Enforcing the Climate Regime: Game Theory and the Marrakesh Accords

This article reviews basic insights about compliance and "hard" enforcement that can be derived from various non-cooperative equilibrium concepts, and evaluates the Marrakesh Accords in light of these insights. Five different notions of equilibrium are considered – the Nash equilibrium, the subgame perfect equilibrium, the renegotiation proof equilibrium, the coalition proof equilibrium, and the perfect Bayesian equilibrium. These various types of equilibrium have a number of implications for effective enforcement: (1) Consequences of non-compliance should be more than proportionate. (2) Punishment needs to take place on the Pareto frontier, rather than by reversion to some suboptimal state. (3) An effective enforcement system must be able to curb collective as well as individual incentives to cheat. (4) A fully transparent enforcement regime is not unconditionally a good thing. It is concluded that constructing an effective system for "hard" enforcement of the Kyoto Protocol is a formidable task that has only partially been accomplished by the Marrakesh Accords. In practice, however, the design of the compliance system for the climate regime had to balance a desire to minimize non-compliance against other important goals, including the need for due process.     

Sweden

European Journal of Political Research -     

Book reviews

Word Processing for Solicitors, Kevin Townsend and Kate Taphouse, Gower Publishing, 1983 £12.50

Computer Law, Colin Tapper, Longman, London and New York, 1983 Third Edition, £9.50

Understanding Computer Contracts, Martin Edwards, Waterlow Publishers, 1983 £6.50

Data Protection: Perspectives on Information Privacy, Edited by Colin Bourn & John Benyon, Department of Adult Education, University of Leicester, 1983 £5

The Computer in Court, Alistair Kelman and Richard Sizer, Gower Publishing Company, 1982 £15.50

Principles of Database Systems, Jeffrey D Ullman, Pitman Publishing Ltd, 1982 Second Edition £13.95

Computers and the Law Teacher, A report of the proceedings of a conference held at North Staffordshire Polytechnic, Edited by David V Marshall, North Staffordshire Polytechnic, 1983 £3     

Reports of our death are greatly exaggerated: A study of criminal justice academic program survival in Alabama

It has been suggested that the reduction of and eventual termination of LEEP funds for the education of inservice justice system employees would lead to a reduction in the size of criminal justice academic programs with attendant termination of many programs. However, academic programs are rarely terminated and tend to develop their own constituencies. This study examined the survivability of criminal justice academic programs in Alabama and found that while there may have been a reduction in size at some point, the criminal justice programs continue to survive, are experiencing growth in student population, and have longterm plans for program development.