Introduction

Many of the major policy challenges facing governments today are in some sense collective problems, calling for joint solutions. This also applies to the issue-area of environmental management, and to Europe at least as much as to any other region. However, even when effective solutions can only be reached through joint efforts, voluntary cooperation seems quite often to be hard to establish and maintain. This makes it all the more important to be able to understand the conditions for ‘success’ and the causes of ‘failure’ in international environmental problem-solving.