🏠 Home Detailed notes Climate governance notes IMF + World Bank notes All judgement grids

How to use this

Two grids on the same template. The first is empty - print it, fill in each cell with a one-line note while you revise. The second is a worked example to check yourself against.

Each cell asks one question: does this row strengthen the column quality (mark +) or weaken it (mark -)? Then add a one-line note saying why. The plus and minus columns are deliberately not pre-printed - your judgement is the work.

Strong institutions = does this body or regime have real institutional machinery? Binding enforcement = can it enforce its rules against an unwilling state? States comply = do states actually follow it in practice? Measurable progress = has the underlying problem actually improved? Serves the weakest = does it protect or serve the least powerful? Great-power backing = do the most powerful states support it? Well dealt with = your overall verdict: has this been dealt with well?

Financial crises against climate - which does global governance handle better? +   -

Empty version. Print and fill in.
Body / regime+   - Strong institutions Binding enforcement States comply Measurable progress Serves the weakest Great-power backing Well dealt with
IMF crisis
lending
2008 crisis
response
Trade rules
(WTO)
Kyoto
Protocol
(1997)
Paris +
COP process
The market
shift
How to use the grid in an essay. The top three rows are economic crisis governance; the bottom three are the climate regime. The comparison is the sharpest on the syllabus because the machinery quality is so different: money governance has lenders with conditions and rules with penalties, climate governance has pledges with reviews. Read any column down both halves and the contrast is your paragraph.

Financial crises against climate - which does global governance handle better? +   -

Filled version. Use this to check your own grid - and tap any cell for the full detail behind the judgement.
Body / regime+   - Strong institutions Binding enforcement States comply Measurable progress Serves the weakest Great-power backing Well dealt with
IMF crisis
lending		 +A permanent crisis lender with rules, staff and resources. +Conditionality - compliance is the price of the loan. +States in crisis comply because the alternative is collapse. +Crises contained in months, not decades. -Austerity conditions land hardest on the poorest. +Weighted voting keeps the funders in charge. +Hard machinery that works - at a distributional price.
2008 crisis
response		 +Existing machinery repurposed within weeks. -Coordination, not compulsion - states acted from self-interest. +Every major economy moved, and moved together. +Depression averted - the counterfactual is the achievement. -Bailouts for banks; austerity afterwards for the rest. +Worked precisely because the great powers all wanted it to. +Cooperation at speed - when the threat is now.
Trade rules
(WTO)		 +Standing rules and dispute settlement. +Authorised retaliation gives rulings force. +Access to the system is worth more than any single dispute. +Decades of falling barriers and rising trade. -Rules written by, and for, the biggest traders. -Under strain when great powers ignore it - tariff wars test the system. +Rule of law, commercial edition.
Kyoto
Protocol
(1997)		 +The first binding climate machinery. -Binding on paper - the US never ratified and Canada walked away. -Targets held only where they were easy. -Global emissions kept rising throughout. -The North-South divide was built into its design. -Lost the United States and never bound China. -The binding experiment that taught the regime to stop binding.
Paris +
COP process		 +Universal, permanent, transparent - the machinery exists. -Voluntary NDCs; no penalty for missing them. -Free-riding exactly as the tragedy of the commons predicts. -Emissions rising; the 1.5C threshold crossed on annual average in 2024. +CBDR and Loss and Damage acknowledge the unfairness - funding lags. -One US election can swing the whole regime's credibility. -Everyone signed; the problem grew.
The market
shift		 -Markets, not machinery. -No rules - prices do the work. +States decarbonise when it pays - and increasingly it pays. +Renewable costs have fallen sharply - the real bright spot. -Transition finance still scarce where it is needed most. +Great powers compete to lead the industries. +Self-interest succeeding where treaties stalled - an AO3 gift.
What the filled grid shows. Read the two halves against each other. Binding enforcement is the decisive column: IMF conditionality and trade rules bite because money and market access can be withheld - the Paris Agreement deliberately abandoned binding targets after Kyoto failed to hold them. Measurable progress follows: crises get contained in months while emissions have risen through three decades of summits. The judgement line: global governance works where the cost of defection is immediate and financial, and fails where it is deferred and environmental - states fear the bond market today more than the climate in 2050.
See also
David Clayton Tutoring | davidjclayton@proton.me