Obstruction or Reform? Assessing the Role of the United State in Climate Negotiations

Working Title: Obstruction or Reform? Assessing the Role of the United State in Climate Negotiations (with Alex Thompson)

Abstract: Dissatisfied states use a variety of tactics to promote change in international organizations (IOs) and their associated regimes. In most cases, this comes in the form of legitimate negotiation strategies designed to reform institutions in a manner that is broadly consistent with their cooperative goals. In some cases, however, change-seeking states deploy tactics aimed at intentionally delaying negotiations or undermining the regime’s mandated functions. The choice between these strategies—legitimate reform versus deliberate obstruction—are highly consequential for the functioning and evolution of IOs, especially when powerful states are the ones seeking change.

Although the literature has grappled extensively with the increased frequency of backlash and the disruptions driven by dissatisfied and aggrieved states in international institutional forums, scholars have not done enough to distinguish between demands for legitimate reforms and efforts to undermine international organizations. Our paper seeks to contribute both conceptually and empirically. First, we propose a set of tactics that are consistent with these two strategies, distinguishing between these designed to promote reform and those representing deliberate obstruction. Second, we analyze the history of U.S. behavior in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) regime, which we use to refine our conceptual distinctions (especially the notion of obstructionism) and to provide a mapping of U.S. negotiating strategies over time.

Specifically, we plan to compile a corpus of U.S. positions on international environmental negotiations and, using text-as-data, analyze UNFCCC negotiation texts to evaluate, over time, when the U.S. is being obstructive or cooperative vis-à-vis the broad goals of the climate regime. The U.S.’s unique position in global governance and its ambivalent relationship to the climate regime should provide meaningful temporal and political variation. At the very least, we plan to produce a catalog of negotiating tactics that can be categorized as either legitimate or obstructionist, demonstrating that grievances can take various forms in multilateral negotiations. Finally, we will discuss whether and to what extent to our conceptual distinctions and empirical approach can be extended to other regimes. We anticipate that our findings will speak to broader debates on IO dissatisfaction and reform, advancing the literature both conceptually and empirically.