Search

The datasets provided in the repository (listed in Table 1 of the manuscript): Governance (Andrijevic et al., 2020)* Government effectiveness (Andrijevic et al., 2020)* Violent conflict (Hegre et al., 2016) Rule of law (update to the Soergel et al., 2021) *Please note that these two variables can be found in the same data file.

The Paris Agreement, adopted in 2015, paved the way for a new hybrid global climate governance architecture with both bottom-up and top-down elements. While governments can choose individual climate goals and actions, a global stocktake and a ratcheting-up mechanism have been put in place with the overall aim to ensure that collective efforts will prevent increasing adverse impacts of climate change. Integrated assessment models show that current combined climate commitments and policies of national governments fall short of keeping global warming to 1.5 °C or 2 °C above preindustrial levels. Although major greenhouse gas emitters, such as China, the European Union, India, the United States under the Biden administration, and several other countries, have made new pledges to take more ambitious climate action, it is highly uncertain where global climate policy is heading. Scenarios in line with long-term temperature targets typically assume a simplistic and hardly realistic level of harmonization of climate policies across countries. Against this backdrop, this article develops four archetypes for the further evolution of the global climate governance architecture and matches them with existing sets of scenarios developed by integrated assessment models. By these means, the article identifies knowledge gaps in the current scenario literature and discusses possible research avenues to explore the pre-conditions for successful coordination of national policies towards achieving the long-term target stipulated in the Paris Agreement.

A large-scale transformation of the energy system, which climate mitigation entails, is a global and highly politicized problem. This thematic issue brings together scholars who work with Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs)—which are used for Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports and other key analyses of future climate trajectories—and social scientists working on climate and energy issues to highlight how the two strands of research could benefit from combining insights across different disciplines and methods. One of the key messages across almost all contributions is that the more technical perspectives could benefit from adjusting their assumptions to reflect the patterns observed in quantitative and qualitative social science. Combining different disciplines is methodologically challenging but promising to ensure that the mitigation strategies developed are considered technically and politically feasible, as well as just.

The European Commission has recently presented its new framework for climate and energy policies for the period 2020-30. The proposal comes during a time of increased concerns over the European economic competitiveness. Some of the measures required to reach the 2030 targets give the impression that the European Union is ready to give up its strict environmental policies. We argue that in order to reach these targets, something the European Union certainly fails to do with respect to the catchy 20-20-20 strategy, a substantial revision of the core elements of the 2030 strategy is required.

The recent Russian/Ukrainian crisis reveals a fundamental conundrum about the future of European energy security, one that impels policymakers to choose between two distinct futures. Should Europe decrease its gas cooperation with Russia assuming it could do so and, thus, move now to mitigate future gas interruptions or, alternatively, should it build on its strong interdependent trade and investment relationship to reel in Russian foreign policy while concurrently moving to anchor Ukraine tightly into the Western fold? The choice is not necessarily an easy one. One’s assumptions about Russia’s intentions in its near abroad, its reliability as a supplier, and one’s notion of whether an economically strong or weak Russia is good or bad for EU strategic interests all play a role. Yet while the EU’s position is far from strong (it still lacks a short or medium term alternative to Russian gas), it is not weak. Russia does not have a credible alternative to European foreign direct investments (FDIs) and that gives the EU’s bargaining position more teeth than one might initially think. Moreover, when one looks beyond the punditry and rhetoric, Russia has proven to be a reliable supplier since it began delivering gas to Western Europe in the late 1960s. A move to break that partnership over Ukraine may be popular, but it will not benefit Europe’s interests in the short to medium term. This policy brief argues that it is not in the EU’s interest to decrease cooperation with Russia in the short term, but rather to work toward deepening it.