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The Montreal Protocol—the regime designed to protect the stratospheric ozone layer—has widely been hailed as the gold standard of global environmental governance and is one of few examples of international institutional cooperative arrangements successfully solving complex transnational problems. Although the stratospheric ozone layer still bears the impacts of ozone depleting substances (ODSs), the problem of ozone depletion is well on its way to being solved due to the protocol. This chapter examines how the protocol was designed and implemented in a way that has allowed it to successfully overcome a number of thorny challenges that most international environmental regimes must face: how to attract sufficient participation, how to promote compliance and manage non-compliance, how to strengthen commitments over time, how to neutralize or co-opt potential 'veto players', how to make the costs of implementation affordable, how to leverage public opinion in support of the regime's goals, and, ultimately, how to promote the behavioural and policy changes needed to solve the problems and achieve the goals the regime was designed to solve. The chapter concludes that while some of the reasons for the Montreal Protocol's success, such as fairly affordable, available substitutes for ODSs, are not easy to replicate, there are many other elements of this story that can be utilized when thinking about how to design solutions to other transnational environmental problems.

The role of American leadership in the UN climate negotiations that produced the 2015 Paris Agreement is examined. First, United States (US) climate goals are identified. Then, utilizing unique survey data collected at eight UN climate summits between 2008 and 2015, the extent to which the US was recognized as a leader by potential followers is investigated. Finally, the extent to which US goals are reflected in negotiation outcomes is evaluated. Recognition of the US as a leader varied over time, peaking at the UN climate meetings in Copenhagen and Paris, reflecting US leadership in shaping the outcomes of both meetings. Although the results reveal a divided leadership landscape in which the US must compete for leadership with other actors, such as the European Union and China, US leadership was crucial to the successful adoption of the Paris Agreement.

AbstractThis article examines the nexus between the EU's goal of being a leading actor on the world stage in devising a global solution to the threat of climate change and the performance of its Member States in meeting their climate change obligations. In doing so the article will discuss the concept of EU leadership, examine the modes of leadership the EU has employed in pursuing its climate protection objectives, scrutinize the extent to which EU Member States are actually living up to their Kyoto obligations and analyse how the EU's own performance, credibility and legitimacy in this area affects its aspirations to be a key norm‐entrepreneur in the establishment of a post‐2012 climate change agreement. The article concludes with a balance sheet of some of the Union's key successes and failures and closes by highlighting some potentially inconvenient truths that might frustrate the EU's climate protection aspirations.

A number of high profile crises and disasters have driven the EU to increase cooperation among its member states in the area of civil protection and to enhance its capacity to conduct civil protection operations in Europe and around the world. However, in the light of recent transboundary crises in the EU, manifested by the refugee crisis, terrorist attacks, and natural disasters, it is far from clear how effective such cooperative EU arrangements can be due to differences in the way national civil protection has been organized and due to the question of whether sufficient trust exists within and between the involved organizations. In this article, drawing from a unique study of civil protection agencies in 17 EU member states, and utilizing theories on crisis management, public administration and trust, we shed light on the factors that promote national and EU-level effectiveness in civil protection and crisis management.