I NSTITUTIONAL F RAGMENTATION AND C LIMATE C HANGE R EGIME

In world politics, when hegemony withered away, an alternative cooperative mechanism to the power-oriented order needed to sit on a vacant chair of global order. Then, the wind of institutionalism blew, and the institution occupied that seat. International institution has functioned as a provider of symmetrical information, a reducer of transaction costs in negotiation and bargaining, an enhancer of credible commitments, and a focal point of patterning legal liabilities (Keohane 1984). Regime is a special name of issue-specific institution (Young 1994). If a certain issue is recognized as a global problem and a condition surrounding the issue fosters international negotiations among actors involved, the negotiations produces an institution/regime in the form of treaties, conventions, and international agreements (Mitchell 2010). Institutional institution/regime, once established, takes a regulatory ascendance ladder by sitting a series of more specific and stringent institutional arrangements on the existing framework arrangement. Thus, international institution/regime exits and develops in a one-to-one correspondence to a singular global issue. By the issue-institution match, international society inherently having diverse issue problems became replete with institutions, which is characterized by institutional multiplicity, complexity, density, proliferation, and fragmentation.⁴⁹ Thus, scholarly concern moved from the core to the boundaries of an institution in interaction with the other institutions on an overlapping subject matter. Because

the interaction between two institutions can influence the effectiveness of each institution, the typology, consequence, and management of dyadic institutional interaction have been explored (Gehring and Oberthür 2009; Oberthür 2009). Then, a focus moved onto institutional/regime complex, ƒa network of three or more international regimes to a common subject matter„ at an overarching systematic level (Orsini et al. 2013, p.29). Importantly, the boundary of regime complex is defined by a specific subject matter, not an issue area. If issue areas indicate sets of issuesƒdealt with in common negotiations and by the same, or closely coordinated, bureaucracies„, the subject matter isƒoften narrower in scope than an issue area„ (p. 30).⁵⁰ The singular issue area draws a boundary of an individual regime, and the subject matter can invite an overlapping of different issue-oriented regimes. Thus, the regime complex has a horizontal, overlapping and indecomposable structure (Raustiala and Victor 2004) and harbors conflictual or synergistic nature of the linkage among the institutions at the center of a specific subject matter (Orsini et al. 2013, p.32). Because different institutions emerge in response to different issue problems, an appropriate response to regime complex is a coordination among the concerned institutions (Zürn and Faude 2013). A division-of-labor through functional, sectoral, or spatial differentiation among institutions is suggested to bring out positive coordination results to institutional/regime complex (Oberthür and Stokke 2012).

Meanwhile, at the overarching level of analysis, a new concern arose on the institutional complexitywithin a given singular issue area, and this is termed institutional fragmentation. This is a new and different ontological entity from the institutional fragmentation on a subject matter by regime complex. It is because the logic of one-to-one match between a single institution/regime and a single issue area fails by the creation of multiple and overlapping institutions besides the central institutional arrangement in the given issue area. This new ontological entity opens a door for diverse epistemological and methodological approaches, so the institutional fragmentation is inevitably susceptible toƒconceptual richness„ (Zelli and van Asselt 2013, p.3). Overarching system of multiple institutions in a given issue area is defined as global governance architecture, and the

50 Definition of issue areas are originally quoted from Keohane (1984, p.61).

institutional fragmentation broadly refers to a phenomenon that international policy domain in a singular issue area is marked byƒa patchwork of international institutions„ with divergent character, constituencies, spatial scope, and subject matter. In this regard, the first scholarly step was made in grasping the degree of institutional fragmentation with criteria- and typology-making (Biermann et al. 2009, p.16). Yet, the fragmentation study has waited for moving from the typological stage of assessing fragmentation degree to the stage of exploring the genesis, consequences, and management of institutional fragmentation. In parallel, a theoretical turn has come beyondƒlinguistic turn„ (Zelli 2011; Zelli and van Asselt 2013, p.3).

The institutional fragmentation is exemplary in climate change issue area. The climate change regime firmly grounded itself in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which was agreed in 1992 to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations on the basis of the first assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that scientifically proved human impact on climate change. The subsequently agreedKyoto Protocol(KP) was a reinforcing institutionalization of a singular climate change regime. However, right after the KP became effective in 2005, theAsia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate(APP) was created in July 2005 by the initiatives of the US and Australia, both of which did not ratify the KP, and the participation of China, India, Japan, and South Korea as founding members. Notably, the APP is interpreted as a competitor to the UNFCCC/KP (van Asselt 2007), which marks a start of institutional fragmentation in the climate change issue area. Under a snapshot picture of numerous institutions densely living in the climate change issue area, there it says, …the global governance architecture on climate change is cooperatively fragmented†(Biermann et al. 2009).

However, the institutional fragmentation has not stopped since picture-taking. Particularly, Asian region watched the creation of theEast Asia Climate Partnership (EACP) by South Korea in 2008 and the East Asia Low Carbon Growth Partnership (LCGP) by Japan in 2012. Besides, numerous bilateral agreements on climate change between the Asian countries have been formed besides the multilateral cooperative institution of Kyoto Protocol. This observation leads us to pose two questions. Why did the APP, an overlapping or competing institution to the dominantly existing

institutions of the UNFCCC/KP, emerge? This question fleshes out the next question. Why do overlapping or competing institutions continuously emerge in climate change issue area, particularly, in the Asian region? These questions relate to the genesis of the institutional fragmentation, on which the theoretical exploration just started. Accordingly, with these puzzling questions, the next section explores previous theoretical approaches to the origin of the institutional fragmentation mainly with the case of the APP.

Section 3. P

S

The question of why a competing institution is created in a given issue area just started being touched by three distinctive international relation theories (IRTs): neo-realism, neo-liberal institutionalism, and constructivism. In neo-realist viewpoint, the structure of world politics is anarchistic without a central orderer, and this anarchical structure conditions the rationality of nation states to pursue higher relative gains over the others (Waltz 1979). Any institution set up by the agents cannot be a substitute for the anarchy but a ƒreflection of the distribution of power in the world„ where the interests of hegemonic nation state are exercised, reflected, and reproduced (Mearsheimer 1995, p.7). Thus, the institution lives from its birth to death with the intention of hegemon. If the institution cannot work as the hegemon†s power-carrier to diffuse its own plots, then, an expected path is that the hegemon exits negotiations, discards the extant institution, and sets up a parallel and competing institution by exploiting its agenda-setting power and maneuvering of weaker states (Benvenisti and Downs 2007). In this viewpoint, the APP is explained to be driven by the skewed distribution of abundant coal resources in the Asian region and the resultant interest in clean coal technology development (Kellow 2006). Along this line, national economic dependence on coal resources and the geographical distribution of coal across the states in the US are explicated to relate to the discontents with the Kyoto Protocol†s uniform regulatory measures that potentially endanger coal industry and coal-dependent economic growth and the creation of the APP with sectoral focus on clean coal technology development (Skodvin and Andresen 2009). Yet, above all, behind the

emergence and continuation of legitimacy-deficient mini-lateral forum like the APP other than the UNFCCC/KP in climate change issue, necessarily, there should be hegemonic nation†s power (Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen and McGee 2013).

In neo-liberal institutionalism, despite an anarchical political structure, cooperation is possible by the formation of institution which facilitates political exchanges through the reduction of transaction costs of negotiating, monitoring, and information-collecting and -sharing (Keohane 1984). The institution with its own internal hierarchy can substitute the anarchy within the boundary of a certain issue area and elicit cooperative agent behaviors. Despite some difference, the neoliberal institutionalism together with the neo-realism stands on a function-oriented ground that institution is created by the rational and interest-maximizing actors in the process of liquidating the demand-and-supply of institution and is originated from the design efforts for expected consequences (Mattli 1999; Pierson 2000b). On the step of both function-oriented approach to the institution, the creation of additional and multiple climate change institutions are attributable to the diverse problems associated with climate change issue, the diverse interests of the actors, and the different national or regional capabilities on the basis of divergently trodden-paths and organizational practices.

Particularly, the APP is described as a club-type institution functionally intended to produce club goods of low emission technology development cooperation (Keohane and Victor 2011). In this approach, the term, diversity, dilutes a negative connotation of fragmentation. Besides, in the borrowing of non-functional approach to the creation of a countervailing institution in renewable energy issue area (Van de Graaf 2013), the creation of the APP can be explained to be driven by institutional capture and hedging; if the UNFCCC/KP are perceived as being change-impermeable due to institutional capture by particular interests of certain nation states and interest groups, then dissatisfied actors create a new competing institution, the APP, on the basis of domestic preferences.

This institutional capture is the source of abandoning the existing path-dependent institution and adding a new institution. Important is not the institutional capture itself but the perception of relevant actors on the capture.

Meanwhile, in the constructivist approach, actor forms a mutually constitutive relation with

political structure; the actor interprets the structure and forms his/her identity; this identity is subjective, stable, and ƒinherently rational„ (Wendt 1992, p. 397). This identity determines the actor†s positional willingness to support, inaction, or change the structure and induces a certain action strategy. Institution, which is a process of social construction by the instantiation of actors†

identity through practices, hasgGLFCPCLRJWdiscursive^cg_hmcih„ that is reflexive of the concerned actorm†discursive, sociological, and ideational realm of rationality (Wendt 1987, p. 359). In this vein, the creation of international institution is grounded on norms, ideas, and perception. Thus, the creation of a competing institution can be expounded by ideational contestation. Many literatures compared the APP to the UN-based climate change umbrella and extracted normatively and discursively competing characteristics of the APP in terms of issue-specificity, principle of equity, precautionary approach, procedural legitimacy on the participation of environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and multilateralism in conjunction with universal participation.⁵¹ Thus, the creation of the APP is the representation of a ƒcounter norm„ (Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen and van Asselt 2009, p. 205). As a step further from normative comparison, the creation of the APP is attributable to the incongruence between climate change norms and the Australian domestic conditions and interests in economic growth and to the embodiment of Australia and the US† effort to construct an alternative process of climate governance (Stevenson 2009). Thus, constructivist approach explicates the creation of the APP by ideational contestation and global-domestic normative incongruence.

These IRT-based explanations have competed and complemented explaining the creation of competing institutions, but they do not suffice to clarify the creation of a competing institution. The neo-realism approach cannot explain the creation of normatively different aspect of competing institutions and similarly patterned partnerships that Japan and South Korea erected besides the US-initiated APP against the UNFCCC/KP. Also, having power to establish an institution is one thing, and creating a competing institution outside a prevailing one is a different matter.⁵² The

function-51 van Asselt (2007), Hoffmann (2007), McGee and Taplin (2009), McGee (2011).

52 In case of biodiversity issue area, the US does not even participate in the Convention on Biological Diversity and any resultant related Protocols.

oriented neoliberal institutionalism approach is weak in explaining the creation of institutions that are perceived to be legitimacy-deficient or normatively-conflictive in relation to the existing institution. Also, in the non-functional approach, what determines the perception of institutional capture is not only a particular interest but also an ideational element such as principles and ideologies. In this regard, the constructivist approaches have filled up explanatory lacuna of the rational approaches by exploring the ideational aspects of competing institution in comparison with an existing institution and explicating the domestic normative incongruence as a source of the creation of a normatively contestant institution. However, also, normative contestation is one thing, and the normatively competing institution-building is the other. The fact that the normative contestation has occurred indicates that the existing norms were neither powerful nor internalized yet to work as the logic of appropriateness, which renders us to ask why the existing global norms were not internalized. Also, the creation of normatively contestant institution leads us to ask why the normative contestation was not resolved within the existing institution. Furthermore, the contestation is not at the norm-versus-norm level but at the policy range level. The current constructivist approach is in lack of explaining the causal process of why and how normative contestation occurs and leads to the creation of a competing institution besides the existing institution.

These theoretical promises and limitations have four implications to ponder over. Firstly, the genesis of institutional fragmentation cannot be detached from interest-oriented strategic actors.

The negotiation, establishment, and implementation of institution take huge costs, so non-participation in the existing institution and creation of additional institution cannot be born without power, material capability, and strategic bargaining. Secondly, the genesis of institutional fragmentation cannot be apart from normative and ideational dimension. The constituents of the institution are not only materials and procedural rules but also ideational elements such as norms (or principles), ideology, discourse, and culture that shape the appropriateness of behaviors. Thus, institutional fragmentation necessarily deserves a look on the contestation of appropriateness.

Thirdly, the emergence of new institution is not only consequence-oriented but also appropriateness-oriented. That is, newly emerging institution is originated from an existing institution as well as an

expected future function. Fourthly, both rational approaches and constructivist approach stand in limping leg to explain the creation of competing institution. Thus, a proper way is to make the strategic agent and the social constructive agent get married and bear a new explanatory mechanism.

On the basis of these implications, this chapter hypothesizes that the emergence of competing institution in a given issue area is the ƒstrategic social construction„ that combines the constructivist†s ƒcontested nature of normative change and normative influence„ with interest-oriented rational choice in three specific ways (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998, p.914). The next section unfolds the logic of normative contestation to analyze the institutional fragmentation in climate change issue area.