The Politics of Low Carbon Transformations: Exploring State and Non-State Relations in the Post-Paris Climate Policy Landscape

Abstract

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement recognize the importance of non- and sub-state climate action to achieve a transformation towards a low carbon society. A wide range of actors such as businesses, civil society, trade unions, youth, indigenous people, regions, cities, and municipalities have been invited and are taking voluntary action to address climate change. The climate regime thus combines top-down elements of international cooperation with bottom-up elements of voluntary climate action. While such a hybrid governance arrangement aims to mobilize climate action on all levels of society, the approach also runs the risk of marginalizing more critical voices, leaving out issues of contestation, or silencing competing interpretations of a low carbon society. This panel seeks to advance the research frontier in climate governance and explore the opportunities for critical social science interventions which examine the interplay between domestic and transnational climate initiatives in the political quest for de-carbonization. The panel invites contributions conceptualizing the relationship between state and non-state climate action involving public and private actors; assessing the effectiveness and legitimacy of non-state climate action, and critically appraising the political impacts and transformative potential of transnational climate action. The panel encourages methodological innovation and pluralism by including quantitative and qualitative methods such as discourse analysis, network analysis, single and comparative case studies. The panel will thus advance our understandings of the competing rationales, goals, and aims of the state and non-state actors in climate governance to achieve a low carbon society as well as how non-state actors can contribute to mobilizing climate action in conjunction with or in opposition to the state in different political contexts.

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