It may be an understatement to say that global climate change is the collective action problem of our era. If not addressed effectively relatively soon, this mounting concern will likely dramatically affect every nation on earth—politically, economically, and environmentally. Hence, it is quite appropriate for scholars to focus attention on what factors seem to influence global cooperation and domestic action needed to tackle this critical issue.

This is a welcome volume as there is a small but growing list of comparative work exploring global climate change policy. The editors attempt to uncover the essential international and domestic components that affected the ratification decision of six countries and the European Union of the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty on climate change. The volume also explores which factors influenced domestic abatement policies. It is the interaction between the two—the international system and domestic politics—that interest the editors and their contributors. The countries selected for this comparative study beyond the EU include the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada, Australia, and China in that volume order. These countries lead per capita greenhouse gas emissions, but with differing relationships to Kyoto and domestic politics. Abatement costs varied dramatically among these countries. Some ratifiers, like China and Russia, were not required to reduce emissions, while the United States had the highest costs and did not ratify. Still, the editors find curious why some like the EU, Japan, Canada, and Australia ratified the treaty in spite of high mitigation costs. By exploring the particular politics surrounding the Kyoto Protocol found in the case studies, the editors suggest that insights gleaned might shape understandings useful in hammering out future agreements. The volume is timely in that the international community is still searching for a proper set of incentives needed to forge a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol that will expire in 2012.

International relations scholars Kathryn Harrison and Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom want this volume to go beyond basic viewpoints of international relations, to explore the “black box” of domestic politics. As they state—by focusing on the domestic politics—they want to “reverse the lens of previous scholarship” (p. 2). To explore two distinct outcomes—a state's decision on Kyoto ratification and level of commitment for domestic-based climate change abatement policies—the editors construct a four-factor framework to guide their investigation. These factors—“policymakers' self interest,” “ideas,” “institutions,” and “international influences”—were broken down into more specific elements. For “policy makers' self interest,” the editors focus on two key elements: electoral incentives, and compliance costs and their resulting pressure on government. These two factors became the editors' two central hypotheses. The first argues that the higher public support for addressing climate change, the more likely ratification. The second links higher domestic compliance costs to fulfilling treaty obligations with greater domestic opposition to ratification. Both hypotheses are supported generally by the cases but with twists and turns. The second factor, “ideas,” also has two elements: scientific knowledge and normative principles. Here, the editors and their authors parcel out whether or not domestic politics generally accept the climate change science or challenge it. Australia and especially the United States provide key examples of significant challenge to the science and its effects on both ratification and domestic politics. The second “ideas” element focuses on normative principles. In particular, are leaders or the public interested in being seen as international players, believers in multilateralism, etc.? Japan's ratification was clearly shaped by hosting the Kyoto meetings, while one Canadian prime minister believed in multilateralism. With the third factor, “institutions,” the editors present three distinct elements. For the democracies among the cases, the type of representation, whether proportional, or winner-take-all majoritarian systems, seems to make a difference, with environmental interests more easily represented in policy decisions with proportional representation such as that found in the EU. Vertical and horizontal concentrations of authority represent the second and third elements related to “institutions.” These elements focus on the distribution of decision-making opportunities within the various systems. For example, the more horizontal checks and balances of the United States allowed for various points of political access to decision making used by Kyoto opponents to block ratification. Similarly, the more vertical or federated systems allowed Canadian provinces to stifle national domestic policy efforts at mitigation while adding efforts in the EU. For the final factor, “international influences,” the editors present three elements: diplomatic bargaining, moral pressures from transnational actors, and global business competition or economic networks that make abatement policies factor into comparative (dis)advantages. Following the US failure to ratify Kyoto, which threatened the treaty's viability, that reality aided Russia, Japan, and even Canada's ability to negotiate better terms for ratification. Moral pressures for late ratifiers to sign the protocol came from a number of other governmental and non-governmental actors invested in the treaty, such as the EU and environmental organizations. While limited space does not allow for a complete summary of all the nuanced findings from the interactions among the countries, outcomes, and the factors laid out in the framework, I found the analyses and findings to be quite plausible and supported by the data.

The volume is organized simply, but more importantly, the editors were successful in having their framework more or less systematically adopted in each chapter. In their introduction, the editors provide a clear overview of their topic, their rationales, and their framework for investigation. This first chapter is followed by the seven case studies by the editors and several contributors. In the conclusion, the editors return with a summary of their essential findings, organized around their established framework.

This scholarship demonstrates how integrating comparative politics with international relations can lead to greater conceptual and empirical understanding of why certain efforts are successful or not in attempting to solve collective action problems. The results clearly support the editors' fundamental point that domestic politics matter within an international context. The volume also attests to the important role the social sciences can play more generally in complementing the work of climate scientists. International and domestic politics do matter, and their understanding is likely critical for any progress on future agreements.

If I had to identify a flaw in an otherwise fine volume, it would likely regard the editors' concluding thoughts. Extrapolating from their supported hypotheses, they offer two arguments: (1) that policymakers should simply do the right thing and support policy action that addresses climate change and ignore the political fallout from their actions; and (2) that greater citizen activism should be mobilized to support climate change agreements and domestic abatement policies. Here, they note that sustained public support for addressing climate change turned out to be the most powerful finding of their study. These points are simple and straightforward, but the juxtaposition between them and the nuanced findings generated from their larger analysis is a bit startling. Would political sacrifice stir up popular support or simply eliminate those with conscience as Garrett Hardin argued long ago? It is not obvious to me at least how one generates greater citizen interest and activism to be begin with. I do not believe it has not been from the lack of trying. The editors provide no guidance. Of course, left out of these concluding thoughts is the reality of either argument. Most policymakers are not that noble and are engaged typically in self-preservation, ironically one of the essential factors noted by the editors in their volume. Although touched on in the US chapter particularly, what is being experienced otherwise is a growing, well-funded, and highly organized effort to do just the opposite—to fight climate change by challenging the science and intentionally confusing the public to negate any space for policy action. Climate change in the United States has become highly politicized among the warring political parties, a growing partisan media on what has become an ideological issue and not simply a material one. Public support for policies that address climate change is declining in many countries, including those whose publics have traditionally supported such policies. There is also mounting evidence that anti-climate-change-policy forces are organizing efforts globally. (See Dunlap and McCright. “Climate Change Denial: Sources, Actors and Strategies,” in Constance Lever-Tracey, ed., Routledge Handbook of Climate Change and Society, 2010). So instead of growing legions of climate change voters, the opposite may become true. Until the voting populous experiences climate-related natural disasters, like those that recently happened in Australia to shift sentiments in that country, the world may be in for continued if not greater political stalemate.