Informal International Global Climate Governance Mechanism

Globalization has raised the discussion on how to govern the world affairs with it urgency. In order to govern the global public issues effectively, the international community has established series of formal and informal institutional arrangements. This dissertation selects the most typical global issue climate change as an example and analyzes the formation, characteristics and effectiveness of informal international regime in the context of global climate governance. Informal regime has higher flexibility in dealing with the global issues. It functions in two ways: first, further integrate international organizations and civil society in global climate governance by its external link; second, to enhance the consensus building and interest coordination before the negotiation by the influential informal groups like Group of Eight.This paper argues that compared to the formal international regime which follows the predetermined rules and make decisions on a specific international affairs by voting, informal regimes rely on coordination based on consensus and common interests. It can lower the transaction costs in the process of regime creating, avoid the cost by overlapped bureaucracy, use external contacts effectively and promote norms diffusion of global governance. It has advantages in flexibility and coordination and plays a complementary role to the formal international regime effectively.Understanding informal regime's role in global climate governance accurately is helpful for the developing countries to coordinate stances, meet the pressure from developed countries on climate issue, dominate the discourse in climate negotiation and play a positive role in the future climate regime design. As the Party of United Nations Convention on Climate Change, China has participated in the Conference of Parties negotiations since 1992 and accumulated relatively abundant experience in the framework of United Nations climate negotiations, while as for the informal international regime represented by Group of Eight, China has limited experience on its operational model and organizational structure. Therefore the research on informal international regime within the global climate governance has important practical significance on dealing with these challenges and promoting the"package"deal on climate change.Collective action in the field of global climate governance reflects the problem of global governance without world government in general and the common problems of international cooperation under anarchy. Then through the study on informal international regime in global climate governance, to explore how informal international regime promote the provision of public goods and overcome the dilemma of collective action in global governance, which has important theoretical significance in the global governance study.