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Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 2012, volume 30, pages 591 – 612
doi:10.1068/c11126
Governing climate change transnationally: assessing
the evidence from a database of sixty initiatives
Harriet Bulkeley
Department of Geography, University of Durham, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE,
England; e-mail: h.a.bulkeley@durham.ac.uk
Liliana Andonova
The Graduate University, Rue de Lausanne 132, 1201 Geneva, Switzerland;
e-mail: liliana.andonova@graduateinstitute.ch
Karin Bäckstrand
Department of Political Science, Lund University, Box 52, SE-22100, Lund, Sweden;
e-mail: Karin.Backstrand@svet.lu.se
Michele Betsill
Department of Political Science, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA;
e-mail: m.betsill@colostate.edu
Daniel Compagnon
Sciences Po Bordeaux, 11 Allée ausone, Domaine Universitaire, 33607 PESSAC Cedex,
France; e-mail: d.campagnon@sciencespobordeaux.fr
Rosaleen Du y
School of Social Sciences, Arthur Lewis Building 4.026, The University of Manchester,
Manchester M13 9PL, England; e-mail: rosaleen.duffy@manchester.ac.uk
Ans Kolk
Strategy and Marketing, University of Amsterdam Business School,
Plantage Muidergracht 12, 1018 TV Amsterdam, The Netherlands; e-mail: akolk@uva.nl
Matthew Ho mann
School of Social Sciences, University of Toronto, Scarborough, 1265 Military Trail,
Scarborough, ON M1C 1A4, Canada; e-mail: mjhoff@utsc.utoronto.ca
David Levy
Department of Management and Marketing, University of Massachusetts, Boston,
100 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston, MA 02125-3393, USA; e-mail: david.levy@umb.edu
Peter Newell
Tyndall Centre, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia,
Norwich NR4 7TJ, England; e-mail: P.J.Newell@sussex.ac.uk
Tori Milledge
e-mail: v.j.milledge@googlemail.com
Matthew Paterson
School of Political Sciences, University of Ottawa, 55 Laurier Avenue East, Ottawa, ON,
Canada; e-mail: Matthew.Paterson@uottawa.ca
Philipp Pattberg
Department of Political Science, VU University Amsterdam, De Boelenaan 1081,
1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands; e-mail: Philip.Pattberg@ivm.vu.nl
Stacy VanDeveer
Department of Political Science, 321 Horton Social Science Center, 20 Academic Way,
University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824, USA; e-mail: stacy.vandeveer@unh.edu
Received 8 May 2011; in revised form 15 September 2011
592 H Bulkeley, L Andonova K Bäckstrand, and coworkers
Abstract. With this paper we present an analysis of sixty transnational governance
initiatives and assess the implications for our understanding of the roles of public and
private actors, the legitimacy of governance ‘beyond’ the state, and the North–South
dimensions of governing climate change. In the rst part of the paper we examine the
notion of transnational governance and its applicability in the climate change arena,
re ecting on the history and emergence of transnational governance initiatives in
this issue area and key areas of debate. In the second part of the paper we present the
ndings from the database and its analysis. Focusing on three core issues, the roles of
public and private actors in governing transnationally, the functions that such initiatives
perform, and the ways in which accountability for governing global environmental issues
might be achieved, we suggest that signi cant distinctions are emerging in the universe
of transnational climate governance which may have considerable implications for the
governing of global environmental issues. In conclusion, we re ect on these ndings and
the subsequent consequences for the governance of climate change.
Keywords: climate change, governance, transnational, private authority, public,
legitimacy
Introduction
As interest has grown in the politics of global environmental issues, scholars have recognised
the important role of transnational relations in shaping the dynamics and outcomes of
processes of international negotiation and, more recently, have sought to understand
how actors operating transnationally are directly involved in the governing of global
environmental issues (Andonova et al, 2009; Bulkeley and Newell, 2010; Cashore et al,
2004; Jagers and Stripple, 2003; Pattberg and Stripple, 2008). Primarily using a case-study
approach, this more recent research on transnational governance demonstrates the ways in
which transnational initiatives emerge and the various functions which they perform and
also analyses the consequent implications for the legitimacy and effectiveness of global
environmental governance. However, much of the analysis of the nature and consequences
of transnational governance has been limited by its focus on a few, usually high-profi le, cases
(for example, the Forest Stewardship Council, Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, Marine
Stewardship Council, The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, The World Commission
on Dams, and the UN Global Compact), making it diffi cult to establish a more general
analysis of the character and importance of transnational governance. This paper extends the
debate on transnational governance through an analysis of sixty transnational governance
initiatives operating in the climate change domain. Over the past decade, as global concern
about climate change has grown and the international negotiations have become ever more
cumbersome, there has been a veritable explosion of alternative governance ‘experiments’
seeking to address the issue, many of them in the transnational sphere (Hoffmann, 2011).(1)
Climate change therefore provides an interesting and dynamic fi eld in which to assess a
spectrum of transnational governance initiatives and to assess the potential for developing
a more coherent picture of this phenomenon.
In the fi rst part of the paper we review debates on transnational governance and its
applicability in the climate change domain. We fi nd that while there is a growing debate
within the literature about the nature and scope of transnational governance, core analytical
challenges remain. The fi rst concerns the basis upon which transnational governance is
founded and the ways in which actors seek to bring different forms of authority to bear
in governing transnationally. A second relates to the way in which governance has been
(1) There is some overlap between our database of transnational climate governance arrangements and
Hoffmann’s database of climate change experiments. The primary difference is our exclusive focus on
transnational initiatives.
Governing climate change transnationally 593
conceptualised and the focus on the different functions that transnational initiatives are seen
to perform. The third brings into focus the way ‘transnational’ is conceptualised as residing
in between a world of readily identifi able states, with consequences for how the effectiveness
and legitimacy of such initiatives might be conceived.
In the second part of the paper we introduce our methodological approach and detail the
characteristics of the database of sixty transnational climate governance initiatives which
underpins this analysis. We focus analysis on three core issues. First, we examine the role of
actors in governing climate change transnationally, considering who initiates such initiatives,
the issues upon which they are focused, and their North–South composition. Second, we
analyse the functions which transnational climate governance initiatives undertake. As
suggested above, this issue has received much attention in the literature, where alternative
classifi cations have been advanced as a means of making sense of what transnational
governance initiatives do and how they do it. We fi nd that while some governance functions
are so ubiquitous that they offer a defi ning characteristic of efforts to govern transnationally—
the sharing of information and the building of capacity—other functions such as rule setting
or monitoring, while far from universal, are present across a large number of cases. Indeed,
across our database we fi nd two distinct groups of initiatives. The fi rst consists of hybrid
initiatives that were established relatively early, and are involved in providing funding. The
second includes more recent, largely private initiatives focused on rule setting. Third, we
consider how transnational climate governance has been institutionalised, examining the
mechanisms in place to establish and maintain this activity. Here, we fi nd a difference between
those, predominantly private, initiatives employing ‘harder’ forms of institutionalisation
and the ‘hybrid’ initiatives whose operation is more informal and voluntary in nature,
with potentially signifi cant implications for how accountability and legitimacy to govern
transnationally might be established. In the conclusion we refl ect on our fi ndings and suggest
directions for future research.
The transnational governance puzzle
The term ‘global governance’ owes much to the work of Rosenau (2000) and his distinction
between ‘government’, here encompassing the world of states, and ‘governance’, which
“occurs on a global scale through both the co-ordination of states and the activities of a
vast array of rule systems that exercise authority in the pursuit of goals and that function
outside normal national jurisdictions” (page 167). It is within this broad fi eld of research
that scholars have recently sought to understand how the governing of global environmental
affairs might be organised transnationally. Transnational relations are usually defi ned as
“regular interactions across national boundaries when at least one actor is a nonstate agent
or does not operate on behalf of a national government or an international organization”
(Risse-Kappen, 1995, page 3). Within the fi eld of transnational governance there has been
particular interest in the emergence of forms of private regulation, for some regarded as
akin to ‘private regimes’ (Biermann et al, 2010; Cutler et al, 1999; Falkner, 2003; Hall
and Biersteker, 2002; Lipschutz and Rowe, 2005; Pattberg, 2005), on the one hand, and of
public–private partnerships, epitomised in the so-called ‘type-II’ initiatives which emerged
in the aftermath of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, held in Johannesburg
in 2002 (Andonova, 2010; Andonova and Levy, 2003; Bäckstrand, 2008; Benner et al,
2004; Pinkse and Kolk, 2009), on the other hand. However, recent analysis suggests that
the transnational governance phenomenon is not limited to these two ideal types and that a
range of other initiatives which fall in between these categorisations have been established
which explicitly seek to address environmental issues through constituting new forms of
transnational relations (Bulkeley et al, forthcoming; Hoffmann, 2011; Kolk et al, 2010).
594 H Bulkeley, L Andonova K Bäckstrand, and coworkers
In particular, the issue of climate change with which this paper is concerned is characterised
by a growing diversity of transnational initiatives, operating in a variety of ways and involving
various combinations of actors, not all of which could be reduced to the concept of a private
regime or regarded as public–private partnerships.
Given this complex landscape, it is perhaps not surprising that, despite a growing
interest in this phenomenon, establishing what might count as transnational governance is
far from straightforward. Across the multiple defi nitions of (global) governance found in this
literature Andonova et al (2009) identify three common features that could provide the basis
for a defi nition of transnational governance which could operate across the different specifi c
forms which it may take: governance is concerned with realising public goals through the
process of steering a particular constituency of actors(2) and is regarded as authoritative.(3)
Recognising this multifaceted defi nition of governance, they suggest, allows for a distinction
to be drawn between
“ transnational networks that infl uence the creation and operation of governance institutions
but are not recognized as authoritative (as in the case of nonstate actors involved in
multilateral negotiations) and those that govern ʻin the sense of bringing together a
suffi cient marriage of power and legitimacy to establish, operationalize, apply, enforce,
interpret, or vitiate the [network’s] behavioral rules’ (Conca, 2005, page 190).”
In short, in this approach transnational governance can be distinguished from other forms of
transnational relations because of a focus on public goals, an intention to steer or direct the
behaviour of members or a broader community, and their authoritative position vis-à-vis their
target constituency.
Of course, such defi nitional distinctions are not without their problems. First, in
conceiving of (transnational) governance as a matter of public purpose, the nature, role, and
mobilisation of private interest may be questioned and contested. One way beyond such
dichotomous readings of actors and their interests is to conceive of the public domain as
one where “expectations regarding legitimate social purposes, including the respective roles
of different social sectors and actors, are articulated, contested, and take shape as social
facts” (Ruggie, 2004, page 504). The ‘publicness’ of transnational governance comes, in
such interpretations, not from the actors involved in governing or indeed their motivating
interests but rather from their location within the public domain of, in this case, climate
change. In this manner it is possible to conceive of transnational governance as involving
a range of actors and forms of authority, concerned with establishing what the ‘legitimate
social purpose’ of responding to climate change entails. Indeed, several authors use some
combination of actors and the authority they are thought to bring to bear to analyse different
forms of transnational governance. For example, Bäckstrand (2008) identifi es a spectrum of
approaches to governing climate change, with private self-regulation at one end and public
regulation at the other, with various forms of partnership, coregulation, and collaboration
in between. An alternative approach stems from the management literature, where Kolk
et al (2010) report that the type of (transnational) partnership initiatives that have “received
(2) This includes ‘self-governance’, in which a group of actors attempt to steer their own behaviour (eg,
Carbon Rationing Action Groups) as well as other forms of governance in which a group of actors
seeks to steer the behaviour of other actors (eg, the Carbon Disclosure Project). It is also worth noting
that the notion of steering leads to a broader set of practices that might be considered as governance
than would be the case from other perspectives. In particular, it opens up the fi eld to include many
practices that might otherwise be thought of just as lobbying or ‘infl uence’, which are considered here
as attempts at governance. As we explain below, the aim of developing the database is exploratory,
which we think justifi es keeping a relatively open concept so as not to exclude initiative unnecessarily.
(3) Here, we use ‘authoritative’ in the sense that there is a recognition, rather than formal mandate, of
the governor.
Governing climate change transnationally 595
most attention in the management literature is the one between companies and NGOs: the
private–non-profi t partnership or social alliance” (page 53) with more recent attention focused
on those “between government (agencies) and companies: the public–private partnership”
(page 54) and tripartite partnerships involving all three forms of actors. Likewise, in their
review of transnational governance in the biodiversity realm Visseren-Hamakers and
Glasbergen (2007) suggest that partnerships can be classifi ed as either “private intersectoral
partnerships (strategic alliances between civil society and business)” (page 409) or “public–
private intersectoral partnerships (strategic alliances between governments and business
and/or civil society)” (page 409).
However, the involvement of nonstate actors is not a necessary condition for transnational
governance. In the climate change arena Andonova et al (2009, page 59) suggest that public
transnational governance networks “are established by and for public actors such as sub-units
of government, city or local governments, legislators, judges, or units of intergovernmental
organizations acting quasi-independently of national decisions” at multiple scales. Bäckstrand
(2008, page 91) makes a distinction between transgovernmental networks, primarily operating
between different arms of nation-states and, in the case of climate change, focused on
“coalitions of the willing”, frequently based on technology development and led by the US,
and transnational initiatives operating between subnational state authorities, such as cities
or regions. Whatever the terminology used, the literature therefore suggests that the types
of actors involved and the forms of authority—whether they be public, private, or hybrid—
matter in the constitution and operation of transnational governance. However, what is less
clear from these analyses is the explanatory power of such accounts. Given, as outlined above,
that most analyses to date have relied upon individual case studies or the examination of one
type of arrangement, the agency of different actors in shaping mechanisms of governance
and the extent to which the character of transnational governance is determined by the forms
of authority involved have yet to be investigated in detail, a point to which we return in our
analysis below.
A second problem comes with any focus on governance as an intentional and authoritative
activity, which raises questions both about the unintended effects which served to ‘govern’
climate change and as to whether the term ‘steering’ adequately captures the process through
which governing is achieved. In the main, the analysis of transnational governance has
focused on the functions that it is thought to perform. As Andonova et al (2009, page 63)
suggest, the
“ literature on transnational networks has identifi ed several types of resources that give
networks leverage across borders: the diffusion of information, knowledge and norms;
the pooling and distribution of fi nancial, managerial and technical resources; and, more
recently, the negotiation and establishment of a set of norms, rules, and standards outside
of the intergovernmental arena.”
While there is signifi cant diversity in the literature in the terms used, a relatively discrete
set of functions can be identifi ed: agenda setting; information sharing; capacity building;
soft and hard forms of regulation; and integration across different global environmental
governance arenas (Andonova et al, 2009; Bäckstrand, 2008; Bitzer et al, 2008; Dingwerth,
2008; Pattberg, 2006; Visseren-Hamakers and Glasbergen, 2007). Much of the controversy
surrounding how such functions are determined and the extent to which they are regarded
as a form of ‘governing’ stems from deep-rooted differences in theoretical perspective.
Perhaps more than with any of the other functions identifi ed in the literature, there is
a considerable grey area concerning whether agenda-setting and knowledge-sharing
activities are indeed forms of governance or are more akin to the traditional roles assigned
to transnational coalitions and advocacy groups of seeking to infl uence others. For scholars
596 H Bulkeley, L Andonova K Bäckstrand, and coworkers
of transnational governance such activities can be regarded as governance either where
they are explicitly recognised as authoritative, perhaps leading to new learning processes
that enable actors to fulfi ll new roles and take over new responsibilities (Pattberg, 2006),
or where governing is regarded as a matter of shaping the conduct of constituents through
establishing new norms and practices—for example, of carbon reporting or of offsetting
(Paterson and Stripple, 2010). Rather than governance taking place through a direct form
of steering members towards explicit goals—through incentives, soft regulation, and so
on—this suggests that it may also involve more discursive and normalising practices
whereby the exchange of knowledge, ideas, and beliefs is also a critical means through
which transnational governance has effect. In this sense the instrumentalism implied by
a governance ‘function’ perhaps belies the ways in which governing is accomplished
transnationally.
Nonetheless, the notion of governance functions has served as an important analytic lens.
Importantly, the literature suggests that these functions are not undertaken on an either/or
basis—many transnational governance initiatives will engage in several functions at once,
or may evolve different functions over time. Again, however, the limited empirical basis of
work in this area is a limitation. We know little about how such functions may be clustered,
the extent of their uptake amongst different types of transnational governance, or indeed of
their effectiveness. Below, we undertake an analysis of the governance functions adopted
across sixty transnational climate governance initiatives in order to contribute to this debate.
While the functions that transnational governance initiatives perform are important, the
boundaries between them are often diffi cult to discern in practice. At the same time, while
knowledge exchange and capacity building have traditionally been regarded as ‘weaker’
functions than those of regulation, engaging with governing as accomplished through the
establishment of new norms and forms of conduct may require that this implicit hierarchy of
functions is revisited. We also fi nd that it is important to discern whether transnational forms
of governance might have a comparative advantage in some functions over others in relation
to intergovernmental mechanisms and the resulting consequences for the ‘regime complex’
of climate governance (Abbott, 2012).
Once the debate on governance is moved into any transnational domain, a third critical
problem arises. Working with the notion that the ‘transnational’ requires the crossing of
national boundaries and the inclusion of nonstate actors speaks to a world in which such
demarcations between state and nonstate are distinct and where national sovereignty is
clearly established. In the main, scholars suggest that the emergence of transnational
governance has occurred at a period when there is growing dissatisfaction with the model of
‘megamultilateralism’ that dominated global environmental politics through the second half
of the 20th century and an increasing fragmentation of governance authority (Hoffmann,
2011). This is expressed in a number of different ways. For some, transnational governance
has emerged to fi ll voids created by the absence of national or international intervention. For
example, Visseren-Hamakers and Glasbergen (2007, page 409) argue that such initiatives
“fi ll in what governments are not (yet) willing or able to regulate, sometimes to outplay
them and to prevent the governments from taking action, and sometimes to show alternatives
for public governance or to challenge it to take up more thorough public action.” Voluntary
initiatives on the part of businesses, whether it is the Cement Sustainability Initiative or the
Responsible Care programme of the chemical industry, often aim to demonstrate action in
the face of criticism as well as preempt demands for more stringent measures from states or
international organisations. In other cases it may not be the lack of governance by other means
but rather issues of governance failure or implementation defi cit that transnational initiatives
seek to address (Bäckstrand, 2008; Kolk and Pinkse, 2008). Initiatives such as the Extractive
Governing climate change transnationally 597
Industries Transparency Initiative seek to deal with the lack of transparency in the collection
and use of resource revenues, while the Equator Principles govern project fi nancing in a way
that goes beyond existing guidelines from international economic institutions. However, the
sense of a shift from a world of well-defi ned states to new forms of political space does little
to acknowledge the porous categories of state–nonstate or the varieties of state sovereignty
encountered (Jackson, 1990; Sørensen, 2001), especially in the Global South where in some
cases defi ning the boundaries and interests of the state separately from private actors or the
international community is fraught with diffi culty (Compagnon et al, 2011; Duffy, 2006)
and where nonstate actors may have limited autonomy or resources to act in a manner which
is separate from the state (Compagnon, 2010). This suggests that, rather than focusing on
whether or not governance initiatives are transnational, the more important questions concern
how they are transnational—the basis upon which they have been initiated, who is involved,
to what ends, and for whom, and so on.
One way of assessing this analytically is to examine the basis upon which transnational
governance initiatives have been initiated and institutionalised, a theme that we examine
below and which in turn has implications for another key debate in the literature—the extent
to which they offer a legitimate form of governance. For some, new governance initiatives
such as public–private partnerships have the potential to “decrease the legitimacy and
accountability defi cits by including a diverse set of private and public actors” (Bäckstrand,
2008, page 78). However, whether such potential will be realised is highly contested.
Bäckstrand suggests that they could instead lead to “increased business infl uence, power
inequalities and skewed representation of stakeholders, fragmentation of global governance,
reinforcement of elite multilateralism and the retreat of state responsibility in the production
of public goods” (page 78), which in turn may contribute to reducing the legitimacy of
decision making and the scope for accountability. Likewise, in the case of Madagascar,
Duffy (2006) fi nds that new forms of transnational environmental governance have led to the
“cooption of local and global/southern and northern environmental NGOs” (page 745) which
means that “they can be effectively neutralised in terms of their resistance to external forms
of governance” (page 746), in turn reducing the scope for alternative forms of accountability.
These related concerns—for the effectiveness, accountability, and legitimacy of transnational
governance—are not only central to academic analyses but, as we explore further below, are
also critical to the actual confi guration and operation of initiatives themselves.
Surveying the transnational climate change governance landscape
In order to develop our understanding of the extent and nature of transnational governance
in the climate change domain, we developed a methodology to extend beyond small-n
case studies or surveys of one particular type of transnational arrangement. To this end
we compiled a database of sixty transnational climate governance initiatives that included
examples from the well-known types identifi ed in the literature (eg, which were private,
public, or hybrid) and that included various combinations of business, government, and NGO
actors (see table 1). Cases were included in the database where they met three criteria: (1)
they explicitly sought to address climate change; (2) they operated transnationally, in the
traditional sense of working across at least one national border and involving at least one
non-nation-state actor; and (3) they sought explicitly to govern a constituency, whether that
be participating members or a wider audience, in terms of seeking to steer or conduct their
actions towards specifi c ends.
The cases were generated through an iterative process involving eighteen experts
participating in the Leverhulme international research network on transnational climate
governance, each of whom pursues an active research agenda on different modalities of
transnational climate governance across multiple regions of the world. Initially, network
598 H Bulkeley, L Andonova K Bäckstrand, and coworkers
members proposed a set of cases to be included in the database, each drawing on their
specifi c spheres of expertise as well as their reading of the broader case-study literature
on transnational governance. This was supplemented by a literature and web search for
additional examples, which were then cross-checked with the members of the Leverhulme
network. Discussions of the proposed cases helped refi ne our selection criteria and determine
whether a given arrangement met the three criteria for database inclusion as an instance of
transnational climate governance. Throughout the process the task of determining whether an
initiative was involved in governing proved particularly challenging as the task of governing
is more central in some initiatives than others. However, we agreed that the question of
governance centrality should be a matter for further investigation, rather than a basis for
eliminating an arrangement prior to database analysis. The expert group also had ongoing
Table 1. List of sixty initiatives included in the database.
Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience
Network (Rockefeller)
Asia-Pacifi c Emissions Trading Forum
Asia-Pacifi c Partnership
BioCarbon Fund
Business Environmental Leadership Council
Carbon Disclosure Project
Carbon Fix Standard
Carbon Sequestration Leadership Initiative
Carbon Sequestration Leadership Initiative
Carbon Trade Watch
Challenge Europe: British Council
Chicago Climate Exchange
Climate Change Champions
Climate Neutral Network
Climate Savers
Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance
ClimateWise
ClimateWorks
Clinton Climate Initiative
Collaborative Labelling and Compliance
Standards Programme
Conference of New England Governors
and Eastern Canadian Premiers Climate
Change Action Plan
Connected Urban Development Program
CRAGs: Carbon Rationing Action Groups
CRed: Carbon Reduction
e8 Network
Energie-Cites
Environmental Resources Trust-Greenhouse
Gas Registry (now known as the
American Carbon Registry)
ERC-Pacifi c Calling Parnership
Green Belt Movement
Green Power Market Development Group
HSBC Climate Partnership
ICLEI: Cities for Climate Protection
International Emissions Trading
Association
International Leadership Alliance for
Climate Stabilization
Investor Network on Climate Risk
Johannesburg Renewable Energy
Coalition
Major Economies Meeting on Energy
Security and Climate Change
Memorandum of Understanding between
Victoria (AUS) and California (USA)
Methane to Markets
Network of Regional Governments for
Sustainable Development
Pew Centre on Global Climate Change
Red Cross/ Red Crescent Climate Centre
REDD (UN Collaborative Programme on
Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and
Forest Degradation in Developing Countries)
Regional Greenhouse Gas Effi ciency
Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative
Renewable Energy and Energy Effi ciency
Partnership
Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels
SlimCity Initiative
Social Carbon
The Climate Group
The Climate Registry
The Gold Standard
Transition Towns
UK-California Initiative
UN Global Compact ‘Caring for Climate’
UN Fund for International Partnership’s
environment partnerships
Union of Baltic Cities (Environment
Commission and Energy Commission)
Voluntary Carbon Standard
Western Climate Initiative
World Business Council
Zero Carbon City
Governing climate change transnationally 599
discussions about the requirement that initiatives have an explicit focus on climate change.
Over time it became clear that this resulted in a bias towards initiatives focused on climate
mitigation as opposed to adaptation where the focus is couched in more localised concerns
related to vulnerabilities to climate impacts or broader issues of sustainable development. We
maintained this requirement for pragmatic reasons.
This method of identifying cases was used in order, fi rstly, to overcome the dearth of
systematic records on transnational governance initiatives for climate change and, secondly,
to address the diffi culty of capturing the entire range of transnational governance activities
which are highly dispersed across jurisdictional boundaries, across institutional settings, and
across time. By engaging the expertise of a relatively large network of researchers focusing
on a variety of issues and manifestations of transnational climate governance, we sought
to maximise the scope and variation in transnational climate governance captured by the
database. Information about each case was gathered through an analysis of documents and
electronic materials available in English on publicly accessible websites conducted during
the period of October 2008 to March 2010. This information was collected, fi led, and coded
according to: its history; the actors involved; the organisational structure of the initiative; the
types of activities that have been undertaken to institutionalise the initiative; its engagement
with mitigation and/or adaptation; the issue focus; North–South involvement; regional
coverage; and the functions that the initiative undertakes. This information was organised
in a database using MS Excel, and analysis was then undertaken to determine patterns and
variations using descriptive statistics.
There are, of course, signifi cant limitations to our approach. First and foremost,
we make no claim to have gathered a representative sample of transnational climate
governance initiatives, largely because the entire population is unknown. As noted above,
by requiring that initiatives have an explicit focus on climate change, we are likely to
have underrepresented initiatives working on climate change adaptation. We also limited
our search to initiatives with an English-language web presence. These two restrictions may
help to account for the relative dearth of database initiatives based in the Global South.
Nevertheless, the cases in the database present a relatively large set of diverse initiatives, and
the discussion that follows provides a window into the general phenomenon of transnational
climate governance, even if it is not a perfectly representative sample of the full range of
initiatives. It remains the largest set of cases for analysis of which we are aware.
The initiatives included in the transnational climate change governance (TCCG) database
are primarily focused on mitigation and are a recent phenomenon. Very few initiatives focus
solely on adaptation (3%), and only 10% were founded prior to 1997, with some 38% being
founded since the ratifi cation of the Kyoto Protocol in 2005. In seeking to explore the nature
and character of transnational climate governance in more depth, in the remainder of this
section we focus on three core issues: the basis of transnational initiatives, in terms of the
actors, regions, and issues involved; the ways in which transnational governance functions
are conducted; and the ways in which initiatives have sought to institutionalise, or establish
their authority, and the consequent implications.
Establishing transnational climate governance
As indicated above, the cases included in the TCCG database are relatively recent in origin,
predominantly emerging in the period since the Kyoto Protocol entered into force in 2005.
There are, however, some signifi cant differences in terms of the actors involved in establishing
transnational climate governance initiatives. Our analysis explores the types of actors that
initiate transnational governance initiatives as well as the types of actors to whom these
initiatives are targeted. In terms of initiating actors, we observe interesting patterns across
time. Local government and business organisations set up the fi rst transnational climate
600 H Bulkeley, L Andonova K Bäckstrand, and coworkers
governance initiatives (eg, Climate Alliance, ICLEI Cities for Climate Protection), followed
by NGOs (eg, Climate Savers, Carbon Disclosure Project), while national governments and
international organisations have more recently become involved.(4) While a sizeable minority
of initiatives in the database have been initiated by companies (18%), the leading actors
are nonprofi t organisations who collectively initiated 44% [business associations (8%),
environmental NGOs (23%), foundations (5%), and community-based groups (8%)] (fi gure 1).
National (17%) rather than regional (12%) or local government (7%) or international
organisations (12%) have been the leading public actors involved. Interestingly, while some
TCCG initiatives have been founded by more than one actor, we fi nd very few cases (5%)
where this has involved actors from across these different actor types.
When we combine the type of actors involved with the composition and sources of
authority of transnational climate governance initiatives, we can distinguish between public,
private, and hybrid initiatives. Amongst the nonstate actors, 45% of initiatives in the database
started by companies are hybrid and 55% are private; in contrast, environmental NGOs
(71%), business associations (60%), and community-based organisations (60%) make more
use of private initiatives, operating solely within the ‘nonstate’ sphere. Amongst public actors
the small number of initiatives started by regional and local governments are aimed only
at other public actors, while 60% of initiatives led by national governments and 57% led
by international organisations are hybrid initiatives. These different combinations of actors
involved in public, private, and hybrid governance initiatives may refl ect differences in
the authority that initiating actors can bring to bear and the extent to which working with
others is necessary in order either to achieve particular outcomes or to gain legitimacy for
the activities which they are undertaking. For instance, we fi nd examples of not-for-profi t
organisations which establish initiatives in order to advance a set of norms as a basis of
governance (eg, Gold Standard). Since they draw their legitimacy and authority primarily on
(4) This is in contrast to the emergence of codes of conduct, which were initiated by international actors,
then taken up by business and nonprofi t organisations (Kolk and Van Tulder, 2005).
%
50
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Capacity building
Information sharing
Direct action
Monitoring and certifi cation
Provision of funding
Target setting
Rule setting
International organisation
National government
Regional government
Local government
Company
Business association
Environment NGO
Foundation
Community-based organisation
Figure 1. Initiating actors and governance functions (N = 60).
Governing climate change transnationally 601
the basis of moral standards and normative capital, we might expect to fi nd that they would
be more cautious in safeguarding their independence. Companies, by contrast, may actively
seek greater legitimacy of transnational governance initiatives, as well other advantages
such as reducing political risk, via collaboration and vetting by public organisations (eg, the
ClimateWise network of insurance companies, based in the UK) (Kolk et al, 2010).
Amongst the TCCG initiatives in the database, initiating actors are based predominantly in
the Global North. The only recorded initiative to include initiating actors from more than two
counties in the Global South is the Methane to Markets partnership, which was established by
Australia, Brazil, China, Colombia, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, the Ukraine,
the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. Five initiatives (Asia-Pacifi c
Emissions Trading Forum; Carbon Sequestration Leadership Initiative; Methane to Markets;
Network of Regional Governments for Sustainable Development; Social Carbon) that include
initiating actors from a group of rapidly industrialising countries which are widely regarded
as signifi cant in terms of their contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions and as critical
actors in the international climate regime and which we term ‘BRICSAM’ (Brazil, India,
China, South Africa, and Mexico), but the vast majority (87%) are initiated by actors in the
North.
Yet, actors from the Global South are regularly involved in transnational climate
governance. We fi nd that 77% of the initiatives in our database include at least one actor
and 57% have at least two actors from the Global South. Of the forty-six initiatives which
include Global South involvement, in thirteen cases this is from only the BRICSAM group
of industrialising countries, in twenty-six cases initiatives involve participation from both
BRICSAM and the wider Global South, while in only seven initiatives is there participation
from countries in the Global South excluding the BRICSAM group. While this may suggest
that TCCG is a phenomenon which is focusing on the inclusion of rapidly industrialising
countries, it appears that a broader constituency of actors across the Global South are also
being engaged. Although these data do not enable us to examine how and with what effects
actors from these different regions are participating in transnational climate governance
initiatives, the absence of initiating actors from the Global South combined with their
widespread participation in such initiatives may give cause for concern that the transnational
governance arena is simply replicating existing patterns of international politics where the
interests and agendas of the North are advanced at the expense of those in the South. This may
be because the premise of transnational governance—of the presence of state and nonstate
actors with suffi cient independence, resource, and capacity to engage in governing beyond
the national arena—serves to structurally exclude those places in the world characterised by
limited statehood (and, indeed, limited nonstatehood), a situation that is exaggerated because
of the limited role that international organisations have played in establishing those initiatives
included in our database (Andonova and Levy, 2003). However, where issues are of pressing
importance there is evidence of the emergence of transnational initiatives—for example, in
relation to confl ict resolution (Kolk and Lenfant, 2011). The apparently secondary role
played by most of the actors from the Global South—in particular, the least developed
countries—might be partially explained also by the continued dominance of northern actors
in the international politics of climate change and the low number of initiatives focusing on
adaptation, which is of more signifi cant concern in these areas. It may also refl ect the fact
that many developing countries, with the exception of the BRICSAM countries, are under
less domestic and external pressure to show leadership on the issue of climate change.
Domestic drivers behind the creation of TCCG initiatives including civil society and public
pressure to act, perceptions of business opportunities and market openings, or the need
602 H Bulkeley, L Andonova K Bäckstrand, and coworkers
to construct regulation, share information, or diffuse technologies are noticeably weaker in
countries with lower emissions profi les and which are less integrated into the global economy.
While the initiatives included in the database are focused on mitigation, there is signifi cant
variation in the sorts of issues which they are seeking to address, with energy (renewable,
effi ciency, demand reduction) (63%), carbon markets, and fi nance (50%) attracting
more attention than carbon sequestration/biodiversity (43%), low-carbon infrastructure
(transport, waste, water) (43%), clean fossil fuel energy (25%), adaptation (28%), and food
(25%) (which crosses the adaptation and mitigation domains) (fi gure 2). Interestingly, the
issues with which initiatives are concerned do vary according to the type of arrangement
(public, private, or hybrid) as well as in terms of the actors who have initiated them. Public
initiatives play a proportionally greater role in adaptation (40%) and clean fossil fuel energy
(33%) domains, while private initiatives are more often concerned with carbon markets
and fi nance (59%), as might be expected. The focus of these private initiatives on carbon
markets and fi nance is driven not only by companies involved in initiating transnational
governance initiatives but also by environmental nongovernmental actors who have been
responsible for initiating a quarter of these initiatives (fi gure 3). This may refl ect the concern
of such organisations with driving up global standards in this area. There are differences,
too, in terms of the role of public sector actors. Particularly striking is the role of national
governments in initiating those initiatives with a focus on clean fossil fuel energy. Initiatives
which include adaptation are somewhat different from the others, with a stronger role being
played by community-based organisations and foundations, as well as regional and local
government, suggesting that this is predominantly an issue being pursued by organisations
with some form of place-based focus. As might be expected, where an initiative includes
actors in the Global South outside of the core group of rapidly industrialising countries
we term BRICSAM, adaptation and food are more signifi cant issues (fi gure 4). It is also
amongst initiatives in this group that engagement with carbon markets and fi nance is at
its lowest, in contrast to those initiatives whose participants in the Global South include
only countries from the BRICSAM group where this issue receives the strongest level of
attention, in turn refl ecting the emerging geographies of the carbon market and the Clean
Development Mechanism whose activities have been concentrated in this group of countries.
Further, these fi ndings refl ect the growing fragmentation of the Global South in the climate
change regime as illustrated by the conferences of parties in Copenhagen and Cancun, and
in particular the tensions between emerging countries with rapidly rising emissions, on the
one hand, and less-developed countries and small island states, on the other.
International organisation
National government
Regional government
Local government
Company
Business association
Environment nonfoundation
Foundation
Commumity-based organisation
120
100
Fees/compulsory
Voluntary, legal entity, register of members,
memorandum of understanding
80
60
%
40
20
0
Figure 2. Initiating actors and the use of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ forms of institutionalisation (N = 60).
Governing climate change transnationally 603
Overall, this analysis suggests that the establishment of transnational climate governance
has taken place in the ‘shadow’ of the international regime and is fi rmly embedded within
existing patterns of political economy (Newell and Paterson, 2010). While the emergence
of these initiatives at a time when concern for the issue was growing and the international
regime was faltering suggests that they are a response to growing dissatisfaction with
megamultilateralism, their focus on mitigation, and especially issues of energy and carbon
markets, refl ects the opportunities afforded by the regime and the emerging carbon market
for actors to become involved in novel forms of clean energy and carbon governance. At the
same time, the strong role played by national governments and nongovernmental actors in
the North in initiating transnational climate governance refl ects the pattern of actors involved
in the international regime. Rather than operating as a distinct sphere, this evidence suggests
that the emergence of transnational climate governance has been intimately connected to the
fortunes of the international regime and that its future may therefore be highly dependent upon
its continued evolution. At the same time, our analysis suggests that TCCG initiatives may be
35
International organisation
National government
Regional government
Local government
Company
Business association
Environmental NGO
Foundation
Community-based organisation
Adaptation
Energy
Carbon/bio
Markets
Infrastructure
Clean energy
Food
30
25
20
15
%
10
5
0
Figure 3. Initiating actors and issue focus (N = 60).
90
80
70
60
Adaptation
Energy
Carbon sequestration/biodiversity
protection
Markets
Infrastructure
Clean energy
Food
Non-BRICSAM BRICSAM only Non-BRICSAM
involvement and BRICSAM only
Notes: GS = Global South; BRICSAM = Brazil, India, China, South Africa, and Mexico.
50
%
40
30
20
10
0
GS
Figure 4. Regional participation and issue focus (N = 60).
604 H Bulkeley, L Andonova K Bäckstrand, and coworkers
establishing new constituencies and practices of governance which are serving to establish
new agendas in the climate ‘regime complex’, serving as a means through which ideas and
approaches can be tested and common ground can be forged (Abbott, 2012; Hoffmann, 2011;
Keohane and Victor, 2010).
Governing transnationally: a matter of function?
As discussed above, much of the discussion in the literature on transnational governance has
focused on the functions that such initiatives undertake, focusing on fi ve major categories—
agenda setting, information sharing, capacity building, regulation, and forms of policy
integration. Implicitly, the purpose of such assessments has been to establish the extent to
which these forms of governing provide alternative, effective means for achieving particular
ends and, hence, are worthy of analytical attention in disciplines which have traditionally
focused on the activities of nation-states. Debates have centred on the extent to which it
is useful to separate ‘infl uencing’ from those social relations which are constitutive of
‘governing’ as well as on the emergence of so-called ‘private’ regulation. Here, our analysis
is concerned with the role of information sharing as a form of governance, rather than
with the wider debate on agenda setting, and seeks to drill down into the different ways in
which transnational initiatives govern both through building capacity and through forms of
regulation. While we analysed initiatives in terms of their expression of general intention to
build capacity, we also see the provision of funding and direct forms of action (eg, developing
new technologies, members’ actions to reduce emissions) as critical to developing capacity.
Likewise, we disaggregate the category of ‘regulation’ to consider different functions that
initiatives may adopt: the inclusion of targets; forms of monitoring or certifi cation; as well as
setting specifi c rules in the form of mandatory requirements for members.
Using these categories, we fi nd that capacity building (88%) and information sharing
(93%) are the most common functions amongst the initiatives in our database, but there are
also a large proportion of initiatives undertaking direct forms of action (60%) and involving
setting some form of target for their constituents (60%). In fact, few initiatives undertake only
information sharing or some generic form of capacity building (13%), while most have some
form of target, monitoring, or rule-setting function (75%). This suggests that, rather than
being a purely voluntary matter, the majority of the cases of transnational climate governance
included in our database include some form of (soft or self) regulation. However, those
initiatives which set mandatory rules (23%) or seek to develop capacity explicitly through
providing funding (25%) are relatively rare. This varies signifi cantly in terms of the type of
arrangement involved, with over 64% of all rule-setting initiatives being private initiatives,
refl ecting the fact that at least some of the private climate initiatives arise to fi ll the regulatory
void, while only 20% of those that provide funding are private in character. Examining the
differences between initiating actors, we fi nd that rule setting is a key feature of initiatives
established by environmental NGOs—50% of the examples included in our database use
rules in one way or another (such as the Carbon Fix Standard or the Climate Community
Biodiversity Alliance) compared with 20% of the companies and 10% of those started by
national governments, and monitoring/certifi cation is important for all of the nonstate actors
involved (fi gure 1). In contrast, international, national, and local public actors as well as
foundations have set up initiatives which provide funding (for example, the Asian Cities
Climate Resilience Network or the UN Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions
from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries), suggesting that the
different actors involved in transnational climate governance make a material difference to
the way in which it is conducted.
As indicated above, while analyses of transnational climate governance have tended to
treat the functions undertaken as discrete categories, it is acknowledged that this is rarely the
Governing climate change transnationally 605
case in practice. While almost all initiatives in the database undertake information sharing
and capacity building, we also fi nd that the functions of target setting, direct action, and
monitoring and certifi cation are also closely aligned—of those initiatives taking direct action,
69% include some form of target setting, while for those that undertake monitoring and
certifying, 70% also include targets. Similar fi ndings in the analysis of private ‘codes of
conduct’ suggest that such patterns can be found where companies seek to preempt regulation
(Kolk and Van Tulder, 2005), but this may also be driven by concerted efforts to address
current weaknesses in the regulatory context, as suggested above. In contrast, while the
number of initiatives in our database which employ rule setting or the provision of funding
is small (fourteen and fi fteen, respectively), there is limited overlap between these groups,
with only two initiatives—the Renewable Energy and Energy Effi ciency Partnership and the
Red Cross/Red Crescent—that undertake both of these functions. We can see some patterns
starting to emerge when we look in more detail at these different subsets of the database. Of
initiatives that set rules, 36% have been established since 2005 and the majority (64%) are
‘private’ in character with an overwhelming focus on mitigation alone (93%). Those which
provide funding tend to have been established earlier (46% before 2005), and 47% are hybrid
initiatives in which mitigation dominates but where 26% include some focus on adaptation.
This analysis leads to two important hypotheses. First, rather than thinking of the functions
which initiatives undertake in isolation, it may be that it is the cluster of functions that they
undertake that is important for understanding their impact and effectiveness. Second, while
TCCG is characterised by the use of information, resources, and rules in tandem, two distinct
forms may be emerging: one which focuses on the use of funding as its primary mechanism
for accomplishing governance; and another which uses mandatory requirements to achieve
its ambitions, the consequences of which have yet to be established. While there are clearly
limits to what a focus on the functions of governance initiatives can tell us about how in
practice it operates—particularly in relation to issues of authority and power—nevertheless,
we can draw some conclusions from the sorts of functions we see in TCCG. One implication
of the ubiquity of information sharing and capacity building as functions is perhaps that these
initiatives all seek to shape the subjectivity of those they govern—one possibility is that, by
changing the informational context and the resources available to actors, they seek to ensure
that actors internalise more deeply norms about how to act on climate change. This is resonant
of accounts of advanced liberal governmentality, where governance is focused on “the way in
which an individual questions his or her own conduct so that he or she may be better able to
govern it” (Dean, 1999, page 12; see also Miller and Rose, 2008). The other functions may
be understood to combine with these core functions—providing clear normative contexts and
specifi c goals within which action is organised and pursued.
Institutionalising transnational climate change governance: on the path to legitimacy?
The level and degree to which transnational governance initiatives adopt some form of
institutionalisation can provide insight into the ways in which such initiatives are maintained
within what is often regarded as a voluntary sphere of activity. In general, we fi nd that
transnational governance initiatives in the database lack formal organisational structure—
some 38% had no secretariat, governing body, or advisory panel, while only 5% had all
three such mechanisms in place. In terms of their relation with members or constituents,
TCCG initiatives are most often voluntary in nature (82%), but also have some form of
legal standing (75%, which could refl ect the requirements of national governments and
funding agencies—that is, that an initiative has to be constituted in order to receive funding).
Disclosing membership is also common feature (77%), which may suggest that providing
information about the networks of which members are a part is one means through which
such initiatives seek to claim a stake in the global landscape of climate governance and gain
606 H Bulkeley, L Andonova K Bäckstrand, and coworkers
standing. We can regard these three most common aspects—voluntary affi liation, the legal
establishment of an initiative, and register of membership—as relatively weak forms of
institutionalisation, in that they require limited participation from members. Strong forms
of institutionalisation, such as membership fees (27%) and compulsory actions (30%) for
members, are relatively rare.
In terms of the relationship between the type of arrangement and the forms of
institutionalisation that they have adopted, perhaps counterintuitively, 55% of initiatives in
the database with compulsory actions and 44% of those with membership fees are private
in character. Indeed, this may suggest that private forms of TCCG are in some sense required to
adopt more formal forms of institutionalisation, or are seeking to gain standing and legitimacy
in this manner, while the low proportion of hybrid initiatives which use compulsory actions
(17%) may point to diffi culties in establishing such rules between different types of actors.
This use of higher-order forms of institutionalisation by the companies and nonprofi t actors
who initiate TCCG is also evident when we examine how different types of institutionalisation
vary by initiating actor (fi gure 5). Regional differences can also be identifi ed, with those
initiatives whose members in the Global South lie outside of the BRICSAM group making
limited use of either compulsory actions or membership fees (fi gure 6). This suggests that
such mechanisms are regarded as either unnecessary or unworkable where participation
includes the least-developed countries in the world, refl ecting both the challenges of the
limited institutional resources and the focus of the initiatives in the database on the issues of
mitigation for which, as discussed above, there is little mandate for action.
When we examine how these different forms of institutionalisation relate to one another,
an interesting picture emerges which challenges the conventional view that such forms of
governance are predominantly informal or voluntary in character. The three most common
types of institutionalisation used by the initiatives in our database are: register of members;
voluntary affi liation; and some form of legal designation. However, few initiatives undertake
solely one of these functions—we have recorded one initiative as having only a register of
members (Carbon Trade Watch), two as only legal entities (Asian Cities Climate Resilience
Network, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing
Countries), and fi ve as solely voluntary (CRed, ERC, Green Belt Movement, Zero Carbon
City, International Leadership Alliance for Climate Stabilization). In total, thirty-six initiatives
involve one or more of the ‘weaker’ forms of institution—voluntary affi liation, a register of
members, legal entity, or a memorandum of understanding. However, twenty-eight of the sixty
initiatives also include one or other of the ‘harder’ forms of institutionalisation—membership
120 Memorandum of understanding
Register of members
Legal entity
Voluntary affi liation
Membership fee
Compulsory action
100
80
%
60
40
20
0
International organisation
National government
Regional government
Local government
Company
Business association
Environmental NGO
Foundation
Community-based organisation
Figure 5. Initiating actors and type of institutionalisation (N = 60).
Governing climate change transnationally 607
fees and compulsory actions. These forms of institutionalisation are often observed
together—for those with compulsory actions 61% have a membership fee, and for those
with membership fees 69% also have compulsory actions. This suggests that we can identify
two different types of transnational climate governance, one which is based on voluntary
or symbolic forms of institutionalisation and another which utilises ‘stronger’ approaches.
Some 75% of hybrid initiatives adopt the former, while only 50% of private initiatives and
53% of public initiatives use this approach, indicating that the use of stronger forms of
institutionalisation is diffi cult for hybrid initiatives. Voluntary approaches are, however, most
often initiated by national government organisations or NGOs and include countries beyond
the BRICSAM group in the Global South, while stronger forms of institutionalisation tend to
be led by business organisations and to have a high level of involvement in the BRICSAM
group (fi gures 2 and 7).
The analysis suggests that, at least for those included in our database, a signifi cant
proportion of transnational climate governance initiatives are consciously adopting some
form of hard or binding form of institutional structure for their constituents. At the same time,
as outlined above, there remains limited internal oversight of their processes and outcomes.
This may suggest that such forms of governance have only limited legitimacy. However, such
an analysis depends on the assumption that TCCG initiatives depend on a broadly democratic
set of claims to legitimacy, which emphasises processes of accountability, transparency,
representation, and so on. What is perhaps surprising is that a relatively small number of
our initiatives base their legitimacy claims on such a democratic discourse. Rather, the
100
90
MoU
Register of members
Legal entity
Voluntary affi liation
Membership fee
Compulsory actions
GS involvement
BRICSAM only
non-BRICSAM only
BRICSAM and non-BRICSAM
80
70
60
50
%
40
30
20
10
0
Notes: MoU = memorandum of understanding; GS = Global South; BRICSAM = Brazil, India, China,
South Africa, and Mexico.
Figure 6. Regional involvement and types of institutionalisation (N = 60).
70 Fees/compulsory
Voluntary, legal entitity, register of members,
memorandum of understanding
Notes: GS = Global South; BRICSAM = Brazil, India, China, South Africa, and Mexico.
60
50
40
%
30
20
10
0
GS involvement
BRICSAM only
BRICSAM and
non-BRICSAM
Non-BRICSAM only
Figure 7. Regional involvement and the use of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ forms of institutionalisation (N = 60).
608 H Bulkeley, L Andonova K Bäckstrand, and coworkers
predominant claim to legitimate authority by the actors organising these initiatives is one
of expertise. Figure 8 shows how the actors involved in TCCG claim legitimacy. The six
types of claim identifi ed draw on Avant et al (2010), with the addition of the ‘jurisdiction’
category based on a preliminary reading of a sample of the database. It shows clearly that
the predominant type of legitimacy claim is based on expertise, with around two thirds of
initiatives claiming legitimacy on this basis. Democratic legitimation is a clear second but
a long way behind, with only around a quarter of the initiatives. Given that initiatives can
be coded for more than one type, we looked at the relationships between the types.(5) The
major statistically signifi cant relationship showed that initiatives legitimated by expertise
tend to not call on democratic legitimacy. This suggests perhaps a broad distinction between
technocratic and democratic governance initiatives.
This impression is also supported by other aspects of legitimacy. We also assessed the
overall ideological discourse within which an initiative is embedded [drawing on Clapp
and Dauvergne’s (2005) typology] (fi gure 9), and the types of claims about why the actions
an initiative engaged in were legitimate (fi gure 10).(6) Here, we fi nd statistically signifi cant
positive relationships between the expertise basis for legitimacy and a motivation for
action based on effi ciency and an overall market liberal ideology.(7) Effi ciency itself is also
clearly positively related to the market liberal ideology. Conversely, market ideology and
effi ciency have statistically signifi cant negative relationships with moral and democratic
claims to agency and justice as a motivation for action. Social green and bioenvironmentalist
ideologies have statistically signifi cant positive relationships with moral and democratic
claims to agency and justice as a motivation for action, but only a small number of initiatives
have these heterodox ideologies. So we see a dominant cluster of initiatives whose legitimacy
claims are based on market liberal ideology, the pursuit of effi ciency, and the expertise of its
actors and a smaller cluster that call upon alternative ideologies, the morality and democratic
nature of actors, and the pursuit of justice.
(5) Owing to the nominal nature of the data, we ran a series of crosstabs and χ2 tests to ascertain whether
there is a relationship amongst the different measures of legitimacy.
(6) This typology was developed inductively through a reading of a sample of the database. Four distinct
themes were identifi ed: (1) urgency (need for actions with immediate impact); (2) effi ciency (need for
cost-effective actions); (3) learning (need to learn from the experience of others and/or gain practical
experience); and (4) justice (need to address the needs of marginalised populations).
(7) Positive in this crosstab and χ2 analysis refers to when the different legitimacy claims are related
and tend to be called upon in the same initiatives (ie, we are more likely to see an initiative that has the
market worldview and the effi ciency motivation). Negative is the opposite (ie, we are not likely to see
initiatives with the social green worldview and the effi ciency motivation).
80
45
45
45
45
45
%
45
45
45
45
45
Moral
Delegated
Expertise
Democratic
Econonmic resources
Jurisdiction
Figure 8. Sources of initiating actors’ legitimacy (N = 60).
Governing climate change transnationally 609
Conclusions
As international efforts to develop global climate change agreements became more complex
and stagnant, our analysis suggests that new forms of TCCG emerge. In contrast to analyses
that focus on a single type of transnational governance initiatives or in-depth accounts of
single case studies, we seek to provide an overview of this fi eld. Although the database
through which this analysis has been conducted captures only a limited sample of the overall,
dynamic population of TCCG initiatives (the universe of which is unknown), we suggest that
it yields some useful insights into this expanding area of activity. We fi nd that such initiatives
have some features in common—they are relatively recent; they tend to focus on mitigation
and especially the energy domain; they are established by actors in the Global North, but
usually involve actors from the Global South in their operation; they use limited institutional
structures together with voluntary and ‘soft’ forms of institutionalisation; and they are
engaged in sharing information, capacity building, setting targets, and taking direct action to
address this issue. We also identify some key differences. First, we fi nd a difference between
those, predominantly private, initiatives employing ‘harder’ forms of institutionalisation and
the ‘hybrid’ initiatives whose operation is more informal and voluntary in nature. Second, we
identify a difference between groups of initiatives in terms of the functions that they employ.
We fi nd two distinct groups of actors: the fi rst are involved in providing funding, are hybrid
in character, and more often include action on adaptation (on average, these initiatives have
been founded earlier); and the second are focused on rule setting, tend to be private, and
focused on mitigation (on average, these are the more recent initiatives). These fi ndings point
to the importance of considering the patterns emerging across different types of initiatives
and the relationships between them as critical in shaping this emerging governance landscape.
As discussed above, a database of this nature has signifi cant limitations. Reliant on a
selective sample and discourse analysis of secondary material, it clearly cannot provide
evidence about why and how such initiatives aim to govern climate change. In addition,
40
30
20
%
10
0
Markets Social
greens
Institutions Bioenvironments
Figure 9. Motivating worldviews of initiating actors (N = 60)
60
50
40
30
%
20
10
0Urgency Effi ciency Learning Justice
Figure 10. Types of action legitimacy amongst initiating actors (N = 60).
610 H Bulkeley, L Andonova K Bäckstrand, and coworkers
reliable data on the concrete impacts and effectiveness of transnational climate governance
initiatives remain limited. In this regard, our fi ndings remain a small step towards a
comprehensive analysis of this phenomenon, which could be considerably strengthened by the
addition of interviews with key actors involved in TCCG as well as with other organisations
to which their efforts are directed and those engaged in other forms of climate governance.
This would help us to discern and disaggregate further the origins of the design of TCCG
mechanisms; why they take the form they do and pursue some functions rather than others;
and the politics of their everyday operations across regions and sectors. It would also enrich
our understanding of the power dynamics within them around priority setting, funding, and
implementation strategies, for example. The consideration of these questions, across a range
of different types of TCCG initiatives, should be a priority for future research in this fi eld.
In addition, the context within which TCCG is taking place has changed considerably since
this analysis was begun. It will be interesting to assess what the effect of prolonged stalemate
in the climate change negotiations will have on the further evolution of TCCG, where
previously it has cast a long shadow over its formation and the sorts of issues it addresses.
Despite the fi nancial crisis and failure to date to agree on a commitment period after 2012,
high levels of interest remain in carbon markets, despite the failure of the high-profi le example
of the Chicago Climate Exchange. Technology and the promotion of clean energy and the
central role of cities in responding to climate change are also all receiving greater policy
attention—all of which suggests that the sorts of actors and modes of governing that we
have sought to document and analyse here are set to play an important role in the future
transnational governance of climate change. As we set out here, this raises signifi cant issues
around the extent to which such initiatives will be able to engage across different areas of
the world where state and nonstate capacity is limited and the extent to which the forms
of accountability and legitimacy which they have adopted to date will be suffi cient to cope
with the future challenges of climate change governance.
Acknowledgements. Our collaboration and the research which underpins this paper were supported
by the Transnational Climate Change Governance international network grant from The Leverhulme
Trust (2008–10). We would like to thank our colleagues Frank Biermann, Kristine Kern, and Marc
Levy for their contributions to some of the discussions that gave rise to the ideas developed in this
paper.
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