The Paris agreement and key actors' domestic climate policy mixes: comparative patterns.

This article examines two important conditions for achieving the Paris Agreement's (PA) ambitious goals. The first is the actions of the largest emitters-China, the European Union (EU) and the USA whose combined share of global emissions is near 50%. The second condition is the bottom-up design of the PA itself. Drawing on the policy mix literature and comparison of the three major emitters examined in this special feature (see Bang, Heggelund and Skjærseth), we first conclude that the EU has the most ambitious climate targets and policy mixes needed for achieving net zero emissions. Second, the PA has contributed to more ambitious targets and policy mixes mainly in the EU but also in China. Ambitious EU actors have actively invoked the PA goals to further their interests and legalize the Agreement's dynamic five-year cycles. With Biden as president the USA will again be a party to the PA and is set to join the EU and China in upgrading ambitions. Looking towards the future, the USA and particularly China will have to, in one way or another, to follow the EU if net zero emissions are to be achieved. This may necessitate actual EU leadership by example.

What Can Be Learned from Experience with Scientific Advisory Committees in the Field of International Environmental Politics?

Scientific advisory committees (SACs) are a critically important part of global environmental policy. This commentary reviews the role of SACs in six global and regional environmental regimes, defined here as the set of rules, norms, and procedures that are developed by states and international organizations out of their common concerns and used to organize common activities. First, SACs play a critical role in putting issues on the political agenda and the creation of an overarching regime. Second, the effectiveness of a given SAC and the associated regime is highly variable. Third, there is also considerable variation in the extent to which the regime is driven by an overarching scientific consensus, for example, high in the case of climate change, lower in the case of whaling. Fourth, the role of science in a given regime is also a function of whether the problem being addressed is relatively benign or more malign, that is to say, marked by deep political disagreements (i.e., climate change). Finally, the cases examined here suggest that the institutional design of the SAC matters and can influence the overall effectiveness of the SAC and by extension, the regime, but it is seldom decisive.

Much Can Be Learned about Addressing Antibiotic Resistance from Multilateral Environmental Agreements.

Antibiotic resistance (ABR) is a common-pool resource challenge. This means that efforts to address ABR can learn from similar collective action problems faced within the environmental sector. Multilateral environmental agreements are the backbone of global environmental governance. Their ability to effectively solve environmental problems depends on the problem structure and the regime's problem-solving capacity. The success or failure of environmental agreements is mainly determined by the problem structure, including the degree of political consensus and scientific certainty. But agreements' institutional design also matter because they can change the problem structure and problem-solving capacity. Based on experiences with environmental agreements, an international ABR agreement should contain robust reporting/verification procedures, sanctions for non-compliance, assistance for implementation, majority vote decision-making rules, a strong secretariat, an independent scientific panel, and specific commitments. More research on global strategies for achieving collective action is needed to help inform future institutional designs that are both effective and politically feasible.

A new approach to global health institutions? A case study of new vaccine introduction and the formation of the GAVI Alliance.

There is an emerging research agenda to analyse empirically the forces driving changes in global health governance. This study applies analytical tools from international relations research to explain the formation of international health regimes. The study utilizes two explanatory perspectives: individual leadership, and the interests of key non-state actors in the formation process, using the case of the formation of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) from 1995 to 1999. The case study is based on material from interviews with key actors, an archival review of documents from the Children's Vaccine Initiative (CVI), and published literature. Findings show that the regime formation process was initiated by individuals who were primarily affiliated to scientific communities and who led to the World Bank and the Gates Foundation becoming champions of a new coordinating mechanism for new vaccine introduction. Negotiations in the regime formation process were between a small group of founding agencies with divergent interests regarding immunization priorities. The case also sheds light on the authority of the WHO and the resources of the Gates Foundation in driving the process towards the final structure of the alliance. The paper discusses the potential contribution of the international relations approach compared to policy research as a way of understanding the institutional dynamics of global health, particularly in respect of relations between countries and non-state actors.