A single big regime would, from a theoretical perspective, be the most efficient way of handling things, and be most likely to prevent the potential abuses of forum-shopping and race-to-the-bottom that you could get if different areas, sectors, or groups of states set up different rules rather than all adhering to the same rules. On the other hand, a fragmented set of regimes, divided amongst different regions, sectors, or groups of states could be more tailored to individual needs, more politically realistic, and more practically manageable.
And as far as I'm concerned, that's most of what you can productively say about the issue. There are trade-offs.
This should not be taken to imply that that's all that has been said about it. For instance, Biermann, Pattberg, van Asselt, and Zelli (2009) provide a lengthy run-down of the various debates about unification (large-n agreements or "broad-but-shallow") vs. fragmentation (small-n agreements, or "narrow-but-deep"). Here's a small sub-set (just skim this, it's just here so you can share my pain):
So-called "narrow-but-deep" agreements that achieve substantial policy goals with relatively little participation may be superior to a situation of a less demanding regime even if it has full participation and compliance... Some strands of the literature on environmental policy analysis also suggest that fragmentation and regulatory diversity increase innovation and thus overall governance performance. ...
However, quickly negotiated small-n agreements might decrease also the level of ambition in the long run. At a later stage, when interest-constellations change and new situations arise, it might be difficult to reach agreement within the international community without an existing overall agreement that includes those structural elements. In addition, smaller agreements only with few like-minded countries will decrease the opportunity for creating package deals...
Economic modeling projects that compared different hypothetical universal and fragmented climate regimes - based on criteria of environmental effectiveness, cost effectiveness, and cost distribution - also concluded that the more fragmented a regime is, the higher the costs are to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations at low levels, because more ambitious reduction targets need to be achieved by a smaller number of countries. As Aldy, Barrett, and Stavins concur, '[c]urrent understanding of the benefit and cost functions characterizing climate change suggest that the latter type of policy [broad-but-shallow] is more likely to satisfy the dynamic efficiency criterion. ...
Similarly, economic model calculations show that emissions trading brings both higher environmental effectiveness and cost-effectiveness if based on a universal architecture. (26-28)
Biermann et al. 2009, "The Fragmentation of Global Governance Architectures: A Framework for Analysis." Global Environmental Politics 9:4.
Yeah. Don't you feel that if you were a policy-maker, you'd come out of this review with a good idea of what to push for?
Anyway, it was refreshing to read Keohane & Victor's 2011 paper this month, which I think I can basically sum up as saying, "Look, we can spill all the ink we want about this, but let's face it: how fragmented the regime is in a particular issue area is mostly an inevitable result of the characteristics of the issue area. There's really only so much we can do about it."
They're right about that! Sadly, I don't think they provide a very good answer about what that means for us (and policy-makers). My answer is that the point is not how fragmented the regime is or how long it takes to gain increasing coherence; rather, regimes (fragmented or otherwise) are successful based on entirely different criteria. Heh. Yep, I'm vague too; but only because I'm protecting my embryonic dissertation, y'all.
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