ABSTRACT
The concept of international regimes is not specific to the study of global environmental governance. Regimes occupy an intermediary position: they are shaped by structures in place, including power distribution or prevailing ideas, but they also guide and constrain the behavior of actors. International regimes are not necessarily centered on a formal treaty or an intergovernmental organization. Research on environmental regimes started in the 1980s. In the 1990s, while scholars in other fields abandoned the concept of international regimes to its detractors, researchers in environmental governance worked to adapt it in several manners. In the 2000s, environmental scholars developed conceptual and methodological tools to assess regime effectiveness. They show that regimes have various impacts, including on neighboring regimes. Regimes can collide, compete against each other, develop synergies, or even merge. Since the beginning of the 2010s, regime analysts have been investigating institutional interactions between different regimes known as “regime complexes”.
