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For many years, suggestions to 'geoengineer' the climate occupied a marginal role in climate change science and politics. Today, visions of massive carbon drawdown and sunlight reflection have become reasonable additions to conventional mitigation and adaptation. Why did researchers start engaging with ideas that were, for a long time, considered highly controversial? And how did some of these ideas come to be perceived worthy of research funding and in need of international governance? This Element provides an analysis of the recent history and evolution of geoengineering as a governance object. It explains how geoengineering evolved from a thought shared by a small network into a governance object that is likely to shape the future of climate politics. In the process, it generates a theory on the earliest phase of the policy cycle and sheds light on the question why we govern the things we govern in the first place.

This thesis examines the role of science in the earliest stages of the political process. It does this by studying the emergence of 'geoengineering' on the political agenda. The term describes a set of ideas on how to stabilize global temperature by intervening into the Earth's natural systems, and was subject to a strong taboo in the scientific community until the mid-2000s. Yet within a decade, it has become relevant to international climate politics. To understand how this transition took place, the thesis uses mixed methods to study the causal mechanisms by which geoengineering became an object of governance. Paper I describes the internal dynamics of a scientific community that helped transform geoengineering into a distinct, salient and malleable governance object. It explains how social cohesion, brokerage and diversity acted as important mechanisms in this process. Paper II studies the role of authoritative scientific assessments in making geoengineering a normal and relevant topic for research. It shows how such assessments act as a form of de facto governance in shaping the activities of a research landscape. Paper III identifies similarities and differences in the way that different sub-areas of climate change policy are governed. It suggests that, if a problem structure is perceived to be malign, this makes it less conducive to public governance. Conversely, if a problem structure comes to be perceived as more benign, this facilitates public governance. Paper IV examines the role of problem definition and 'institutional fit', evaluating how geoengineering matches with the expectations of government actors. It discusses three areas where such fit is lacking, and how this makes it difficult for government officials to form a political position on geoengineering. The results of this study flow into the description of a pattern that seems to be important at many different stages of the opinion-shaping process. This pattern includes the introduction of a topic to a new audience; the audience's heated debate around this topic; the intervention of an actor with authority; and the streamlining of the audience's debate according to the authoritative actor's judgement. Found at many different levels of the political process, the pattern may explain why some topics become subject to political decision making, and others do not.

Numerous recent studies project that 'climate engineering' technologies might need to play a major role in the future. Such technologies may carry major risks for developing countries that are often especially vulnerable to, and lack adaptive capacity to deal with, the impacts of such new technologies. In this situation, one would expect that developing countries—especially the least developed countries that are most vulnerable—should play a central role in the emerging discourse on climate engineering. And yet, as this article shows in detail, the discussion about whether and how to engage with these technologies is shaped by experts from just a small set of countries in the Global North. Knowledge production around climate engineering remains heavily dominated by the major research institutions in North America and Europe. Drawing on information from 70 climate engineering events between 2009 and 2017 along with extensive document analysis, the article maps a lack of involvement of developing countries and highlights the degree to which their concerns remain insufficiently represented in politically significant scientific assessment reports. The article concludes by sketching options that developing countries may have to influence the agenda on climate engineering, reflecting on earlier attempts to increase control over novel technologies and influence global agenda setting.

This article, and the special issue it introduces, seek to contribute to the emerging and much-needed dialogue between the study of global governance and the study of social complexity. We hold that, while there is wide acceptance that global governance is becoming increasingly complex, studying this complexity still faces significant challenges in terms of concepts, theory, and methodology.The article outlines why that dialogue is needed, and how the complexity sciences can help us address some of these challenges. It then introduces key questions central to such an integrated research programme, for instance: under what conditions can a global governance system be regarded as complex? Which methods can help us recognize and assess patterns of stability, iteration, and change in global governance? How can a theory-driven analysis take into account that complexity may influence spaces for political agency, i.e. that it may alter key aspects of legitimacy, accountability, transparency, technocracy, and power and ultimately the strategical options of certain actors? Finally, the article looks ahead to the special issue and summarizes how the authors contribute crucial conceptual, theoretical, and methodical ideas for addressing these and other questions.

This article, and the special issue it introduces, seek to contribute to the emerging and much-needed dialogue between the study of global governance and the study of social complexity. We hold that, while there is wide acceptance that global governance is becoming increasingly complex, studying this complexity still faces significant challenges in terms of concepts, theory, and methodology.The article outlines why that dialogue is needed, and how the complexity sciences can help us address some of these challenges. It then introduces key questions central to such an integrated research programme, for instance: under what conditions can a global governance system be regarded as complex? Which methods can help us recognize and assess patterns of stability, iteration, and change in global governance? How can a theory-driven analysis take into account that complexity may influence spaces for political agency, i.e. that it may alter key aspects of legitimacy, accountability, transparency, technocracy, and power and ultimately the strategical options of certain actors? Finally, the article looks ahead to the special issue and summarizes how the authors contribute crucial conceptual, theoretical, and methodical ideas for addressing these and other questions.

− Agency is one of five core analytical problems in the Earth System Governance (ESG) Project's research framework, which offers a unique approach to the study of environmental governance. − Agency in Earth System Governance draws lessons from ESG–Agency research through a systematic review of 322 peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2008 and 2016 and contained in the ESG–Agency Harvesting Database.− ESG–Agency research draws on diverse disciplinary perspectives with distinct clusters of scholars rooted in the fields of global environmental politics, policy studies, and socio-ecological systems. − Collectively, the chapters in Agency in Earth System Governance provide an accessible synthesis of some of the field's major questions and debates and a state-of-the-art understanding of how diverse actors engage with and exercise authority in environmental governance.