An Early Action Climate Change Policy for all Countries
In November 2000, just after the presidential elections in the United States, negotiators will meet in The Hague at the sixth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP6) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). By then, it will have been almost three years since the negotiation of the Kyoto Protocol on global climate change at COP3, which was held in Kyoto in December 1997. Intense negotiations over the intervening period have focused on how to implement the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol has been signed by 84 countries but not ratified by any of the key countries, and ratification does not appear to be imminent, especially in the United States, where the Senate has registered its strong opposition.
This chapter looks at recent trends in the historiography of state-formation since the appearance of Charles Tilly's Coercion and Capital and European States, AD 990-1990. The impact of globalization upon scholarship is analyzed, with increasing attention to comparative studies on China and the Ottoman Empire. Another emphasis has been the study of institutions in relationship with economic growth, among others through state finances and state loans.