About

Michele Betsill is Professor of Global Environmental Politics at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen and was a founding member of the Earth System Governance Project’s Scientific Steering Committee. Michele’s research focuses on global environmental governance, with a particular interest in the role of non-state actors in creating new mechanisms for steering society towards a more sustainable future. Her scholarship explores how these actors gain and maintain authority, the mechanisms through which they exercise agency, and the broader implications for the governance of global issues such as climate change, natural resource extraction, and marine conservation. Michele received her PhD in political science from the University of Colorado-Boulder. Prior to moving to the University of Copenhagen, she was a professor of political science at Colorado State University for more than 20 years. She has been a visiting faculty at the Economics University of Prague (2005), the National Center for Atmospheric Research (2006-07), the University of Colorado (2013) and Lund University (2014).
Books:
  • Transnational Climate Change Governance (with the Levehulme network on transnational climate governance, Cambridge, 2014)
  • Advances in International Environmental Politics, 2e. (co-edited with Kathryn Hochstetler and Dimitris Stevis; Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)
  • NGO Diplomacy: The Influence of Nongovernmental Organizations in International Environmental Negotiations (co-edited with Elisabeth Corell; MIT Press, 2008)
  • Cities and Climate Change: Urban Sustainability and Global Environmental Governance (with Harriet Bulkeley; Routledge, 2003).

Selected publications:

  • Michele Betsill. 2017. Trump’s Paris withdrawal and the reconfiguration of global climate change governance. Chinese Journal of Population, Resources and Environment. Published online 3 July 2017.
  • Michele Betsill and Dimitris Stevis. 2016. The Politics and Dynamics of Energy Transitions: Lessons from Colorado’s (USA) “New Energy Economy.” Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy. 34(2): 381-396. Doi: 0263774X15614668.
  • Michele M. Betsill. 2015. NGOs. In Research Handbook on Climate Governance, edited by Karen Bäckstrand and Eva Lövbrand. Edward Elgar Publishing.
  • Michele Betsill, Navroz Dubash, Matthew Paterson, Harro van Asselt, Antto Vihma, and Harald Winkler. 2015. Building Productive Linkages Between the UNFCCC and the Broader Global Climate Governance Landscape. Global Environmental Politics 15(2): 1-10.
  • Michele M. Betsill Kathryn Hochstetler and Dimitris Stevis eds. 2014. Advances in International Environmental Politics 2e. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Harriet Bulkeley Lilana Andonova Michele Betsill Daniel Compagnon Thomas Hale Matthew Hoffmann Peter Newell Matthew Paterson Charles Rogers and Stacy VanDeveer. 2014. Transnational Climate Change Governance. Cambridge University Press. (Runner-up for the International Study Association’s 2014 Harold and Margaret Sprout Award for the best book in global environmental politics)
  • Matthew Paterson Matthew Hoffmann Michele Betsill and Steven Bernstein. 2014. The Microfoundations of Policy Diffusion Towards Complex Global Governance: An analysis of the transnational carbon emissions trading network. Comparative Political Studies. 47: 420-449.
  • Michele Betsill. 2014. International Climate Change Policy: Complex Multilevel Governance. In The Global Environment: Institutions Law and Policy 4e. (R. Axelrod S. VanDeveer and D. L. Downie eds.). Washington DC: CQ Press.
  • Harriet Bulkeley and Michele M. Betsill. 2013. Revisiting the Urban Politics of Climate Change. Environmental Politics 22(1): 163-154.

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