The legitimacy of multilateral climate governance: a deliberative democratic approach

Abstract

For almost three decades, the international community has grappled with the challenge of avoiding dangerous global climate change. The failure to produce a new comprehensive treaty in Copenhagen, in 2009, provoked debate about appropriate decision-making processes. Multilateralism has lost favor and credibility, while ‘minilateralism’ appears to be an idea whose time has come. Reconciling this approach with growing demands for legitimacy in global governance will be difficult but essential. Existing proposals for reforming multilateral negotiations promise greater effectiveness, but fall short on legitimacy. We propose that the dilemma of securing both effectiveness and legitimacy can be resolved in a deliberative democratic model that combines minilateralism with discursive representation. Legitimacy is therein sought in the resonance of collective decisions with public opinion, defined in terms of the provisional outcome of the engagement and contestation of discourses.

Keywords:

• legitimacy
• democracy
• multilateralism
• negotiations
• climate change

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this article were presented at the General Conference of the European Consortium of Political Research, Reykjavik, 2011, and the Annual Conference of the Australian Political Studies Association, Canberra, 2011. For help and comments we thank Robyn Eckersley, Eva Lövbrand, Peter Lawrence, and two anonymous reviewers. This research was supported by Australian Research Council Federation Fellowship FF00883522.

Notes

1. This section summaries key aspects of these discourses. A complete account of the constitutive elements of each discourse, as well as the discourse analysis method employed, is presented in Dryzek and Stevenson (2011). In summary, sample texts (written, audio, and visual) based on presenters and presentations were collected for each setting. A total of 326 texts were analyzed. These provided a basis for identifying and recording the constitutive elements of discourses (ontology; assumptions about natural conditions and relationships; agents and their motives; and key metaphors). This is consistent with Dryzek's (2005) discourse analytic approach. The patterns discussed in this section were discerned from this data.

2. To discern the presence or absence of public discourses, seven meetings (workshops and informal plenary sessions) were observed online and recorded: Informal Plenary, 1 April 2008, 11:00am, Bangkok (AWG-LCA 1); Informal Plenary, 2 April 2008, 10:00am, Bangkok (AWG-LCA 1); Informal Plenary continued, 2 April 2008, 3:00pm, Bangkok (AWG-LCA 1); Informal Plenary, 3 April 2008, 10:30am, Bangkok (AWG-LCA 1); Informal Plenary, 3 April 2008, 3:15pm, Bangkok (AWG-LCA 1); Workshop, 22 August 2008, 12:35pm, Accra (AWG-LCA 3); Workshop, 31 March 2009, 10:30am, Bonn (AWG-LCA 5). Each of the issues covered by the AWG-LCA mandate was covered. One hundred and seventy-seven statements were recorded. These are almost all statements made by state delegates, however when civil society observers were given the opportunity to present at the end of a meeting their statements were also recorded.

3. E.g. European Union (Czech Republic), Workshop, 31 March 2009, 10:30am.

4. E.g. Japan, Informal Plenary, 3 April 2008, 3:15pm.

5. E.g. Japan, Workshop, 31 March 2009, 10:30am.

6. E.g. United States, Informal Plenary, 3 April 2008, 10:30am.

7. Ibid.

8. These are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Some Annex I Parties articulate both 2 and 3.

9. E.g. Tuvalu, Climate Action Network, and Indigenous People's Forum on Climate Change, Workshop, 22 August 2008, 3:00pm; Friends of the Earth International, Workshop, 31 March 2009, 10:30am.

10. Philippines, Informal Plenary, 1 April 2008, 11:00am.

11. Namely, in the meetings analyzed: see note 2.

12. Friends of the Earth International, Workshop, 31 March 2009, 10:30am.

13. Ibid.

14. However, members of civil society are occasionally included in party delegations and this may present an opportunity for increasing the presence of non-dominant discourses.

15. Venezuela, Informal Plenary, 1 April 2008, 11:00am.

16. Bolivia, Workshop, 3 December 2008, Poznan, AWG-LCA 4. Note, this is Stevenson's translation of the original Spanish. The official English interpretation delivered on the UNFCCC webcast was uncharacteristically poor and contained errors and significant omissions. For more comprehensive analysis of Bolivia's representation of Green Radicalism, see Stevenson (2011).

17. For an account of the mood among Party delegations in the month before COP-15 see Rajamani (2009).

18. Accounts vary on which countries were invited to participate. Bodansky (2010) identifies the United States, the European Union (represented by Sweden as president and the European Commission), China, India, Brazil, South Africa, the UK, France, Germany, Denmark, Australia, Canada, Japan, Russia, Grenada, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Papua New Guinea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Colombia, Gabon, Indonesia, the Maldives, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and Mexico.

19. The following discussion draws on and summarizes Dryzek and Stevenson (2011, Section 4.2). It is based on interviews with 18 senior negotiators from 13 different Parties or negotiating blocs. These were conducted in person and by telephone between September 2009 and July 2010. Anonymity was assured. Interviews lasted between 15 and 45 minutes and were structured around six questions pertaining to the indicators of deliberative quality.

20. See Dobson (2011) on the significance of listening in deliberative democracy.

21. Harald Winkler and Joan Beaumont have represented South Africa in UNFCCC negotiations.

22. It is neither necessary nor desirable to aim for a representation of discourses that is proportionate to the number of people subscribing to each; discourses are not proxies for people.

23. Unlike Eckersley's conceptualization of the Climate Council, we see no reason why this body could not deliberate on all issues on the agenda (mitigation, adaptation, technology, finance, and shared vision). Indeed this wider mandate would be important for seeking legitimacy in the discursive terms advocated in this article (for the reason that many public discourses on climate change raise concerns beyond the question of emission targets).