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The authors are indebted for comments on an earlier draft to a number of colleagues, notably: Liliana Andanova, David Driesen, Robert Fri, Kelly Sims Gallagher, Jessica Green, Thomas Hale, Madeline Heyward, Ethan Kapstein, Yon Lupu, Kiran Magiawala, Ronald Mitchell, Michael Oppenheimer, Mihaela Papa, Kal Raustiala, and Burton Richter. They are particularly grateful to Jeff Isaac and three reviewers at Perspectives on Politics for their detailed comments. They also thank participants at various seminars and colloquia: at the Woods Institute, Stanford University, December 2009; the University of Texas, Austin, and Arizona State University, January 2010; New York University, February 2010; Princeton University, March and October 2010; University of California--San Diego Laboratory on International Law and Regulation, May 2010; and Columbia University, September 2010. The authors would also like to thank Linda Wong for research assistance.
For two decades, governments have struggled to craft a strong, integrated, and comprehensive regulatory system for managing climate change. Instead their efforts have produced a varied array of narrowly-focused regulatory regimes--what we call the "regime complex for climate change." The elements of this regime complex are linked more or less closely to one another, sometimes conflicting, usually mutually reinforcing.1
This article explores the continuum between comprehensive international regulatory institutions, which are usually focused on a single integrated legal instrument, at one end of a spectrum and highly fragmented arrangements at the other. In between these two extremes are nested regimes and regime complexes, which are loosely coupled sets of specific regimes.2 We outline an analytical framework to help to explain why regulatory efforts in different issue areas yield outcomes that vary along this spectrum. We argue that, in the case of climate change, the structural and interest diversity inherent in contemporary world politics tends to generate the formation of a regime complex rather than a comprehensive, integrated regime. For policy-makers keen to make international regulation more effective, a strategy focused on managing a regime complex may allow for more effective management of climate change than large political and diplomatic investments in efforts to craft a comprehensive regime. Recent years have seen massive global summits, such as the Copenhagen meeting organized around the goal of a single universal treaty, but our analysis suggests...