Adoption and diffusion of mitigation policies in the multi-level EU system

Climate change is one of the greatest threats facing humanity in the 21st century. As worldwide patterns of temperature, precipitation and extreme weather event change, the delicate balance of climate and life is disrupted, with serious impacts on food and agriculture, water sources, ecosystem conservation, among others. The international climate change regime started out more than 25 years ago as a very advanced tool to combat the growing problem of the anthropogenic originated climate change phenomenon. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Kyoto Protocol were one of the first global level legally finding environmental regimes with quantitative targets to deal with a global challenge. Even that has been progress over these years; governance responses from the international climate regime have been widely critiqued in failing to achieve sufficient responses to the increasing emission of greenhouse gases (GHG). Many have suggested that the 'governance gaps' in the international agreement needs to be filled in by new and more innovative forms of governance. Moreover, recent research is revealing that these "new" and more dynamic forms of governing are appearing around, below and to the side of the UNFCCC, producing a much more complex, multi-centred and polycentric pattern. Given the urgency to reverse and combat negative effects of climate change, climate governance patterns and future possibilities need to be explored in a comprehensive manner. In this direction, the proposed research project aims to contribute to understanding of the role of the European Union (EU) -as a group of nation states- to fill in the 'governance gap' by engaging in mitigation policy innovation. The results of the research are expected to be relevant to academic audiences but also to support debates on mitigation policies and measures in the public and private sectors.
The three objectives of the research are:
(1) To deepen the understanding of the adoption and diffusion of mitigation policies in the EU from 2009 to 2020. Some studies have stated the rapid pace in the adoption and implementation of mitigation policies in Europe. This research purpose to develop an empirical study and develop a set of variables on the drivers and barriers surrounding the adoption and diffusion of mitigation policies across the 28 EU member states.
(2) To explore how horizontal diffusion processes interact with those dominated by vertical interactions. Moreover, this research also focuses on the difference and/or interplay between the national level decisions to take up new policies and lower levels of government. In order to address these issues, I intend to work within the theoretical framework of national policy innovation, 'Europeanization' and multi-level governance.
(3) To study whether the adoption and diffusion of mitigation policies in the EU is dependent upon the existence of a dynamic and ambitious international regime. It is commonly stated the importance of inter-state diffusion to get things moving in the absence of global agreements in the climate regime and these two modes of governing are presented as alternatives rather than complements. But is national diffusion totally independent of international regulatory factors? Or in case that patterns of dependency are tested, to what extent governance of climate change by diffusion can be faster and more productive to promote innovative policies than negotiating common standards through international processes?