The latest UN Climate Change Conference in Warsaw highlighted the role that smaller states can play in negotiations

Climate change negotiations aimed at an eventual deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol have proved extremely challenging in recent years. Federica Genovese writes on the UN Climate Change Conference held in Warsaw last month. She argues that while a distinction is traditionally made between ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ states in negotiations, supposedly weaker states have far more capacity to shape decisions than is commonly recognised. This was apparent in Warsaw where the Philippines played a pivotal role in shaping the discussions

States? interests at international climate negotiations: new measures of bargaining positions

To advance empirical research on international environmental institutions, new data on national positions at the international climate change negotiations are introduced. The observations cover more than 90 countries at two historical moments of climate change decision making: the pre?Kyoto Protocol enforcement (2001?2004) and the post?Kyoto Protocol (2008?2011) meetings. Data were collected from different types of written text. Coding entailed a qualitative (dictionary-based) content analysis and a quantitative text analysis. By systematically exploring these new data, I offer a ?map? of national preferences at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). I also propose a discussion of the dimensions of conflict and policy competition over 10 years of climate negotiations

Climate change campaigners should be cautiously optimistic after the latest UN Climate Summit

World leaders met in New York on 23 September for a ‘Climate Summit’ with the aim of discussing some of the measures that will be contained within a new climate change agreement in 2015. Federica Genovese writes that while the summit provided little in the way of new commitments, it nevertheless demonstrated that the international community of climate policy supporters is growing ahead of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in December

Market Responses to Global Governance: International Climate Cooperation and Europe’s Carbon Trading

International environmental cooperation can impose significant costs on private firms. Yet, in recent years some companies have been supportive of international climate agreements. This suggests that under certain conditions environmental accords can be profitable. In this paper I seek to explain this puzzle by focusing on the interaction between domestic regulation and decisions at international climate negotiations. I argue that global climate cooperation hurts the profits of polluting firms if domestic governments do not shield them from international compliance costs. Vice versa, if firms are subject to protective (i.e. insufficiently severe) instruments at home, firms can materially gain from international climate agreements that sustain expectations about their profitability. I test the argument with an event study of the effect of decisions at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on major European firms that received free carbon permits in the early stages of the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS). The analysis suggests that financial markets carefully follow the international climate negotiations, and reward the regulated firms based on the outcome of UNFCCC decisions. The evidence indicates the advantageous interplay between certain types of domestic regulations and international regimes for business. It also shows the perils of privately supported policy for the effectiveness of international public good provision

Domestic sources of ‘mild’ positions on international cooperation: Italy and global climate policy

This paper investigates Italy's position on global climate change politics in order to explore the larger question of why this country, like similar middle powers, may adopt ambiguous positions on global public policy issues. I start from the observation that in recent history Italy has taken a rather mild position on international climate cooper-ation and climate policy more broadly. To explain this, I propose an argument in divergence with those who claim Italy has low salience in the issue or lack of interest in international climate leadership. I put forward a political economy perspective and claim that different salient concerns motivate the domestic actors that shape the country’s international position. I maintain that these different concerns offset each other, resulting in overall mild preferences. I present support for my theory, zooming in on the motivations of two domestic sources of interna-tional positions: economic sectors and public opinion. The empirical data largely corroborates the theory

The political battle over the EU’s new climate plan is just beginning

A report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on 9 August has been described as a ‘code red for humanity’. The report came less than a month after the European Commission outlined a new climate action plan that it hopes will lead to a substantial drop in emissions. Patrick Bayer and Federica Genovese write that the new plan is much needed, but major political struggles lie ahead

Explaining the uneven demand for EU parliamentary oversight during the Eurozone crisis

The Eurozone crisis increased calls for institutional reform and closer parliamentary oversight of the EU’s crisis managers. As Federica Genovese and Gerald Schneider show, the national demand for increased parliamentary scrutiny crucially hinged on the exposure to the crisis and the domestic leeway in fighting it

Beliefs about Climate Action Consequences under Weak Global Institutions: Sectors, Home Bias, and International Embeddedness

Climate policy has distributional effects, and ratcheting up climate ambition will only become politically feasible if the general public believes that their country can win from ambitious climate action. In this article, we develop a theory of belief formation that anchors distributional effects from climate action at the sector level. Specifically, we study how knowing about these impacts shapes public beliefs about collective economic consequences from climate policy—not only in a home country but also abroad. A nationally representative survey experiment in the United Kingdom demonstrates that respondents are biased toward their home country in assessing information about winning and losing sectors: while beliefs brighten for good news and worsen for bad news when the home country is involved, distributional effects from abroad are discounted for belief formation. We also show that feelings of “international embeddedness,” akin to globalization attitudes, make UK respondents consistently hold more positive beliefs that the country can benefit from ambitious climate action. Ruling out several alternative explanations, these results offer a first step toward a better understanding of how distributional effects in one issue area, such as globalization, can spill over to other issue areas, such as climate change

In Draghi we trust: how unorthodox monetary policy weakened the anti-austerity movement in Europe

Soon after the sovereign debt crisis started taking a toll on European economies, several strikes and mass protests spread acoss the continent. Yet, while the crisis continued lingering on in some European countries, the mobilisation quickly ebbed away. Federica Genovese, Gerald Schneider and Pia Wassmann argue that one reason why people stopped going to the streets is that the Europan Central Bank decided to adopt a new unconventional policy to ease the problems in Europe’s economies and reduce public discontent