The Presence of Cheap Riders in International Environmental Regimes

Sammanfattning: Tragedy of the commons is reflected in the international climate policy arena as countries are unable to coordinate and cooperate to reach the goals set within the conventional framework of the Paris Agreement. Although carbon mitigation plans have been submitted by member states, the pledges lack ambition and are not sufficient if humanity is to prevent detrimental anthropogenic warming. The difference between countries' commitments and the level of emissions the world needs to reduce to is defined as the emission gap. It is therefore more interesting to consider the concept of cheap riding instead of free riding, as institutional settings, national interests and opportunistic behaviors cause suboptimal, rather than zero contribution outcomes in the climate regime. With Collective action in an asymmetric world by Chen and Zeckhauser as the foundation of this thesis, we investigate the phenomenon where large and small countries cheap ride on each other, whilst relating this occurrence to nations' respective emission gaps. Our correlation test results indicate that countries with larger GNI have relatively less ambitious climate mitigation policies compared to countries with smaller GNI, suggesting that bigger states cheap ride on smaller nations. In other words, our findings oppose that of Chen and Zeckhauser.