This article investigates how future climate governance might be made legitimate and compatible with collective self-determination. I develop an original account of international legitimacy through a domestic analogy between relations among self-determining individuals and relations among self-determining political communities. I argue that ideally, future climate legislation should be authorized by an assembly of the world’s peoples and other relevant constituencies, through qualified majority voting, and it should be enforced through carbon tariffs applied by cooperating states. Though this proposal may not be immediately actionable, it performs an important guidance function, helping us evaluate currently feasible climate governance options according to whether they facilitate a transition toward this ideal.
July 20, 2023
In this journal article, which received the American Political Science Association's Theodore J. Lowi Award, BESI Climate lead Jonas Meckling and his coauthor Nicholas Goedeking, researcher at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability, advance a model of the politics of tipping points based on trans-subsystem policy feedback that results in "coalition cascades."
September 1, 2025
BESI climate affiliate Meg Mills-Novoa and Boise State human-environment geographer Sophia Borgias human-environment geographer conduct a systematic review of peer-reviewed articles and atlas profiles to understand the nature of contest hydropower development and the dynamics of social resistance. They find that in most cases, contested projects were backed by multiple types of funders, with a notable shift toward public-private and bilateral finance.
April 1, 2026
Historians Robyn d’Avignon (NYU) and Matthew Shutzer (UC Berkeley) coordinated the Forum section for a volume of the journal Environmental History, in which novel archival sources and approaches take center stage. Situated in case studies in Africa, the Middle East, the Pacific, and the United States, the essays call attention to how underutilized archival knowledge has begun to reframe environmental historians' approach to subterranean histories.
