Between Global Goals, Domestic Actions, and Polycentric Networks: Explaining the Ambition of International Climate Change Mitigation Commitments and their Alignment with National Policies

Under the Paris Agreement, 194 governments have submitted Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) detailing their pledged climate change mitigation targets and actions. This centrally orchestrated but nationally driven system underpins the increasingly polycentric nature of global climate governance. Achieving the Paris Agreements’ overarching temperature goal requires both that the NDCs are ambitious enough, and that they are implemented domestically through appropriate laws, policies, and regulations. In this paper, we investigate the drivers of both the NDCs’ ambition and their alignment with those national policies and laws. We argue that ambition and alignment may not only depend on countries’ structural, political, and macroeconomic characteristics such as their income, their governments’ quality, their vulnerability, or their dependence on fossil fuels, but also by their level of involvement in the polycentric climate governance system. We assess this dimension by looking at the level of experience and leadership displayed by government delegates participating in the Paris Agreement negotiation meetings, as these characteristics may enable delegates to influence domestic policymaking in a way that makes it more aligned with international commitments, and by their degree of involvement in other climate-related IGOs and transnational climate governance initiatives, as these connections may provide them with information and tools to design and implement their NDCs. We apply regression analysis to novel data on the characteristics of countries’ negotiation delegations and on the alignment of NDCs and national policies, combined with existing data on level of ambition of NDCs and on transnational networks to test these expectations.