Mitigating global climate change: Why are some countries more committed than others?

Abstract

This article analyzes factors affecting countries' commitment to mitigating global climate change within the scope of existing international institutions. The commitment level is operationalized as an ordinal variable ranging from an agreement with the international institutions (signature and ratification of the Framework Convention on Climate Change) to the actual implementation of the internationally negotiated modes of behavior (enactment of domestic environmental policies). A theoretical model of governments' decisionmaking is presented and tested for 91 countries at different levels of economic development with different domestic institutions. A given national government selects its commitment level depending on its incentives and ability to affect global emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG). An ordered logistic regression model is employed to analyze the factors affecting the levels of national commitment. Empirical analysis suggests that national commitment is significantly affected by the national government's incentives and the ability to affect the global level of GHG emissions, impacted more by the incentives than by the ability, and not affected by the aggregate levels of economic benefits.