Abstract
The 2015 Paris agreement represents a deep-rooted change in global climate governance. While existing scholarly assessments highlight central institutional features of the Paris shift, they tend to overlook its symbolic and discursive dimensions. Our analysis shows that the Paris architecture combines two core elements: an iterative pledge and review process to stimulate global climate action, and a ‘performative’ narrative aimed at aligning actors’ expectations on the prospect of a low-carbon future. We therefore suggest calling it an incantatory system of governance. We then examine the origins of the new approach and find that the rise of ‘soft law’ approaches and communicative techniques in global climate governance are both indicative of a broader process: the entry of management culture in international organisations. Against this backdrop, we examine the prospects, limitations and caveats of the new approach and discuss its wider implications for global politics.
Highlights
The Paris agreement adopted in December 2015 is widely considered as a major breakthrough in global climate governance, with the potential of becoming a blueprint for other governance arenas (Jordan et al 2018)
Scholars of international relations generally agree that a central feature of international regimes is that actors’ expectations converge in a given area of international relations (Krasner 1983)
While it has generally been thought that such convergence is best reached through binding regulations and the building of strong international organisations, this no longer holds for Paris-type governance arrangements
Summary
The Paris agreement adopted in December 2015 is widely considered as a major breakthrough in global climate governance, with the potential of becoming a blueprint for other governance arenas (Jordan et al 2018). There are, important differences between the initial proposals and the Paris approach These relate to the specific ways in which the Paris agreement combines binding and non-binding elements, and to the broader global setting in which the new climate governance is embedded. In the lead-up, during and on the back of COP21, the agreement’s core architects set up an elaborate communications campaign whose purpose was to shape a new climate narrative centred on three elements: the low-carbon transition is already underway; it presents unprecedented economic opportunities, and its successful implementation rests on the cooperation of actors from all sections of society This, it was believed, would generate ‘momentum’ around the ‘Paris moment’, and more generally the benefits of decisive climate action. The multi-dimensional nature of the problem calls for an in-depth rethinking of the established global order, beginning with the existing division of labour and hierarchy between international organisations, and the regulatory void when it comes to strategic domains such as fossil fuel production and trade
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