This paper looks at soft ways of assessing countries’ performance against agreed targets in the form of global monitoring and their potential to increase accountability among states. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) serves as an interesting case. While the UNFCCC has been equipped with soft and hard mechanisms to provide transparency on states’ performance and enhance compliance of parties with their commitments made, the ‘softer’ tools are in focus. The paper aims to answer if and how ways of performance measurement like self-reporting and expert reviews are used by different stakeholder such as civil society actors and peer states to hold the respective countries accountable for their actions. It will be assessed to what extent the numerical data resulting from monitoring under the UNFCCC, e.g. on emissions, is taken up by stakeholders and whether they are effective tools to increase accountability among parties to the Convention.
