Fism is key to solve warming.

Climate change policy presents a complex and contested set of problems requiring independent assessment. The papers in this issue of Review of Policy Research focus in part on the politics of multilevel governance, i.e., where policy outcomes result from the interaction of nested public authorities of ever-increasing jurisdictional scope, from the local shire to the global order. The emphasis here is mainly on domestic politics, intertwined with international relations and global governance. One of the main themes has been the implementation (or not) of the Kyoto Protocol of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) and what comes after Kyoto. Kathryn Harrison and Lisa Sundstrom point out that much of the political science on climate change issues has been focused on international relations, but more recently analysis has begun to include domestic politics (2010, pp. 2–4). This more recent inquiry seeks not only to explain better, perhaps, the results of international relations––why, for example, the United States has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol, but also to explain (and to propose) policy options and outcomes arising from the detailed implementation of international agreements. Political scientists have also been examining the local, regional, and national roots of state and civil society discourse and action on climate change issues. The papers in this issue came together because of two converging interests. First is that for several of the most important international players on climate change policy, one must take full account of the multilevel and/or federal nature of their domestic polities where they are a prominent feature. This is certainly so for the European Union (EU),1 the United States, Canada, and Australia, which these papers address. Second is that comparative federalism is an area of intrinsic interest on its own, whether one is comparing two, a few, or the entire set of federal-type systems around the world. I offer here comments on this theme, concerning what the study of comparative federalism can contribute to climate change policy, and then focus on the specific significance of the actual comparative set developed in these papers as well as on the papers themselves and what they suggest for federalism issues. The Value of Comparative Federalism Public interest in federalism exploded after the end of the Cold War (Elazar, 1994; Hueglin & Fenna, 2005). As part of a trend toward increased democratization, many countries revived their federal roots or adopted new federal institutions (e.g., Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, Spain, United Kingdom, Belgium), and even in long-established federations, reform of federal arrangements has been a prominent feature of their domestic politics (e.g., Germany, Switzerland, India, and Canada, among others). And of course, the EU, particularly since the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, has been operating as a federal-type system, in the process creating many intriguing hybrid forms of power sharing. Out of these significant political developments has arisen a rich new literature on comparative federalism.2 Scholars of federalism tend to specialize, as if federalism itself was not enough of a specialty. Among the most prominent aspects of federalism that have merited significant attention, one may list the following: federal theory; federal society, i.e., the underlying social diversity that federal-type power sharing arrangements seek to manage and preserve; constitutional and treaty law; fiscal arrangements; and the design and practice of executive, legislative, and judicial institutions reflecting federal principles, including intergovernmental relations. To this list, one might also include a sixth topic: that of specific policy fields and how they are affected by federalism (health care, economic development, environment, and so on). To claim that all aspects of federalism studies have some relevance to climate change policy may seem rather grand. Nonetheless, a great deal of the field is relevant, as will be demonstrated here and in the other papers in this set. Federal scholarship adds value to the study of climate change precisely due to the nature of the problem. Assuming one accepts that there is global warming due to the emission of “greenhouse gases” (GHGs), with resultant harmful climate change, the task of reducing or even of stabilizing GHG emissions presents by now a very familiar case of collective action problems. No one country can solve alone the problem of global emissions as those emissions originate from anywhere on the planet. Moreover, economists and others have demonstrated that the benefits of GHG emission reduction are diffuse and long-term compared with the costs, which are concentrated and immediate. These collective action issues have of course been a key puzzle for some years in international relations theory and practice. The key issue has been whether institutions and norms of global governance can overcome the independent prerogatives of states to effectively achieve a regime of GHG mitigation. International relations theory acknowledges that nation-states have the same collective action problem internally, but authority is usually assumed to be unified. Federal studies would recognize that in reality, the domestic authority of nation-states is often divided and overlapping but that federal arrangements offer a rich array of norms, institutions, and practices for dealing with a mixture of sovereignty and interdependence. Many matters dealing with the environment are intrinsically multilevel, none so much as climate change. Because GHG emission as a phenomenon is global, it is of legitimate interest to international governance agencies, let alone national governments. However, the sources of GHGs could not be more locally and regionally specific, involving such matters as land use, resource exploitation, energy production, and urban and transportation systems––all of which entail local, regional, and national policy, including regulation. In federal systems, the policy instruments for climate change are significantly divided and/or shared for the very reasons that federal arrangements exist, to allow for the coexistence of local and regional diversity with “national” or wider community unity. Where coordination is loose, and essentially provided by the interaction of independent policy actors in various jurisdictions, this encompasses what has been called “competitive federalism,” which can mean direct and indirect competition among the constituent units in a federation (states, provinces, etc.) and between them and the federal or central government. Tighter coordination can be achieved in federations where cooperative mechanisms are highly developed or where centralized action can be justified (more on this later). In sum, federal theorists and advocates would argue that two of the key tasks of climate change policy, GHG mitigation, and adaptation to global warming effects are not only more likely to be achieved through the power sharing arrangements of federal states but done more sustainably (in a political sense) and more effectively as well.3 However, this is a proposition not only to be theorized but also to be tested. Comparative federal research can illuminate at least four further aspects of the climate change policy puzzle, each one of which merits brief discussion. First, as just outlined, it is important to understand the precise multilevel nature of the problem and how and what different levels of governance can actually contribute to policy solutions. There is a burgeoning literature on local initiative, subnational and national competition, and the effectiveness of supranational governance on climate change, but no satisfactory theory of the whole.4 Second, the domestic politics of GHG emission are rooted fundamentally in the political geography and economy of emission sources. The carbon-intensive industries are often regionally concentrated, both in an international sense and in a subnational sense. How to overcome the political divisions of specific regional interests is a key task of federal polities. Third, values and beliefs concerning climate change, and from them policy norms and tolerances, can also differ significantly according to the nature of economic and social development within a country, as well as territorial, national, and ethnic or linguistic differences. How climate change issues are variously framed and discussed within federal societies and how these differences in political culture are bridged merits considerable exploration. Finally, as hinted earlier, there is the nature of the intergovernmental policy coordination challenge posed by climate change. In other words, a key question to be addressed is where legal or policy responsibility is divided or shared, what policy outcomes are required of intergovernmental relations and what are some promising ways to achieve them?