690 5 NOVEMBER 2021 • VOL 374 ISSUE 6568 science.org SCIENCEBy Navroz K. Dubash^1 , Aditya Valiathan Pillai^1 ,
Christian Flachsland^2 , Kathryn Harrison^3 ,
Kathryn Hochstetler^4 , Matthew Lockwood^5 ,
Robert MacNeil^6 , Matto Mildenberger^7 ,
Matthew Paterson^8 , Fei Teng^9 , Emily Tyler^10D
iscussions about climate mitiga-
tion tend to focus on the ambition
of emission reduction targets or the
prevalence, design, and stringency of
climate policies. However, targets are
more likely to translate to near-term
action when backed by institutional ma-
chinery that guides policy development and
implementation. Institutions also mediate
the political interests that are often barriers
to implementing targets and policies. Yet the
study of domestic climate institutions is in its
infancy, compared with the study of targets
and policies. Existing governance literatures
document the spread of climate laws ( 1 , 2 )
and how climate policy-making depends on
domestic political institutions ( 3 – 5 ). Yet these
literatures shed less light on how states orga-
nize themselves internally to address climate
change. To address this question, drawing
on empirical case material summarized in
table S1, we propose a systematic framework
for the study of climate institutions. We lay
out definitional categories for climate insti-
tutions, analyze how states address three
core climate governance challenges—coor-
dination, building consensus, and strategy
development—and draw attention to how
institutions and national political contexts
influence and shape each other. Acontextual
“best practice” notions of climate institutions
are less useful than an understanding of how
institutions evolve over time through interac-
tion with national politics.CATEGORIES OF INSTITUTIONALIZATION
Climate institutions shape and are shaped
by national politics, and this process is a
leading determinant of climate policy. Re-
cent literature suggests that distributionalconflict within countries is a more impor-
tant determinant of climate policy than
considerations of free-riding across coun-
tries ( 6 ). Consequently, the interplay be-
tween institutions and politics also shapes
what countries put forward as their Na-
tionally Determined Contributions (NDCs)
under the Paris Agreement. Institutions de-
termine who sits at the table, how decisions
are made and by whom, and the cognitive
priors carried into decision-making. Over
time, successful climate institutions create
long-term dynamics that favor more ambi-
tious climate policy by restructuring deci-
sion-making and interest-group politics.
For our purposes, “institutions” are de-
fined as “...the formal or informal proce-
dures, routines, norms and conventions
embedded in the organisational structure of
the polity or economy” [( 7 ), p. 938], includ-
ing laws, organizations in government, and
interdepartmental coordination processes.
In this article, our focus is on national and
formal institutions, while acknowledging
that informal practices and institutions at
regional and national scales and nonstate
organizations of various kinds play a sub-
stantial governance role.
Even this limited subset of national climate
institutions are challenging to define because
they take a wide array of forms. For example,
in the UK, a Climate Change Act requires
5-year carbon budgets, on the basis of advice
from a credible analytical body. In India, a
climate action plan led to the National Solar
Mission that provided a political arena for so-
lar energy interests to counter fossil fuel in-
terests within bureaucratic negotiations. By
contrast, in Brazil, institutional restructuring
that reduced deforestation-linked emissions
was driven entirely by nonclimate consid-
erations, suggesting that institutional shifts
outside the climate sphere are relevant to
climate outcomes. The definition of climate
institutions cannot be limited to an assess-
ment of institutional mandates but must alsoinclude those that bring climate cobenefits.
Rather than seeking sharp boundaries, we
focus on the institutionalization of climate
concerns as a process, which proceeds at
different rates and in different ways across
countries, with the possibility of both ad-
vancement and retreat. This process is use-
fully mapped by using three categories of
institutionalization. First, the deepest form
of institutionalization involves the creation
of new, “purpose-built” climate institutions—
laws, organizations, or processes—primarily
and intentionally focused on climate change.
Second, in many cases, institutionalization
happens through intentional “layering” ( 8 ) of
climate obligations on existing institutions,
which involves repurposing of existing insti-
tutional structures. Third, climate change–
related outcomes, positive or negative, may
result from “latent” institutions that are not
intentionally aimed at climate mitigation.
This last category has a very wide scope
and is consequently not included in table
S1. However, its inclusion as a category
signals that any part of state activity could
be salient to climate change and that over
time, these institutions could be made more
intentionally climate oriented through lay-
ering or substituted through purpose-built
institutions. The study of climate institu-
tions needs to consider all three categories.
They serve as analytical ideal types through
which to track the process of institutional-
ization, which is shaped in path-dependent
ways by national political context, interac-
tions with international processes, and ex-
isting bureaucratic norms ( 9 ).THREE PROBLEMS OF GOVERNANCE
We suggest that national climate institutions
are usefully assessed against three problems
of governance that are particularly salient to
climate change. As an all-of-economy and all-
of-society problem, climate solutions require
rapid and large-scale social and economic
transformations that have the potential to
create economic losers who may oppose
change. Examples of institutional efforts to
address these challenges—drawing on the au-
thors’ recent study of Australia, Brazil, China,
Germany, India, South Africa, the UK, and
the United States ( 10 )—are discussed below
and further summarized in table S1.Coordination challenges
The scale and scope of the mitigation chal-
lenge requires coordination across policy
domains such as energy, industry, agricul-
ture, and urbanization through “climateCLIMATE POLICYNational climate institutions
complement targets and policies
Institutions can affect coordination, consensus, and strategy
INSIGHTS(^1) Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, India. (^2) Centre for Sustainability, Hertie School, Berlin, Germany. (^3) Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC,
Canada.^4 Department of International Development, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK.^5 Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex, Sussex, UK.^6 Department
of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia.^7 Department of Political Science, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA.
(^8) School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK. (^9) Institute of Energy Environment and Economy, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. (^10) African Climate and Development
Institute, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa. Email: [email protected]
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