Global democracy and earth system governance

ECOLEC-03882; No of Pages 10 Ecological Economics xxx (2011) xxx–xxx

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Ecological Economics j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / e c o l e c o n

Global democracy and earth system governance John S. Dryzek, Hayley Stevenson ⁎ Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia

a r t i c l e

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Article history: Received 28 July 2010 Received in revised form 26 January 2011 Accepted 27 January 2011 Available online xxxx Keywords: Earth system governance Deliberative democracy Climate change Deliberative system

a b s t r a c t The issue of climate change confirms the global reach of earth system governance, whose legitimacy and effectiveness could gain from democratisation. While electoral democracy as practised in states provides no model for global democracy, lessons drawn from the performance and history of states prove helpful in identifying the elements that a well functioning ecological democracy ought to strive for. We capture these elements through reference to the idea of a deliberative system, and show how the idea of such a system can be used to analyse, evaluate, and provide prescriptions for the global governance of climate change. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction The relationship between democracy and environmental affairs now has a long history of study. In both normative and empirical literatures, the balance of opinion has over the years come down on the side of the efficacy of democracy. However, in normative thinking, much turns on what kind of democracy is at issue. In empirical study, a lot depends too on what indicators of environmental performance are used, and whether there is much of an effect independent of the level of economic development (if the environmental Kuznets curve that links eventually positive performance with the level of economic development holds). The rise to political pre-eminence of the climate change issue creates new challenges because the issue is so clearly global, and so clearly one that has eluded existing governments of all sorts, as well as existing transnational and global political processes. The public opinion that drives democracy may only move decisively in the direction of action when its effects are large, visible, and immediate; but by then it may be too late. This is what Giddens (2009) calls “Giddens's paradox”, though it had of course been common wisdom in environmental studies for several decades before Lord Giddens so thoughtfully bestowed its new name. Losing patience with the seemingly interminable machinations of polycentric politics, some observers of climate change politics have called for more authoritarian approaches (for example, Shearman and Smith, 2007). James Lovelock in a 2010 interview asserted that “Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches,

⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +61 2 6125 1723. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (J.S. Dryzek), [email protected] (H. Stevenson).

democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while” (Guardian, 2010). Some point to the likelihood that the East Asian approach to environmental governance is likely to be as authoritarian as the East Asian approach to economic development (Beeson, 2010). These treatments echo works from the 1970s, when a discourse of limits and survival was accompanied by calls for authoritarian government by Garrett Hardin (1977), Robert Heilbroner (1974), William Ophuls (1977), and others. Even if global authoritarianism were possible (which it is not), it would still be desirable to think about global democracy first — for the sake of legitimacy, even before we get to the question of environmental performance. Conventional liberal democracy, stressing competitive elections and individual rights under a constitution, is a non-starter at the global level for many reasons, including its close ties as a model to developed Western states (on this point, see also Spagnuola, 2011). It is much more fruitful to think in terms of deliberative democracy. As Sen (2003) points out, democracy as voting is a Western construct, democracy as public reason and discussion is more universal. There is a substantial literature that points to the ecological efficacy of deliberative democracy (Smith, 2003; Baber and Bartlett, 2005), which can be joined to an emerging literature on global deliberative politics (for example, Bohman, 2007). Many international relations scholars would at this point object that we have jumped the gun: that international politics lies in a realm beyond authoritarianism and democracy, where international regimes are created by negotiations between states (or through imposition by hegemonic states), but otherwise anarchy reigns. We assume that in light of contemporary global demands for legitimacy and accountability in global governance for climate change in particular (Biermann and Gupta, 2011), such a response will not do. And it is not as though negotiations between states have been a resounding success in

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Please cite this article as: Dryzek, J.S., Stevenson, H., Global democracy and earth system governance, Ecol. Econ. (2011), doi:10.1016/j. ecolecon.2011.01.021

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J.S. Dryzek, H. Stevenson / Ecological Economics xxx (2011) xxx–xxx

producing an international climate regime that is either effective or legitimate. In this article we show that recent work on the idea of a deliberative system enables fruitful contemplation of the elements of global democracy for earth system governance (see Biermann et al., 2010, for an overview of earth system governance challenges). The task of identifying the key elements and characteristics of a deliberative system is aided by a brief review of the comparative environmental performance of states. Who performs best, and why? What shortcomings remain? We show in the next section that the environmental performance of consensual democracies is generally superior to that of adversarial democracies. However, the close proximity between the state and civil society in consensual democracies tends to thwart radical critique, which is necessary insofar as their environmental performance remains inadequate. In a global deliberative system, then, we should be looking for critical distance between empowered and public space. The value in thinking about global democracy in deliberative terms is then illustrated by the global governance of climate change. A rudimentary deliberative system already exists in this arena but its shortcomings are significant. The challenge for democracy and ecologically effective climate governance is to find ways to overcome these shortcomings. 2. Lessons from the Environmental Performance of States To begin with the question of who does best: consensual democracies consistently out-perform other kinds of states. An inspection of the environmental performance league tables sponsored by the World Economic Forum shows many of the top positions occupied by European consensual democracies. (The rankings are online at http:// epi.yale.edu/Countries). Scruggs (2003) finds that there is a strong positive association between degree of corporatism and environmental policy performance. Corporatism, a sub-category of consensual democracy that involves joint policy making by representatives of peak business and labour organisations and government executives, blurs the divide between government and opposition, and often coalition governments incorporate parties representing a broad range of social interests. While there is little agreement on the components of environmental performance indicators, there is a convergent validity across the findings of studies using different sorts of indicators (for further comparative studies, see Jänicke, 1992; Jahn, 1998). Poloni-Staudinger (2008) finds that consensual democracies do better on many pollution control measures. Of course there are other factors that enter into explanation of cross-national variation in the environmental performance of states. Our claim is not that consensual democracy is the only explanatory variable that matters, merely that it is a particularly robust predictor. When it comes to climate policy in particular, the adversarial democracy of the UK has recently shown signs of breaking the mould by taking a leadership position; but we note that whatever policy commitments the labour government (defeated in 2010) adopted, UK leadership has yet to be reflected in outstanding performance. What is responsible for the relatively good performance of consensual democracies? It could be the efforts they make to integrate seemingly conflicting values, which is why the discourse of ecological modernisation, putting environmental and economic values in a positive–sum relationship, flourishes in these states (Mol et al., 2009). It could be their economic systems: consensual democracies tend to have what Hall and Soskice (2001) call cooperative market economies, while adversarial democracies tend to have competitive market economies (and so embrace neo-liberal economics). Another possibility is that consensual systems are more deliberative: that is, politics involves a greater ratio of communicative action to strategic action than in adversarial democracies. Steiner et al. (2004) find in their comparative study of parliamentary debates that consensual democracies such as Switzerland and Germany feature

substantially higher quality deliberation than adversarial democracies such as the United States and United Kingdom. Their finding is based on the careful application of a ‘discourse quality index’ that codes all interventions in debates on a number of criteria derived from Habermas' account of communicative action, and then sums the scores and divides by the number of interventions to get an average for the debate as a whole. Deliberative, communicative action ought in theory to promote environmental values because in such action, argument is effective to the degree it proceeds in terms generalisable to all parties concerned (Dryzek, 1987: 204–5). Ecological values are examples (of course not the only examples) of such values, so there is every reason to expect such values to come to the fore to the degree interchange is deliberative. Evidence from designed deliberative ‘mini-publics’ composed of ordinary citizens on environmental issues frequently shows that deliberation among participants induces such a green shift (Niemeyer, 2004). So for example Fishkin (2009: 124) trumpets the deliberative polls held on energy issues in Texas and Louisiana. After deliberating on the energy supply issue, the citizen participants came down decisively on the side of greater investment in renewable energy and conservation — and the Texas state government adopted some of the recommendations. Dryzek et al. (2009) show that minipublics organised on the issue of genetically modified foods in many countries almost always come to conclusions that are more precautionary than the Promethean commitments of political elites, who are much more inclined to favour GM agriculture as an ingredient of conventional economic growth. A more subtle analysis of both the ecological effectiveness of consensual states and its limits is made possible by taking a look at historical dynamics. Consider the environmental histories of Norway and (West) Germany, as analysed in Dryzek et al. (2003). Norway exemplifies the actively inclusive consensual state. Formations that in other countries inspire and constitute social movements are in Norway integrated into the state from the very beginning. So from the early 1970s, environmentalists participated in key policy making committees, and were funded by government. The membership of these organisations has always been tiny, as they do not need members. While all this may look exemplary, what it means is that Norway can institutionalise only moderate forms of environmentalism and ecological modernisation. In contrast, Germany for a long time featured a lively green public sphere mobilising large numbers of activists, organisations, and ecological research institutes at a distance from the state. Until the mid 1980s, Germany's corporatist system of government was closed to environmentalists (and other social movements outside the traditional corporatist triumvirate of government executives, business, and labour). It was in Germany's oppositional green public sphere that some of the most profound and thoroughgoing green critiques of the political economy were generated. Since the mid-1980s many activists made the long March from oppositional public sphere to state institutions, as Germany's corporatist system opened up. But many of these activists carried at least a memory of radical critique. If the performance of even the best consensual states is ecologically inadequate, then such radical critique is a necessity. And if consensual states cannot generate this kind of critique themselves, they must import it from elsewhere. Or to put it slightly differently, in a way that will support some generalisations we will make in a moment, effective environmental governance benefits from both deliberative empowered space and deliberative public space at a critical distance. Any consensual government in empowered space should be linked to contestation in public space. This insight can be applied to governance of any kind and level: from the local to the global, from sovereign government to informal networks. These generalisations drawn from comparative studies of states will not automatically apply to the structurally different international global polity (for which we can have no direct cross-sectional



comparative evidence, because there is only one international polity). We can be confident in making the extrapolation to the international polity only to the extent the mechanisms that explain the superior performance of deliberative processes at national and sub-national levels can also be found in the international polity. Abstracting from the prior discussion and the larger literature, the four most important mechanisms are: 1. Integration of multiple perspectives on complex issues. 2. Prioritisation of public goods and generalisable interests over sectional interests. 3. Facilitation of positive sum discourses such as ecological modernization. 4. Co-existence of moments of consensus and contestation. All four are in fact readily found at the global level. Indeed, precisely because there is no central executive authority that can impose solutions and so pre-empt deliberative resolution, they may be more readily available in international affairs than in many states — especially when it comes to environmental issues. We stress availability rather than actuality because existing global climate politics does not feature full realisation of any of these four mechanisms. In the recent UNFCCC negotiations, the most problematic of these mechanisms has been (2), as competing sectional interests have stymied effective global agreement. Yet even here we note that powerful interests often couch their arguments in generalisable terms. So China and the G77 make appeals that justify their negotiating position in terms of generalisable notions of climate justice. Our point is not that the existing global governance is deliberative and effective, but that it could become more so. To show how, we now introduce the idea of a deliberative system that would provide a home for all four mechanisms.

3. The Deliberative System The notion of a deliberative system was first introduced by Mansbridge (1999). Hers and subsequent treatments by Parkinson (2006), Hendriks (2006) and Goodin (2005) were limited by their close ties to the institutions of a liberal democratic state. A more generally applicable conceptualisation of a deliberative system (presented initially in Dryzek, 2009) proceeds with the following elements. While consistent with the deliberative approaches to global democracy surveyed by Smith and Brassett (2008), this conceptualization is novel in its use of the system framing. 3.1. Public Space In public space a diversity of viewpoints and discourses can interact, ideally without legal restriction. Discourses might be engaged by activists, social movements, journalists, bloggers, or ordinary citizens. Spaces might exist or be created in connection with, for example, physical places (classrooms, bars, and cafés), virtual locations (internet forums), the media, social movements, public hearings, and designed citizen forums. 3.2. Empowered Space Empowered space is where authoritative collective decisions get produced, and can feature, for example, legislatures, constitutional courts, corporatist councils, empowered stakeholder dialogues, international negotiations, governance networks, or international organisations. Empowered space in some kinds of governance arrangements may take on a more informal character (for example, in many of the cases of community-based governance of common pool resources described by Ostrom (1990)).

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3.3. Transmission Public space can influence empowered space through for example political campaigns, the argument and rhetoric of political activists, and cultural change initiated by social movements that eventually changes the outlooks of those in empowered space. 3.4. Accountability Democratic legitimacy requires that empowered space be held accountable to public space.1 The most common means within democratic states is through elections, though these are not necessarily very deliberative affairs. But accountability means, quite literally, having to give an account; it does not have to involve the possibility of sanction through, for example, removal from office.2 3.5. Meta-Deliberation Meta-deliberation is the reflexive capacity of those in the deliberative system to contemplate the way that system is itself organised, and if necessary change its structure. As Thompson (2008: 15) puts it, not all practises and arrangements need to be deliberative all the time, but they do need to be justifiable in deliberative terms. 3.6. Decisiveness The deliberative system should be consequential when it comes to the content of collective outcomes. That is, deliberation should not be a sideshow that obscures where key decisions actually get made. This sixth aspect drives home the idea that democratic deliberation should be consequential as well as authentic and inclusive. This conceptualization of the deliberative system yields a general template for the analysis and evaluation of any real-world political process. Its underpinning is the philosophical claim (which has empirical support) that deliberative democracy yields legitimate outcomes. In the context of environmental affairs in particular, the desirability of its applicability rests in addition on both theoretical and empirical claims about the efficacy of deliberative democracy in resolving complex problems and providing public goods. The conceptualization is not in itself a normative model because there are many different ways each of the elements could conceivably be realised. This kind of thinking can be applied to all kinds of settings, including ‘post-Westphalian’ ones involving transnational networked governance (Braithwaite, 2007), whose democratisation turns on a differentiation of empowered space and public space within the network, and the presence of contestation within public space. Such contestation can be impeded by discursive hegemony; so it is important to have multiple and contesting discourses, engaged by all those affected by network decisions (or their representatives). Hegemony characterised global financial networks prior to the crash of 2008. Such public space as did exist was populated by financial journalists and other cheerleaders for the dominant discourse. Criticism of the system that did occur was at an irrelevant distance with no impact on the production of collective outcomes in the network. 1 As Mitchell (2011) notes , transparency is essential for accountability because actors can only be called on to give an account of behaviour that they are known to be engaged in. 2 Although sanctions are a central element of many accountability models, they are not a strictly necessary element. As a result of the social justice advocacy carried out by NGOs, transnational institutions are increasingly forced to justify their actions in terms of a range of discourses. Little or no sanctioning power is available to these NGOs, but their actions make the world more democratic than it would otherwise be (Dryzek and Niemeyer, 2008: 491).


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In the following section, we use this theoretical account of a deliberative system to analyse, evaluate, and provide prescriptions for democratising the global governance of climate change. 4. The Global Governance of Climate Change 4.1. Public Space The public space of global climate governance is populated by a large and diverse range of civil society and commercial actors, including business leaders, entrepreneurs, activists, church groups, youth groups, trade unions, non-government organisations, journalists, and bloggers (sometimes grouped under the heading of global civil society). Major inequalities of access to global public space exist (as they of course do nationally). Nevertheless it is plausible to think in terms of representation of the discourses that go some way toward capturing the diversity of values, interests, and needs of the world's peoples — including (as we will show) the least advantaged and most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. So rather than attempt to define the contributions of all the various actors, a more fruitful exercise is to identify the set of discourses represented within the public space. This move is consistent with normative theories of deliberative democracy that emphasise de-centred communication within the broad public sphere (Benhabib, 1996; Habermas, 1996; Dryzek, 2000). The growing range of issues being absorbed into the climate agenda has been accompanied by a growing number of climate discourses. Identifying the character of distinct discourses and their inter-relationships is important for assessing the health of the public space itself, as well as the inclusiveness of representation in the wider deliberative system. The programme of side events that runs alongside the annual Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is a good place to examine empirically the discourses found in public space. A discourse analysis of applications for the side event programme of the Conference of the Parties (COP-15) in 2009 in Copenhagen points to the following patterns.3 Climate discourses can be classified on two dimensions: one broadly economic and the other broadly political. The economic orientation can be understood as either reformist or radical in relation to the parameters of the existing liberal capitalist international economic system. Reformists accept these basic parameters. From a radical perspective, existing economic objectives and values are themselves deeply implicated in the problem of climate change and ought to be the focus of more transformative actions. The political orientation of climate discourses can be understood as either conservative or progressive. The conservative position envisages that strategies to address climate change will be designed 3 The Secretariat received 560 applications for side events at COP15. The compiled list of applicants was used to generate a sample for analysis. For the purpose of identifying discourses in public space, events proposed by government or intergovernmental agencies were excluded, as were multiple proposals by the same organisation. The remaining 344 applicants were categorised on the basis of their principal theme (for example, justice, spirituality, adaptation, indigenous peoples, forests, financing, security, and technology), to ensure that the sample was representative of all key topics. From these categorised events, a sample of 120 applicants was selected for a discourse analysis. The selection was affected by two limitations: material for analysis had to be available on the internet, and it had to be available in a language in which at least one author is proficient (English and Spanish). Materials were sourced from applicant organisations' websites for analysis. The majority of these materials were written texts (declarations, information brochures and publicity, press releases, UNFCCC written submissions, website text, research and position briefings, and magazine articles); there were also a few posters and videos in the sample. These materials provided the basis for identifying and recording the constitutive elements of discourses (ontology; assumptions about natural conditions and relationships; agents and their motives; and key metaphors) (see Dryzek, 2005: 17–19). The overall message of each piece of material was also recorded to assist with identifying patterns across them. The patterns discussed in this article were discerned from this data.

and enacted within the parameters of existing institutions and power structures. The progressive position is that the existing distribution of power is inadequate and inappropriate. Authority for designing and enacting strategies should thus be shared with, or transferred to, presently disempowered actors at global, national, or local levels. Bringing together these two analytical dimensions (the economic and the political) generates a four-cell typology of climate discourses, as shown in Fig. 1. The discourses captured in this typology are those that accept the hypothesis of anthropogenic climate change as valid and thus engage with the debate of how the international community should respond to the problem. In the background there is a persistent discourse of scepticism of the existence of climate change and denial of the need to do much about it. 4.1.1. Mainstream Sustainability The first class of climate discourses is economically reformist and politically conservative. Action to address climate change can be defined within the parameters of the existing economic order by actors and institutions already endowed with power and authority. Competition and the profit motive are inherent in human relations, but sustainability and material growth prove compatible. When adaptation is recognised by these discourses it tends to be understood in terms of development and risk management. Three distinct discourses within this category diverge in terms of how and why climate change ought to be absorbed into existing development. 4.1.1.1. Climate Marketisation. All aspects of global climate governance can effectively be brought under the logic of the market. Emissions can be reduced most efficiently through cap and trade schemes. Carbon emitted through deforestation can be reduced by creating market mechanisms that make it more profitable for landowners to keep their trees in the ground rather than fell them. Emissions-intensive industries and environmentally-conscious individuals can then purchase offsets that negate the impact of their emissions — the environment benefits and nobody loses. Global carbon markets would allow impoverished communities in the global south to profit by auctioning their inaccessible allocations of atmospheric space. Development and climate change mitigation are thus rendered compatible. The market can also be extended to adaptation. Vulnerability of life and property can be ameliorated through climate insurance, which transfers the risk to a commercial entity. Businesses are motivated to contribute to mitigation due to a desire to profit from new markets, compliance with legislation, propagating a responsible image, and genuine concerns about climate change. While the agency of business is stressed, governments too have a role in creating markets in emissions and offsets. Ecological modernisation is based on the premise that economic development and climate change mitigation can be mutually supportive. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions presents an opportunity for efficient and productive economies in which green technologies become the motor of economic development. Recognising that “pollution prevention pays” will spur a shift away from emissions-intensive production towards technologies such as renewable energy, biochar, and

Economic Orientation Reformist

Radical

Mainstream Sustainability

Limits

Conservative

Progressive

Expansive Sustainability

Green Radicalism

Political Orientation

Fig. 1. Classifying climate discourses.



carbon sequestration. But market forces alone will not propel this modernisation process. In the absence of appropriate policy and regulation, climate-friendly technologies and services will not be able to compete. Governments thus have a vital role to play in enabling ecologically as well as economically rational decisions from the private sector. This requires internationally negotiated GHG stabilisation targets, voluntary or mandatory sectoral standards, a monetary value applied to greenhouse gases, publicly-funded research and development, and strong intellectual property rights regimes. Energy security interprets climate change through the prism of existing energy and security concerns. This discourse, increasingly salient in the United States during recent years (Schlosberg and Rinfret, 2008), focuses on opportunities presented by the climate challenge for promoting changes in the supply and source of energy. The energy responsible for emitting carbon dioxide is the same energy imported from politically and economically volatile regions. A safe climate is thus synonymous with energy independence and domestic security. Maximising efficiency and domestic renewable energy are justified for reasons largely unrelated to ecological and climate concerns. For some, all this lends new legitimacy to nuclear power. Energy security emphasises the agency of national policy-makers, whose decisions affect both climate and security. These actors are primarily motivated by a concern for economic growth and national security. 4.1.2. Expansive Sustainability The second class of climate discourses is economically reformist but politically progressive in its stress on a redistribution of power. 4.1.2.1. Equitable Modernisation. Climate change mitigation is potentially profitable so it can be reconciled with decarbonised economic development. However, unlike ecological modernisation, the objective should not be simply decoupling profit and pollution within industrial economies; instead, modernisation should serve human rights and needs while evening out inequalities between industrialised and developing countries. This may require carefully designed and monitored market mechanisms, or transfer of mitigation and adaptation technology from north to south. In contrast to ecological modernisation, equitable modernisation perceives intellectual property rights as an obstacle to modernisation. Wealthy governments thus have a duty to transfer technology to developing countries so that future development and trade can occur on a clean and even playing field. A wider range of actors should be drawn into decisionmaking. Thus this discourse recognises the potential agency of (for example) local communities, indigenous peoples, forest-dependent populations, youth, and non-government organisations. Mobilising their agency requires a shift away from traditional decision-making processes that favour distant authorities in favour of mutual learning and capacity building among many actors at different levels. Natural integrity accepts ‘sustainable growth’ but insists that strategies for addressing climate change while promoting ‘green capitalism’ should aim as far as possible to maintain the integrity of the natural world and to empower its advocates. The natural world provides services that ought to be valued as an alternative to artificially manufactured strategies and products. Manipulating natural processes through genetic engineering or the displacement of organic products for synthetic ones may yield unexpected adverse consequences due to the inherent complexity of ecosystems. The agency of national policy-makers is highlighted. Recognised but condemned is the agency of unscrupulous corporate actors that seek to profit by promoting mitigation strategies involving manipulation of natural processes. 4.1.3. Limits Discourse The third class of climate discourses is economically radical yet politically conservative.

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Reorienting society questions the viability and/or desirability of existing neoliberal development, criticising unconstrained economic growth, population growth, meat consumption, and profligate material consumption. But although the economy needs to be radically reorganised, this does not require a redistribution of power. Changes can be implemented either under the guidance of existing authorities or by non-authoritative actors voluntarily modifying their own behaviour. Political leaders should legislate and devise multilateral agreements against unsustainable practises. Responsibility also lies in the hands of ordinary individuals who are assumed to have the capacity to reorganise their behaviour in accordance with the planet's ecological limits. Religious leaders may also help guide society towards a more sustainable future. Adaptation is represented not as a mere risk management, but as coping with destabilisation attending massive human displacement and conflict over resources. The military may be an important agent here. 4.1.4. Green Radicalism A fourth class of discourses is economically radical and politically progressive, seeking fundamental reorientation of economic development. Unconstrained material growth cannot be reconciled with a safe climate and sustainability. Such changes demand a redistribution of power away from presently dominant authorities. Concerns relating to human rights, justice, and equity are prioritised over short-term economic concerns. Green radicalism focuses on the political and economic structural causes of climate change. Ecofeminism connects climate injustice and gender injustice. Ecofeminists observe that institutions are overwhelmingly dominated by masculine interests, concerns, and rationality. Government delegations to the UNFCCC are largely composed of men, as are the scientists and economists advising these negotiators, even NGO representatives (MacGregor, 2010; Boyd, 2002). Existing governance arrangements thus tend to marginalise women and their concerns and experiences, including their increased vulnerability to both climate change and mitigation measures (MacGregor, 2010). Adequately responding to climate change requires fundamental transformation of patriarchal institutions. Radical decentralisation, “small is beautiful”, identifies the structural cause of climate change in a model of development that privileges industrial-scale production, which therefore needs replacing by small and local scale production. Present global governance arrangements are dominated by big businesses, state elites, and international institutions. Community-level development, mitigation, and adaptation can better respond to human needs and the environment. Carbon markets and offsetting are rejected because they shift responsibility and accountability away from the local level. Decision-making processes also need to be de-centralised to allow for genuine participation by marginalised and affected peoples. New globalism avers that an effective and just response to climate change will only be possible if the presently unequal international system is transformed into an equitable global community, featuring a low-carbon economy that is socially and ecologically sustainable. Basic human needs should be prioritised over material wealth. In principle, a per capita allocation basis for greenhouse gas emissions may be appropriate but global equity may in some instances require preferential treatment for vulnerable and marginalised people. Governance within a new global community ought to be democratic and foster cooperation between individuals, cultures, nations, social movements, and NGOs. Existing institutions are clearly unable to deliver such a fair and sustainable economic and political order; instead, citizens and civil society can drive the transition. The presence of such a wide range of discourses, some of which stand at a healthy critical distance from empowered space, is one indication of vibrant public space. But this in itself is insufficient. A well-functioning public space should also feature engagement of discourses in such a way that induces critical reflection on the part of


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people articulating different discourses. Diverse groups and individuals are active in the public space of global climate governance, but the level of genuine inter-discourse engagement remains quite low. As we have demonstrated elsewhere (Stevenson and Dryzek, 2010), enclaves of like-minded individuals are pervasive. For example, the Klimaforum civil society forum that paralleled the COP-15 negotiations in Copenhagen featured almost exclusively green radical discourses. Enclave deliberation has its place (Karpowitz et al., 2009), but in light of the requirements of a deliberative system, only as a place for creating competence prior to engagement with other discourses. A further problem is that organised scepticism can undermine the authenticity of deliberation in public space by seeking to discredit the climate science that informs many of the discourses we have highlighted; and scientists have often responded with dogmatic assertion, rather than admit real uncertainties. 4.2. Empowered Space Authoritative decisions on climate change are made in a number of venues. From a deliberative democratic perspective, these decisions may be considered legitimate to the extent they reflect inclusive and authentic dialogue responsive to the needs of all affected parties. There are three principal empowered spaces in global climate governance: state-based multilateral arrangements; network-based arrangements that coordinate the activities of private or public and private actors; and market-based arrangements (see Pattberg and Stripple, 2008; Andonova et al., 2009). The deliberative legitimacy of each of these merits close empirical inquiry, which is beyond the scope of a single article. Given the present space constraints, we report an empirical analysis of just one empowered space: the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in which member states meet (sometimes several times a year) to define and refine collective agreements for mitigating and adapting to climate change. The UNFCCC features a lot of bargaining. While deliberative theorists have traditionally contrasted bargaining and deliberation, the two might legitimately co-exist (Mansbridge, 2009) and frequently do so in multilateral negotiations (Risse, 2000). Mansbridge defines deliberative negotiations as those open to all potentially affected by a decision, in which all participants speak truthfully, are treated with mutual respect, protected by basic rights, and have equal resources and an equal opportunity to influence the process. Participants should also exchange reasons that are mutually comprehensible and acceptable, and seek a desired outcome through mutual justification rather than coercion (threats, sanctions, and manipulation) (Mansbridge, 2009: 2). Assessing the authenticity of negotiations against the criteria identified by Mansbridge is rendered difficult by the closed nature of much of the UNFCCC negotiation. Such assessments must therefore rely on the accounts of negotiators and privileged UNFCCC staff.4 Interviews carried out by the authors with senior negotiators in the two-track process set out in the Bali Action Plan,5 reveal that deliberative quality is quite low: 4.2.1. Participation Among those interviewed there was fairly broad agreement that although the debates and negotiations are procedurally open, a 4 However, negotiations frequently feature a pre-negotiating phase of open debate and this may also offer an insight into the authenticity of deliberation. Information on the methods available for analysing such open debate is provided at bhttp:// deliberativedemocracy.anu.edu.au/ccglobalGovernance.htmlN. 5 Eighteen negotiators were interviewed either in person or by telephone between September 2009 and July 2010. Anonymity was assured. Interviewees represented thirteen different parties, however several spoke from the perspective of their negotiating bloc rather than their individual party. Interviews lasted between fifteen and forty-five minutes and were structured around six questions pertaining to the indicators of deliberative quality.

number of factors impact on parties' capacity to participate. Small, poor, and non-Anglophone parties are at a disadvantage, which is only partly mitigated by formal rules and provisions. Limits apply to the number of contact group meetings that may be held simultaneously, but this rule does not extend to informal meetings. The Secretariat covers the cost of two delegates from each least developed country to attend UNFCCC sessions, but there are frequently more than two formal or informal meetings running simultaneously. The challenges facing small delegations are not only logistical; large inter-ministerial delegations obviously have a greater capacity to genuinely participate in all political, technical, and legal aspects of a debate than do small specialised delegations. Interpretation between the six languages of the United Nations is provided, but only in high-level plenary sessions. Actual negotiations are conducted in English and no formal interpretation is provided (while it might be assumed that senior delegates are all adequately proficient in English, this is not so). Several interviewees commented that parties tend to ‘know their place’ and understand that when decisions need to be made only a small number of parties will be actively involved. 4.2.2. Truthfulness Perceptions of truthfulness in negotiations are affected by the level of trust that exists between parties, as well as between parties and chairs. Among those interviewed, none claimed that a high level of trust exists among participants of UNFCCC negotiations. However, a couple observed that it is higher than generally assumed. Most claimed that the level of trust varies across issue areas. Several observed that trust is low or entirely absent for reasons ranging from previous broken promises (in the UNFCCC and other fora); suspicions that some parties seek to abolish existing mandates and agreements; and perceptions that some negotiators were failing to represent their states' views by promoting more extreme positions than their ministers. Lack of trust was cited as an issue between and within the north and south; within some negotiating blocs; between parties and chairs6; and between parties and civil society observers. One interviewee was more sceptical and suggested that parties tend to use the trust issue as a negotiating tool to resist pressure to increase their commitments. Beyond the impact of trust, truthfulness in the UNFCCC is affected by the nuances of negotiation norms. Negotiating in bad faith is considered a ‘cardinal sin’ but it is expected and accepted that negotiators will maintain reserved positions until the final stage of negotiation. Similarly, several interviewees observed that parties may hide their true positions in the presence of observers but speak more openly behind closed doors. 4.2.3. Respect Despite the widely recorded lack of trust, most interviewees agreed that negotiators generally treat one another with a high level of respect. Although there are frequently disagreements over positions, this rarely results in personal disrespect. Many empathised with their colleagues and recognised that unfavourable positions could not be associated with the speaker. However, several admitted that it is difficult to separate the person from the position, and/or observed rare bad behaviour (pulling faces, making blunt comments while someone is talking, and temper tantrums). More positively, many interviewees commented on the collegiality and even friendships that have developed among long-serving negotiators and diplomats, which is seen to aid the negotiating process. 4.2.4. Justification Observations of the level and quality of reason-giving in UNFCCC negotiations were quite mixed. Many claimed that the mutual exchange of reasons was quite prevalent, citing that diplomats have 6

This observation was not explicitly made in relation to the present chairs.



a talent for making compelling cases. However, this claim was often qualified with observations that reasons were provided ad nauseam without actually listening and reflecting. Some suggested that the extent of reason-giving depends on the nature of the underlying reasons: scientifically or morally legitimate positions tend to be explained, but not purely strategic positions. Of course, the general lack of trust impacts on this indicator of deliberative quality: there are sometimes suspicions that the reasons provided are insincere or incomplete. One interviewee noted that the culture of mistrust made it hard to seek explanations because to do so may be perceived as cruel, harsh, or negative, or even as a lack of one's own political will to allow progress. While some suggested that informal corridor conversations were useful for understanding the reasons behind parties' positions, several observed that time constraints preclude seeking or exchanging reasons because delegates are constantly rushing between meetings. According to a couple of interviewees, delegates sometimes are simply unable to provide reasons because they do not adequately understand the issue or position; for example, diplomats cannot express technical reasons, and technical delegates cannot express political reasons. A few interviewees drew a distinction between reasoned and rational positions and ideological ones: open plenary can be a venue for venting ideological statements (perhaps for domestic audiences), while behind closed doors delegates will move beyond these given that it is not possible to reach agreement on the basis of ideology. A couple articulated this distinction in north/south terms, or associated ideology only with seemingly unconstructive positions such as the rejection of markets or the focus on historical responsibility. 4.2.5. Mutual Justification Without Coercion/Threats Deliberative negotiations are those that seek a desired outcome through mutual justification rather than coercion (Mansbridge, 2009: 2). According to the observations of interviewees, the UNFCCC does not perform well on this condition. Several commented that the process is one of give-and-take in which the best outcome is one in which everyone is unhappy. Often this results in lowering ambitions to the lowest common denominator by finding the most flexible language (or ‘constructive ambiguities’) that all parties can live with. ‘Constructive ambiguities’ may be particularly useful in interim texts (although they may also be found in final agreements), but one negotiator observed that there is frequently no scope for compromise or ambiguous language, for instance when the decision concerns creating a particular board or a mechanism, or not. Delegates are reportedly rarely persuaded by the force of the better argument but rather come into the negotiations knowing their thresholds of acceptability. Shifts that do occur tend to concern minor details of mechanisms and procedures. A few were more sanguine noting that good ideas can get traction; the paradox, according to one interviewee, is that good ideas are less likely to prevail later in the process once suspicion sets in, but if introduced early on there is a larger pool of competing ideas in which good ones may be lost. The absence of threats, sanctions, and manipulation is crucial in deliberation, yet such instances were observed by two interviewees. One cited threats being issued in corridors (if your party does not pull back on issue x, we will raise issues z and y that will be very inconvenient for you). Another claimed that pressure had been externally exerted on the leaders of small states to vocally support the less ambitious position of a more powerful state. On the basis of our interviews, debate and negotiation in the UNFCCC appear to perform weakly against the standards of authentic deliberation. 4.3. Transmission, Accountability, and Meta-deliberation Transmission, accountability, and meta-deliberation features of the deliberative system will manifest differently in the context of the

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empowered spaces identified in the previous section. The following account refers only to the multilateral empowered space of the UNFCCC. The means of transmission from the engagement of discourses in public space to empowered space are many and varied. An inside/ outside distinction can be drawn between the strategies used by actors in public space to transmit ideas to the empowered space of the UNFCCC (Fisher, 2010). Those outside the UNFCCC tend to engage in protest, publicity, and performance outside the venues of actual negotiations as well as in activists' home countries as they seek to influence the positions of their governments prior to international meetings. Insider status is secured through the observer accreditation process of the UNFCCC secretariat. Close to one thousand organisations (business and industry groups, environmental organisations, local governments, research institutions, trade union associations, and women, youth, and church groups) have taken advantage of this opportunity to gain access to the venue of UNFCCC meetings (UNFCCC, 2010). We can think of them as representatives of particular discourses (though that is not how they think of themselves). Once inside, their access is confined to open meetings (formal and informal plenary sessions, workshops, and side events). Influence within these confines is pursued in a variety of ways. Developing relationships with governments may eventually yield a coveted ‘pink badge’, which denotes membership of a government delegation and widens the scope of access to talks and negotiations. In some cases, NGOs may also sponsor a delegate for a Least Developed Country delegation to bolster the inadequate representation assured by the UNFCCC Secretariat. The Climate Action Network has sought to convey its ideas by distributing a daily newsletter, Eco, which ridicules, shames, and occasionally praises, the positions of specific countries. Other organisations and networks opt to hover outside closed meeting rooms to present departing delegates with suggested negotiating texts. There is some blurring of the inside/outside distinction as actors on the ‘inside’ do sometimes employ strategies of performance, publicity, and protest, such as the Fossil of the Day awards ceremony conducted by the Climate Action Network. Another blurring of the inside/outside distinction stems from the efforts of some ‘postneoliberal’ governments to establish relationships with social movements representing Green Radical discourses. The Bolivian president, Evo Morales, with the support of Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, and Nicaragua, has been the driving force of this ‘discourse coalition’ (Hajer, 1995). Through public meetings and the commissioning of a negotiating text drafting group in Copenhagen, as well as the convening of a World People's Summit on Climate Change and Mother Earth Rights in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba in 2010, Bolivia has sought to bring the voice of one version of ‘the people’ to the empowered space of the UNFCCC (Stevenson, 2010). But the receptiveness of this empowered space to marginal discourses remains limited. Evaluating the observed transmission is not simply a task of applying categorical criteria from deliberative democratic theory. Thinking in systemic terms, a systemic test may be more appropriate than a categorical test. We should ask not only whether transmission mechanisms are themselves deliberative, but also whether these mechanisms help create and constitute an effective deliberative system for governing climate change. Protests may be non-deliberative in themselves, while at the same time promoting the deliberativeness of the larger system. Accountability mechanisms in global climate governance are quite weak. Within states, the main accountability mechanism is that of elections, as voters can hold governments to account for their actions. Elections do not of course exist in global governance. National elections make very little contribution to transnational accountability, except at two removes: negotiators are accountable to their own governments, who in turn are sometimes accountable to voters. Within the UNFCCC, the principal accountability mechanism is the


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Compliance Committee of the Kyoto Protocol, comprising a Facilitative Branch and an Enforcement Branch. The former is designed to support parties in complying with their commitments, while the latter branch may impose ‘consequences’ on parties in the second commitment period of the Protocol in the event of non-compliance in the first commitment period. Specifically, failure to comply with an emission reduction or limitation commitment will result in a 30% deduction from a party's assigned emissions in the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol; in addition, the non-complying party is required to submit a compliance action plan, and will be rendered ineligible to participate in emissions trading (Stokke et al., 2005: 1–3; Yamin and Depledge, 2004: chapter 12). As the future of the Kyoto Protocol remains uncertain, it is unclear whether this compliance system will be of any consequence. Opportunities for those in the empowered space of the UNFCCC to provide a more direct public account of their positions and decisions are minimal but not absent. At their own discretion, national delegations may arrange briefing sessions during international climate talks to update their compatriots within civil society, and respond to questions about their own position and that of other parties. In addition, an increasing number of government delegations, as the well as the UNFCCC Secretariat and observers, arrange press briefings during the annual conferences of the parties and interconference negotiating sessions. Again, these briefings are at parties' own discretion but they do allow parties and negotiation groups to explain their positions and respond to questions from the media. Access is restricted to accredited journalists so the potential for these briefings to serve as an accountability mechanism is dependent on critical and capable media representation. The growing number of activist media groups enhances the diversity of questions directed at governments during press briefings, but the exclusive nature of press and observer briefings, together with the absence of any sanctioning power, limits accountability. The style of briefing described here reflects what Mansbridge has called ‘narrative accountability’ rather than ‘deliberative accountability’. Narrative accountability is a one-way process in which the representative provides the represented with an account or explanation of their actions. Some negotiators are expected by their governments to remember storylines about the government's positioning: as frontrunner, as vulnerable, as mainstream, or as objector. Deliberative accountability, by contrast, involves two-way communication between the representative and the represented in which both ask questions and give answers (Mansbridge, 2009: 384). In enhancing the deliberative democratic capacity of global climate governance, special attention will need to be directed to institutionalising opportunities for deliberative accountability. Meta-deliberation is weak. There is no developed reflexive capacity to work on the deliberative system itself. In one sense this is not surprising because no important actors explicitly conceive of the global governance of climate change in the systemic deliberative terms set out in this article. However, in the aftermath of Copenhagen much attention has been focused on the perceived deficiencies of the empowered space of the UNFCCC. Two features in particular have been the subject of debate: representation and decision-making. In the now infamous final plenary of the fifteenth Conference of the Parties, a handful of countries including Tuvalu, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Sudan rejected the negotiated text not only on the basis of its contents but also for the exclusive manner in which it was drafted and presented to the world as a finalised deal prior to consideration by all parties (UNFCCC, 2009). Although it is not unusual for negotiations to move to smaller groups of Friends of the Chair or President, what appears to be crucial is that adequate representation of positions (and discourses) is assured and that all parties be provided an opportunity to consider a document before it is adopted. Both of these requirements were violated in the final days of the Copenhagen climate meeting. In the first instance, the ALBA

countries,7 many of whom espouse a post-neoliberal and anticapitalist position, were not represented in the smaller negotiating group, which appears to be based on a representation of regions rather than discourses.8 In the second instance, US President Barack Obama announced to the world that a deal had been reached before this document was presented to the parties for consideration. The impact of this controversy on the outcome of the meeting was profound given that the Conference of the Parties operates on the basis of consensus (in that if any party vocally objects to any clause, that objection must somehow be accommodated). At the beginning of the Copenhagen meeting, the chief negotiator for Papua New Guinea, Kevin Conrad, made an impassioned plea to adopt the rule on voting which had been consistently disallowed since the parties failed to adopt the Rules of Procedure in 1995 (Yamin and Depledge, 2004: 432). He argued that ‘consensus means that any agreement here can only aspire to the lowest common denominator amongst us. From our perspective…making decisions based only on the lowest common denominator is beyond irresponsible, it's gravely negligent’ (Conrad, 2009). Yet the consensus requirement means that there has to be a lot of persuasion of actors on points that matter to them. Such persuasion might be coercive, but it might also involve reason giving that induces reflection. The problem remains that states (such as Saudi Arabia) interested only in blocking progress have every incentive to object frequently. If the rule had been implemented as Conrad proposed, the Copenhagen Accord would have been adopted rather than merely ‘taken note of’, as it was supported by more than three-quarters of the parties. Of course, as dissenting parties pointed out in the final plenary, even if it had been adopted, the Copenhagen Accord would not achieve its stated objective of keeping global warming to below 2 °C. In fact, scientists estimate that the emission pledges accompanying the accord imply a greater than 50% chance that global temperatures will exceed 3 °C by 2100 (Rogelj et al., 2010). What these two controversies over representation and decisionmaking ultimately point to is the need for better contemplation of how global climate governance is organised. Such contemplation has occurred when it comes to the governance of the global economic and financial order, ever since the Bretton Woods conference of 1945. By contrast, the current system for climate governance arose in very haphazard fashion. As we pointed out earlier, not all arrangements need be deliberative all the time, but they must be amenable to deliberative justification. Even after lapses in transmission, accountability, and meta-deliberation, the global deliberative system for climate change governance often fails to be decisive when it comes to determining outcomes. Any agreements reached will have to be implemented by states. Even if they get to the point of formal acceptance of an agreement, states are quite capable of failing to enforce its provisions and meet targets — as the experience of the Kyoto Protocol illustrates. And states are quite capable of negotiating compliance in such a way as to meet the letter of agreements while interpreting it in such a way as to promote their own interests at the expense of global sustainability concerns (Stevenson, 2011). Energy corporations that have failed in public space may exert power behind the scenes upon states in order to secure the fossil fuel economy (and their own profits).

7 Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, Antigua and Barbuda, Nicaragua, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. ALBA is the Spanish acronym for the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America. 8 Accounts vary on who participated in the Friends of the President. According to Bodansky (2010), twenty nine parties were present: 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, the Republic of Korea, and Mexico.



5. Conclusion We conclude this contemplation of the global governance of climate change with the following observations. • Public space, some of whose actors and discourses stand at an appropriate critical distance from empowered space, is in good shape in terms of the sheer variety of available discourses — though often they fail to engage each other as effectively as they might. This might seem unremarkable, until we contrast with cases where hegemony of a single discourse prevails — such as in the global financial system pre-2008. • Empowered space features a lot of bargaining, but some real deliberation. • Means of transmission from public to empowered space, notably the UNFCCC, do exist, if imperfectly. However, some discourses (for example green radicalism) do not make it through in very effective fashion. • There is some narrative accountability but very little deliberative accountability in the system. • Meta-deliberative capacity is currently weak. • The deliberative system is not as decisive as it should be. Any lacunae notwithstanding, the elements of a deliberative system can be discerned, even if only in putative or compromised form. Thus it is worthwhile to examine global governance in deliberative democratic terms. The democratisation of global earth system governance will need to draw on the lessons of experience, not simple application of normative reasoning. And to develop lessons, we need analysis of the sort that our conceptualisation and application of the deliberative system concept supplies. There is a long way to go before anything adequate in the way of global governance seems attainable. But however long and hard the road, in the end the question is one of ‘how’ rather than ‘whether’. Acknowledgments Versions of this paper were presented at the conference on Earth System Governance: People, Places and the Planet, Volendam, 2009; the Oceanic Conference on International Studies, Auckland, 2010; the conference on Democratising Climate Governance at Australian National University, Canberra, 2010; the Conference of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, 2010; and the Conference of the Standing Group on International Relations of the European Consortium for Political Research, Stockholm, 2010. A sketch of the argument was delivered as the 2009 Cunningham Lecture to the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. For comments we thank Walter Baber, Frank Biermann, Erik Eriksen, Aarti Gupta, Stephen Healy, Ronald Mitchell, Steve Vanderheiden, and the anonymous referees. This research was supported by Australian Research Council Federation Fellowship FF00883522. References Andonova, L.B., Betsill, M.M., Bulkeley, H., 2009. Transnational climate governance. Global Environmental Politics 9 (2), 52–73. Baber, W.F., Bartlett, R.V., 2005. Deliberative Environmental Politics: Democracy and Ecological Rationality. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Beeson, Mark, 2010. The Coming of environmental authoritarianism. Environmental Politics 19, 276–294. Benhabib, S., 1996. Toward a deliberative model of democratic legitimacy. In: Benahbib, S. (Ed.), Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political. Princeton University Press, Princeton, pp. 67–94. Biermann, F. and Gupta, A. 2011. Accountability and Legitimacy in Earth System Governance: A Research Framework. Ecological Economics (this section). Biermann, F.M.M., Betsill, J. Gupta, Kanie, N., Lebel, L., Liverman, D., Schroeder, H., Siebenhüner, B., Zondervan, R., 2010. Earth system governance: a research framework. International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics 10 (4), 277–288.

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