International decision making process (BC3 Summer School _July 2015)

International Decision‐making Processes
Arild Underdal
University of Oslo, Department of Political Science
Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research –
Oslo (CICERO)
CICEP

Outline of presentation
I. Global climate change mitigation as a governance challenge
I. …in light of lessons learned from the study of international (environmental) regimes
II. The ‘global challenge ‐> global solution’ approach (‘top down’)
I. What may we expect global conference diplomacy to achieve?
III. The ‘clumsy solutions for a complex world’ approach (‘bottom up’)
[Verweij et al., Public Administration, vol. 84(2006), no. 4]
I. What may we expect coalitions of the willing – in particular, ‘climate clubs’
(Nordhaus) – to achieve?
IV. Can some combination of the two approaches give us the best of both?

Why are some international regimes more effective than others?
General lessons from three decades of research
 Grossly simplified, there seem to be two main answers (Miles et al., 2002)
– Because some problems are easier to solve than others
• Because they are better understood or easier to understand
• Because they are politically more benign problems (~ coordination problems)
– Because some groups or systems have greater problem‐solving capacity than
others
• For tasks defined in terms of collective action, Miles et al. pointed to three main
elements:
– The institutional setting
– The distribution of (basic game) power, over the configuration of preferences
– The supply of (non‐coercive) leadership
– Success rates (Miles et al., 2002)
• Politically benign and well‐understood problems & high‐capacity systems: .95
• Politically malign problems clouded by uncertainty & low‐capacity systems: .08

Climate change mitigation:
an extremely demanding governance challenge
 Climate change mitigation combines several features that make it
an extremely demanding challenge of governance
o Very long time‐lags between policy measures (~’costs’) and environmental effects
(~’benefits’)
o Embeddedness in highly complex systems that are not fully understood
o Links to deep poverty and stark inequities and to high‐stakes competition in global
markets and international politics
o Very large asymmetries between ‘guilt’ in causing the problem and capacity to alleviate
it on the one hand, and socio‐ecological vulnerability to climate change on the other
o Concern with global collective goods that are affected by a wide range of human
activities and (as of today) beyond the reach of any ‘single best effort solution’

The ‘global problems ‐> global solutions’
approach
Basic premises
 Global climate change is a systemic
challenge, calling for solutions at
the same level (~ global in scope)
 Global solutions affect people
worldwide and should therefore be
designed and implemented by the
global community
– Ideally through universal participation
in democratic processes
Scientific rationale provided by
 Earth system science and collective
action theory
 ‘Good governance’ research (from
philosophy to political science)
o Strong support from LDCs and many
(E)NGOs

What may we expect global conference
diplomacy to achieve? (1)
 The good news: even faced with an extremely demanding challenge
global conference diplomacy can be an effective tool for
o Setting agendas and focusing attention worldwide
o Organizing joint efforts to build a consensual platform of research‐based
knowledge
o Providing arenas for diffusion of policy ideas and practices (learning)
o Generating, for those actively involved, positive stakes in its own success

What may we expect global conference
diplomacy to achieve? (2)
 The bad news: When it comes to effective substantive measures
global conference diplomacy becomes highly vulnerable to
o ‘Veto players’ (‘the law of the least ambitious program’)
o Deadlock over basic principles (and ‘worldviews’)
o Internal coalition dynamics that enhance polarization
o The strains of global competition over wealth and power
o The burden of sprawling agendas and overwhelming complexity

The ‘clumsy solutions for a complex world’
approach
Basic premises
 The human impact on the climate system can
be traced back to multiple systems of
activities that can more effectively be
governed in smaller clusters or one by one
 A wide range of measures that can
contribute to mitigation will be attractive to
a critical mass of actors (also) for other
reasons. Such win‐win measures can be
adopted and implemented with joint support
from ‘Baptists and Bootleggers’
 Existing institutional capacity can
sometimes be used also for mitigation
governance
Scientific rationale provided by
 Natural science research measuring the
human impact on the climate system
 Social science studies of (multi‐level)
governance
 Strands of political science (and political
economy) research, in particular political
feasibility analysis
 As above

Institutional alternatives at the international level:
Coalitions of the Willing (‘Climate Clubs’)
 David G. Victor (2011:6): ‘(...) start with what nations are willing and able to
implement’
 Also: ‘(...) start with the interests of the most powerful countries’
(Victor 2011:265)
 A ‘Climate Club’ is founded by two or more ‘enthusiasts’ (frontrunners) to
induce reluctant countries to join and contribute more by
 Making their own commitments contingent (upon reciprocation)
 Offering club goods (i.e., benefits available to club members only)
 Offering side payments (to actors joining the club)
 {Imposing trade sanctions on non‐members; see e.g. Nordhaus 2015}

Coalitions of the willing:
basic assumptions
 Most countries are indeed willing and able to take some meaningful steps towards
mitigation (in some cases, though, for other reasons)
 Which steps will vary but many countries will go for more ambitious measures if
allowed to choose what makes sense given their particular circumstances
 Willingness to contribute will to some extent increase with contributions from
important others
 More can be achieved by taking advantage of existing international institutions
 The overall result will be a ‘clumsy’ patchwork of measures but it will likely add up to
more than the UNFCCC ‘global problem ‐> global solution’ approach can deliver

Methodological approach:
agent‐based modelling (ABM)
 We need tools that are well suited for studying collaboration as an
evolving (bottom‐up) process
 ABM provides flexible tools for computational simulation of process
dynamics
 For example, mechanisms generating momentum or cascading collapse
 The ABM toolbox is particularly useful for studying processes involving
 Non‐linear evolution ‐> emergent properties
 Heterogeneous groups, consisting of agents (actors) capable of learning and adapting

Modelling actors
 ‘Enthusiasts’ (frontrunners and likely climate club founders)
 Have an exogenous motivation to contribute to reducing global GHG emissions
o Behaviour will in part be premised on norms
 Do not attempt to free‐ride (even when opportunities arise)
 Abandon club if and only if – after negotiating with all other potential
members – the club gives them negative net benefits relative to the no‐club
scenario
o A soft version of Axelrod’s (1984) ‘nice, retaliatory, forgiving, and clear’ recipe
 ‘Reluctant’ actors (beginning as outsiders)
 Rational actors motivated by self‐interest only; will join club only if private
benefits exceed own abatement costs

Modelling climate clubs
 Potential members make binary decisions: membership or not
 Membership requirement (‘fee’):
o Undertake GHG mitigation costing 1% of own GDP
 A global club (~ universal membership) reduces – over the long haul – global climate
damage costs by 3% (sensitivity tests 1.5% ‐ 4.5%) of GGP
o Smaller clubs’ accomplishments: a linear function of the proportion of total emissions
covered by the club
 The model acknowledges the asymmetries in wealth, emissions, and vulnerabilities
that characterize real‐world countries (but often left out in theory‐building research)
o But we have (so far) not tried to estimate effects of inter‐state affinity scores (varying with
e.g. conflict over exogenous issues)

Club growth achieved with different instruments
Club size measured in percentage of global emissions and {number of members}
(Borrowed from H. Sælen, 2015)
Club founder(s) (%
of global emissions)
Cond. mitigation
pledges
(Modest) club‐
good benefits
Cond. pledges &
mod. club goods
Side payments
to poorer partners
China (27) 0 0 47 {3} 46 {37}
USA (14) 0 41 {2} 47 {3} 67 {49}
EU (9) 0 36 {2} 56 {4} 63 {51}
China & USA (41) 0 41 {2} 47 {3} 73 {76}
China & EU (36) 0 36 {2} 56 {4} 68 {76}
USA & EU (23) 50 {3} 50 {3} 56 {4} 86 {89}

Club growth as a function of club good benefits
Club size measured as percentage of global emissions and member countries
(Borrowed from J. Hovi et al., 2015)
Founder(s) No club good CG Benefits = 0.1 CG Benefits = 0.2
China 0 0 0
USA 0 41   USA, China 47  USA, China, India
EU 0 36   EU, China 61  EU, China, USA, India, Indonesia
China & USA 0 41   China, USA 47  China, USA, India
China & EU 0 36   China, EU 61  China, EU, USA, India, Indonesia
USA & EU 0 50   China, USA, EU 61  USA, EU, China, India, Indonesia
China, USA & EU 50   China, USA, EU 50   China, USA, EU 61  China, USA, EU, India, Indonesia
BASIC 37   BASIC 37   BASIC 37  BASIC
BRICS 42   BRICS 42   BRICS 42  BRICS

Preliminary findings:
general propositions
 Clubs that cover a substantial share of global emissions emerge under a
range of circumstances that cannot outright be dismissed as mere
phantasy
 Universal participation is, however, achieved only with overly optimistic
assumptions
 Even a single (very) large emitter can initiate more cooperation through
providing sufficiently strong incentives for certain others to join

Preliminary findings:
effects of different club growth strategies
 Conditional commitments to mitigate more if others reciprocate achieve only one
important ‘recruitment’
 China may respond positively to joint conditional commitments by the US and the EU
 With modest club goods (costs between .2% and .4% of a member’s GDP), clubs
consisting of two or three of the largest emitters can be viable
 To attract other countries, however, more highly valued club goods will have to be provided (or a
more complex scheme introduced, combining modest club goods with side payments and/or
conditional commitments)
 Side payments are particularly effective for broadening participation to include
smaller countries (in particular, small developing countries)
 The side payments required are of the same order of magnitude as the Climate Fund contributions
that developed countries have collectively pledged (USD 100 billion annually)

Empirical finding:
no international climate clubs exist!
 Weischer et al., 2012: 183: ‘[t]there are no clubs for which the level of
ambition is the membership criterion, in the sense that a country would
have to demonstrate a certain track record or agree to specific
commitments regarding emissions reductions as a criterion for being
admitted to the club’
 Andresen, 2014: alternatives to the UNFCCC process have served largely
as fora for discussion and are not ‘clubs’ as defined in this presentation
(and by Nordhaus)

Can a combination of the two approaches
give us the best of both?
 Significant progress at lower levels (e.g., within clubs and specialized
regimes/organizations) can expand the settlement range in global
negotiations
 UNFCCC negotiations can help shape agendas, focus attention, support
the development of a consensual knowledge‐base, and facilitate diffusion
of policies and practices
 Yet, certain combinations are not likely to work well. One example is a
voluntary ‘Intended Nationally Determined Contribution’ approach within
the setting of UNFCCC conference diplomacy

International decision making process (BC3 Summer School _July 2015)

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