Democracy in the shadow of climate change governance: Where systems fail and temperatures rise

The thesis seeks to investigate the intersection of climate change, political regimes, and governance structures, positioning climate change as a significant factor in the transformation of governance frameworks over the past several decades. Using the classification of political regimes as a primary unit of analysis, this thesis examines: (1) how such regimes have been conceptualized and classified since the 1970s, a period marked by the rise of the ‘crisis of democracy’; (2) the increasing centrality of climate change on international agendas, and (3) the emergence of expanded forms of governance that transcend national borders and traditional state frameworks. Hence, the central inquiry of this thesis is: To what extent has climate change—emerging with increasing urgency and political salience since the 1970s—affected the transformations of governance structures, particularly within political regimes, and subsequently, to what extent are contemporary political systems prepared to face the complex and multidimensional challenges of the climate crisis in a context of globalized and transnational governance?