Multilevel Climate Governance, Polycentrism, and Environmental Performance

The long-term and large-scale issues stemming from climate change include scientific, technical, social, and political/policy challenges. In the United States, the political and governance challenges embedded in climate change are perhaps the most daunting. In the vacuum of national policies to mitigate and adapt to climate change, subnational arrangements offer an ideal opportunity to study the ways in which polycentric institutional arrangements may lead to improved environmental performance. Using the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework (IAD) we test hypotheses that explore: (1) policy diversity (variety); (2) multilevel institutional nesting; and their relation to (3) Greenhouse Gas Emission (GHG) reduction performance while controlling for climate vulnerability. Our analysis capitalizes on a new data source that provides information on facility level emissions, the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program. Recognizing the clustered nature of our data, facilities embedded in states, we rely upon multilevel modeling to examine the relationships between subnational climate risk governance and environmental performance. Our results, while preliminary, are encouraging. Even when controlling for past emissions levels, some aspects of subnational climate risk governance are associated with better environmental performance.