Regulatory Unilateralism: Arguments for Going It Alone on Climate Change
| Author | Christian Downie,Peter Drahos |
| Date | 01 February 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12349 |
| Published date | 01 February 2017 |
Regulatory Unilateralism: Arguments for Going
It Alone on Climate Change
Peter Drahos
Australian National University
Christian Downie
University of New South Wales
Abstract
Climate change is a collective action problem that has often been analyzed as a Prisoner’s Dilemma. States have an incentive
to free ride on the efforts of others. Yet around the globe national and sub-national governments are introducing regulatory
measures to reduce emissions that can be fairly characterized as unilateral actions. The US and China, the world’s two largest
emitters, are at the forefront. Indeed the evidence of states beginning to depart from business-as-usual behavior raises the
possibility that the characterizations of climate change as a Prisoner’s Dilemma may apply less strongly to the problem and
that something else may be starting to happen. Accordingly, this article considers: (i) to what extent nations are taking unilat-
eral action to address climate change; and (ii) in the context of climate change, which is considered one of the greatest global
collective action problems the world has faced, what are the possible economic explanations for nations to act in a unilateral
fashion and what are the normative reasons for doing so. We justify regulatory unilateralism on economic, geopolitical and
moral grounds, and argue that regulatory unilateralism may offer the best hope of triggering a race to cut emissions. A race
rather than prolonged negotiations is what is required at this moment in climate history.
Policy Implications:
•Need to gain a better understanding of the extent and depth of regulatory unilateral action on climate change being
undertaken by all states at the national and sub-national levels.
•Need to question whether the Prisoner’s Dilemma framework captures the real-world dynamics of the problem of climate
change.
•Be aware of the wide range of co-benefits from taking unilateral measures. These go beyond economic benefits to
include, for example, the geopolitical benefit a state has from preserving the existing order and avoiding worst-case cli-
mate scenarios.
•Unilateral measures should be chosen based on a country’s regulatory and innovation capabilities.
Climate change is a collective action problem that has often
been analyzed as a Prisoner’s Dilemma (Gardiner, 2001;
Newberry, 2011; Soroos, 1994). Two decades of international
negotiations have produced a climate regime that has had
only modest impacts on mitigation (Downie, 2014). Given the
strength of the free-rider problem it seems puzzling to con-
sider, as this article does, the case for ‘regulatory unilateral-
ism’in the case of climate change. Even if unilateralism turns
out to be an improbable path to climate change mitigation it
is worth being sure whether this is actually the case.
Regulatory unilateralism in the context of climate change
has not really been explored. Yet there is evidence that
states have already taken actions on climate change that
can be fairly characterized as ‘regulatory unilateralism’.
Moreover, the level of this activity is greater than might be
expected if the free rider logic that we described above
were to hold tightly or if we were to assume that a Prison-
er’s Dilemma game perfectly characterized the climate
change problem. In other words, the evidence of states
beginning to depart from business-as-usual behavior raises
the possibility that these characterizations may apply less
strongly to the problem and that something else may be
starting to happen.
We analyze regulatory unilateralism in two ways. We
begin by considering the extent to which regulatory unilat-
eralism is happening, especially in the US and China, and
then shift to a possible economic explanation for why it
might be happening. If this explanation is right it also offers
a potential normative reason for acting unilaterally, assum-
ing that, all other things being equal, acting to gain an eco-
nomic benefit gives one a reason for so acting. From there
we shift to considering the geopolitical and moral cases for
regulatory unilateralism. Ours is an argument by conver-
gence. We find that there are economic, geopolitical and
moral reasons for states to adopt policies of regulatory uni-
lateralism.
©2016 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Global Policy (2017) 8:1 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12349
Global Policy Volume 8 . Issue 1 . February 2017
32
Research Article
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