The Hologram Regime: Is the UNFCCC’s Global Stocktake an Ambition Facilitator or a Status Game?

This paper interrogates the institutional logic of the UNFCCC Global Stocktake (GST) and its role within the Paris Agreement’s ambition cycle. While the Paris Agreement has been lauded for its innovative design—replacing binding targets with Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and iterative review mechanisms—it also introduces a regime where symbolic perfor-mance and status-seeking behavior may be rewarded over substantive climate action. We argue that the GST, as currently structured and practiced, risks evolving into what we call a “holo-gram regime”: an institutional context in which the appearance of ambition and commitment is decoupled from tangible outcomes and policy effectiveness. We conceptualize the GST as a diplomatic ritual space akin to the UN General Assembly, where states perform climate leadership for specific audiences—international, domestic, or both—without pressure toward behavioral convergence. This decoupling between means and ends reflects a broader trend in global governance, where soft institutional tools may stabilize procedural compliance and reputational payoff without driving substantive change. Drawing on institutional theory and literature on status-seeking in international politics, we suggest that the GST incentivizes states to engage in performative diplomacy, foregrounding rhetorical ambition and moral claims without necessarily delivering on mitigation goals. The GST lacks unified evaluation criteria, binding consequences, or authoritative review mecha-nisms, enabling states to construct status-enhancing narratives regardless of actual climate per-formance. Empirically, we analyze GST-related documents and plenary statements from 2020 to 2025, alongside case studies of NDC development in 23 countries. Our findings reveal the emergence of status scripts and symbolic postures that shape state behavior within the GST, reinforcing a regime where ambition is performative and recognition is detached from implementation. This institutional design legitimizes a range of climate postures—from “champion” and “victim” to “perpetrator”—that confer reputational benefits through symbolic alignment rather than measurable impact. We contribute to debates on soft governance and international status politics by highlighting how institutional design can inadvertently reward symbolic compliance. The challenge for the GST is not merely to encourage ambition, but to ensure that recognition and status are tied to credible, verifiable climate outcomes.