TY - JOUR A1 - Sælen, Håkon A1 - Hovi, Jon A1 - Sprinz, Detlef F. A1 - Underdal, Arild T1 - How US withdrawal might influence cooperation under the Paris climate agreement JF - Environmental science & policy N2 - Using a novel agent-based model, we study how US withdrawal might influence the political process established by the Paris Agreement, and hence the prospects for reaching the collective goal to limit warming below 2 degrees C. Our model enables us to analyze to what extent reaching this goal despite US withdrawal would place more stringent requirements on other core elements of the Paris cooperation process. We find, first, that the effect of a US withdrawal depends critically on the extent to which member countries reciprocate others' promises and contributions. Second, while the 2 degrees C goal will likely be reached only under a very small set of conditions in any event, even temporary US withdrawal will further narrow this set significantly. Reaching this goal will then require other countries to step up their ambition at the first opportunity and to comply nearly 100% with their pledges, while maintaining high confidence in the Paris Agreements institutions. Third, although a US withdrawal will first primarily affect the United States' own emissions, it will eventually prove even more detrimental to other countries' emissions. KW - climate change KW - Paris agreement KW - President Trump KW - 2 degrees C target KW - agent-based modeling KW - reciprocity Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2020.03.011 SN - 1462-9011 SN - 1873-6416 VL - 108 SP - 121 EP - 132 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER - TY - GEN A1 - Sprinz, Detlef F. ED - Luterbacher, Urs ED - Sprinz, Detlef F. T1 - Our Conclusions T2 - Global Climate Policy: Actors, Concepts, and Enduring Challenges Y1 - 2018 SN - 978-0-262-53534-2 SN - 978-0-262-03792-1 SP - 323 EP - 335 PB - MIT Press CY - Cambridge ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Sprinz, Detlef F. A1 - Bang, Guri A1 - Brueckner, Lars A1 - Kameyama, Yasuko ED - Luterbacher, Urs ED - Sprinz, Detlef F. T1 - Major Countries JF - Global climate policy: actors, concepts, and enduring challenges Y1 - 2018 SN - 978-0-262-53534-2 SN - 978-0-262-03792-1 SP - 171 EP - 216 PB - MIT Press CY - Cambridge ER - TY - GEN A1 - Luterbacher, Urs A1 - Sprinz, Detlef F. ED - Luterbacher, Urs ED - Sprinz, Detlef F. T1 - Foreword T2 - Global climate policy: actors, concepts, and enduring challenges Y1 - 2018 SN - 978-0-262-53534-2 SN - 978-0-262-03792-1 SP - IX EP - XI PB - MIT Press CY - Cambridge ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Avrami, Lydia A1 - Sprinz, Detlef F. T1 - Measuring and explaining the EU’s effect on national climate performance JF - Environmental Politics N2 - To what extent has the European Union (EU) had a benign or retarding effect on what its member states would have undertaken in the absence of EU climate policies during 2008–2012? A measurement tool for the EU policy’s effect is developed and shows a benign average EU effect with considerable variation across countries. The EU’s policy effectiveness vis-à-vis its member states is explained by the EU’s non-compliance mechanism, the degree of usage of the Kyoto flexible mechanisms, and national pre-Kyoto emission reduction goals. Time-series cross-sectional analyses show that the EU’s non-compliance mechanism has no effect, while the ex-ante plans for using Kyoto flexible mechanisms and/or the ambitious pre-Kyoto emission reduction targets allow member states to escape constraints imposed by EU climate policy. KW - Climate change KW - policy effectiveness KW - EU KW - kyoto protocol KW - non-compliance KW - Kyoto (flexible) mechanisms Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2018.1494945 SN - 0964-4016 SN - 1743-8934 VL - 28 IS - 5 SP - 822 EP - 846 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Dirnitrov, Radoslav A1 - Hovi, Jon A1 - Sprinz, Detlef F. A1 - Saelen, Håkon A1 - Underdal, Arild T1 - Institutional and environmental effectiveness BT - will the Paris Agreement work? JF - Wiley interdisciplinary reviews : Climate change N2 - The 2015 Paris Agreement (PA) has been widely hailed as a diplomatic triumph and a breakthrough in global climate cooperation. However, it is commonly accepted that the PA's collective goal—keeping global warming “well below” 2°C above preindustrial levels—remains ambitious. Making matters even more challenging, in 2017, global CO2 emissions resumed growth after 3 years of near standstill. In 2018, this growth accelerated. It is therefore extremely important that the PA's institutional architecture meet expectations concerning its ability to induce member countries to promise and deliver emissions reductions. This study offers a review of the rapidly growing literature on the PA, to assess its strengths and weaknesses, its significance, and its prospects. We focus on evaluations of its institutional structure and its ability to induce member countries to implement policies. We frame the issues as a trilemma: the challenge of simultaneously satisfying all three main conditions for effectiveness—broad participation, deep commitments, and satisfactory compliance rates. Based on our review, we conclude that the key challenge for the PA will likely be to facilitate sufficiently fast ratcheting‐up of nationally determined contributions, while keeping compliance rates high. KW - ambition KW - climate change cooperation KW - compliance KW - Paris Agreement KW - participation Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.583 SN - 1757-7780 SN - 1757-7799 VL - 10 IS - 4 PB - Wiley CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hovi, Jon A1 - Sprinz, Detlef F. A1 - Saelen, Håkon A1 - Underdal, Arild T1 - The Club Approach: A Gateway to Effective Climate Co-operation? JF - British Journal of Political Science N2 - Although the Paris Agreement arguably made some progress, interest in supplementary approaches to climate change co-operation persist. This article examines the conditions under which a climate club might emerge and grow. Using agent-based simulations, it shows that even with less than a handful of major actors as initial members, a club can eventually reduce global emissions effectively. To succeed, a club must be initiated by the ‘right’ constellation of enthusiastic actors, offer sufficiently large incentives for reluctant countries and be reasonably unconstrained by conflicts between members over issues beyond climate change. A climate club is particularly likely to persist and grow if initiated by the United States and the European Union. The combination of club-good benefits and conditional commitments can produce broad participation under many conditions. KW - UNFCCC KW - climate change co-operation KW - climate clubs KW - club goods KW - conditional commitments KW - agent-based models Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123416000788 SN - 0007-1234 SN - 1469-2112 VL - 49 IS - 3 SP - 1071 EP - 1096 PB - Cambridge University Press CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Sprinz, Detlef F. A1 - Shreejaya, Shradha A1 - Prasad, Devi K. V. T1 - Predicting Climate Policy Choices BT - The Indian Water Mission JF - Leidenschaft und Augenmaß : sozialwissenschaftliche Perspektiven auf Entwicklung, Verwaltung, Umwelt und Klima : Festschrift für Harald Fuhr Y1 - 2020 SP - 207 EP - 218 PB - Nomos CY - Baden-Baden ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Sprinz, Detlef F. A1 - de Mesquita, Bruce Bueno A1 - Kallbekken, Steffen A1 - Stokman, Frans A1 - Saelen, Hakon A1 - Thomson, Robert T1 - Predicting Paris: Multi-Method Approaches to Forecast the Outcomes of Global Climate Negotiations JF - Politics and Governance N2 - We examine the negotiations held under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change in Paris, December 2015. Prior to these negotiations, there was considerable uncertainty about whether an agreement would be reached, particularly given that the world’s leaders failed to do so in the 2009 negotiations held in Copenhagen. Amid this uncertainty, we applied three different methods to predict the outcomes: an expert survey and two negotiation simulation models, namely the Exchange Model and the Predictioneer’s Game. After the event, these predictions were assessed against the coded texts that were agreed in Paris. The evidence suggests that combining experts’ predictions to reach a collective expert prediction makes for significantly more accurate predictions than individual experts’ predictions. The differences in the performance between the two different negotiation simulation models were not statistically significant. KW - climate policy KW - climate regime KW - expert survey KW - forecasting KW - global negotiations KW - Paris agreement KW - prediction KW - simulation Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.v4i3.654 SN - 2183-2463 VL - 4 SP - 172 EP - 187 PB - Cogitatio Press CY - Lisbon ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Sprinz, Detlef F. T1 - Long-term policy problems: definition, origins, and redponses JF - Predicting the Future in Science, Economics, and Politics Y1 - 2014 SN - 978-1-78347-186-7 SP - 126 EP - 143 PB - Elgar CY - Northampton ER - TY - GEN A1 - Sprinz, Detlef F. T1 - Long-term environmental policy BT - challenges for research N2 - Long-term policy issues are a particularly vexing class of environmental policy issues which merit increasing attention due to the long-time horizons involved, the incongruity with political cycles, and the challenges for collective action. Following the definition of long-term environmental policy challenges, I pose three questions as challenges for future research, namely 1. Are present democracies well suited to cope with long-term policy challenges? 2. Are top-down or bottom-up solutions to long-term environmental policy challenges advisable? 3. Will mitigation and adaptation of environmental challenges suffice? In concluding, the contribution raises the issue of credible commitment for long-term policy issues and potential design options. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Reihe - 81 KW - anniversary issue KW - long-term policy KW - definition KW - design options KW - environmental policy Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-403193 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bang, Guri A1 - Hovi, Jon A1 - Sprinz, Detlef F. T1 - US presidents and the failure to ratify multilateral environmental agreements JF - Climate policy N2 - Whereas the US President signed the Kyoto Protocol, the failure of the US Congress to ratify it seriously hampered subsequent international climate cooperation. This recent US trend, of signing environmental treaties but failing to ratify them, could thwart attempts to come to a future climate agreement. Two complementary explanations of this trend are proposed. First, the political system of the US has distinct institutional features that make it difficult for presidents to predict whether the Senate will give its advice and consent to multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) and whether Congress will pass the required enabling legislation. Second, elected for a fixed term, US presidents might benefit politically from supporting MEAs even when knowing that legislative support is not forthcoming. Four policy implications are explored, concerning the scope for unilateral presidential action, the potential for bipartisan congressional support, the effectiveness of a treaty without the US, and the prospects for a deep, new climate treaty. Policy relevance Why does the failure of US ratification of multilateral environmental treaties occur? This article analyses the domestic political mechanisms involved in cases of failed US ratification. US non-participation in global environmental institutions often has serious ramifications. For example, it sharply limited Kyoto's effectiveness and seriously hampered international climate negotiations for years. Although at COP 17 in Durban the parties agreed to negotiate a new agreement by 2015, a new global climate treaty may well trigger a situation resembling the one President Clinton faced in 1997 when he signed Kyoto but never obtained support for it in the Senate. US failure to ratify could thwart future climate agreements. KW - enabling legislation KW - environmental treaties KW - Kyoto Protocol KW - political processes KW - ratification KW - United States Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/14693062.2012.699788 SN - 1469-3062 VL - 12 IS - 6 SP - 755 EP - 763 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - INPR A1 - Sprinz, Detlef F. T1 - Long-Term environmental policy challenges for research T2 - The journal of environment & development : a review of international policy N2 - Long-term policy issues are a particularly vexing class of environmental policy issues which merit increasing attention due to the long-time horizons involved, the incongruity with political cycles, and the challenges for collective action. Following the definition of long-term environmental policy challenges, I pose three questions as challenges for future research, namely 1. Are present democracies well suited to cope with long-term policy challenges? 2. Are top-down or bottom-up solutions to long-term environmental policy challenges advisable? 3. Will mitigation and adaptation of environmental challenges suffice? In concluding, the contribution raises the issue of credible commitment for long-term policy issues and potential design options. KW - anniversary issue KW - long-term policy KW - definition KW - design options KW - environmental policy Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/1070496511435667 SN - 1070-4965 VL - 21 IS - 1 SP - 67 EP - 70 PB - Sage Publ. CY - Thousand Oaks ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Sprinz, Detlef F. A1 - von Buenau, Steffen T1 - The Compensation Fund for Climate Impacts JF - WEATHER CLIMATE AND SOCIETY N2 - Climate change is very likely to lead to undesirable climate impacts. How to compensate for such negative impacts at the international level has, hitherto, received little attention. This article reviews the most frequently discussed grounds for legal obligations of states vis-a-vis climate impacts (damages) and concludes that no convincing mechanism has yet been found to compensate climate impacts. The authors outline an architecture for a voluntary, international compensation fund with specialized, independent climate courts. Subsequently, this article addresses three strategic considerations related to the fund, namely, the incentives for founding it, the merits of double proportionality with respect to contributions and payments, as well as the benefits of employing prediction markets to enhance trustworthiness. Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1175/WCAS-D-12-00010.1 SN - 1948-8327 SN - 1948-8335 VL - 5 IS - 3 SP - 210 EP - 220 PB - AMER METEOROLOGICAL SOC CY - BOSTON ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Sprinz, Detlef F. T1 - Environment meets statistics : Quantitative analysis of international environmental policy Y1 - 2004 SN - 0-472-06861-X ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Sprinz, Detlef F. A1 - Wolinsky-Nahmias, Yael T1 - Introduction : Methodology in international relations research Y1 - 2004 SN - 0-472-06861-X ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Sprinz, Detlef F. A1 - Wolinsky-Nahmias, Yael T1 - Conclusion : Multimedhod Research Y1 - 2004 SN - 0-472-06861-X ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Sprinz, Detlef F. A1 - Wahl, Andreas T1 - Reversing (Inter)national policy : Germanyïs response to transboundary air pollution N2 - Perhaps like no other country, Germany has radically changed its policies towards regulating air pollution in the European context. Acting originally as a dragger in the 1970s to regulate transboundary air pollutants due to pessimism about the relationship between causes and effects, Germany responded very decisively to its own damage assessment in the early 1980s. In particular the adverse effects to forests (Waldsterben" or forest decline) led to the formulation of strict air pollution regulations in the domestic context, efforts to spread the regulatory system within the European Union, and activities within the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe to foster stronger, continent-wide emission reductions. Using three conceptual models (rational actor, domestic politics, and social learning), we show that Germany deviated strongly from the ideal policy cycle consisting of (i) domestic policy formulation, (ii) international negotiations, as well as (iii) implementation and compliance with the provisions of international environmental agreements. Both national policy-making as well as partial implementation have been well on the way towards compliance even before Germany entered international negotiations on substantive protocols. Therefore, one may conclude from this country study that push countries may use the results of their national policy processes to influence the policy of other countries. Y1 - 2000 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Sprinz, Detlef F. T1 - Problems of cross-level inference in political science N2 - Political Science research encounters inferences across levels of analysis; however, they are fraught with challenges. After introducing voting examples of aggregation bias, problems posed by aggregation bias are summarized more generally. Subsequently, the article reviews the major methodological approaches to overcome aggregation bias and to solve the ecological inference (disaggregation) problem. The article highlights the possibility that aggregation bias may lead governments to accept (or reject) international climate agreements when negotiating as blocs of countries as compared to the distribution of the preferences of all countries involved in the negotiations. Y1 - 2000 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Helm, Carsten A1 - Sprinz, Detlef F. T1 - Measuring the effectiveness of international environmental regimes N2 - Although past research has emphasized the importance of international regimes for international gover-nance, systematic assessments of regime effects are missing. This article derives a standardized measure-ment concept for the effectiveness of international environmental regimes. It is based on a simultaneous evaluation of actual policy against a no-regime counterfactual and a collective optimum. Subsequently, the empirical feasibility of the measurement concept is demonstrated by way of two international treaties regu-lating transboundary air pollution in Europe. The results demonstrate that the regimes indeed show positive effects;but fall substantially short of the collective optima. Y1 - 2000 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hovi, Jon A1 - Huseby, R A1 - Sprinz, Detlef F. T1 - When do (imposed) economic sanctions work? N2 - Previous research has documented only a modest success rate for imposed sanctions. By contrast, the success rate is higher in cases that are settled at the threat stage. In this article, the authors provide new insights about the circumstances under which sanctions cause behavioral change only after being imposed. First, the target must initially underestimate the impact of sanctions, miscalculate the sender's determination to impose them, or wrongly believe that sanctions will be imposed and maintained whether it yields or not. Second, the target's misperceptions must be corrected after sanctions are imposed. A game-theoretical model with incomplete information is used to develop and clarify the argument Y1 - 2005 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Sprinz, Detlef F. T1 - Die Herausforderung der internationalen Umweltpolitik Y1 - 2005 SN - 3-938863-18-8 ER -