The Regime Complex for Climate Change
Abstract
There is no integrated 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 interest-based, functional, and organizational arguments. This institutional form is likely to persist; efforts to build a comprehensive regime are unlikely to succeed, but experiments abound with narrower institutions focused on particular aspects of the climate change problem. 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. Adaptability and flexibility are particularly important in a setting—such as climate change policy—in which the most demanding international commitments are interdependent yet governments vary widely in their interest and ability to implement them. Yet in view of the serious political constraints, both domestic and international, there is little reason for optimism that the climate regime complex that is emerging will lead to reductions in emissions rapid enough to meet widely discussed goals, such as stopping global warming at two degrees above pre-industrial levels.
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Commonly used larger organizations include Microsoft Research Open Data, Allen Institute for AI Datasets, and consortia such as LDC, ELRA, and CLARIN, which aim to centralize and standardize access to textual resources.
“Commonly used larger organizations include Microsoft Research Open Data and Allen Institute for AI Datasets, as well as consortia such as the Linguistic Data Consortium (LDC), European Language Resources Association (ELRA) and CLARIN [76], which aim to centralize and standardize access to textual resources for members of the community.”
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CLARIN uses a restricted version of such a taxonomy for non-commercial data only.
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By allowing for participation in collective decision-making, democratic procedures treat people with equal respect as rational, autonomous agents.
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“Keohane and Victor [77] study the case of the regime complex for climate change, whose global governance happens at the intersection of e.g., UN and local legal regimes and bilateral agreements and spans topics such as trade regulation, technology, or geoengineering.”
BackgroundInfluentialHighly decentralized solar geoengineering
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- Authors
- Keohane, R. O., & Victor, D. G.
- Affiliations
- Princeton University (US)
- University of California San Diego (US)
- ORCID
- Victor, David G.
- Venue
- Perspectives on Politics
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2011-03
- Volume
- 9
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 7-23
- ISSN
- 1537-5927 (ISSN-L)
- 1541-0986
- OpenAlex
- W3124381591
- Cited by
- 2,047
- References
- 68
- Citations by year
- 2026: 136 · 2025: 129 · 2024: 100 · 2023: 167 · 2022: 195 · 2021: 156 · 2020: 217 · 2019: 169 · 2018: 160 · 2017: 129 · 2016: 94 · 2015: 107 · 2014: 93 · 2013: 84 · 2012: 72
- FWCI
- 227.96
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Perspectives on Politics (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Climate Change Policy and Economics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law › International Environmental Law and Policies
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Sustainability and Climate Change Governance
- Keywords
- international climate governance, international environmental regimes, regime complexity, climate policy, institutional design, emission reduction, 2°C target
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