Beyond democracy: What explains increased ambition in climate pledges?

Abstract

The Paris Agreement of 2015 was a milestone in global climate politics, as it achieved global coverage with all states contributing to joint efforts to combat climate change. The agreement places climate policy ambition at its core, employing a pledge-and-review system which involves the formulation of nationally determined contributions (NDCs), their periodic review through multiple mechanisms, and cyclical updates—a critical framework for escalating ambition to levels necessary for averting dangerous climate change (Bodle et al., 2016; Höhne et al., 2017). NDCs became universal for all signatories of the UNFCCC, irrespective of their levels of economic development or regime type. The Agreement explicitly stipulates that each successive NDC should represent a progression beyond the previous one. While some states have diligently provided multiple updates, others have lagged, and among those that have updated their NDCs, not all have amplified their climate change mitigation ambitions. What factors determine the change in climate ambition? Current research points out that democracies are more likely to increase the ambition of their climate pledges in consecutive submissions. Still, as much as one half of global emissions come from hybrid or authoritarian regimes, so if democratization is a prerequisite for ratcheting up climate action, hopes for avoiding dangerous warming are all but lost. However, empirical research which highlights the better environmental and climate performance of democratic regimes often also underlines that it is not the political system per se, but certain features of governance which are more pronounced in democratic countries that are responsible for better performance (Bättig & Bernauer, 2009; Böhmelt et al., 2016; Hanusch, 2017; Povitkina, 2018; Povitkina & Jagers, 2022; Schaffer et al., 2022; Stein, 2022). In this paper we want to look specifically at the connection between increasing ambition in recent NDC submissions and certain features of governance which can occur both in democratic and autocratic polities. We propose three hypotheses explaining increased ambition between NDC submissions, each derived from the theorization of a different causal mechanism: transparency, accountability and multilateral engagement.