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The Regime Complex of Climate Change

Author(s): Keohane RO, Victor DG

Published: January, 2010

Publisher: Harvard University

Tags: Governance

URL: http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/19880/regime_complex_for_climate_change.html

Abstract: There is no integrated, comprehensive regime governing efforts to limit the extent of climate change. Instead, there is a regime complex: a loosely coupled set of specific regimes. We describe the regime complex for climate change and seek to explain it, using functional, strategic, and organizational arguments. It is likely that such a regime complex will persist: efforts to build an effective, legitimate, and adaptable comprehensive regime are unlikely to succeed. Building on this analysis, we argue that a climate change regime complex, if it meets specified criteria, has advantages over any politically feasible comprehensive regime, particularly with respect to adaptability and flexibility. These characteristics are particularly important in an environment of high uncertainty, such as in the case of climate change where the most demanding international commitments are interdependent yet governments vary widely in their interest and ability to implement such commitments. For two decades, governments have struggled to craft a strong, integrated and comprehensive regulatory system for managing climate change. Instead their efforts have produced a varied array of narrowly-focused regulatory regimes—what we call the "regime complex for climate change." The elements of this regime complex are linked more or less closely to one another, sometimes conflicting, sometimes mutually reinforcing. This paper explores the continuum between comprehensive international regulatory institutions, which are usually focused on a single integrated legal instrument, at one end of a spectrum and highly fragmented arrangements at the other. In-between these two extremes are nested regimes and regime complexes, which are loosely coupled sets of specific regimes. We outline an analytical framework to interpret and begin to explain why regulatory efforts in different issue-areas yield outcomes that vary along this spectrum. Further, we argue that for the case of climate change the structural and interest diversity inherent in contemporary world politics tends to generate the formation of regime complexes rather than a comprehensive, integrated regime. For policy makers keen to make international regulation more effective, we argue that the outcome is not just likely but also may allow for more effective regulation when compared with comprehensive regimes. In settings of high uncertainty and policy flux, regime complexes are not just politically more realistic but they also offer some significant advantages such as flexibility in substantive content and scope.


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