The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat as an orchestrator in global climate policymaking
| Author | Oscar Widerberg,Thomas Hickmann,Philipp Pattberg,Markus Lederer |
| Date | 01 March 2021 |
| Published date | 01 March 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852319840425 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Review of
Administrative
Article
Sciences
International Review of Administrative
The United Nations
Sciences
2021, Vol. 87(1) 21–38
!
Framework Convention
The Author(s) 2019
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on Climate Change
DOI: 10.1177/0020852319840425
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Secretariat as an
orchestrator in global
climate policymaking
Thomas Hickmann
University of Potsdam, Germany
Oscar Widerberg
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Markus Lederer
Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany
Philipp Pattberg
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Abstract
Scholars have recently devoted increasing attention to the role and function of inter-
national bureaucracies in global policymaking. Some of them contend that international
public officials have gained significant political influence in various policy fields.
Compared to other international bureaucracies, the political leeway of the
Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has
been considered rather limited. Due to the specific problem structure of the policy
domain of climate change, national governments endowed this intergovernmental
treaty secretariat with a relatively narrow mandate. However, this article argues that
in the past few years, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
Corresponding author:
Thomas Hickmann, University of Potsdam, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, August-Bebel-Str. 89,
14482 Potsdam, Germany.
Email: hickmann@uni-potsdam.de
22
International Review of Administrative Sciences 87(1)
Secretariat has gradually loosened its straitjacket and expanded its original spectrum of
activity by engaging different sub-national and non-state actors into a policy dialogue using
facilitative orchestration as a mode of governance. The present article explores the recent
evolution of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat
and investigates the way in which it initiates, guides, broadens and strengthens sub-national
and non-state climate actions to achieve progress in the international climate negotiations.
Points for practitioners
The Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has
lately adopted new roles and functions in global climate policymaking. While previously
seen as a rather technocratic body that, first and foremost, serves national govern-
ments, the Climate Secretariat increasingly interacts with sub-national governments,
civil society organizations and private companies to push the global response to climate
change forward. We contend that the Climate Secretariat can contribute to global
climate policymaking by coordinating and steering the initiatives of non-nation-state
actors towards coherence and good practice.
Keywords
climate change, environmental policymaking, intergovernmental relations, international
bureaucracies, sub-national and non-state actors
Introduction
Several scholars of international relations and public administration have lately
put much effort into studying international bureaucracies (Bauer et al., 2017).
Particularly in the realm of international environmental politics, numerous case
studies have been conducted on the impacts of different types of international
bureaucracies on policy outcomes (e.g. Bauer, 2006; Biermann and Siebenhu¨ner,
2009a; Jinnah, 2014; J€
orgens et al., 2017; Widerberg and Van Laerhoven, 2014).
The political influence of the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has been considered rather limited
when compared to other international environmental bureaucracies. In 2009,
Busch (2009) portrayed the role of the UNFCCC Secretariat as ‘Making a
Living in a Straitjacket’. He argued that nation-states endowed this bureaucracy
with a relatively narrow mandate and attributed its limited influence to the specific
problem structure of the issue of the policy domain of climate change.
However, we claim that the UNFCCC Secretariat has recently found new leverag-
ing opportunities by engaging non-nation-state actors in policy dialogues. In fact, the
UNFCCC Secretariat increasingly reaches out and works together with sub-national
bodies, such as cities or regions, non-governmental organizations, and civil society
groups, as well as private companies and their associations, to pursue common policy
Hickmann et al.
23
goals. The new role of the UNFCCC Secretariat in global climate policymaking can
be understood as a case of ‘orchestration’ (Abbott and Bernstein, 2015; B€ackstrand
and Kuyper, 2017; Widerberg, 2017). Orchestration is an indirect mode of gover-
nance where a given agent (i.e. the orchestrator) uses one or more intermediaries to
influence a target group. To do this, the orchestrator employs various techniques and
different facilitative measures to work with intermediary actors.
In this article, we conceptualize the UNFCCC Secretariat as an orchestrator
that strategically interacts with sub-national and non-state actors to motivate
national governments to take a more ambitious stance on climate change. We
analyse three recent initiatives in which the UNFCCC Secretariat interacts with
sub-national and non-state actors: (1) the Momentum for Change Initiative; (2) the
Lima–Paris Action Agenda (LPAA); and (3) the Non-State Actor Zone for Climate
Action (NAZCA). In these initiatives, the UNFCCC Secretariat has adopted vary-
ing roles and functions that we investigate in the present article. Thus, the main
contribution of this article is an empirical illumination of the way in which the
UNFCCC Secretariat has used facilitative orchestration as a mode of governance
in an attempt to achieve progress in the international climate negotiations.
The analysis underlines that the UNFCCC Secretariat has put much effort into
pushing the global response to climate change forward by initiating, guiding, broad-
ening and strengthening the myriad climate actions taken by sub-national govern-
ments, civil society organizations and private companies. In this endeavour, the
Secretariat acted: as a spearheading institution in support of pioneering small-scale
climate projects; as a convening body together with other orchestrators to encourage
state and non-state climate actions; and as a manager and coordinating node to
highlight existing climate measures on the ground. This article hence suggests that
the UNFCCC Secretariat has been able to loosen its straitjacket, demonstrating its
capacity to be an autonomous actor in global climate policymaking. In a nutshell,
we contend that the UNFCCC Secretariat has gradually expanded its spectrum of
activity and thereby stretched its original mandate in a creative way.
The article is structured as follows. In the second section, we situate our study
in the literature on the growing importance of international bureaucracies in
global (environmental) policymaking. In the third section, we conceptualize the
UNFCCC Secretariat as a facilitative orchestrator and describe our data-
collection methods. In the fourth section, we turn to the empirical analysis and
first provide a brief overview of the UNFCCC Secretariat before we focus on
three recent orchestration initiatives in which the Secretariat interacts with sub-
national and non-state actors. Finally, we draw conclusions about the role and
function of the UNFCCC Secretariat as a facilitative orchestrator and point to
aspects that merit attention in future research.
The growing importance of international bureaucracies
Over the past decades, authors from different fields have highlighted the increasing
influence of international organizations on global policymaking. This includes
24
International Review of Administrative Sciences 87(1)
studies from sociology, International Relations and public policy (e.g. Abbott
et al., 2015; Be´land and Orenstein, 2013; Jakobi, 2012; Keohane and Nye, 1974;
Meyer et al., 1997). While most of these studies have not looked deeper into the
inner workings of international organizations, we recently witnessed a growing
scholarly interest in the roles and functions of international bureaucracies and
their staff members in global public policy (e.g. Ege and Bauer, 2013).
Some sceptics continue to doubt that the bureaucracies of international public
agencies have any significant impact beyond that of technical assistance and serv-
ices to national governments (Drezner, 2007). Yet, an increasing number of
authors contend that international bureaucracies can acquire significant autonomy
in various domains of global policymaking (e.g. Bauer and Ege, 2016; Fraser-
Moleketi, 2003; Maggetti and Verhoest, 2014). In line with these scholars, we
perceive international bureaucracies as distinct actors and argue that they have
adopted important policymaking tasks. International bureaucracies, for instance,
put existing problems on the political agenda, collect, analyze and spread knowl-
edge, stimulate public debates, organize discussions among stakeholders, support
civil society actors in international negotiations, and help to implement interna-
tionally agreed norms and rules.
The field of global environmental politics is of particular interest for examining
the evolution of international bureaucracies. This domain has been characterized
as ‘one of the institutionally most dynamic areas in world politics regarding the
number of international institutions and actors that have emerged over the past
three decades’ (Biermann and Siebenhu¨ner, 2009b: 9). A case in point is the
International...
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