Explaining transformative change in EU climate policy: multilevel problems, policies, and politics

The EU's ambition to lead in global climate governance has shaped its engagement with the UNFCCC regime and informed a vast body of regulatory instruments. However, EU climate policy outcomes have not always matched aspirations. We explore how UNFCCC-EU institutional interactions have shaped EU climate policy outcomes by combining a multilevel governance perspective with scholarship on policy entrepreneurship to explain when, why, and how motivated policy entrepreneurs are most likely to secure transformative policy change. We contrast the successful policy transformation of the European Green Deal with the experience of policy stagnation in the aftermath of the economic crisis, shedding light on the interaction between problems, policies, and politics across levels. We find that while the international level is significant in opening up windows of opportunity from above, the presence below of an authoritative and motivated policy entrepreneur within the political stream is a crucial additive to securing transformative policy change

Making global public policy work: A survey of international organization effectiveness

Do international organizations (IOs) actually help address global problems? This question is of major concern for global governance scholars and policy makers, yet few existing studies review issues of effectiveness across a range of different issue areas. This paper generates comparative insights on IO performance across seven policy domains, namely climate change, development, finance, investment, migration, security, and trade. Based on a detailed expert survey, we consider how key IOs in these issue areas perform across three different measures of effectiveness: constitutive effectiveness, compliance, and goal achievement. We also investigate causal claims on effectiveness, exploring how IO institutional design – and in particular measures of authority – influence their ability to shape policy outcomes. Taking stock of the distribution of authority across issue areas and policy functions, we ask whether highly formalized, deeply constraining institutional arrangements have a consistently stronger impact on state behaviour or whether less formalized institutions with fewer discretionary powers can also contribute to the effective implementation of internationally coordinated policies. Finally, we identify key cross-cutting challenges for global governance effectiveness, including political conflict and politicization, concerns related to legitimacy and representation, and growing problem complexity

Are corporate climate efforts genuine? An empirical analysis of the climate ‘talk–walk’ hypothesis

This study conducts machine-aided textual analysis on 725 corporate sustainability reports and empirically tests whether climate ‘talk’ within the sampled reports translates into performance ‘walk’, proxied by changes in greenhouse gas emissions over a 10-year period. We find mixed results for the ‘talk–walk’ hypothesis, depending on the type of talk and the associated climate change actors involved. Indeed, our empirical models show that while some climate commitments are genuine, many constitute little more than ‘greenwashing’—producing symbolic rather than substantive action. We attribute this result to false signalling of climate transitioning in order to mislead due to misaligned incentives. An unexpected positive finding of the study is that talk about operational improvements is a significant predictor of climate performance improvement. On the other hand, reactive strategies are consistent with poor climate performance. Our findings highlight the significance of corporate climate strategies other than emissions reductions in assessing the effective contribution of business to the climate transition

Major league baseball stadium

Fifth year student research paper--School of Architecture, Georgia Institute of TechnologyDate given as: [195-

Orchestration or Improvisation at the UN? The International Coordinating Committee of National Human Rights Institutions

To bridge the gulf between international human rights law and domestic practice, the UN promoted a novel idea in the 1990s: all countries were to adopt National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs). Their endorsement by the UN General Assembly in 1993 has precipitated a global norm cascade with 120 NHRIs in existence in 2013. This paper applies the conceptual framework of orchestration to analyse how and why the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has ideationally and materially supported a third-party intermediary – the International Coordinating Committee of NHRIs (ICC) – to achieve human rights compliance by UN Member States. Orchestration, as developed by Abbott and Snidal, provides a valuable alternative to traditional IO governance approaches which emphasize ‘hard’ regulation. A focus on indirect and soft modes of human rights governance is particularly pertinent to explaining the influence of the UN given its lack of coercive modes of governance. In analysing the UN’s enlistment of the affiliated but independent ICC to achieve human rights objectives with respect to target States the paper demonstrates that orchestration provides a powerful conceptual tool to illuminate a novel arena of human rights compliance. Drawing on significant primary fieldwork, the paper also advances a cautionary note to the empirical application of orchestration theory. It highlights the importance of individual human rights norm entrepreneurs willing and able to exploit constructive ambiguities within UN structures to advance their objectives. It further reflects on the potential for strategic setbacks as different stakeholders compete for resources and influence

The Language of Compromise in International Agreements

Env. 21: Amah & Forman childrenGrayscaleForman Nitrate Negatives, Box

Torture Prevention in Latin America: Rights of Persons Deprived of Liberty and the Role of National Preventive Mechanisms

This chapter assesses implementation of the United Nations Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture (OPCAT), and National Preventive Mechanism (NPM) designation processes and outcomes specifically, in Latin America. It shows that NPM designation processes have varied considerably in the region between countries depending on two sets of factors: (i) the degree of official and institutional resistance to designation of effective monitoring; and (ii) pre-existing capacity on the part of domestic structures tasked with monitoring duties. The empirical analysis of four country case studies (Argentina, Costa Rica, Peru and Mexico) demonstrate that even in situations of high levels of state resistance high-capacity candidate agencies can have a powerful, even decisive, impact. Interestingly, strong capacity can co-exist with resistance and can mitigate the pernicious effects of resistance to designation of potentially effective NPMs. These findings are important for any assessment of the potential of NPMs and monitoring of detention facilities more generally. Not only do they highlight key factors that shape domestic processes of treaty implementation during the post-ratification phase, but they also put the spotlight on the central political and institutional conditions that determine the effectiveness of monitoring institutions to protect the rights of persons deprived of liberty