Reframing climate diplomacy: power asymmetries, civil society, and the limits of multilateral environmental agreements

In a multipolar international system characterized by geopolitical fragmentation and economic asymmetry, climate diplomacy faces persistent structural constraints. This paper examines why treaty-based international environmental agreements have struggled to deliver durable mitigation outcomes, arguing that their limitations stem less from technical design flaws than from power asymmetries, domestic political incentives, and weak enforcement capacity. In response, the paper operationalizes the concept of transition regimes as a complementary governance architecture capable of functioning under conditions of partial cooperation and strategic competition. Drawing on K-group theory and two-level game logic, the analysis specifies how flexible coalitions of dominant, middle, and subnational actors can generate momentum without presuming universal consensus or stable great-power alignment. The paper further demonstrates how life-cycle-based emissions accounting can serve as a politically salient instrument for differentiated burden-sharing, and how civil society, market actors, and subnational governments function as legitimacy and compliance multipliers within transition regimes. By integrating insights from political economy and climate governance, the paper advances an analytical framework that shifts attention from idealized multilateralism toward pragmatic institutional design under fragmentation. The transition-regimes model is presented not as a replacement for existing treaties, but as a realistic pathway for sustaining climate cooperation when traditional multilateral approaches fall short.