Interest group influence in multilateral environmental agreements: Empirical evidence from the climate change negotiations

The international negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) constitute an interesting case to study the influence of interest groups in a setting of multilevel governance, because the climate change problem affects so many aspects of life and the economy, that many groups have a stake in it (see e.g. Raustiala, 2001). As the negotiations have grown to encompass ever more topics, more and more interest groups have started to try to influence them either directly as part of member states’ delegations, or indirectly by participating as observers in the negotiation process. Existing work in the area of multilateral environmental agreements has found that the amount of influence exerted by interest groups depends on the level of activity exerted by these groups during international negotiations, the amount of groups present at the negotiations, and the interaction between these two factors (see e.g. Böhmelt and Betzold, 2010). However, no quantitative work exists yet that looks systematically at the influence of different types of interest groups, and at the channels in which such influence is exerted in multilateral settings. To contribute to this research gap, in this paper I look at whether, how and under what conditions interest groups have a discernible influence on member states’ positions regarding several specific issue-areas in the climate change negotiations. I focus on influence on member state positions and not on the outcome of the negotiations because the outcome of negotiations can be influenced by factors that cannot be captured in the quantitative framework of this study, as for example issue linkages. Furthermore, as the climate change negotiations are still on-going, several of the issues analysed here are still under discussion, and it is not possible yet to state with certainty what the outcome of the negotiations is. The underlying assumption in this paper is, thus, that if there is an observable influence of interest groups on member state positions, this influence will arguably extend to the level of the internationally agreed outcome. I look at four possible channels of direct and indirect influence of interest groups in the international climate negotiations: participation in the negotiation sessions as part of member states’ national delegations, participation in the negotiation sessions as observer organizations, organization of side events at the negotiation meetings, and publication of issue-specific studies. Empirically, the dependent variable is the member state position on a specific negotiation topic, which has been hand-coded from written submissions sent to the UNFCCC and from summaries of oral statements in the negotiation sessions. The explanatory variables capture the preferences of interest groups that are active in the negotiations with respect to the issue-areas analysed, and their level of activity through the four channels of influence described above. They have been coded from the participant lists to the UNFCCC negotiation meetings, from the daily programmes of the negotiation meetings, and from announcements in an email interest group (Climate-L) that is subscribed by many members of the climate change community. Finally, control variables are added to control for the general salience of the issue area in the negotiations, and for specific country characteristics that may influence the countries’ positions in the negotiations (e.g. level of greenhouse gas emissions, forested area, political orientation of the government). The influence of interest groups on member state positions is then assessed using multivariate regression analysis.