Domestic Institutions and Global Climate Change

• In Event: Addressing Climate Change: NGOs, States, and People

Abstract

Differences in the forms of government, ideology, and institutional capacity as sources of conflict among states have attracted considerable scholarly attention in the centuries since Thucydides presented an account of the Peloponnesian War fought between the democratic Athenians and oligarchic Spartans at the end of the fifth century bc. In this paper I seek to understand the role of domestic institutions in the satisfactory resolution of international problems related to climate change which requires successful coordination and collective action between states with different institutional make up. I argue that the nature of a state’s governing institutions, especially features of accountability, plays a crucial role in possible solutions and the feasibility of global collective actions and coordination problems. Any solution to collective action dilemmas and coordination problems requires not only highly motivated (incentivized) accountable actors, but also high levels of trust and reciprocity, a strong sense of community and non zero-sum approach to common issues among the actors. Countries with inclusive open domestic institutions are more likely to overcome collective action dilemmas and coordination problems as their commitments are often more credible and the informational asymmetries about states’ preferences, goals, and capabilities are less likely to cause difficulties. In inclusive institutional domestic settings, governments are also more likely to take into account local conditions and incorporate local stakeholders into the decision-making process, and by doing so adopting more suitable bottom-up approaches to problems.

In this paper, I focus on the nature of a state’s governing institutions, especially accountability, and their impact on the solutions (and their feasibility) of international collective action problems, specifically the emergence of international institutions to tackle climate change and explore the complex interaction of the transformation of governance structures and ecological changes in achieving efficient environmental resource management.

Author

• Muserref Yetim, New York University