Chapter 3 examines the history of the clean energy regime complex, which sets the stage to delve into questions of its effectiveness in later chapters. This chapter traces the role played by states, multilateral and bilateral organizations, transnational initiatives, and norm diffusion in driving regime complex emergence over the three periods of analysis (Period 1: 1980–2001, Period 2: 2002–2008, Period 3: 2009–2023). The chapter demonstrates that diverging state interests alone do not explain the regime complex’s emergence, but that organizational expansion, transnational actor agency, normative change, and institutional interplay all contribute to its formation.

FFramework climate laws have been enacted across a growing range of countries, and are often assumed to provide stability in terms of climate policymaking. This chapter provides a more nuanced assessment. I argue that, while some common design elements of framework climate laws do indeed serve to bring stability to climate policymaking, in many respects framework climate laws depart from the ideal design type envisioned by the literature on time inconsistency, commitment devices, and non-majoritarian institutions. Moreover, framework climate laws can actually serve to make explicit political conflicts and sectoral trade-offs, and can thus serve to politicize even as they depoliticize. Furthermore, by seeking to introduce stability to climate policymaking in the sense of stability in policy design over time, framework climate laws simultaneously and deliberately seek to undermine and challenge stability as status quo. The chapter draws on examples of framework climate laws principally in European countries to illustrate the argument.

The history of global climate governance can be seen as a series of politicization conflicts. Countries seek to either legitimize and strengthen hard-won global rules or reinterpret or replace them. This chapter focuses on one such conflict, whether to replace or protect the Kyoto Protocol. This conflict primarily pitted the United States against the EU, but each drew other countries into their side of the conflict. By focusing on one conflict, this chapter provides insights into how processes and strategies of politicization unfold in international politics. Countries employed a range of tools, rhetorical and behavioral, to question or support the Kyoto Protocol inside and outside the negotiation process. Several of these strategies are currently employed in relation to the Paris Agreement, marking another politicization conflict.

How can the state make durable policies and control resistance of incumbent fossil fuel interests for rapid decarbonization? Through the lens of policy feedback and coalitions, we argue that in certain contexts the state can manage political conflicts to ensure durable policies for decarbonization. We use the case of China – the world’s largest carbon emitter with a political economy system where the state has large influence on the market – to illustrate the possibility of conflict management for energy transition. We show how the central government has used regulatory power to induce big power companies to shift away from fossil fuels toward renewable energies. Reflecting upon the Chinese case, we identify some conditions under which the state can redirect the interest of incumbent actors toward net zero transition. Our study suggests that while political conflicts are inevitable to combat climate change, policymakers can strategically manage them to deepen and accelerate transition.

Collaborative climate governance has emerged as a promising approach to address the urgent need for decarbonization. Here, we summarize the book’s findings on the complex interplay between states and non-state actors in the pursuit of climate goals, using Sweden as a case study. Collaborative governance can effectively engage industry, cities, and other stakeholders in climate politics, yet it falls short in achieving transformative change. The success of collaborative climate governance is influenced by broader political, economic, and social context and calls for a critical examination of its applicability in diverse settings. Looking beyond Sweden, we identify three main research avenues. Firstly, we emphasize the need to engage with the challenge to institutionalize and sustain climate commitments. Secondly, we encourage scholars to explore democratic innovations to address contestation within collaborative governance. Finally, we call for a deeper exploration of how external shocks and crises serve as catalysts or barriers to decarbonization.

Climate change governance is becoming more polycentric. From the global to the municipal level, an unprecedented number of actors are addressing climate change. But will polycentric governance generate significant emissions reductions? What brings disperse action together to build cumulative outcomes capable of limiting climate change to well below two degrees of warming? How will actors in different institutions and jurisdictions be able to learn from one another and thereby generate significant governance synergies? These important questions relate directly to the vexed question of policy evaluation, an underappreciated, but potentially highly consequential element of polycentric climate governance. In spite of substantial growth of evaluation activity and theorization, its role in assessing and possibly improving climate governance has been insufficiently explored. This chapter introduces the book, which tackles this challenge head-on by developing new, cutting edge theory and then conducting an empirical test in the context of the European Union, Germany and the United Kingdom.

Despite being an authoritarian state, China has adopted a quasi-federalist system to combat climate change. This chapter first introduces the structures and operations of China’s quasi-federalist system. Vertically, there are five hierarchical levels of bureaucracy. Horizontally, there are party committee, government, and environmental and ecological agencies at each level. Power is dynamically distributed vertically and horizontally. This chapter elaborates on the five mechanisms embedded in the quasi-federalist system, namely a target-responsibility system, the inclusion of environmental performance in local officials’ promotion assessment, fiscal incentives, the central inspection system for ecological and environmental protection, and public participation. We then conduct a case analysis of the low-carbon pilot policy in China to explain how each mechanism functions at each stage of the policy process. It shows that China’s quasi-federalist system in climate governance features centralized decision-making, supervision, and evaluation, together with decentralized implementation. China’s environmental quasi-federalism has allowed local governments to experiment with diverse and innovative solutions to climate change, but it has also experienced some challenges as demonstrated in the fragmented patchwork of policies at local levels of government. Overall, China’s environmental quasi-federalism has been effective in climate governance even though it has some drawbacks.

The Introduction discusses the relevance of federalism to different aspects of climate governance. Drawing on the existing literature, we review the key advantages and disadvantages that federalism may offer for the adoption of ambitious climate policies.

Climate change governance in Spain is framed between international commitments and EU legislation and encompasses several levels of government and stakeholders. Numerous climate strategies and policies have been adapted at all territorial levels over the last decade, however, there are no formal vertical channels of influence for Autonomous Communities (ACs) or local actors on policy formulation at the federal level, which limit climate policy diffusion at the vertical dimension. Moreover, the coordination mechanisms for the implementation of climate policies are not very effective and do not consider the early phases of public action nor the participation of all involved authorities. However, the ACs and local governments have ample room for policy experimentalism in adapting their climate change strategies to the peculiarities of their different territories. In this regard the Spanish State of Autonomies has provided a favourable context for policy experimentalism in climate change governance, but not a favourable framework for effective decision-making between levels of government.

This chapter reflects on key findings in this book and how they enhance understanding of the relationship between climate governance and federalism around the world. federalism and federal-type arrangements work in crosscutting ways, facilitating climate governance in some respects, hindering it in others. Divided jurisdiction’s effects vary according to a range of institutional, political, social, economic and geographic factors.

India’s federal structure is unsuited to the localized demands of climate governance. It is highly centralized, with a federal government that enjoys fiscal, bureaucratic, and jurisdictional powers greater than in more classical, decentralized federations. Indian states, however, are responsible for several areas crucial to climate action, from water and health to the emissions-intensive electricity sector. This makes elaborate forms of cooperation between the two levels essential. In this chapter, we show that the federal system has organically begun evolving some institutions and practices to keep up with the demands of climate change, including climate-specific financing and capacity flowing from the centre to the states, and instances of bottom-up experimentation and learning. But these developments are uncoordinated and lack strategic direction; policies appear and fade away with regularity, unpegged to long-term goals or a plan to rectify top-heaviness in Indian climate federalism.

South Africa adopted a system of decentralised government more than two decades ago. This government’s ability to see to collaboration and cooperation across line functionaries, the executive, the legislature and the judiciary is put to the test by, among others, the demands of an adequate national response to climate change and an established practice of centralised governance. This chapter gives an overview of the practice of federalism in South Africa; the country’s climate change profile; the way the federal government system links up with the demands of climate change governance; and a case study of tangible decentralised climate governance practices and developments. The focus is specifically on the challenges and opportunities presented by the multiple forums for law, policy and decision-making, rather than on matters of experimentation and diffusion. The chapter concludes with a brief assessment of the government’s performance thus far and suggestions for moving forward on its climate-resilient development trajectory.

Switzerland genuinely pushes for stronger climate policies in international negotiations and during the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conferences of the Parties (UNFCCC). In contrast, when it comes to domestic regulation it tends to wait for, and align itself with, the positions of the European Union (EU). In fact, rather than a climate ‘pusher’, Switzerland is more accurately described as a ‘follower’ of the EU on climate matters. This chapter takes this observation as a starting point, aiming to unpack the advantages and disadvantages offered by the Swiss federal structure in both enabling and hindering effective and sustainable climate governance. We show that the fragmented nature of the Swiss polity, with its 26 constituent units (cantons) and some 2,000 municipal polities with each more or less autonomy in key policy areas, is not in itself an obstacle. However, tackling the complexity arising from such a multilevel structure is time consuming, at best. We find that the high degree of decentralisation has facilitated locally tailored solutions and policy innovation in particular regarding climate adaption, but inter-jurisdictional coordination and learning is limited and subnational policies do not compensate for an absence of ambitious climate mitigation policy at the national level.

This chapter examines the role that the Indian judiciary has played in advancing climate action and environmental governance. This chapter traces the judiciary’s contributions through a few landmark judgements and its relationship to varieties of environmentalism in India. India’s environmental movement, and the lawyering that supports it, oscillates between environmentalism of the poor and exclusionary conservation, where the human rights of forest-dwelling and other local communities are often violated. Moreover, though the judiciary in India has been a site of progressive environmental jurisprudence, it has nonetheless produced jurisprudence that violates the human rights of vulnerable communities. The judiciary is very often left to choose between the two competing strains of environmentalism and responding to the needs of development. These pressures, I argue, will shape the decisions the judiciary is likely to make in the context of climate change. Yet, this chapter ultimately argues that courts can play an important role in climate change governance if they adopt a more sensitive approach to questions of climate justice.