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International environmental regimes have undergone a transformation in the last decade from a system based on centralized nation-state governance of resources to a devolved collaborative system of management in which non-state actors can play a significant role. One result is the growth of interlocal institutions which can provide local non-state actors a role in cross-scale environmental decision-making. This paper analyzes the local to global interplay of institutions managing four key arctic species: caribou, salmon, beluga whales, and polar bears. The research proposes that while global forces have reduced the capacity for non-state resource-users to control these species due to climate change and global market forces, representing a loss of power, interrelated global trends have caused an increase in the number of vertical institutions that are available to such resource-users to participate in species management. More narrowly, this paper proposes that central to the efficacy of non-state actor participation in transborder natural resources is the interlocal institution. These claims are supported through a threefold case study methodology. First, using Young?s (2002) theories of fit, the institutional pathways from local native co-management to global agreements are traced in order to evaluate the fit of institutional designs with ecological resource characteristics. Second, institutions come with certain discourses that empower some behaviors and forbid others (Escobar, 1995, 1999). This research articulates the extent to which different non-state actors wield power, and in what fashion, either through or in spite of institutions. Lastly, the paper demonstrates further support for the analysis of interlocal institutions, local transnational institutions for contiguously shared resources (Lovecraft, 2004), as a setting for local non-state actors to influence international environmental decisions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a conceptual framework for global climate protection based on the observation that there is a remarkable degree of similarity regarding when and how the issue is addressed domestically across countries suggesting an effective linking mechanism in terms of diffusion and learning in the wake of early movers. So far, however, a consistent analytical framework to theorize such phenomena that could shed some new light on the emergence of global cooperation is missing. Most models dealing with global cooperation in climate protection focus primarily on questions of finding and stabilizing international agreements that are addressed as problems of strategic interaction and rational design. The theoretical problems such a top-down approach entails due to an innate free-rider problem that prevents individual actors from taking action by their own are all well known. Equally known, however, is the fact that individual actors often do get engaged in voluntary measures beyond formal obligations. Empirical research on climate protection has long recognized the important role of domestic initiatives, which are seen as vital to create the political and regulatory environment for more effective and widely accepted international cooperation. Analytically this indicates a multi-level process that may be best captured by self-organization as a process of macroscopic pattern formation based on the interactions of microscopic system components. The challenge now is to identify the mechanisms that explain the complex interactions and feedback mechanisms that lead to innovation, selection, and diffusion of new political strategies and solutions. To provide this link the paper develops the concept of an international system of innovation. Innovation oriented environmental policies are already discussed and implemented for quite some years in various countries. The promise of such policies is to capitalize on a potential win-win situation regarding economic development and ecological improvement, which would turn climate protection into an individually rational strategy. In how far such gains really could materialize depends, of course, on a number of factors that are not further considered here. The paper focuses instead on the international dimension of innovation oriented policies and the implications this may have for global cooperation to emerge. In a globalized world, innovation decisions regardless whether they refer to policies or technologies have to take account of the behaviour and reactions of other countries. If other countries follow suit based on the expectation that serious action on climate protection will be inevitable in future, it may be possible to capitalize on first mover advantages. Self-reinforcing processes may be possible at the national and international level if a competition for the best environmentally friendly policies and technologies emerges. The approach thus sets out a framework to examine whether and how innovation oriented policies at the domestic level may lead to a multi-level diffusion process and thereby to the creation and deepening of global cooperative structures reflected by social, political, and institutional arrangements and treaties that may result in some lock-in effects and path dependency. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long-term policies face a number of challenges to methodological approaches of decision-making. Decisions under deep uncertainty and complexity hardly fulfill the requirements of established optimization methods such as perfect foresight and information about the systems involved. In addition, in a world with a vast number of actors who dynamically interact across multiple levels established game theoretic approaches fail to provide reasonable solutions over long periods. Addressing the challenge, a diversity of methods is being developed and applied which draw on concepts of artificial intelligence, complex adaptive systems and agent-based modeling. The approaches describe a system dynamics that is based on decision rules and adaptive behavior, with optimal control and game theory as special cases. The various methodologies are specified and compared for decision-making in long-term climate policy. Adaptive decision rules of individual actors on emission reductions and technical change are a function of the expected utilities and risks for a given time horizon, extending the established approach of time-discounted optimization. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]