented approaches. As a World Bankrepresentative observed in an interview by the auUior in Washington, DC, duringJune, 1994, the former's hierarchical structure goveming relations amongadministrative bodies and economic units would have greatly facilitated mandatedtechnological change that now is complicated by the dilution of state authority.

Like its Indian counterpart, the Chinese environmental agency was a juniormember of an institutional landscape dominated by powerful central ministriesinvolved in production and finance. Coalitions within NEPA saw the MontrealProtocol as a vehicle to increase the institution's power and leverage. When thestate assigned NEPA, rather than the rival State Science and TechnologyCommission, responsibility for coordinating ODS phaseout, a relatively weakagency became a key intermediary for industries undergoing reform. As two UnitedNations officials observed in separate interviews during 1994 in New York City andBeijing, many innovative factory managers with potential markets in view saw theMontreal Protocol as an aid in the industrial restructuring necessary for enhancedcompetitiveness. A World Bank staff member added that NEPA's direct associationwith international agencies and foreign aid offered another important advantage interms of resources and opportunities for collaboration and travel.'^

In India's more fiuid context, entrepreneurial spirit within the MOEFseemed restrained. The task of phaseout was seen as costly, extremely difficult, andunpopular with key constituencies, including the business community and a publicconcemed about increased prices or Northem intervention. Neither group offeredsolid support. As an Indian nongovernmental organization representativecommented, an alliance between the industrial community and the MOEF wouldhave been facilitated if the latter's representatives were "hard-nosed industrial types,"instead of officials with a more technical orientation. The latter's isolation wascompounded by recurrent references to fading socialist ideals.'^

While some Indian contractors and subcontractors welcomed the infusion offunds and opportunities arising from the Montreal Protocol's multilateral fund,potential benefits for MOEF fell far short of those for its Chinese counterpart.Indian costs would be higher, for two reasons. First, the MOEF did not stand togain prestige and leverage in India's institutional landscape as a result of itsinvolvement in a task mandated by extemal forces. Second, and more importantly,the structure of the Indian economy never had been subject to central control, and theMOEF faced a daunting task, especially in its uncharted small-scale and informalsector. During the 1970s, this sector had emerged as unsung worker bees ofdevelopment (Sethuraman, 1976; Souza & Tokman, 1976). It fell from public viewin the 1980s, as emphasis in development strategy shifted to questions of efficiency.Since the latter often was associated with economies of scale, China clearly had anadvantage over India in a competition for scarce resources. Indian officials estimatedthat the unit project cost for the small-scale and informal sector would be two-and-a-half times that of large and medium industry (India Ministry of Environment andForests, 1993).

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In late 1993, Indian officials told the Multilateral Fund's executivecommittee that India did not know who its ODS users were nor how to reach them.Yet they made a strong plea for considerations of equity over an altemative strategyof trickle-down technical change, which could restructure a vast constituency out ofwork (Sims, 1995; India Ministry of Environment and Forests, 1993). A leadingIndian scientist observed that such a shakedown was feasible in China's authoritarianpolitical system, but that it could not be supported by any govemment indemocratic India''*

In China, dislocation was occurring on a much grander scale. Therelaxation of political controls upon citizens' mobility and economic activity cast anenormous floating population adrift of the state. The proliferation of small-scaleenterprises that often use substandard equipment and procedures was not discussed inthe national Country Programme, which focuses on large-scale enterprises in thestate sector (China National Environmental Protection Agency, 1993). The report'semphasis highlights China's comparative advantage in terms of economies of scalein an intemational competition for resources, and responds effectively to incentivesfrom the intemational community that stress efficiency rather than equity (Bachman,1994).

On the one hand, then, Chinese leaders further relaxed their predecessors'official barriers to external participation in domestic affairs, and specifically theChinese economy. Key documents suggest that officials did not regard industrialrestructuring as an issue with potential political implications resulting frompossible job losses. In democratic India, domestic economic and political concemswere intertwined, and salient in all three arenas of the state.

Conclusion

A topic of current concem is a moving target, and thereby difficult to sight.As the authors of a major study of the World Bank observe, it is easy to writeassessments in hindsight, after the target has come to rest (Mosley, Harrigan, &Toye, 1995). Yet conclusions based on hindsight drawn from the official documentsthat predominate in environmental policy, and particularly internationalenvironmental policy, sometimes may obscure as much as they reveal. Recentstudies (Benedick, 1991; Harrison, 1995) suggest that much of public policy isshaped in informal conversations, perhaps in late-night sessions in hotel rooms.Since scholars' access to such informal meetings is limited, they may seek tosupplement official documents with interviews of participants in unfolding events.

A comprehensive assessment of the Montreal Protocol's impact upon thestratospheric ozone layer cannot be undertaken until the middle of the next century,an estimated recovery date set by a broad consensus of United States scientificopinion. A study of Chinese and Indian efforts to implement the Protocol might beundertaken in 2010, or perhaps a few years earlier, if ODS phaseout is accelerated.While such studies may claim to be more definitive than any undertaken during thepresent century, there is no reason to defer study of the implementation of theworld's first environmental agreement in two pivotal countries.

Ultimately, knowledge of public policy processes must rest upon ananalogue of Etzioni's "mixed scanning" (Etzioni, 1967) that will allow futurescholars to consider both the wide horizon and the idiosyncratic details visible onlyin sharp focus. Historians often need to remind social scientists that sometimes

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small, seemingly random events or chance remarks may trigger forces that emblazethe sky.

In the last decade of the 20th century, it could be argued that ozonedepletion not only claws a window in the stratosphere, but that it also highlightsthe nature and operations of two key states as they come to grips with a globalenvironmental threat. When the problem of ODS phaseout moved from the highlyvisible public arena of the United States to intemational and bureaucratic arenas, itassumed the guise of a neutral and purely technical problem, both in the UnitedStates and in small and medium countries that lack ODS production capacity. Yetthe issue is not easily neutralized in a large, complex country, such as China orIndia, with considerable ODS production capacity and skyrocketing demands forrefrigerators and air conditioners.

Initially, both took a similar approach to ODS phaseout, treating it as yetanother ploy by the industrial world to burn the bridges to economic developmentbehind itself. When China abruptly broke with India in 1990 to accept theProtocol, its behavior invited explanations. The explanation offered here startedwith a straightforward investigation of policy differences, which were linked to theJanus-like nature of the policy issue in question. Its technical aspects were morevisible in China, whereas political components and implications were more visiblein India. The next question—Why?—led to an analysis of the two states. Foranalytical purposes, they were studied as entities comprising two political arenas,representing senior policy authorities and societal constituencies, and anadministrative arena directly concemed with the ODS issue.

A comparison of initial Indian and Chinese approaches to the dilemma ofozone depletion suggests that the problem was neutralized in China more easily thanin India. Chinese leaders treated ODS phaseout as a technical issue, divorced frombroad North-South conflicts, but their Indian counterparts did not. Through a freepress, legislative debates, and public forums, a democratic system of govemmentfmstrates official attempts to draw boundaries between domestic and intemationalpolicy arenas, and between economic or technical questions and political questions.

As Gerschenkron (1966) observed long ago, the timing of economic changein a country has a host of implications that are appreciated best in the intemationalcontext that emerges in a comparative study of dissimilar national rates of change.China's relatively early encounter with economic liberalization, and the nature ofthat process, may be linked to its leaders' subsequent acceptance of strengthened tieswith industrialized countries, through cooperation and aid. As a latecomer to post-Cold War economic competition, key Indian leaders may have perceived suchlinkages through lenses that focused upon past confiicts but blurred possible futurealternatives. Whereas, in China, political and institutional interests sawopportunities to augment their power both abroad and at home, from India, thepreceding analysis suggests a vista of a harshly unsheltering sky.

Holly Sims is assistant professor of public administration and policy atthe Graduate School of Public Affairs of the State University of New York inAlbany.

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Notes

Please contact the author for further information regarding the qualitative data upon which thisstudy is based.

The author appreciates comments on this paper by Jyotirindra Das Gupta, Jeryl Mumpower,Frank Thompson, Theodore Wright, Jr,, and four anonymous reviewers. She is grateful to the NualaMcGann Drescher Foundation for generous support.

This view was expressed even by representatives of national signatories to the MontrealProtocol who attended meetings of the United Nations Multilateral Fund Executive Committee inMontreal between April, 1993, and July, 1995.

Since, as Bamet and Cavanagh (1994) note, "globalization" means "precisely whatever theuser says it means," this is not surprising.

Ofndals consulted include representatives of such intemational agencies as the World Bank,the United Nations Development Programme, and the United Nations Industrial DevelopmentOrganization, in meetings held between 1993-August, 1995, in Montreal, Washington, DC, New YoikCity, Beijing, and New Delhi, Interviews on more specifically political concems also were conductedduring that period with seven representatives of present or former national delegations to intemationalnegotiations on ozone depletion and ODS replacement. Ten intemational environmentalnongovemmental organizations also were consulted, in addition to four representatives of Indiannongovemmental organizations. All of the interviews were unstructured, to focus attention upon eachrespondent's specific area of knowledge or expertise.

Personal communication in an interview in Montreal during July, 1994, with arepresentative of India's Centre for Science and the Environment

^ Interview in New Delhi, February, 1994, II should be noted that Gandhi was an unorthodoxrepresentative of a generally technicallyKJiiented agency.

This account was corroborated during interviews in Montreal, in Mardi, 1995, with two keyrepresentatives to the London Meeting,

The author is identified by initials only.Interview in Montreal, July, 1995.

° Public "green consciousness" led Germany's entire refrigerator industry sector to switch tohydrocarbons, a technology originally promoted by Greenpeace, Personal communication in an interviewwith a representative of Deutsche Gesellschaft Fur Technische Zusammenarbeit, in Montreal, during July,1994.

'^ Interview with an official in the E>evelopment Commission of Small Scale Industries, NewDelhi, January, 1994.

' ' See United Nations Environment Programme documentation for meetings of the ExecutiveCommittee ofthe Multilateral Fund held during 1994, in Montreal,

Interviews with United Nations Development Programme officials in Beijing, in October,1994, and in New York City, in June, 1994; interview with a World Bank official in Washington, DC,in August, 1994.

Interview in Montreal with a representative of the Centre for Science and Environment inJuly, 1994,

Interview in New Delhi, February, 1994,

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