Power and Climate Change Governance: Negative Power Externality and the Brazilian Commitment to the Paris Agreement

Abstract

Brazil is facing a climate change governance puzzle in which we can identify economic and political instabilities interacting in a conflicting manner with power relations. The exercise of institutionalized power through the national government and international institutions should be enough to reach an environmental second best outcome—the institutional power coordination of the environmental agenda. However, domestic governance and institutionalized power relations are working in a contradictory manner, since the second best solution is not enough to reach an effective agenda for climate change and sustainable development. We call this situation as a negative power externality. This could be a signal that the strictly economic view of the free market system is not sufficient to handle the environmental concerns and sustainable development policies.