Call for Abstracts for “Climate Clubs and the Paris Agreement: Complementary or Conflicting Governance?”
Florentine Koppenborg
Dear GEP-ed community,
I am submitting a panel on “Climate Clubs and the Paris Agreement: Complementary or Conflicting Governance?" to the ECPR Annual Conference (September 2026 in Poland). If you are interested in submitting an abstract, please send your expression of interest to Florentine...@hfp.tum.de by December 28th. It should include a paper title and an abstract of no more than 450 words. Full panel abstract below.
Best regards,
Florentine
Panel abstract:
As international efforts to meet the 1.5°C target stall, climate clubs—voluntary coalitions of countries pursuing coordinated climate action—have proliferated as a prominent governance mechanism. From the Clean Energy Ministerial to the Powering Past Coal Alliance and the Global Methane Pledge, these arrangements promise to accelerate implementation of Paris Agreement pledges through economic incentives, normative pressure, or both. This contrasts with earlier cases regarded as competitors to the UNFCCC process, such as the Asia-Pacific Partnership. Yet a critical question persists: do climate clubs complement or undermine the UNFCCC regime?
This panel brings together research examining the institutional interaction between climate clubs and multilateral climate governance. We conceive of climate clubs along two dimensions: First, "economic clubs" offering material benefits to members (carbon pricing mechanisms or green technology) including empirical cases such as the nascent Open Coalition on Compliance Carbon Markets. Second, "normative clubs" organizing around shared policy commitments, which have proliferated widely, with approximately 40 cases spanning intergovernmental cooperation on promoting renewable energy and electric vehicles or phasing out fossil fuels.
We invite papers addressing three central questions: First, how do climate clubs interact with the UNFCCC regime? Do they serve as stepping stones toward deeper multilateral commitments, or do they fragment climate governance? Second, what determines the legitimacy of these new governance arrangements? Third, how effectively are they closing the ambition-implementation gap? Papers may employ qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods and draw on political science and adjacent disciplines. We welcome theoretical contributions, comparative analyses, and empirical case studies spanning developed economies, major emitters, and low- and middle-income countries. By systematically assessing climate clubs across cases and contexts, this panel addresses a significant empirical gap while contributing to broader debates on complex, polycentric climate governance.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
Florentine Koppenborg, PhD
Senior Researcher and Lecturer School of Politics and Public Policy at Technical University of Munich
E-Mail: Florentine...@hfp.tum.de
Website: https://www.sites.hfp.tum.de/en/environmentalpolicy/team/research-fellows/dr-florentine-koppenborg/ |
++ PUBLICATIONS ++ PUBLICATIONS ++