Sustaining cooperation in the international climate change regimes: Employing game theory and network theory

Abstract

For decades, the leverage of transnational actors has skyrocketed, while still an international regime is crucial in managing climate change. Acknowledging this point, this chapter aims to find how to analyze the structure of climate change regimes, why international cooperation is hardly maintained in the regimes, and how to sustain it. To narrow the gap between theory and reality, this chapter integrates the game theory and the network theory. Game theory is used to analyze the negotiations in the regime, and network theory is widely applied to discuss the structure and interactions among diverse actors. The author verifies that the system inside the regime is still international, whereas outside the regime is similar to the network shape. Furthermore, the structure of the regime analyzed proves to be disadvantageous for sustaining cooperation. Thus, the author proposes practicable solution to sustaining cooperation by finding the actor who could fill the structural holes created in the regime. This chapter is one of the first to implement an interdisciplinary study merging game theory and network theory to deal with climate change regimes. This chapter might be helpful to the policy makers and scholars devising methods to improve the efficacy of regimes on managing climate change.