Debate following the announcement of a Copenhagen Accord for global action on climate change centred as much on the question of legitimacy as on the question of scientific integrity. Numerous state and non-state actors vocally denounced the Accord as illegitimate because it was drafted in an exclusive and non-representative group of specially selected states. A key question that emerged from the Copenhagen summit was how international decision-making should be structured to produce outcomes that are widely considered legitimate? In this paper we introduce a model of global climate governance based on deliberation and discursive representation. In this model, legitimacy is associated with the formation and transformation of preferences through authentic and inclusive dialogue that responds to the needs of all affected parties. In assessing the legitimacy of the Copenhagen Accord and the decision making procedures implemented in Copenhagen, it is thus important to consider the pre-negotiating phase of the two-year Bali Action Plan, which guided decision making from Bali to Copenhagen. The focus of our analysis in this paper is the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long Term Cooperation Action (AWG-LCA), which met in five pre-negotiation sessions to allow parties to engage in open and transparent debate with the aim of developing mutual understandings on elements of an anticipated Copenhagen agreement. This suggests some potential for legitimacy in the design of the multilateral process for defining a post-2012 climate change agreement. To assess the deliberative quality of the pre-negotiating phase of the AWG-LCA, we carry out two analytical tasks in this paper. First, we employ Steiner et al’s Discourse Quality Index to assess the authenticity of deliberation. Second, through an analysis of discourses represented in deliberation we assess the inclusivity of deliberation. Drawing on the findings of these analyses, we outline a set of proposals for improving the legitimacy of multilateral climate governance.
