The Paris Agreement ushered in an era of climate governance underpinned by a polycentric theory of change, emphasizing experimentation, collaboration, and innovation while downplaying political contestation, power asymmetries, and the need for regulatory action by the state. This article explores the roles the state plays in polycentric climate governance, focusing on the tension between the regulatory state, where authorities set, monitor, and enforce rules, and the orchestrating state, which facilitates collaboration with nonstate actors to induce behavioral change. Using decarbonization in Sweden as an illustrative case study, the article synthesizes the results of two research projects evaluating the promises and limits of polycentric climate governance. The results problematize the view that Sweden is a forerunner in climate governance, suggesting that while the Swedish government has mobilized support from important industries and cities in favor of decarbonization, that support may be insufficient to achieve necessary societal transformation for deep decarbonization. Finally, the study reflects on the conditions necessary for polycentric governance to effectively decarbonize society, highlighting the pivotal role of the regulatory state.

In this article, we examine how young climate activists make use of the United Nations (UN) constituency system to give voice to children and youth in global climate governance. Our study is based on a mapping of accredited youth nongovernmental organizations (YOUNGO) as well as fieldwork at two UN Climate Change Conferences, where we conducted interviews, observed events, and analyzed plenary interventions. Informed by constructivist accounts of political representation, the article pays attention to the performative relationship between institutionalized means of youth representation and “the represented.” When analyzing our material, we asked who speaks for youth, how youth are spoken of, and how institutions shape representative speech. Our study identifies three subject positions that offer competing interpretations of who youth are as a political community and what they want. Rather than taking youth’s demands and interests as a starting point for representative politics, the article illustrates how the UN constituency system actively constructs youth and effectively molds young climate activists into professional insiders.

The 2015 Paris Agreement is often depicted as a turning point for global climate governance. Following years of diplomatic gridlock, it laid the foundations for a new global climate regime that invites states to partner with nonstate actors in the transition to the low-carbon society. This article critically examines the political rationalities that inform the pluralization of climate politics after Paris and the turn toward cooperative modes of governing. Drawing on an analysis of initiatives led by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that were launched to engage nonstate actors in the evolving Paris regime, we identify a global governmentality that mobilizes nonstate actors as active and responsible partners in the quest for rapid and deep decarbonization. In its search for cooperative and efficient forms of problem management, we argue, this form of rule nurtures a global space free from friction and opposition where businesses, investors, and industry are elevated as the real partners of government.

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is a prominent example of the contemporary turn towards more hybrid modes of global environmental governance. It epitomizes the trend away from hierarchical state regulation towards softer forms of steering along the public-private frontier. In this article we analyze the legitimacy of this novel governance arrangement. While we approach input legitimacy as a procedural ideal that guarantees actors affected by a CDM project voice in the project design and implementation, we relate output legitimacy to the effectiveness or problem solving capacity of the CDM institutions. In contrast to the mainstream understanding of the CDM as a policy mechanism that will secure both goals at the same time and thus reduce the legitimacy gap in global environmental governance, our study points to central trade-offs between the procedural quality and the effectiveness of the CDM project cycle. These trade-offs are illustrated by three carbon projects in Chile, China and Mexico and raise questions for the continued study of legitimacy in global environmental governance.

Forest plantations or so-called carbon sinks have played a critical role in the climate change negotiations and constitute a central element in the scheme to limit atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations set out by the Kyoto Protocol. This paper examines dominant discursive framings of forest plantation projects in the climate regime. A central proposition is that these projects represent a microcosm of competing and overlapping discourses that are mirrored in debates of global environmental governance. While the win-win discourse of ecological modernization has legitimized the inclusion of sink projects in the Kyoto Protocol, a green governmentality discourse has provided the scientific rationale necessary to turn tropical tree-plantation projects operational on the emerging carbon market. A critical civic environmentalism discourse has contested forest sink projects depicting them as unjust and environmentally unsound strategies to mitigate climate change. The article examines the articulation and institutionalization of these discourses in the climate negotiation process as well as the wider implications for environmental governance.