Chinas role in the COP15 negotiations: Influence of lower-level political actors in China on international climate negotiations

In 2009 the world looked to Copenhagen in high hopes, as leaders assembled at the COP15 climate summit to discuss a successor to the Kyoto protocol set to expire in 2012. However the talks failed and much blame was put on the Chinese delegation for allegedly having crashed a potential deal. This came as a surprise, as China just shortly before had announced as a sign of goodwill to reduce its carbon intensity by 40 -45% by 2020 and also domestically climate policy gained more and more traction. This discrepancy bears the question of what went wrong at the climate summit or rather how can we understand this gap between the domestic and the international level. This thesis examines whether and argues that competition between lower level political actors over the right direction between economy and ecology is to blame. This is done by using the negotiation theory of two-level games and the model of fragmented authoritarianism to examine the ways lower level actors such as ministries...Show moreIn 2009 the world looked to Copenhagen in high hopes, as leaders assembled at the COP15 climate summit to discuss a successor to the Kyoto protocol set to expire in 2012. However the talks failed and much blame was put on the Chinese delegation for allegedly having crashed a potential deal. This came as a surprise, as China just shortly before had announced as a sign of goodwill to reduce its carbon intensity by 40 -45% by 2020 and also domestically climate policy gained more and more traction. This discrepancy bears the question of what went wrong at the climate summit or rather how can we understand this gap between the domestic and the international level. This thesis examines whether and argues that competition between lower level political actors over the right direction between economy and ecology is to blame. This is done by using the negotiation theory of two-level games and the model of fragmented authoritarianism to examine the ways lower level actors such as ministries influence decisions at the top level of government and party and by applying these insights to the case study of the COP15 negotiations. In the course of research it became clear that lower-level influence is certainly one explanatory aspect but might on its own not be completely sufficient to conclusively explain the outcome of the negotiations. Nonetheless this research hopefully contributes to the understanding of recent developments in Chinese climate policy and Chinese attitudes towards international negotiations.Show less

Leiden University Student Repository

Documents

In Collections

Chinas role in the COP15 negotiations: Influence of lower-level political actors in China on international climate negotiations