The COVID-19 pandemic is the largest public health crisis in recent history. Many states have taken unprecedented action in responding to the pandemic by restricting international and domestic travel, limiting economic activity, and passing massive social welfare bills. This begs the question, why have states taken extreme measures for COVID-19 but not the climate crisis? By comparing state responses to COVID-19 with those to the climate crisis, we identify the crisis characteristics that drive quick and far-reaching reactions to some global crises but not others. We inductively develop a conceptual framework that identifies eight crisis characteristics with observable variation between COVID-19 and climate change. This framework draws attention to under-considered areas of variance, such as the perceived differences in the universality of impacts, the legibility of policy responses, and the different sites of expertise for both crises. We use this structured comparison to identify areas of leverage for obtaining quicker and broader climate action.

In the Paris Agreement era of climate governance, private market-based initiatives are expected to play a catalytic role in achieving global commitments. However, the literature has been largely silent on the political causes of the variable and often limited uptake of such initiatives in the Global South. This article uses original project-level data to investigate the participation in voluntary carbon offset (VCO) programs across developing countries. We argue that, paradoxically, access to formal international institutions and linkages with domestic priorities are key factors for participation in voluntary carbon markets, reducing asymmetries in information, capacity, and interest in developing contexts. Our statistical analysis finds that institutions such as the Clean Development Mechanism and targeted foreign aid, as well as domestic concerns such as climate vulnerability and advancing renewable energy, shape in important ways the variable engagement in VCO projects. Our analysis also suggests that the design of private regulations can be fine-tuned to better capture synergies between local concerns and transnational climate action.

Drawing from theories of regime interplay and social learning, this article investigates linkages between hybrid governance schemes and intergovernmental regimes. My analytic framework suggests that, by enhancing cooperation among stakeholders, transnational public-private partnerships will facilitate policy-makers’ learning, and accordingly advance the formation of intergovernmental regimes. Here I use qualitative methods to examine the influence of the UNEP Global Mercury Partnership on negotiations over different components of the Minamata Convention on Mercury. Technical and scientific information provided by this partnership helped relevant policy-makers understand the problems to be addressed and some appropriate solutions, thereby accelerating the consensus-making process and shaping the features of certain provisions. I also compare the influences of different partnership areas, revealing that inclusive stakeholder engagement and boundary coordination between different governance schemes are two important conditions for transnational partnerships to promote cooperation in intergovernmental fora.