International structure affects the foreign policy issues and the domestic politics; you can’t just prioritise one or the other you have to do both sequentially and simultaneously.
Prof. Robert Keohane (Princeton University) talks about international relations, cap-and trade and a “dual-leadership world” where Usa and China have to take the lead, but you can’t say to say which players can determine the outcomes in the system. How can we get action from people and leaders in climate negotiations?
“In the presence of a deadlock on the traditional ways of solving climate change questions, may be the Economy of Esteem could help us” Prof. Keohane argues in this interview to Climate Science&Policy.
A Two Level Game
Climate change is an issue that is described by a two level game in political science; that is you have to do both (international and national level) at the same time. You can’t just prioritise one or the other because the international structure affects the foreign policy issues and the domestic politics. It affects the costs and benefits of the states and therefore the reactions of domestic groups and of course domestic politics shapes what states can do and therefore shapes their bargaining positions and their credibility of their negotiating positions. So you have to do this simultaneously. That’s one reason why it’s so difficult; it requires this mutual back and forth. And this is also true of trade for example; trade is also a two level game. You only get a trade agreement if you both get a negotiation among the major trading partners and at the same time you get a domestic agreement on the trade agreement. So it’s a common phenomenon in international politics but it means you can’t make a choice being one or the other level. You have to do both sequentially and simultaneously.
Climate Change and the Economy of Esteem
You have to start with the basic problem, which is that it’s difficult to find incentives that are self-interested for states and leaders to pursue a responsible climate policy. And we’ve had a hard time doing this. The first best way to do it is with some sort of international agreement that everybody agrees to but we have failed in doing that, so far, at least. So Geofrey Brennan and Philip Pettit have a book on the economy of esteem, a general book from about five or six years ago. And they point out that prizes and prestige and reputation can be important incentives for leaders. So we could think about ways in which we could give prizes to states for taking advance action, prizes to cities or to cooperations. Some sort of awards, a distinction for people who take initiatives on climate change that is giving them reputational incentives to act in a way that otherwise a purely material basis wouldn’t act. It’s one way to think outside of the box as we say, to try to think about ways that may not be the principal way, I’m not at all saying that this is the principal way to solve climate change, but in the presence of a deadlock on the traditional ways of doing it. It’s one way to think about getting some action from some people in some context.
Incentives, Credible Actions and Binding Limits for a Global Climate Policy Architecture
(Talking about cap-and-trade architecture) I think it’s the best way that I have seen so far although you may not call it cap and trade anymore; it’s going to be very complicated. But the basic architecture has the advantage that it enables resources to be transferred from richer countries that are more willing to take action to poorer countries that are reluctant to have binding commitments without public funds explicitly being sent so that if you set up a situation where there were caps on everybody but the caps on the developing countries came into force later or were high enough that there was space, a so-called hot air, between the level of their actual emissions and the cap. They could sell the credits for that amount into the world market or into national carbon markets. So cap and trade is a way of giving material incentives to reluctant developing countries to actually take action. Now, so far they haven’t decided to do this. Partly because the actions by developed countries have not been sufficiently credible, especially the United States, and partly because they are reluctant to accept a binding limit in the condition of uncertainty. But the basic principle of market driven flows of funds that provide incentives to developing countries is I think going to have to be part of any climate architecture. It may not be called cap and trade. It may have lots of different variations to it. It may be safety valves and ways to reassure developing countries that they aren’t locked into a certain cap, which they then can’t meet effectively. But something like it, some adaptation of it will have to be part of the global structure.
Interrelated Topics for a Multilevel Issue
(Environmental topics, energy market, economics, policy and science) all of the above (are important) because you can’t separate them very well; that is you can analyse them somewhat separately but take energy market and climate emissions; those are inseparable. You change the nature of the energy market and you change climate emissions one way or the other. If you look at different sectors, that of course effects the general pattern and the international politics part involves especially the question of bargaining, how the commitments are going to be made via these other commitments and also the question of compliance. That is how you arrange patterns so that once agreements have been made in a very decentralised environment without any normally hierarchal way of forcing compliance, how you use reciprocity in some form to give incentives to states to comply with their commitments or at least to come close enough, they don’t have to always totally comply, but they come close enough where they are actually doing something worthwhile.
USA and China Potential Leadership for Important Players
It’s different to talk about which are the most important players then to say which players can determine the outcomes in the system. China and the US are the most important players. Each of them emitting approximately the same amount, roughly 20% of world emissions. So without them, nothing will happen. And no other blocks except for maybe Europe to some limited extent will take major action without the US and China acting. So their action is necessary, but it’s not sufficient; they can’t dictate terms. Europe is a major actor, India, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, Russia are in different ways major actors and the combination of everyone else is also substantial. So you take the 17 or 18 major emitting countries that account for about 85% of the emissions. So all or almost all of them have to somehow be included. Although the US and China have to take the lead, and as long as the US and China are not taking the lead which they are not yet, then everybody else will not just use them as an excuse not to act but it will rightly see that they can’t really act from an economic point of view unless the US and China take action. So they are the key to the logjam but it’s not a bipolar world. They can’t dictate and you could imagine some set of rules that they could propose that everybody else would say this is terrible. For example, rules that were especially helpful to the US and China are bad for everybody else. So it’s not a bipolar world. You might call it a world of dual leadership or potential leadership.