The Structural Feasibility of Environmental Governance under Power Concentration in the Anthropocene

Nicolò Bellanca

Working Papers - Economics from Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze per l'Economia e l'Impresa

Abstract: Despite unprecedented advances in climate science, satellite monitoring, and digital environmental surveillance, global environmental degradation continues largely unabated. From climate change to deforestation and urban air pollution, improvements in knowledge and monitoring capacity have not translated into commensurate gains in governing performance. This article advances a structural explanation for this persistent gap by linking long-run environmental governability to the concentration of political–administrative power. It develops a framework showing that environmental governance remains institutionally feasible over time only if three interdependent capacities are jointly preserved: (i) reliable transmission of environmental information, (ii) autonomous corrective accountability, and (iii) sustained political orientation toward long-term environmental protection. The central claim is that sufficiently high power concentration systematically undermines at least one of these capacities through endogenous mechanisms affecting information hierarchies, oversight autonomy, and elite selection. Once this occurs, governance failure becomes embedded in institutional architecture rather than remaining contingent on policy design, incentives, or declared political intentions. The framework is situated within the Earth System Governance literature on institutional architecture, polycentricity, accountability, and information politics. Its diagnostic implications are illustrated through comparative patterns from global atmospheric governance (Montreal Protocol versus Paris Agreement), Amazon deforestation governance in Brazil, and urban air-quality governance in China. The analysis clarifies why technological advances can enhance governance performance only within structurally viable institutional configurations, and why, beyond this region of feasibility, additional monitoring, surveillance, or modeling exhibit diminishing or null returns. By reframing environmental governance as a problem of structural feasibility under power concentration, the article contributes to current debates on the institutional conditions under which long-term environmental protection remains politically and administratively sustainable in the Anthropocene.

Keywords: Environmental governance; Power concentration; Institutional feasibility; Polycentricity; Accountability; Information and monitoring; Elite selection; Anthropocene; Institutional architecture (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D73 H11 Q50 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44 pages
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env
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