Understanding Inadequate Climate Change Governance: A Neo-Gramscian Discourse Analysis

This thesis engaged with the research question: How do multilateral institutions, fossil fuel companies and environmental nongovernmental organisations attempt to fixate meaning in climate change discourse to steer international climate change governance? The analysis reveals that governments and the fossil fuel industry problematise climate change as a challenge of decarbonising society, which can be achieved with technological and economic solutions. The climate change challenge is depoliticised, because this strategy enables the root cause of climate change, the fossil fuel-based energy chain, to be left intact. By articulating this strategy in the context of justice and responsibility, social consent is generated and the hegemonic position of states and the fossil fuel industry is safeguarded. ENGOs attempt to re-politicise the climate change problem by articulating it as an opportunity for systemic social change and trying to break social consent for the hegemonic bloc. Their...Show moreThis thesis engaged with the research question: How do multilateral institutions, fossil fuel companies and environmental nongovernmental organisations attempt to fixate meaning in climate change discourse to steer international climate change governance? The analysis reveals that governments and the fossil fuel industry problematise climate change as a challenge of decarbonising society, which can be achieved with technological and economic solutions. The climate change challenge is depoliticised, because this strategy enables the root cause of climate change, the fossil fuel-based energy chain, to be left intact. By articulating this strategy in the context of justice and responsibility, social consent is generated and the hegemonic position of states and the fossil fuel industry is safeguarded. ENGOs attempt to re-politicise the climate change problem by articulating it as an opportunity for systemic social change and trying to break social consent for the hegemonic bloc. Their strategies for influencing and steering governance, however, are limited as a result of structural constraints. This demonstrates the hegemonic position of states and the fossil fuel industry.Show less

Leiden University Student Repository

Documents

In Collections

Understanding Inadequate Climate Change Governance: A Neo-Gramscian Discourse Analysis