Advantages of a polycentric approach to climate change policy

Abstract

Lack of progress in global climate change negotiations has revamped interest in polycentric approaches – sub-global mechanisms to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It is still unclear why these mechanisms might achieve better outcomes than global negotiations. This Perspective outlines themain advantages of polycentric approaches over a global one by reviewing significant theoretical, empirical, and experimental evidence. Lack of progress in global climate negotiations has led scholars to reconsider polycentric approaches to climate policy. Several examples of subglobal mechanisms to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions have been touted, but it remains unclear why they might achieve better climate outcomes than global negotiations alone. Decades of work conducted by researchers associated with the Vincent and Elinor Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University have emphasized two chief advantages of polycentric approaches over monocentric ones: they provide more opportunities for experimentation and learning to improve policies over time, and they increase communications and interactions — formal and informal, bilateral and multilateral — among parties to help build the mutual trust needed for increased cooperation. A wealth of theoretical, empirical and experimental evidence supports the polycentric approach.