Domestic Sources of Transnational Climate Governance

Transnational climate governance (TCG) is an example of complex governance in which national governments no longer serve as reliable gatekeepers between nonstate and subnational actors and global governance. The articles in this special issue demonstrate that TCG and complex governance do not eliminate the importance of domestic political institutions and actors in explaining national variation in engagement with TCG. Rich democracies provide the most favorable political setting for participation in TCG. National policies that favor climate change mitigation produce greater engagement with TCG on the part of nonstate and subnational actors. The same political ecology that produces favorable national policies supports TCG participation: NGO presence and activism, affluent consumers that encourage corporations to engage with TCG, subnational governments with political incentives and fiscal space to undertake cross-border activism. Although direct effects by TCG on greenhouse gas emissions may be limited, TCG may have longer-run and second-order effects that are larger, particularly if commitments are more precise and binding. Overall, TCG illustrates a complementary rather than competitive relationship between national governments and complex governance, a relationship that should be investigated in other issue areas.