Domestic Politics and Participation in Transnational Climate Governance: The Crucial Case of China

Abstract

Transnational governance is increasingly important to many areas of global politics, including global climate change, where multilateral negotiations have fallen into gridlock. However, we have yet to fully understand how domestic political conditions affect sub- and non-state actors' ability to engage in governance beyond the state. Existing approaches to transnational governance emphasize, often implicitly, a liberal, pluralist view of politics, in which non- and sub-state actors have considerable agency with which to pursue their interests. The paper explores, instead, transnational governance under conditions of authoritarianism, explaining how the Chinese political context affects sub- and non-state actors' participation in transnational climate governance. Because China will soon be the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, understanding Chinese actors' participation is crucial to the ultimate success of transnational approaches to climate governance. We find that while Chinese participation in TCG is limited and primarily reactive, the fragmented nature of the Chinese political system allows for greater participation than conventional theoretical approaches would expect.