Climate Change: Regime Formation

There are at least four different types of fundamental features that are affecting to the state’s decision in terms of regime formation. Those are interests, power, information and beliefs. All of these features are changing over time but at different speed in different countries and on different issues. Because of the varying interests and power, states are likely to form “clubs” that will serve their own interests the best possible way and to limit the benefits of the states that are not part of the club i.e. seek to act as free riders. As a result, international regimes vary in membership (Keohane and Victor 2009, 3.)

According to Keohane and Victor (2009, 14 – 15), the regime complexes have risen

because of the functional, strategic and organizational reasons. From functional standpoint, the specific problems that are involved in regulating climate change are so diverse that a single institutional response is too difficult to organize. The diversity of the problem is usually accompanied by a diversity of interests, power, information, and beliefs. The states are creating institutions, based on their own interest to help solving the problems of a collective action but they have imperfect information and ability to regulate the behavior through them.

The strategic point of view is based on the idea that specific regimes are often anchored on private goods supplied to a small number of actors whose interests are similar to each other but not the same with the others. These interests are interdependent because, for example, regulatory decisions are affecting economic competition. The members of these clubs are seeking to maintain these arrangements for their own benefit. This interest diversity therefore pushes towards the fragmentation of the comprehensive regime. Therefore, the benefits of the comprehensive regime may not seem to be sufficient enough to justify the bargaining efforts and concessions that would be required (Keohane and Victor 2009, 14 – 15.)

Finally, from the organizational point of view, the different countries and sectors have become interested in serious action against the climate change at different times. When the timing of the action varies, the state-leaders are aiming to construct partial institutions that are suitable for their own purposes and interests. Once they have done this, they are not likely to change these arrangements fundamentally, mainly because of the cost-benefit reasons (Keohane and Victor 2009, 14 – 15.)

Abbott (2011, 2) is on the same page with Keohane and Victor and includes the concept of transnational climate change governance in the discussion. According to him, the so called

“explosion” (i.e. Cambrian explosion) of transnational institutions has been reshaping the governance regarding various issue areas such as environmental protection and climate change. The central feature of this governance explosion is a rapid growth of the

organizations, rules, implementation mechanisms, financing arrangements and operational activities. Because of this proliferation, the climate change governance is highly complex by its nature.

According to Abbott, this transnational climate change governance may be fragmented or polycentric. This basically means that the responsibilities for different types of tasks are usually shared among various organizations that have diverse membership and are acting on different levels. According to Abbot, the transnational climate change governance is also decentralized which means that most of the organizations have been created from the bottom up by the groups of actors that are trying to achieve their own individual goals with little central coordination (Abbott 2011, 5 – 8.)

According to Colgan (et al. 2012, 119), the regimes and regime complexes are changing when new issue area rises or configuration of powers and interests changes. Sometimes, actors are seeking for institutional change and when these efforts are successful, they will create great changes in the institutional structure of the regime complex. Colgan has distinguished three different types of institutional innovations which are:

 The creation of new organizations and links between organizations,

 the inclusion in established organizations of major new members with the capacity to shape policy as well as

 internal structural changes, reflecting the adaptation of existing organizations to new conditions.

These innovations normally tend to happen because of strong dissatisfaction by

policymakers with the outcomes of the regime complex. When this dissatisfaction of the issue-area rises, the opportunities for change in the institutional landscape will increase.

Vice versa, when the dissatisfaction decreases, the regime complex is likely to stay frozen and retain its former structure (Colgan et al. 2012, 119.)

According to Colgan (et al. 2012, 138) it is unlikely that the coherent climate and energy regime will be constructed at least in the near future. At the moment, the institutional inertia is too strong for the major changes and the preferences of major states overly diverse. Quite the opposite, it is more likely that the development of the loosely coupled set of specific regimes will continue.

According to Keohane and Victor (2009, 1), this new type of regime complex actually offers advantages over politically feasible comprehensive regime, mainly because it offers more flexible and adaptable tools to battle against the threat. These tools are especially

important in an environment of high uncertainty, such as is the case of the climate change where the most demanding international commitments are interdependent, yet governments are hesitating with their interests and abilities to implement them.

Keohane and Victor (2009, 18) are not claiming that the regime complexes would be better solution than the comprehensive regimes. However, they are suggesting that in an

environment where the political reality makes effective and legitimate comprehensive regimes impossible, the regime complexes may work as part of the solution. When the rules do not have to be bound within a common institution, it gives an opportunity to adapt them to distinctively different conditions on different issues, or for different coalitions of actors. This would mean that different states would have an opportunity to sign different sets of agreements. Because of this increased flexibility, it would be more likely that the nation states would adhere at least to some constraints on the greenhouse gas emissions.

Keohane and Victor (2009, 18) are also thinking that the regime complexes might offer better adaptability over time compared to the comprehensive regimes. Because the changes in different issue areas or domestic politics tend to take place at different rates in different times, the regime complexes might be able to adapt to these changes faster than the comprehensive regimes. This kind of loose coupling is also many times advantageous when there is no clear knowledge about the best strategies for adaptation and several different efforts should be tried. In the case of climate change, this might attract especially developing countries that are wary about the obligations that might come otherwise too quickly and hard.

These advantages however do not arise automatically and they definitely cannot be taken for granted. In some cases, these kinds of dispersed institutions may create chaos and gridlocks which deters the policymakers and investors from devoting themselves to the climate change problem. Because of this, the institutions should be carefully analyzed in order to find out if they are performing as well as might be expected (Keohane and Victor 2009, 19).

Whether this diversification in the future will continue or not, it seems to be rather clear that some kind of a change in the international climate cooperation will be needed. These linked regimes might be more effective than a single comprehensive regime but the future success will be dependent on the policy-makers. According to Colgan (et al. 2012, 119),

the regimes and regime complexes are in subject to change when new issues are rising and configurations of power and interests are changing. From this point of view, the

institutional changes in the future are possible.

In this chapter, I have been concentrating on the global level of the climate change governance. As it has been demonstrated, the climate change governance is extremely multifaceted by its nature and the international climate change regimes are part of this multilevel governance system where several actors and multiple layers of governance are linked to each other (Young 1997, 292). As a conclusion, it is rather safe to say that the institutional changes are much needed in order to control the ever growing pressure of the climate change in the future. However, this is not an easy task to do but will require international cooperation, change of political environment and also state level actions in order to be successful.

In the next chapter, I am going to focus on the national policies inside the international climate change regime. In the national level, this mainly includes the energy policies because energy is still the biggest emitting sector in terms of GHGemissions. In order to achieve the sustainable, climate friendly and low carbon future, a revolution in the current energy system will be needed.