Disrupting Organized Hypocrisy in the UNFCCC?

A longstanding feature of global climate governance has been a gap between rhetoric and action that can be conceptualized as “organized hypocrisy”. This is not unusual or unique. Krasner argued that “organized hypocrisy is the normal state of affairs” in the international system. Brunsson argued that organizations operating in complex environments with competing demands often resort to decoupling rhetoric, decisions, and actions. Both scholars understood hypocrisy as a source of stability and functionality. Brunsson theorized that excessive scrutiny and demands for consistency could be destabilizing. In this paper I subject this theoretical assumption to empirical study in the context of global climate governance where the international community is at an important juncture. Since it was established, the UNFCCC has enabled organized hypocrisy, but recent years have seen greater scrutiny and growing pressure on states to improve the ambition and consistency of their pledges and actions. These expectations underpin the Paris Agreement’s transparency and accountability mechanisms (the Enhanced Transparency Framework and the Global Stocktake). In this paper, I analyse the design and application of these mechanisms to determine whether they disrupt the longstanding dynamic of organized hypocrisy, or rather enable its continuation.