How does institutional complexity affect effectiveness? This chapter addresses this question for the three policy fields studied in this book: renewable energy, fossil fuel subsidy reform, and carbon markets. The chapter takes a comprehensive perspective across the three case studies by examining three dimensions of effectiveness: output (generating regulations and intrastructure), outcome (changing behaviour), and impact (solving the problem). The study relies on a two-track approach, integrating assessments by researchers and interviews with key stakeholders. The results show how the considerable institutional complexity in the climate-energy nexus has consequences for effectiveness. Notwithstanding the methodical challenges for evaluating effectiveness under conditions of institutional complexity, these insights demonstrate that such an assessment is of high importance and should be continued for other contexts of global governance. In particular, the findings of this chapter help to identify suitable management options – i.e. options for formally regulating the linkage between institutions – for the climate-energy nexus. With these suggestions and its conceptual and empirical novelty, the chapter contributes to a variety of literatures – on climate and energy governance, on institutional complexity, and on effectiveness – while being of interest to different stakeholders operating in the climate-energy nexus.

The concluding chapter first summarizes some of the volume’s main results along the four evaluative themes. In terms of coherence and management, the three policy fields under scrutiny – renewable energy, fossil fuel subsidy reform, and carbon pricing – are roughly marked by coordination, rather than competition or outright harmony. Regarding legitimacy, the specializations and work backgrounds of stakeholders lead to considerable variations in their perceptions of institutions. For effectiveness, institutional complexity plays both a supportive and a hindering role across all three cases. Following the summary, a series of policy recommendations is developed, including: improving awareness of each other’s activities to avoid duplication of efforts and conflicting messages; aligning interpretations of central concepts, i.e. what constitutes renewable sources of energy, fossil fuel subsidies and carbon pricing; building stronger connections to counterparts in other areas of the climate-energy nexus and beyond; and entrusting one institution with an orchestrator role. Finally, the chapter suggests a future research agenda on the governance of the climate-energy nexus, e.g. to learn more about the causes of institutional complexity, to identify conditions for successful management efforts, and to examine further subfields and even other domains outside the climate-energy nexus.

This chapter establishes four evaluative themes that will be employed across this volume to analyze the institutional complexity of policy fields in the climate-energy nexus: coherence, management, legitimacy, and effectiveness. Coherence among institutions is conceptualized along four dimensions: convergence on an overarching core norm for the policy field, balanced coverage and distribution of memberships (private, public, hybrid), balanced coverage and distribution of governance functions (standards and commitments, operational activities, information and networking, financing), and mechanisms underlying cross-institutional relations (cognitive, normative, behavioural). Management will be examined according to types of managing agents, political levels (from domestic to global), and the consequences of management efforts in enhancing coherence. Legitimacy will be assessed along nine dimensions, among them expertise, transparency, accountability, or procedural and distributive fairness. Effectiveness, finally, will be examined in terms of normative and legal output produced by the institutions, their behaviour-changing outcome, and their ultimate problem-solving impact. Altogether, the four themes and their dimensions make up a novel framework for an in-depth analysis of a governance nexus. They help us examine a variety of important questions in a comparative research design, combining a high level of ambition with feasibility and novelty.

The introduction first explains the rationale and theoretical and empirical contributions of the edited volume. The book seeks to address a considerable gap in knowledge of the nature of the relationship between institutions governing the climate-energy nexus in a multilevel context. In particular, there is scant research on consequences on the legitimacy and effectiveness of governance arrangements and the climate-energy nexus as a whole. For an in-depth analysis of institutional complexity in the nexus, we selected three policy fields as case studies: renewable energy, fossil fuel subsidy reform, and carbon pricing. We made this choice since the three cases represent urgent and major components of the climate-energy nexus, since they vary considerably in the number and mix of institutions that govern them at the international level, and since they differ in their positioning within the climate-energy nexus – with carbon pricing primarily a climate change issue, renewable energy lying at the core of energy governance, and fossil fuel subsidy reform falling in between. The chapter concludes with an outline of the ccontributions to the book, structured along the volume’s three parts on mapping (I) coherence and management (II), and legitimacy and effectiveness (III).

International institutions established to promote carbon pricing and carbon markets (including carbon taxation, emissions trading and offsets) constitute a rapidly growing alphabet soup of acronyms straddling the boundaries between public and private organisations. All institutions within the carbon pricing sub-field subscribe to the norm that climate change should be addressed through placing a price on emissions. The various institutions perform different roles. While several of the private institutions set standards and commitments regulating how private actors should trade emission allowances and offset emissions, public and hybrid institutions tend to play information dissemination and networking roles focused on supporting political decisions to implement carbon pricing and to link carbon markets. The carbon pricing sub-field is characterised by coordination or co-existence, with significant attempts to establish a division of labour, and only little outright competition or conflict. Focusing on the interlinkages between the UNFCCC and the World Bank institutions that address carbon pricing, we found that also the relationships between these two particular sides are characterised by close coordination. This coordination is informed by cognitive and normative interaction mechanisms, while differences between both sides are managed in a bottom-up, incremental manner.

The growing body of scholarship on ʿulamaʾ in the twentieth century tends to focus on the rise of their institutions, the development of their teaching, their relationship to the state and their international linkages. There has also been some interest in how they began to use the media, in particular print. However, the depiction of ʿulamaʾ in modern fiction has received little scholarly attention. This is unfortunate, as it might yield insights into the changing role and status of the ʿālim in modern Muslim societies. As vehicles of mass culture, film and later television are interesting, not just for their mass culture appeal, but also for their capacity to create identifiable images and stereotypical roles. This chapter explores the changing perceptions of the role of the ʿulamaʾ by focusing on one particular activity of theirs, the delivery of the Friday sermon, and on how the films and TV dramas relate them to their audiences.

Analysing a specific scene can be fruitful. Film narrative is composed in edited scenes of light and sound. Specific locations, acts or characters evoke particular responses in audiences, often supported by standard shots or sounds. For instance, a scene of a muezzin's call to prayer, with a panoramic shot of a rural landscape and village, is a staple of Egyptian films. This scene connotes the tranquil, peaceful rhythm of daily life as it once was, and perhaps ought to be (Qasim 1997: 67). Films rarely depict the call to prayer in a busy, modern Cairo district – although it takes place there as often – but the meaning would be much less clear and identifiable to cinema audiences.

The scene of the Friday khuṭba is well known to most Muslim men in the Arab world. Loudspeakers, radio and television have familiarised other groups in Arab society with sermon content, and they readily recognise the scene. The use of the word minbar (pulpit) as the title of Islamic periodicals and TV programmes testifies to the association of the khuṭba with authoritative religious address in contemporary Arab public imagery. It is an instance of communication and of collective attention, and thus eminently suited to narratives of social engagement and action, of communal life and of religious inspiration as the mover of men. Hence, it makes for an attractive scene in a film.