Governance scope can bootstrap narrow and scale as commercial migration paths deepen over time

The Montreal Protocol demonstrates a bootstrap pattern for governance scope expansion tied to commercial migration path deepening. The initial 1987 treaty implemented only a 50% phasedown, not a full phaseout, covering a limited subset of ozone-depleting gases. As the source notes, 'As technological advances made replacements more cost-effective, the Protocol was able to do even more.' The treaty expanded over time, culminating in the Kigali Amendment (2016) that addressed HFCs as greenhouse gases. This pattern suggests governance can start with minimal viable scope where commercial migration paths exist, then scale incrementally as those paths deepen and new alternatives emerge. The key enabling condition is that the migration path must continue to improve economically — if alternatives had remained expensive or technically inferior, the narrow initial scope would have represented the governance ceiling rather than a bootstrap foundation.