{"word_count": 297, "character_count": 2258}
 The Transnational Regime Complex for Climate Change / Kenneth W. Abbot, Arizona State University, April 2011, 23 p. (Working paper) http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1813198In climate change as in other issue areas, recent years have produced a  "Cambrian explosion" of international and transnational institutions,  rules, implementation mechanisms, financing arrangements and operational  programs. This renders governance highly complex: climate governance is  not only fragmented but decentralized, operating with little central  coordination. It is more appropriate to view it as a regime "complex"  than as a unified regime.Most discussions of the climate change  regime complex focus on inter-state institutions, especially those that  promulgate legally binding rules. A recent example is Robert Keohane  &#38; David Victor's important 2011 paper in Perspectives on Politics,  "The Regime Complex for Climate Change." The present paper, in contrast,  maps the true regime complex for climate change: the inter-state  arrangements Keohane &#38; Victor identify, plus the diverse and  expanding array of transnational organizations engaged in climate change  governance.The paper then characterizes transnational climate  governance in terms of two theoretical frameworks developed specifically  to describe, explain and evaluate complex governance arrangements; this  reveals potentially fruitful lines of positive and normative analysis.  Regime complex theory provides some useful insights, but its core  arguments are of limited utility for transnational governance. A looser  version of the theory, though, directs attention to the causes and  effects of institutional fragmentation and to ways of managing  fragmentation. Polycentric governance theory, associated with the work  of Elinor Ostrom, also considers the benefits and costs of  fragmentation. But it directs particular attention to the scale of  individual organizations and to the operations of governance systems at  multiple scales, arguing that polycentric, multi-scalar systems can  produce collective action more effectively than unified institutions  such as the UNFCCC/Kyoto Protocol process. This has important  implications for climate governance. (© Abbot)