This article investigates the roles of policy diffusion and policy learning in shaping the design of California’s cap-and-trade system. On the surface, it is very similar to other cap-and-trade programs, but in practice many detailed differences reflect active efforts by California policy-makers to avoid flaws that they saw in other systems, such as the EU ETS and the US East Coast’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. We assess how California’s cap-and-trade system emerged, the significance of policy diffusion, and the lessons for other trading systems by applying two broad sets of theoretical frames—the role of policy diffusion and the role of organized local political concerns. We find that despite the signature status of the trading system, California mostly relies on much less transparent and more costly direct regulation. We also find that California’s cap-and-trade system has developed mostly in its own, special political context, which hampers the feasibility of cross-border trading.

In the late 1980s/early 1990s the concept of leadership was introduced in the study of international regimes to describe the role negotiating parties some-times would take on to craft agreement. The concept seemed to grasp an essential feature of multilateral cooperative efforts: that parties can be differentiated by the extent to which they are capable of, and willing to, take on a particular responsibility of guiding other parties in directions that could lead to joint solutions. The concept of leadership has only to a small extent been subjected to critical analytical and conceptual discussion. In this article we revisit the concept by asking: What are the characteristic features of leadership in international negotiations? Our analysis shows that current conceptualizations of leadership are associated with significant ambiguities that make it hard to distinguish leadership behavior from other types of bargaining behavior and that these problems are reproduced in empirical identifications of this mode of bargaining behavior.

While most scholars agree that NGOs make a difference in global environmental politics, there has been little systematic work that looks at the actual influence NGOs have on policy outcomes. This paper looks to shed some new light on the question of NGO effectiveness through an evaluation of the role played by NGOs in climate negotiations. We begin with a brief sketch of different kinds of green NGOs, along with a review of the sorts of strategies and resources they employ. Next, we look to gauge the influence that NGOs have had on recent rounds of negotiations to do with compliance, flexibility mechanisms, and appropriate crediting rules for sinks. Our analysis is based on detailed interviews with members of some of the most prominent environmental NGOs involved in climate work. Finally, we suggest, based on our findings, some means by which NGOs may look to extend their influence in the development of the climate regime. Our analysis points to the crucial need for further “insider” capacity—that is, NGOs are likely to have the most far-reaching influence on future climate negotiations if they foster ways to work closely and collaboratively with key negotiators and governments.

The United States, the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, is not going to ratify the Kyoto Protocol in the foreseeable future. Yet, a number of countries have decided to stay on the Kyoto track. Four main explanations for this apparent puzzle are considered. The first is that remaining Annex I countries still expect the Kyoto Protocol to reduce global warming sufficiently to outweigh the economic costs of implementation. The second is that the parties, by implementing the treaty, hope to induce non-parties to follow suit at some later stage. A third hypothesis is that EU climate institutions have generated a momentum that has made a change of course difficult. Finally, Kyoto's persistence may be linked to the European Union's desire to stand forth as an international leader in the field of climate politics. We conclude that the first two explanations have little explanatory power, but find the latter two more promising.

The role of nonstate actors in international environmental politics has been given increased scholarly attention during the last decade. While most analyses are focused on direct nonstate influence at the international level, one main objective of this article is to develop a multi-level approach that allows analysis of nonstate influence channeled via the domestic decision making level. The point of departure for the analysis is the International Whaling Commission (IWC) during the period from 1970 to 1990, with a particular focus on the competition for influence characterizing the relationship between the scientific community and the environmental and animal rights movement. The analysis shows that domestic channels of influence may be equally, or even more important than channels of influence linked to the international decision making level. In the case of the IWC, for instance, the environmental and animal rights movement succeeded in mobilizing domestic public support, particularly in the United States, and had a key ally in the US government, Congress and Administration. The domestic role of this nonstate actor was of key importance to its success in influencing the development of the international whaling regime. The analysis shows, therefore, that examining the role of the domestic channel is integral to understanding nonstate influence on international policy-making, and particularly how some nonstate actors acquire influence at the expense of others.