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The article investigates the history of transatlantic climate policy and relations. The U.S. is the major emitter of greenhouse gases that are having an impact on the climate system as well as a potential leader in developing technologies to deal with the causes and effects of climate change. Among the potential consequences of such climatic changes are increase in malaria and dengue infections. An overview of the U.S. and European policy on climate change is also provided.

International regime research has pioneered a measurement concept to answer the question whether international institutions matter. Yet this approach is merely concerned with international institutions and not with performance at large. It could well be the case that international institutions are effective, but miss the overall point of making much of a contribution as compared to domestic and European actors in a particular policy domain. This paper builds on the original measurement concept for (relative) regime effectiveness and extends it to the triad regulatory domains of domestic, European, and international. By using absolute lower and upper bounds, this concept of absolute effectiveness allows for the separation of performance across the triad of national, European, and international actors and the derivation of potential cross-actor interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]