Global Climate Governance: Does Bilateral Cooperation Matter?

Abstract

The international relations literature looks at the climate regime from a perspective of power distribution, state interests, institutions, and multilateral negotiations. The international law literature focuses on legal analysis and design of international climate agreements. The transnational governance literature examines the participation of transnational actors at different levels of governance. However, each of these disciplines overlooks the trend in bilateral cooperation between national and subnational actors in a multilateral setting, which arises as part of the construction of the international regime. Why do national and subnational public actors in global climate governance cooperate bilaterally when multilateral cooperation already exists? What type of bilateral cooperative agreements do these actors prefer, and why? Using qualitative methods, including both content analysis and subsequent interviews, this dissertation demonstrates the role and importance of bilateral transatlantic cooperation and informal agreements between national and subnational actors in global climate governance. Using a case study comparing the European Union and the United States, this research identifies a diagonal dimension of interaction between states and transnational actors while developing the concepts of "translateral cooperation" and "translateral agreements" in the new climate regime.