Strategy in the climate change negotiations: do democracies negotiate differently?

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Governments in international negotiations such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations use different negotiation strategies to increase their impact, which can be hard or soft, that is, more or less adding conflict to a negotiation. However, little is known about the structural (e.g. economic size) and domestic (e.g. pressure from stakeholders) factors that determine their choice of strategies. Using an original data set created from interviews with 58 delegations who attended the UNFCCC negotiations in Copenhagen, it is shown that the variables of economic power, democratic status, and pressure from domestic stakeholders had an effect on whether these delegations used hard negotiation strategies. It was found that economically powerful states were likely to use such strategies; in contrast democracies tend to use fewer hard strategies if their economic status is accounted for. However, democracies can be pressured to use hard strategies when they are lobbied by their domestic interest groups (e.g. GHG emitter interests, environmental groups).