From global to polycentric climate governance

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Cole, Daniel H.

Note: [] Indiana University Maurer School of Law, <dancole@indiana.edu>. I am grateful for helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this paper from Elinor Ostrom, Joanne Scott, Carlton Waterhouse, Alexander Zahar, and participants in the May 2011 Workshop on Comparative Institutional Analysis and Global Governance at the European University Institute, Florence.

Abstract: Global governance institutions for climate change, such as those established by the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol, have so far failed to make a significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions. Following the lead of Elinor Ostrom, this paper offers an alternative theoretical framework for reconstructing global climate policy in accordance with the polycentric approach to governance pioneered in the early 1960s by Vincent Ostrom, Charles Tiebout, and Robert Warren. Instead of a thoroughly top-down global regime, in which lower levels of government simply carry out the mandates of international negotiators, a polycentric approach provides for greater experimentation, learning, and cross-influence among different levels and units of government, which are both independent and interdependent. After exploring several of the design flaws of the existing set of global institutions and organizations for greenhouse gas mitigation, the paper explores how those global institutions and organizations might be improved by learning from various innovative policies instituted by local, state, and regional governments. The paper argues that any successful governance system for stabilizing the global climate must function as part of a larger, polycentric set of nested institutions and organizations at various governmental levels.

DOI: 10.3233/CL-2011-042

Journal: Climate Law, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 395-413, 2011