The six articles in this special issue shed a fascinating light on the global diffusion of carbon trading and advance our political understanding of emissions trading systems (ETSs) all over the world. They show the various interactions and spillovers that occur and that push for the extension of carbon trading to more sectors and more countries, now including such diverse jurisdictions as China, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, New Zealand, and California. The studies also highlight the role of learning and how choices about design are very often deeply rooted in domestic politics. The authors thus nicely combine analyses of international top-down processes with an understanding of national circumstances and local power structures.
In this forum piece, I want to push the argument that carbon trading is a highly political, multi-actor, and multilevel process. ETSs are artificial and would not exist without public regulation, but thanks to various analyses like the ones in...