Abstract
Since the adoption of the Paris Agreement, climate cooperation has increasingly migrated away from the universal, consensus-based forums of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) towards smaller, selective groupings of states. Sectoral pledges, trade-based instruments and bilateral financing partnerships now sit alongside and often ahead of the formal multilateral process. This article asks under what conditions such minilateral coalitions strengthen the multilateral climate regime rather than undermine it. Synthesizing regime complexity theory with experimentalist and catalytic- cooperation accounts of institutional design, this article proposes that the decisive variable is not the existence of small-group cooperation itself but whether a coalition remains functionally linked to the multilateral center through reporting, diffusion, and benchmarking mechanisms. Applying this framework illustratively to three prominent coalitions suggests that complementarity is neither automatic nor guaranteed and that the design choices made by coalition architects carry significant consequences for the long-term legitimacy of the UNCCC-centred regime.
Keywords:
climate governance; minilateralism; regime complexity; UNFCCC; institutional fragmentation
Introduction
The architecture of global climate governance looks markedly different today than it did at the signing of the UNFCCC in 1992. What was once envisioned as a single, universal negotiating process has evolved into a dense and expanding ecosystem of overlapping initiatives. The global Methane Pledge, the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), the proposed G7 Climate Club and the Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETPs0 each organize a subset around a specific climate objective, frequently bypassing the slower and more cumbersome consensus procedures of the Conference of the Parties (COP).
This shift has occurred alongside an intensification of great-power competition over green industrial policy, critical minerals and clean energy technology, all of which have made climate policy increasingly inseparable from questions of economic security and geopolitical rivalry. This proliferation of minilateral arrangements raises a governance question that has not yet been resolved in the literature: does the shift toward smaller, more selective coalitions strengthen the overall climate regime, or does it corrode the authority and legitimacy of the multilateral system built around the UNFCC? Existing scholarship offers two largely separate answers. Regime complexity theorists treat institutional fragmentation as a source of incoherence and strategic opportunity for powerful states, which can select whichever venue best serves their interests (Keohane and Victor 2011). Experimentalist and catalytic-cooperation theorists, by contrast, treat small-group cooperation as a productive and even necessary feature of a bottom-up climate architecture, one capable of generating momentum that eventually feeds back into the wider system (Hale 2020; Sabel and Victor 2017).
This article argues that both accounts are partially correct and that the relevant analytical task is not choosing between them but identifying the conditions under which a coalition behaves according to one logic rather than the other. Drawing on this synthesis, the article proposes an operational test for distinguishing complementary from corrosive fragmentation and applies it illustratively to three prominent coalitions. The purpose is not to offer a definitive verdict on any single initiative, but to demonstrate that the complementarity of minilateral climate governance is a matter of institutional design rather than an automatic property of small-group cooperation.
Two Logics of Fragmentation
The foundational account of institutional fragmentation in climate governance comes from Keohane and Victor (2011), who argue that the global climate regime is best understood not as a single institution but as a “regime complex”: a loosely coupled set of specific regimes that lack an overarching, hierarchical structure. Rather than treating this as a temporary or remediable failure, Keohane and Victor suggest that a regime complex is likely to persist because comprehensive, unified alternatives are politically infeasible given the diversity of state interests. On their account, fragmentation is not inherently corrosive; a regime complex can be judged effective or ineffective according to criteria such as coherence, accountability, sustainability, and adaptability. What matters is not whether the system is fragmented, but whether its parts interact coherently rather than working at cross purposes.
A different, though not incompatible, account emerges from scholarship on the design of the Paris Agreement itself. Falkner (2016) argues that the Agreement’s shift toward nationally determined, bottom-up pledges represented a deliberate move away from the top-down, binding target model that had proven unworkable under the Kyoto Protocol. Crucially, this bottom-up flexibility was paired with an international review and transparency architecture intended to generate pressure for states to increase their ambition over time. Building on this logic, Hale (2020) contends that climate cooperation should not be understood primarily as a free-rider problem to be solved through binding enforcement, but as a coordination challenge that can be addressed through “catalytic institutions” capable of shifting the preferences and strategies of participating and non-participating actors alike. Sabel and Victor (2017) offer a complementary account rooted in experimentalist governance, arguing that decentralized, iterative policy pilots are a rational response to deep uncertainty about costs and technological pathways, provided that pilots are benchmarked against one another and revised through structured learning.
A third relevant concept is minilateralism itself, defined by Naím (2009) as the pursuit of the smallest possible number of countries needed to achieve the largest possible impact on a given problem. Naím’s framing is instructive because it treats minilateral cooperation explicitly as an instrument for unblocking gridlock in universal institutions, rather than as a substitute for them. This distinction between using a coalition to solve a problem for the multilateral system, versus using it to escape that system altogether, running through Naím’s account, anticipates the operational distinction developed in the next section.
Toward an Operational Test for Complementarity
Read together, these literatures converge on a shared underlying criterion, even though each frames it differently. For Keohane and Victor, the relevant question is whether a regime complex remains coherent and accountable. For Falkner, it is whether decentralized pledges remain subject to comparative international review. For Hale, and for Sabel and Victor, it is whether small-scale cooperation diffuses outward and gets benchmarked against comparable efforts, rather than remaining a closed and isolated experiment. For Naím, it is whether a coalition is oriented toward solving a problem within the broader system or toward exiting that system altogether.
This convergence suggests an operational test with four observable indicators. First, reporting and review linkage: does the coalition’s activity feed into a common transparency or accounting framework, such as the UNFCCC’s enhanced transparency framework, or does it operate under an entirely separate and non-comparable reporting standard? Second, diffusion: does coalition membership or coalition-generated norms spread outward to non-member states over time, or does the coalition remain a static, closed grouping? Third, benchmarking: are the coalition’s specific commitments and outcomes compared against those of other initiatives and against the aggregate goals of the Paris Agreement, enabling structured learning? Fourth, orientation toward exit versus voice: is the coalition designed as a supplementary venue for solving a specific implementation problem, with an implicit or explicit intention of feeding results back into the UNFCCC process, or is it designed as a permanent alternative venue that allows powerful states to route around multilateral scrutiny entirely?
A coalition that scores positively on most or all of these indicators is more plausibly complementary: it uses the flexibility of small group cooperation to generate ambition and precedent while remaining functionally accountable to the wider regime. A coalition that scores negatively on most indicators functions closer to a genuine substitute, extracting the political and reputational benefits of climate leadership while avoiding the scrutiny that comes with full multilateral participation.
Illustrative Application
A brief, illustrative application of this framework to three prominent minilateral initiatives suggests that complementarity varies considerably across cases, even among initiatives that are often discussed together as examples of the same broader trend.
The Global Methane Pledge, launched at COP26, scores relatively well on diffusion and benchmarking. Its membership has grown substantially since launch, its emissions reduction target is explicitly framed relative to global totals, and its progress has been the subject of comparative tracking by independent monitoring initiatives. Its reporting linkage to the UNFCCC’s own transparency framework remains only partial, which represents the clearest gap between the Pledge and full complementarity.
The EU’s CBAM and the associated proposal for a G7 Climate Club present a more mixed picture. As a trade-enforced mechanism, CBAM has clarity. Still, its design has drawn sustained criticism from developing country exporters who were not party to its formulation and who face compliance costs without having shaped the underlying rules. On the exit-versus-voice indicator, CBAM sits closer to the corrosive end of the spectrum for non-member states, even if it functions as a coherent policy instrument for its own membership.
The Just Energy Transition Partnerships occupy a distinctive position because they are explicitly bilateral multilateral hybrids, pairing a small group of wealthy financing states with individual developing country partners such as Indonesia, South Africa, and Vietnam. Their orientation toward voice rather than exit is relatively strong, since partner countries are direct co-authors of investment plans rather than external targets of instruments they had no role in designing. Their benchmarking mechanism is comparatively weak, however, given the bespoke and country-specific nature of each partnership, which limits opportunities for structured cross-case learning.
Implications and Directions for Further Research
These illustrative applications suggest two implications. First, for coalition designers and policymakers, the framework offers concrete guidance: preserving complementarity requires deliberate attention to reporting linkage, openness to new membership, comparative benchmarking, and inclusive design processes that give affected non-members a genuine voice rather than treating them purely as compliance targets. Second, for scholars, the framework suggests that the debate between regime complexity and experimentalist accounts of climate fragmentation is less a theoretical disagreement than an empirical one: both dynamics are possible outcomes of minilateral cooperation, and which one materializes depends on institutional design choices that are, in principle, observable and comparable across cases.
Systematic empirical research is needed to test this framework more rigorously across a larger population of coalitions, using structured process tracing to establish not only whether coalitions score well on these indicators at a single point in time, but how that scoring changes as coalitions mature. Such research would also need to grapple with the equity dimensions of minilateral governance more directly, since exclusion from coalition design carries different consequences depending on a state’s exposure to climate impacts and its dependence on export markets affected by trade-linked instruments such as CBAM.
Conclusion
The proliferation of minilateral climate coalitions since the Paris Agreement is neither inherently a threat to multilateral climate governance nor an unambiguous solution to its shortcomings. Whether a given coalition strengthens or corrodes the authority of the UNFCCC-centered regime depends on identifiable and, to a significant degree, designable features: its linkage to common reporting standards, its openness to diffusion, its participation in comparative benchmarking, and its orientation toward voice rather than exit. Treating these as empirical variables rather than as fixed properties of minilateralism itself offers both a more precise research agenda and more actionable guidance for the states and institutions currently shaping the next generation of climate coalitions.
References
Falkner, R. (2016). The Paris Agreement and the new logic of international climate politics. International Affairs, 92(5), 1107–1125.
Hale, T. (2020). Catalytic cooperation. Global Environmental Politics, 20(4), 73–98.
Keohane, R. O., & Victor, D. G. (2011). The regime complex for climate change. Perspectives on Politics, 9(1), 7–23.
Naím, M. (2009, June 1). Minilateralism: The magic number to get real international action. Foreign Policy.
Sabel, C. F., & Victor, D. G. (2017). Governing global problems under uncertainty: Making bottom-up climate policy work. Climatic Change, 144(1), 15–27.
Van de Graaf, T. (2013). Fragmentation in global energy governance: Explaining the creation of IRENA. Global Environmental Politics, 13(3), 14–33.
Weischer, L., Morgan, J., & Patel, M. (2012). Climate clubs: Can small groups of countries make a big difference in addressing climate change? Review of European, Comparative & International Environmental Law, 21(3), 177–192.
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The views and opinions expressed in this article/paper are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Paradigm Shift.
Irsa Pervez is an MPhil Scholar at the National Defence University, Islamabad.
