TY - JOUR A1 - Elsässer, Joshua Philipp A1 - Hickmann, Thomas A1 - Jinnah, Sikina A1 - Oberthur, Sebastian A1 - Van de Graaf, Thijs T1 - Institutional interplay in global environmental governance BT - lessons learned and future research JF - International environmental agreements: politics, law and economics N2 - Over the past decades, the growing proliferation of international institutions governing the global environment has impelled institutional interplay as a result of functional and normative overlap across multiple regimes. This article synthesizes primary contributions made in research on institutional interplay over the past twenty years, with particular focus on publications with International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics. Broadening our understanding about the different types, dimensions, pathways, and effects of institutional interplay, scholars have produced key insights into the ways and means by which international institutions cooperate, manage discord, engage in problem solving, and capture synergies across levels and scales. As global environmental governance has become increasingly fragmented and complex, we recognize that recent studies have highlighted the growing interactions between transnationally operating institutions in the wake of polycentric governance and hybrid institutional complexes. However, our findings reveal that there is insufficient empirical and conceptual research to fully understand the relationship, causes, and consequences of interplay between intergovernmental and transnational institutions. Reflecting on the challenges of addressing regulatory gaps and mitigating the crisis of multilateralism, we expound the present research frontier for further advancing research on institutional interplay and provide recommendations to support policy-making. KW - institutional interplay KW - transnational institutional interplay KW - global KW - environmental governance KW - transnational governance KW - multilateral KW - environmental agreements Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-022-09569-4 SN - 1567-9764 SN - 1573-1553 VL - 22 IS - 2 SP - 373 EP - 391 PB - Springer CY - Dordrecht ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hickmann, Thomas A1 - Elsässer, Joshua Philipp T1 - New alliances in global environmental governance BT - how intergovernmental treaty secretariats interact with non-state actors to address transboundary environmental problems JF - International environmental agreements: politics, law and economics N2 - The past few years have witnessed a growing interest among scholars and policy-makers in the interplay of international bureaucracies with civil society organizations, non-profit entities, and the private sector. Authors concerned with global environmental politics have made considerable progress in capturing this phenomenon. Nevertheless, we still lack in-depth empirical knowledge on the precise nature of such institutional interlinkages across governance levels and scales. Building upon the concept oforchestration, this article focuses on the relationship between specific types of international bureaucracies and actors other than the nation-state. In particular, we investigate how the secretariats of the three Rio Conventions reach out to non-state actors in order to exert influence on the outcome of international environmental negotiations. Our analysis demonstrates that the three intergovernmental treaty secretariats utilize various styles of orchestration in their relation to non-state actors and seek to push the global responses to the respective transboundary environmental problems forward. This article points to a recent trend towards a direct collaboration between these secretariats and non-state actors which gives rise to the idea that new alliances between these actors are emerging in global environmental governance. KW - global environmental governance KW - institutional interplay KW - intergovernmental treaty secretariats KW - orchestration KW - Rio Conventions KW - non-state actors Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-020-09493-5 SN - 1567-9764 SN - 1573-1553 VL - 20 IS - 3 SP - 459 EP - 481 PB - Springer CY - Dordrecht [u.a.] ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Elsässer, Joshua Philipp A1 - Hickmann, Thomas A1 - Stehle, Fee T1 - The Role of Cities in South Africa’s Energy Gridlock JF - Case Studies in the Environment N2 - South Africa’s energy sector finds itself in a gridlock situation. The sector is controlled by the state-owned utility Eskom holding the monopoly on the generation and transmission of electricity, which is almost exclusively produced from domestically extracted coal. At the same time, the constitutional mandate enables municipalities to distribute and sell electricity generated by Eskom to local consumers, which constitutes a large part of the cities’ municipal income. This is a strong disincentive for city governments to promote reductions in energy consumption and substantially limits the scope for urban action on energy efficiency and renewable energies. In the present case study, we portray the current development in South Africa’s energy policy and trace how deadlocked legal, financial, and institutional barriers block the transition from a coal-based energy system toward a greener and more sustainable energy economy. We furthermore point to the efforts of major South African cities to introduce low-carbon strategies in their jurisdictions and highlight key challenges for the future development of the country’s energy sector. By engaging with this case study, readers will become familiar with a prime example of the wider phenomenon of national political–economic obstacles to the progress in sustainable urban development. Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1525/cse.2018.001297 SN - 2473-9510 VL - 2 IS - 1 SP - 1 EP - 7 PB - University of California Press CY - Oakland ER -