Abstract:
The possibility of dangerous climate change in the future is one of the most worrying and challenging problems facing the international community today. The international climate change regime – embodied in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol – is the international community’s principal response. But is it effective? In this thesis, I used regime theory to evaluate the climate change regime’s effectiveness in New Zealand and the United States between 1988 and 2015. I found that the climate change regime was ineffective in New Zealand, because its influence was not sufficient to induce New Zealand to reduce total emissions. Similarly, I found that the climate change regime was ineffective in the United States, because although total emissions began reducing in 2008 that was principally because of the global financial crisis and the shale gas boom, not the climate change regime’s influence on US actions. My findings have two theoretical implications, and also some policy implications for negotiating governments at the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris. First, the climate change regime’s ability to impose reputational costs on both states is its primary mechanism of influence. Second, this influence is not sufficient to overcome domestic actors opposed to action. Third, the climate change agreement anticipated in Paris in December 2015 is unlikely to enable the climate change regime to overcome these domestic actors. I conclude by proposing realist regime theory as a way forward, not only for academic analysis, but also for more effective climate change action by governments.