Arild Underdal

Navigating the Anthropocene: Improving Earth System Governance

The United Nations conference in Rio de Janeiro in June is an important opportunity to improve the institutional framework for sustainable development. Science assessments indicate that human activities are moving several of Earths sub-systems outside the range of natural variability typical for the previous 500,000 years (1, 2). Human societies must now change course and steer away from critical tipping points in the Earth system that might lead to rapid and irreversible change (3). This requires fundamental reorientation and restructuring of national and international institutions toward more effective Earth system governance and planetary stewardship.

Explaining Compliance and Defection: Three Models

How can we account for the variance in the level of implementation of and compliance with international agreements? Noting that answers to this question have been sought by pursuing at least three different paths of research, the author outlines three basic models and briefly discusses some of the main propositions and policy implications that can be derived from these models. The first model explicates the calculations that a unitary rational actor would perform in deciding whether or not to honour its commitments. The second examines the domestic politics of implementation, while the third focuses on the ideational basis of compliance, highlighting processes of learning and policy diffusion.

The Oslo-Potsdam Solution to Measuring Regime Effectiveness: Critique, Response, and the Road Ahead

In international regimes research, one of the most important questions is how effective regimes are in delivering what they were established and designed to achieve. Perhaps the most explicit and rigorous formula for measuring regime effectiveness is the so-called Oslo-Potsdam solution. This formula has recently been criticized by Oran Young, himself one of the founding fathers of regime analysis. The present article reviews and responds to his critique and provides several extensions of the Oslo-Potsdam solution. Our response may be summarized in three points. First, we recognize that difficult problems remain unsolved. Second, we argue that for some of the most profound problems there is no escape; we need to engage in counterfactual reasoning, and we need some notion of the best solution achievable (such as the collective optimum). Finally, we would welcome efforts to further develop and refine the Oslo-Potsdam formula as well as alternative approaches.

Implementing Long-Term Climate Policy: Time Inconsistency, Domestic Politics, International Anarchy

As a quintessential long-term policy problem, climate change poses two major challenges. The first is to develop, under considerable uncertainty, a plan for allocating resources over time to achieve an effective policy response. The second is to implement this plan, once arrived at, consistently over time. We consider the second of these two challenges, arguing that it consists of three interrelated, commitment problemsthe time inconsistency problem, the domestic politics problem, and the anarchy problem. We discuss each of these commitment problems in some detail, explore how they relate to climate policy, and suggest institutional designs that may help limit their adverse impact. While each of these commitment problems is difficult to tackle on its own, climate change requires us to cope with all of them at once. This is likely one major reason why we have so far made only modest headway on this vital issue.

Methodological Challenges in the Study of Regime Effectiveness

The study of regime effectiveness can be considered a sub-field of the broader study of regime consequences This sub-field is distinguished first and foremost by the perspective it adopts: regimes are assessed in terms of how well they perform a particular function or the extent to which they achieve their purpose.1 The notion of effectiveness implies the idea of regimes as (potential) tools, and like all other tools regimes can be evaluated in terms of their usefulness in helping us carry out a particular task. In adopting this instrumental perspective, students of regime effectiveness concentrate their attention on a subset of consequences; notably those that are germane to the function or purpose assigned to the regime in focus. Other consequences—side effects—are of interest only in so far as they have a direct or indirect bearing on this task or purpose. Moreover, in assessing effectiveness the costs incurred in establishing and operating the regime are usually left out of the equation. Effectiveness thus becomes a matter of gross rather than net achievement, and should not be confused with efficiency. Finally, in evaluating a regime in terms of the extent to which it achieves its official purpose or solves the problem that motivated its establishment, we should keep in mind that regimes are normally designed to promote the values or interests of their (dominant) members If these interests and values differ significantly from those of non-members, a regime may well serve a useful function for its members at the expense of creating a serious problem for others. As defined here, effectiveness does not imply fairness.

The politics of international environmental management

I. Introduction A. Underdal. II. The interest-based explanation for international air pollution control: determinants of support for the protection of the ozone layer and the abatement of acid rain in Europe D. Sprinz, T. Vaahtoranta. III. The domestic sources of international environmental regulation D. Sprinz. IV. The role of intergovernmental organizations in the formation and evolution of international environmental regimes M. List, V. Rittberger. V. National science and international policy A. Weale, A. Williams. VI. Political leadership in international environmental negotiations: how to design a politically feasible solution A. Underdal. VII. Understanding the formation of international environmental regimes: the discursive challenge O.S. Stokke. VIII. Domesticating international commitments. Linking national and international decision making K. Hanf, A. Underdal.

Regime Effectiveness and the Oslo-Potsdam Solution: A Rejoinder to Oran Young

Fromourpoint of view, the exchange has been very rewarding. In this rejoinder, we brie‘ ysummarize our own position and identify some remaining issues where ourviews seem to differ from Oran Young’ s.First, we are encouraged by Young’ s evaluation that there are some attrac-tive features about the Oslo-Potsdam solution— in particular that it offers a con-ceptual framework producing a single effectiveness score bounded between 0and 1 which permits comparisons across regimes.Second, Young is correct in pointing out that there are multiple alternativeprocedures for evaluating regime

Domesticating International Commitments: Linking National and International Decision-Making

To an increasing extent governments all over the world are being called upon to work out and implement joint solutions to collective policy problems — ranging from the illegal production and distribution of drugs to global climate change. At least two propositions have been offered to account for the proliferation of international policy problems. One attributes this development to increases in the volume and ‘intensity’ of communication, transactions and exchanges of externalities across borders. The underlying assumption behind this line of explanation is that, other things being equal, the higher the volume of interaction between two societies, the more sensitive and vulnerable they tend to become towards each other (Keohane and Nye, 1977, 8 f). And the greater the interdependence between two actors, the more each of them will care about what the other does. An alternative proposition focuses on changes in the role of government, the basic argument being that as the scope of government intervention into society expands — as it has done throughout most of this century — new problems have been drawn into the sphere of public policy. To the extent that these problems have international ramifications, they may in turn also become topics of intergovernmental negotiations. The driving force, according to this hypothesis, is the expanding role of government in economic activities and social life rather than changes in the level or scope of interdependence among societies (Morse, 1973; Sundelius, 1984).

Research Strategies for the Future

Studies of regime consequences wrestle with a wide range of more or less complex questions. Some of these pertain to single regimes, others to sets or even universes of regimes. Most studies focus on consequences defined in terms of success in coping with the specific problem that a particular regime has been designed to solve or alleviate. But analysts as well as policy-makers have come to recognize that many international regimes have important consequences well beyond their designated domains. These broader consequences can be traced in other substantive issue-areas as well as in the nature of domestic political institutions and processes and in the structure of the international political system. Table 14.1 offers a crude map of the field.

Can conditional commitments break the climate change negotiations deadlock

Can a conditional commitment by a major actor (for example, the European Union) induce other major actors (such as the USA, China, India, or Japan) to do more to mitigate global climate change? We analyse this question by first estimating the impact of emission reductions by one of these actors on the mitigation costs of the others and, second, by exploring how domestic politics influence the willingness of the European Union and the USA to contribute. We find that an emission cut by any actor will reduce mitigation costs for all the others and thereby expand the settlement range. These cost reductions seem, however, insufficient to induce significant unilateral policy change. Emissions trading can cut aggregate costs further, but also redistribute wealth. Domestic politics tend to add weight to the concerns of powerful actors that stand to lose from more ambitious mitigation policies.