Dr. Catherine Weaver, Research Coordinator and Distinguished Scholar at the Strauss Center introduced Dr. Robert O. Keohane, Professor of International Affairs, Princeton University on January 25, 2010 to talk on the international regime complex for climate change.

Professor Keohane spoke on the problems and challenges for international regime complexes for climate change and policy implications facing the world today.  He said a central problem in managing climate change is to protect common resources.  Countries that contribute the least to those efforts are tempted to seek the benefits of a healthy climate at the expense of others.  He emphasized getting the incentives right to attain the mutual environmental goals of the regime complex.  He gave examples of incentive structures used in ocean oil pollution.  Professor Keohane outlined four policy goals to guide emerging regime complexes in climate change:  more effective international treaties, more accountable buyers, border tariff adjustments and the flexibility for technological investments.  He also highlighted that the success factors for regime complexes are:  coherence, accountability, effectiveness, determinacy, sustainability and epistemic quality.

Finally, Professor Keohane fielded questions from the audience regarding the cap and trade system, U.S.-China relations, accountability mechanisms, the World Trade Organization and climate change as a scientific and a political problem.

Professor Keohane spoke on problems and challenges
for the international regime complex for climate change.

Following his presentation, Professor Keohane took questions from the audience.

Robert O. Keohane is Professor of International Affairs, Princeton University.   He is the author of After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (1984) and Power and Governance in a Partially Globalized World (2002).    He is co-author (with Joseph S. Nye, Jr.) of Power and Interdependence (third edition 2001), and (with Gary King and Sidney Verba) of Designing Social Inquiry (1994).  He has served as the editor of International Organization and as president of the International Studies Association and the American Political Science Association.  He won the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, 1989, and the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science, 2005.  He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Academy of Sciences.