Rüdiger Wurzel and James Connelly, eds. The European Union as a leader in international climate change politics

Abstract

Rudiger Wurzel and James Connelly, eds. The European Union as a leader in international climate change politics Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 201 I. 299pp $49.95 (paper) ISBN: 978-0415580472It has become a truism among those engaged with global environmental governance that the European Union (EU), before and after enlargement, has played the key role in advancing not only the Kyoto Protocol of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) but also the broader climate change agenda. But this simple statement demands greater scrutiny: what type of leadership has the EU provided? How has it managed to form a common approach to such a contentious issue, one that ultimately demands serious compromises of sovereignty? What actors, beyond the nation states themselves, have influenced EU policy on climate change? These deeper questions have received surprisingly scant attention in the scholarly literature.Rudiger Wurzel and James Connelly offer a partial correction with this welledited text, which advances a healthily critical view, suggesting that the EU had much less influence at the 1992 Earth Summit (where the UNFCCC was hatched) and in the creation of the weak 2009 Copenhagen Accord than is often assumed. Within the EU, however, remarkable leadership has been accompanied by local activities and economic realities that have reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to what are often surprisingly low levels. Three types of leadership are most obvious: structural (read: real power), entrepreneurial, and cognitive. Some combination of all three, not surprisingly, is most effective, especially within the multi-level governance structure of the EU, but also in terms of projecting EU leadership abroad, where it must meet the harsh realities of American and Chinese structural power.This book is particularly useful for shining light on the role of the various EU institutions, including the Council, the Commission, and the Parliament. It also examines excellent chapters on the climate agenda of several key European states (Germany, France, the UK, the Netherlands, Spain, and Poland); and the book features the role of civil society with special chapters on business and environmental NGOs. There are some structural questions about the book itself: for example, two chapters on US and Chinese policy offer little insight into EU policy and may have found better homes in other books. Yet each chapter is crisp, concise, and authoritative; each author was asked to consider four inter-related themes (leadership, ecological modernization, policy instruments, and multi-level governance), and all kept their promise to do so.Some political scientists might find the book slightly disappointing on the conceptual side: the concept of leadership in international relations literature has yielded a rich theoretical harvest over previous decades, but the editors barely glance at that theory in their cursory introduction. …