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ON MELTING SUMMITS: THE LIMITATIONS OF FIELD-CONFIGURING EVENTS AS
CATALYSTS OF CHANGE IN TRANSNATIONAL CLIMATE POLICY
ELKE SCHÜSSLER
Freie Universität Berlin
elke.schuessler@fu-berlin.de
CHARLES-CLEMENS RÜLING
Grenoble Ecole de Management
charles-clemens.ruling@grenoble-em.com
BETTINA B.F. WITTNEBEN
Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford
bettina.wittneben@smithschool.ox.ac.uk
Final draft version March 2013
Final version in Academy of Management Journal after copy edits
Please quote as: Schüßler, E./Rüling, C./Wittneben, B.F. (2014): On
melting summits: The limitations of field-configuring events as catalysts
of change in transnational climate policy. Academy of Management
Journal 57: 140-171.
2
ON MELTING SUMMITS: THE LIMITATIONS OF FIELD-CONFIGURING EVENTS AS
CATALYSTS OF CHANGE IN TRANSNATIONAL CLIMATE POLICY
ABSTRACT
Although field-configuring events have been highlighted as catalysts of institutional change, we still
know little about the specific conditions that allow such change to occur. Based on a longitudinal
study of United Nations climate conferences in the context of the transnational climate policy field
we analyze how regular and high-stakes events in an event series interacted in producing and
preventing institutional change. We uncover variations in event structures, processes and outcomes
that explain why climate conferences have not led to effective solutions to combat human-induced
global warming. Results in particular highlight that growing field complexity and issue
multiplication compromise the change potential of a field-configuring event series. We argue that
events change from field-endogenous catalysts of change into sites of field maintenance when
diverse actors find event participation useful for their own purposes, but their activity disconnects
from the institutions at the center of an issue-based field. In discussing how field-configuring events
can be purposefully staged and enacted, but also how they are influenced by developments in a field
our study contributes to a more complete understanding of field-configuring events, particularly in
contested transnational policy arenas.
KEY WORDS
Organizational fields; field-configuring events; climate policy; transnational regulation; field
structuration; institutional theory; qualitative methods
3
Acknowledgements. We are grateful for insightful comments from participants at research seminars
at Freie Universität Berlin, Grenoble Ecole de Management, University of Oxford, and Technical
University of Berlin, from conference participants at the European Group for Organizational
Studies Colloquium (2009) and the Academy of Management Annual Meeting (2011), and from
members of the Organization Theory Research Group (OTREG). We are particularly indebted for
their detailed feedback on earlier drafts to Olivier Berthod, Grégoire Croidieu, Thibault Daudigeos,
Leonhard Dobusch, Damon Golsorkhi, Royston Greenwood, Gazi Islam, Gregory Jackson, Joseph
Lampel, Uli Meyer, Gordon Müller-Seitz, Jonatan Pinkse, Mitrabarum Sarkar, Joachim Schleich,
André Spicer, Jörg Sydow, Sigrid Quack, and Gail Whiteman. Associate editor Pratima Bansal and
three anonymous reviewers have been extremely constructive in their developmental advice and our
explicit thanks also go to them. All remaining errors are ours.
4
The worst-case scenario for me is that climate becomes a second World Trade
Organization. Copenhagen, for me, is a very clear deadline that I think we need to meet.
And I’m afraid that if we don’t, then the process will begin to slip. And like in the trade
negotiations, one deadline after the other will not be met, and we sort of become the little
orchestra on the Titanic. - Yvo de Boer, UNFCCC executive secretary, 2008 interview
statement
Less than two years after the above statement, United Nation’s climate chief Yvo de Boer
resigned, taking the blame for the chaos and breakdown for which the 2009 Copenhagen climate
summit will go down in history. After almost two decades of transnational policy efforts, the
summit ended without the promised new binding agreement to fight global warming. It was one of a
series of meetings of the Conference of Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention
on Climate Change (UNFCCC), an international treaty aiming at transnational solutions to stabilize
"greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous
anthropogenic interference with the climate system" (Article 2, UNFCCC; United Nations [1992]).
A decisive early COP in 1997 established the Kyoto Protocol, which committed industrial countries
to legally binding greenhouse gas reduction targets. Initially hailed as a breakthrough, the Kyoto
Protocol has not been effective in limiting global carbon emissions (e.g., Heffernan, 2011). Given
widespread agreement that urgent action is required, why have the 18 COPs to date failed to bring
about regulations to combat human-induced climate change?
Recent research has described United Nations (UN) conferences as field-configuring events
that are important "catalysts of change, especially as organizations and governments struggle to
develop global solutions to complex problems" (Hardy & Maguire, 2010: 1365). Such events play a
role not only in transnational policy-making, but also in the structuration of organizational fields
more generally (Meyer, Gaba, & Colwell, 2005; Lampel & Meyer, 2008). In the context of
transnational fields (e.g., Djelic & Quack, 2003; 2008; Hoffman & Ventresca, 2002), the analysis of
field-configuring events sheds light on the microlevel processes in which state representatives and
international organizations, local and transnational communities, and public and private sector
actors interact in a common arena where policy surrounding a contested transnational issue is being
developed (Wittneben, Okereke, Banerjee, & Levy, 2012). To date, however, we know little about
5
the conditions that allow field-configuring events to bring about institutional change.
Hardy and Maguire (2010) argued that field-configuring events can catalyze change because
they provide discursive spaces not normally available: they are temporally bounded, special
moments in the life of a field and facilitate interactions among field members that do not usually
interact. In this paper, we examine how these two vital characteristics of field-configuring events
which we call "temporal boundedness" and "interactional openness" develop over time by studying
the series of annual COPs
1
between 1995 and 2012. We find, first, that events in this series were
staged and enacted in different ways so that "regular" events created more interactional openness by
providing multiple formal and informal opportunities for participant exchange, whereas the few
"high-stakes" events induced a stronger sense of temporal boundedness through deadlines and
media attention. In the early phases of field development, the interaction of regular and high-stakes
events facilitated institutional change by allowing for both trust-building and the creation of
momentum. Second, we find that field-configuring events over time ceased to be interactionally
open and temporally bounded as diverse actors with vested interests entered the field, power
coalitions shifted, and the events became platforms for issues not strictly related to emission
reduction. Under such conditions, the deliberate staging of the Copenhagen high-stakes event in
2009 to induce a sense of urgency in the climate negotiations prevented institutional change and
resulted in an ongoing delay of substantive policy decisions.
Our analysis yields two theoretical contributions to research on field-configuring events,
institutional change, and the structuration of transnational fields. First, we identify variations among
different events within a series that allow us to define the processes by which the temporal
boundedness and interactional openness of field-configuring events can lead to institutional change.
This theorizing extends the current scholarly work on discursive spaces and field-configuring events
1
In contrast to Hardy and Maguire (2010), who considered a series of international conferences as one field-configuring event, we
look at each annual COP as a field-configuring event, because each fulfills the criteria outlined by Anand and Jones (2008) and
Lampel and Meyer (2008) in that they assemble diverse field members in a bounded time and space, enable increased interaction and
communication among diverse field constituents, include both ceremonial and dramaturgical activities and unstructured opportunities
for face-to-face social interaction, and allow for the transformation of capital—for instance, by generating social and reputational
resources. Thus, we refer to the sequence of COPs as a "field-configuring event series".
6
(Hardy & Maguire, 2010). Second, we detect field-level conditions that limit the capacity of field-
configuring events to bring about institutional change. We argue that when an issue-based field
(Hoffman, 1999) fragments into increasingly diverse membership and sub-issues as a result of the
fluid and complex dynamics of transnational field structuration (Djelic & Quack, 2008), the role of
field-configuring events shifts from field-endogenous catalysts of change to mechanisms of field
maintenance. In the field of climate policy, this means that more and more actors find COP
participation useful for their purposes, but their activity is increasingly disconnected from the issue
of mitigating climate change.
FIELD STRUCTURATION, TRANSNATIONAL FIELDS, AND FIELD-CONFIGURING
EVENTS
Field-Configuring Events and the Structuration of Transnational Policy Fields
Organizational fields have become an important unit of analysis in contemporary
organization theory (Davis & Marquis, 2005; Wooten & Hoffman, 2008), and understanding how
new fields are formed and evolve over time has been a central concern in institutional theory (e.g.,
Hirsch, Lounsbury, & Ventresca, 2003; Leblebici, Salancik, Copay, & King, 1991). A field is
broadly defined as "a community of organizations that partakes of a common meaning system and
whose participants interact more frequently and fatefully with one another than with actors outside
of the field" (Scott, 1994: 207-208). Such interactions may take place in the context of an industry
(e.g., Anand & Peterson, 2000; Garud, Jain, & Kuramaswami, 2002; Munir, 2005) or a profession
(e.g., Rao, Morrill, & Zald, 2000; Greenwood, Suddaby, & Hinings, 2002), or may form around a
contested issue (Hoffman, 1999). Field structuration—establishment of increasingly coherent
patterns of interaction and understandings—can be achieved through rules and norms set by states
and professional systems (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983), through collaborations (Phillips, Lawrence,
& Hardy, 2000), through institutional entrepreneurs (e.g., Maguire, Hardy, & Lawrence, 2004), or
through conflicts and debates (Hoffman, 1999; Wooten & Hoffman, 2008).
In transnational fields, diverse organizations, networks, and communities come together
7
around many different regulatory projects and agendas inside and outside of national boundaries
(Djelic, 2011: 36). While they may share interest in a particular policy issue, actors in transnational
fields operate according to different logics and on multiple levels so that transnational field
structuration is characterized by complexity, fluidity, and differentiation (Djelic, 2011; Djelic &
Quack, 2008). Existing research has shed light on different bottom-up and top-down processes by
which transnational institutions are built, diffused, and adapted. Intergovernmental actors such as
the World Bank and the UN set global norms informed and transmitted by national laws in
recursive cycles (Halliday & Carruthers, 2007). From the bottom up, transnational communities not
only define a transnational problem space and mobilize collective action, but also participate
directly in setting rules and monitoring their implementation (Djelic & Quack, 2010). Because an
overarching authority is missing in transnational fields, rules, norms, and understandings are
continuously (re)negotiated and often highly ambiguous to include diverse actors and logics (Djelic
& Quack, 2011).
Processes of transnational field structuration can be facilitated by field-configuring events,
defined as "settings in which people from diverse organizations and with diverse purposes assemble
periodically, or on a one-time basis, to announce new products, develop industry standards,
construct social networks, recognize accomplishments, share and interpret information, and transact
business" (Lampel & Meyer, 2008: 1026). Such temporary gatherings are particularly important in
the context of complex, fluid, and multilayered transnational fields where frequent and fateful
interactions among the diverse field members may otherwise not develop. Accordingly, Djelic and
Quack (2010: 387) have recognized ritualized gatherings as relevant for bottom-up transnational
community building, because they allow diverse actors to develop "richer, denser, and more
contextualized repertoires of interaction". The field-configuring events framework adds to this
argument the potential of such venues to catalyze change—that is, to bring about change in the
rules, positions, and understandings making up an organizational field (Hardy & Maguire, 2010),
similar to other triggering events from which changes in field membership and a joint sense of
8
purpose can emerge (Hoffman, 1999). An analysis of such localized, discontinuous microlevel
processes in transnational fields complements our knowledge about the global, continuous
processes that drive the development of new transnational frameworks (e.g., Frank, 1997; Meyer,
Frank, Hironaka, Schofer, & Tuma, 1997).
The field of climate policy is an extreme case of a transnational field, because the need to
substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions not only mobilizes governments, international and
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), private sector actors, and research institutes all around the
world (Orr, 2006), but also requires that millions of organizations and individuals change their
production and consumption patterns, which implies a changed economic system for a threat that
lies largely in the future (Giddens, 2009; Levy & Egan, 2003). The issue is both wider and deeper
than other transnational issues, touching all areas of human life and fundamental human beliefs and
values (Hoffman, 2011a; b). In order to coordinate this complex task of transnational institution
building, regular climate conferences have been set up as field-configuring events mandated to
bring about converging rules, norms and beliefs among the countries of the world on how to tackle
climate change. This challenging situation raises questions about the conditions under which field-
configuring events can catalyze change.
Field-Configuring Events as Catalysts of Change: A Dynamic Perspective
Many existing studies of field-configuring events have described processes wherein single
or a small number of events have successfully brought about field-level changes, such as a new
collective understanding (Oliver & Montgomery, 2008) or new technological standards (Garud,
2008). These studies highlighted how institutional entrepreneurs seize emergent opportunities
(McInerney, 2008) or gain central positions from which to trigger shared "sensemaking" (Oliver &
Montgomery, 2008). The general understanding is that field-configuring events conform to
dominant field logics but at the same time leave room for individual initiative and creativity
because participants can interact in unpredictable ways (Lampel & Meyer, 2008: 1027-1028). The
concentration of interactions at field-configuring events highlights different and conflicting
9
positions in a field (Garud, 2008; McInerney, 2008) as well as common concerns (Oliver &
Montgomery, 2008) and creates opportunities for both powerful and peripheral actors to influence
emerging orders (Hardy & Maguire, 2010). In focusing on explaining change processes, these
studies have so far tended to neglect that events are also products of a field, embedded in ongoing
processes of field structuration (Lampel & Meyer, 2008). To address this current gap in our
knowledge, a dynamic perspective on the evolution of a series of events in the context of a changing
field is needed.
As a first step in this direction, Hardy and Maguire (2010) discussed how field-configuring
events can take different forms by building on the concept of discursive spaces (Hajer, 1995),
which they defined as physical or virtual arenas in which actors discuss, debate, and dispute issues
important to them. They argued that to trigger change, field-configuring events must comprise
multiple discursive spaces that are more open and at the same time more bounded than the
discursive spaces regularly available in a field. In this way, events bring actors together that do not
normally interact for a fixed duration or at particular intervals. Innovation then emerges because
new things can be said in these unusual discursive spaces, information can flow between otherwise
separate discursive spaces, and multiple actors translate dominant narratives in unforeseeable ways
(Hardy & Maguire, 2010).
This argument is useful in that existing research often described events as temporally and
spatially bounded social arenas (Lampel & Meyer, 2008; McInerney, 2008), but did not distinguish
the dimension of temporal limitation from the question of whether field-configuring events, not
least through their spatial arrangements, support an increase in the extent of interaction among
organizations in a field—a central aspect of field structuration (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). As
indicated by a recent study, events can be temporally bounded, but still provide for little openness in
members’ interactions (Zilber, 2011): two conferences in the field of Israeli high tech assembled
field members in a temporally bounded space, but participants were not engaged in a joint debate
because event organizers allocated different issues to separate social spaces. As a result, these
10
events contributed to maintaining conflicting institutions rather than leading to a convergence of
positions and new institutional frameworks.
Thus, in order to better understand why events fail to trigger change we first need to treat the
dimensions of temporal boundedness and interactional openness as separate, displaying distinct
causes and effects. Interactional openness relates to the temporary spatial co-presence of diverse
actors that can interact in the context of overlapping formal and informal spaces. Research from the
field of economic geography has shown that co-presence at trade fairs, in a research laboratory, or
during a joint product presentation can stimulate knowledge exchange, learning, and the emergence
of trustful ties (e.g., Maskell, Bathelt, & Malmberg, 2006; Torre, 2008). Temporal boundedness, in
contrast, refers to the temporal limitation of events. Temporally limited meetings among different
and possibly rival professional communities in creative projects, for instance, are said to induce
creative friction (e.g., Grabher, 2004; Ibert, 2010). The setting of deadlines, another form of
temporal limitation, is known as a mechanism to stimulate momentum for change (e.g., Gersick,
1989, 2004). Whereas openness is thus primarily associated with learning and trust building,
boundedness relates more to creativity and momentum, and both processes may be necessary for
facilitating institutional change. Existing research indicates that the temporal boundedness of an
event can be enhanced by building up anticipation (Lampel, 2001) or by making thematically
charged opening statements (Oliver & Montgomery, 2008). Interactional openness, on the other
hand, is influenced by organizing choices concerning, for instance, spatial arrangements, participant
fees, or theme selection (Rüling & Strandgaard Pedersen, 2010; Zilber, 2011). To elaborate on these
two characteristics of field-configuring events and their relationship to institutional change we pose
the following first research question: What are the causes and effects of temporal boundedness and
interactional openness in a field-configuring event series?
A related, but different aspect concerns the question of how and why field-configuring
events change over time as they become more deeply embedded in a field. Lampel and Meyer
(2008) argued that during field emergence field-configuring events create new standards, practices,
11
or categories; in mature fields, they expand, refine, and solidify beliefs. Existing research indicated
that rare and exceptional events, like the case of a 1944 conference of Jewish lawyers that
established an independent legal system in the newly forming state of Israel (Oliver &
Montgomery, 2008), are associated with radical field-level changes, whereas periodic events tend to
stabilize field processes. Power and Jansson (2008), for instance, study recurrent trade fairs in the
furniture industry and their role in entrenching business relations and exchanges. Similarly, research
on tournament rituals stresses how events such as award ceremonies symbolically reinforce existing
field structures such as power relations (Moeran, 2011; Skov, 2006) or horizontal relationships
(Anand & Watson, 2004; Anand & Jones, 2008). While these events may also lead to changes such
as new genres or market categories, such changes occur primarily in an incremental way. To better
understand why field-configuring events fail to trigger change therefore also depends on analyzing
how and why their characteristics change over time as a result of ongoing processes of field
structuration (Barley & Tolbert, 1997; Giddens, 1984). Accordingly, we pose a second research
question: How and why do field-configuring events change in the context of an evolving
organizational field?
RESEARCH CONTEXT
UNFCCC and the Field of Transnational Climate Policy
The field of transnational climate policy is structured by the dominant institution of the
UNFCCC. This international treaty first adopted at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 has been ratified
by 194 countries and therefore boasts near global acceptance. During annual meetings of the COPs
decisions pertaining to the implementation of the treaty and the extension of its legal framework are
taken and countries' climate change reports and greenhouse gas emission inventories reviewed.
Drawing on the concept of issue-based fields (Hoffman, 1999), we take participation in the COPs as
a proxy for membership in the transnational climate policy field and for engagement in a common
debate, although the actual extent of interaction among field members remains to be examined
empirically. The aegis of the UN has shaped the rules and understandings governing the COP's
12
discursive spaces. From the outset, the UNFCCC was aimed at universal membership, which
involves openness to all countries, and the principle of unanimous consent. It relied on the standard
instruments of transnational environmental policy processes including targets, timetables and a
focus on legally binding texts (Victor, 2011). As we will outline later, this structure has been
problematic in the face of the enduring and complex issue of climate change, because it affected the
ability of the COPs to be both temporally bounded and interactionally open.
Figure 1 illustrates how the climate policy field and the COPs have developed in two main
phases. The years from 1995 to 2005 were dominated by the negotiation, adoption, and
implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty that defines legally binding emission reduction
targets for industrialized countries in a first commitment period ending in 2012. This process was
delayed by an open discord between the European Union (EU) and the United States (U.S.). In the
year 2000, the U.S. decided to leave the Kyoto Protocol process (e.g., Hoffman, 2002; Levy &
Egan, 2003). When the Kyoto Protocol finally "entered into force" in 2005,
2
the field moved into a
second phase, in which its future was negotiated. As we will show in more detail in the findings,
this second phase was marked by a growing diversity of field constituents and issues, a shift in
dominant coalitions, and the emergence of parallel regulatory solutions in a context of increasingly
complex rules and instruments mainly associated with the Kyoto Protocol. These changes were
reflected in strongly increasing COP participation, the multiplication of official negotiation tracks,
and an increasing divide among a growing number of diverse field constituencies.
-----------------------------------
Insert Figure 1 about here
-----------------------------------
Inside the Conference of the Parties
The meetings of the COPs can be considered the climate change field’s central field-
configuring event series. The UNFCCC’s secretariat and a host country government organize each
annual conference. In between COP meetings, subsidiary bodies hold negotiations in which draft
2
A treaty does not immediately enter into force at the time of its adoption, but typically on a later date following its ratification by a
pre-defined number of signatory states.
13
texts are advanced. Since 1995, about an average 3,500 government delegates from more than 190
countries, 4,500 delegates from accredited Observer organizations, and 1,200 media representatives
have attended each COP. Total attendance varied between 4,300 for COP 8 in New Delhi and more
than 27,000 registered participants for COP 15 in Copenhagen.
Multiple discursive spaces coexist at COPs. Central among these is the negotiation space, in
which governments that are Parties to the convention make decisions. Most countries belong to
groups, such as the G-77 group of developing countries, the EU, or the BASIC group, which
comprises Brazil, South Africa, India, and China. Albeit not directly involved in decision making,
the second key discursive space is the Observer space. Observers are admitted to the COPs to
represent industry, civil society, and the realm of science. Observer delegates must be registered
with a not-for-profit non-governmental organization and admitted by the UNFCCC secretariat.
Observers typically attend the COPs to set up and participate in official side events, network, learn,
and share information (Orr, 2006). Over time, diverse Observer groupings have been officially
recognized, including representatives of environmental NGOs (ENGOs), business and industry
NGOs (BINGOs), research and independent NGOs (RINGOs), indigenous peoples' organizations
(IPOs), trade union NGOs (TUNGOs), women and gender groups, and young generation NGOs
(YOUNGOs). Press and media representatives (who must be accredited by the UNFCCC
secretariat) constitute the media space. Media is allowed to take photos and video footage at the
COPs, and invited to numerous press briefings held by country and Observer groups as well as by
COP organizers.
The main COP activities are policy negotiations, side events, and exhibits. The first week of
a conference is normally dedicated to technical negotiation in the UNFCCC bodies and contact
groups—open-ended meetings where negotiation text is drafted. The second week is reserved for
the so-called high-level segment in which environment, trade, and finance ministers advance
negotiations and make decisions in the COP plenary. Any government or Observer organization can
register a side event to hold a panel discussion or present an idea or research findings. In addition,
14
any registered organization can also request free exhibit space to distribute brochures and display
posters. Negotiation, Observer, and media spaces overlap at side events, exhibits, press briefings,
and informal exchanges. The latter can be staged or simply organically emerge from the interaction
of event participants. While the broad format of the COPs remained stable over time, our research
found evidence of critical shifts in temporal boundedness and interactional openness which affected
the COPs' ability to advance institutional change.
METHODS
Research Process
Drawing on our prior experience in the climate policy field and in studying field-configuring
events, our initial research question focused on field-configuring processes during COP events.
Two authors (Bettina and Elke) attended COP 14 in Poznan (2008) and the subsequent meeting of
the subsidiary bodies (SB 30, 2009) in Bonn to observe, conduct interviews, collect documents, and
take field notes (see the section on data sources below). From these initial observations and
interviews we discovered that most field participants referred to the COPs as part of a trajectory
rather than as discrete events (e.g., placing a COP within the two years of negotiation for the Bali
Roadmap) but at the same time anticipated each COP differently. We began to develop the idea that
COPs should be understood as embedded in a longer-term event series with changing dynamics
over time.
To capture the factors leading to variations among the COPs and to understand the long-
term evolution of this event series, we conducted follow-up interviews with people we had met at
COP 14 and other experts in the climate policy field. In addition, we collected many secondary
data, mostly academic articles from environmental policy studies and international law, discussing
the development of the field and reporting on specific COPs (see the details on data collection
below). Finally, we collected COP-related primary data. Following Hardy and Maguire (2010), we
analyzed all daily and summary issues of the Earth Negotiation Bulletin (ENB) related to the
meetings from COP 1 in 1995 to COP 17 in 2011. Published by the International Institute for
15
Sustainable Development, based in Canada (www.iisd.ca), ENBs are "high quality, reliable,
independent, and technical" and "considered invaluable by policymakers who require up-to-date,
detailed information on international meetings" (United Nations Association in Canada [2009],
quoted in Hardy and Maguire [2010: 1371]).
We used ATLAS.ti qualitative data analysis software to code all 204 COP-related ENB
issues as well as our interviews and observations. During a first round of coding, we assigned
descriptive codes to all text passages that evoked activities and processes occurring during or
related to the COPs. A review and consolidation of these descriptive codes yielded an initial scheme
with 60 codes that facilitated the comparison of topics across data sources. This coding scheme,
which remained close to the data, comprised labels such as "inter-COP lack of agreement,"
"texts/drafting/bracketing," "conflict/dissent/tensions," "proposing and receiving texts,"
"NGO/Observer-delegation contact," "government-sponsored meetings and initiatives," and
"conference logistics." In addition, we coded our data for temporal boundedness and interactional
openness of discursive spaces. We linked openness to text passages indicating either overlap or
distance of discursive spaces and to exchanges between different actor groups; boundedness was
linked to text passages that indicated either the exceptional or routine character of events, the
frequency of events/number of additional events, and time limits. After the first round of coding, we
began an iterative process, moving back and forth between data and theory to capture what we had
identified as the most empirically grounded and theoretically interesting factors relating to the
temporal boundedness and interactional openness of discursive spaces at the COPs. This process
yielded a simplified, more abstract data structure (Figure 2).
-----------------------------------
Insert Figure 2 about here
-----------------------------------
The data structure has six main second-order themes that we associated with two aggregate
dimensions: "event staging" and "event enactment." These dimensions reflected the notion of events
as forms of collective performance (Rao, 2001) and captured different ways in which organizers
16
and participants set up events and participated in them. Once we had defined the data structure, we
used the six second-order themes to recode our primary data as well as additional texts including
articles, COP reports, and speeches. We then compared all text passages associated with each
second-order theme to comprehend how and why the temporal boundedness and interactional
openness varied across COPs and over time along with changes in the field. Table 1 is an overview
of themes and categories, with representative data.
-----------------------------------
Insert Table 1 about here
-----------------------------------
Data
The transnational climate policy field is uniquely complex with often conflicting and
dynamic political, scientific, technological, and legal dimensions and pressing public concerns. We
have approached our research in this multifaceted, vibrant field by combining a detailed knowledge
of climate science and policy gained through a decade-long engagement in the field with nuanced
qualitative insights from in-depth interviews and longitudinal analysis of textual data.
Participant observation. One of us (Bettina) has more than ten years research experience in
the climate policy field (see, e.g., Wittneben 2007; Whiteman, Dorsey & Wittneben, 2010) and has
attended 13 major international climate policy events since 2000 (see Table A1 in the Appendix)
working for the UNFCCC secretariat, different European governments, and conducting research for
academic and policy institutes. In these roles, she was able to follow the field's development over
time and to observe event-related processes. These observations have been documented in blog
entries, conference reports (Ott, Brouns, Sterk & Wittneben, 2005; Wittneben, Sterk, Ott & Brouns,
2006; Sterk, Ott, Watanabe & Wittneben, 2007), videos, and field notes. Another author (Elke)
joined to attend climate policy conferences in 2008 and in 2009 and took field notes on side events,
informal gatherings, social events, and press conferences. We drew on these observations to identify
key moments in the development of the field and to map out variations in COP-related micro-
dynamics over time.
Semistructured interviews. We conducted 39 formal, semistructured interviews (28 at
17
events and 11 follow-ups; see Table A2). COP interviewees were selected to reflect diversity in
global regions (industrialized and developing countries), organizations (government delegations,
not-for-profit organizations, business associations, and intergovernmental agencies), and length of
experience in the climate policy field. Our long-term engagement in the field facilitated access to
high-level respondents. Interviews lasted between 30 and 60 minutes, and 34 were audio-taped and
fully transcribed. Initial interviews addressed respondents' roles in the conference process, their
activities before, during, and after the events, and their evaluation of the importance of the
UNFCCC event cycle compared to other international climate change policy-making processes and
events. We revised our interview protocol for the follow-up interviews, taking into account current
policy developments and asking for assessments of the evolution of the UNFCCC process.
Documents. Our goal was to gain a broad understanding of the field and related COP
dynamics by analyzing, first, academic work reflecting on the climate policy process and specific
COPs; second, texts allowing us to closely trace negotiations and interactions during the COPs and,
third, texts reflecting the perception of COPs in the media. Table A3 gives an overview of the
document types and how we used them.
Academic sources were identified using EBSCO and Google Scholar. We selected 58
academic articles that explicitly analyzed the UNFCCC or commented on COPs and transferred
information from these documents onto a 3'×10' paper timeline and a spreadsheet in which we
entered information by source (line) and by COP (column). These steps improved our
understanding of developments over time. To capture negotiation processes and interactions, we
mainly relied on daily ENBs and COP summaries. ENB volume 12, which is devoted to the
UNFCCC, comprised more than 530 individual issues by May 2012. During COPs, ENBs are made
available to attendees on the morning of each negotiation day. For each COP, we retrieved, on
average, 11 ENB issues of about 2,000 to 3,000 words each. Each issue summarized the key points
in the official negotiations of the past day and contained a section entitled "In the Corridors," about
the negotiation process itself. We complemented the 187 ENB daily issues with 17 ENB COP
18
summaries, published several weeks after the respective COPs that reviewed the events and
evaluated outcomes.
Furthermore, we analyzed a large number of documents from the UNFCCC secretariat's
electronic archives. We used directories of participants to identify the number of delegates and
average delegation size. Official COP press releases and official speeches and statements of the
UNFCCC Executive Secretary were used to refine themes and categories identified from the
analysis of the ENBs. We consulted the detailed daily programs of seven COPs to identify the
number of country and Observer groupings present and to count the official press briefings
scheduled, and we accessed the UNFCCC’s electronic side event registration system to identify the
organizers of all side events since COP 9. Finally, we analyzed the annual budget reports submitted
by the UNFCCC secretariat to the COPs to trace the development of UNFCCC budget and staff
over time.
To capture variation in the media coverage associated with the respective COPs, we also
included articles from the New York Times, whose critical role in the translation of climate change
policy has been analyzed in prior research (Boykoff & Boykoff, 2004). As the extent of coverage
varied over time (from only 2 articles in 2003 to 110 in 2009), we decided to sample 3 articles for
each COP (unless fewer articles were published for a given COP) published on the first, the middle,
and the final days of a conference. We retrieved these texts from Dow Jones/Factiva and in addition
counted the total number of articles published in the New York Times for each COP and about
climate change in general.
FINDINGS
Our findings are structured in two parts. To address our first research question, we begin by
discussing the variations in the staging and enactment of events which lead to differences in
temporal boundedness and interactional openness and, consequently, different outcomes. In line
with our second research question, we then examine changes in event structures, processes and
19
outcomes over time, with emphasis on the phase following the Kyoto Protocol’s entry into force in
2005. We end by applying these findings to explain the failure of the 2009 Copenhagen summit and
provide an outlook on subsequent developments.
Variations in Event Staging and Enactment: Regular versus High-Stakes COPs
The extent to which discursive spaces in the COP event series were temporally bounded or
interactionally open differed according to whether the event was a regular COP or one of the
smaller number of high-stakes COPs. Both kinds of COPs were characterized by different actor
compositions, interaction dynamics, and outcomes. Relatively unspectacular, incremental, and
technical negotiation and decision making characterized the large number of regular COPs. Three
high-stakes COPs—COP 3 in Kyoto, COP 13 in Bali, and COP 15 in Copenhagen—stood out
because they marked milestones in the negotiation process, thereby creating high expectations that a
substantial outcome would be reached and receiving significantly more media attention. What was
at stake at high-stakes COPs depended on the type of actor and changed over time. For Parties,
binding texts or political commitments created high stakes; for Observers, particular opportunities
to mobilize resources, to gain visibility, and to weigh in on the policy process were at stake; and for
supporters of the UNFCCC itself, the legitimacy and credibility of the overall policy process
depended on the success or failure of the high-stakes events.
Event staging. High-stakes events occurred at visible junctures in the multi-year negotiation
periods. What happened in Kyoto (1993), for instance, marked the end point of the highly debated
Berlin Mandate adopted at COP 1, and the Copenhagen COP (2009) was widely seen as the
"culmination of a two-year negotiating process" (ENB 12[459]) defined in the Bali Roadmap. The
definition of deadlines and negotiation cycles created boundedness for specific events in the
ongoing event series. Frequent references by UNFCCC officials to the deadline and expected results
for an upcoming high-stakes event enhanced expectations and pressure to progress:
You have one year to go before Copenhagen, and the clock is ticking! Work needs to shift into
higher gear! (Y. de Boer, UNFCCC Executive Secretary, COP 14 opening statement)
Our interviewees at the Poznan COP 14 constructed this event in reference to the expected
20
outcomes of the upcoming high-stakes Copenhagen meeting:
The Bali action plan said that there should be a negotiated outcome in Copenhagen, ... but then how
to get there that’s what we have to get out of Poznan; so even though I mean as the work program
doesn’t sound as sexy ... it will be quite important for next year. (Developed country delegate,
interview at COP 14)
The experience of successful high-stakes events in the past also contributed to sustaining
high expectations with regard to an upcoming high-stakes event. Although many of our COP 14
interviewees stressed their disillusion with the overall UNFCCC process, they still expressed their
belief that the Copenhagen summit would "somehow" move the process ahead, "cut the Gordian
knot" in negotiations, and get delegates "out of the trenches," in the words of one expert we
interviewed. The earlier Kyoto and Bali high-stakes events, during which Parties had actually been
able to establish consensus and advance the policy process, served as symbolic references and
influenced the hopes and expectations attached to Copenhagen.
Beyond its placement in the overall negotiation timeline, the characteristics of an upcoming
event depended heavily on the key negotiation issues and positions that had emerged in prior
negotiations and during the build-up for a COP. Prior to the 2007 high-stakes Bali COP, for
example, an unusual number of high-level political meetings such as the G8 meetings had brought
the issue of climate change to the public's attention and contributed to raising expectations about the
event’s outcomes. Comparable hype was highlighted in the UNFCCC Executive Secretary's
opening statement at the 2009 Copenhagen COP:
Over recent weeks and months, I have heard a multitude of strong political statements calling for a
successful and ambitious agreement in Copenhagen. And I have heard strong political statements
calling for an agreement that offers serious emission limitation goals and that captures the provision
of significant financial and technological support to developing countries. (Y. de Boer, UNFCCC
Executive Secretary, COP 15 opening statement)
The UN and the host country government contributed to the positioning of some conferences
as high-stakes events. To build momentum, the Danish organizers of COP 15, for example, had
labeled it a "summit," and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had approached the International
Advertising Association, a large trade organization, to build "buzz" and coverage with a campaign
including branding as "Hopenhagen"—a label that many critics later replaced with "Nopenhagen"
21
or "Brokenhagen".
Finally, events outside the UNFCCC process also helped shape the high-stakes character of
an event. Several sources concurred that an unusual frequency of extreme weather conditions,
together with the award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize to the IPCC and to former U.S. vice
president and climate activist Al Gore (who in the same year received an Academy Award for his
climate change documentary, An Inconvenient Truth) contributed to increased media attention and
public interest in the 2007 COP 13 in Bali.
We found that the structure of attendance at regular and high-stakes COPs differed. The
latter attracted more Observers, more journalists, and stronger media coverage. COP 3 in Kyoto, for
example, featured 50 percent more Observers, four times more journalists, and 60 percent more
press briefings than the subsequent COP 4 in Buenos Aires (see Table A4). From one month before
the conference to one month afterwards, The New York Times published an average of 63 articles
for each of the 3 high-stakes COPs, compared to an average of only 7.6 articles for each of the 14
regular ones. As we show in more detail below, strong media attention, more attendees, and the
salience of targets and timelines increased focus on the short time span available for reaching an
outcome, but decreased opportunities for exchange between negotiators and Observers. High-stakes
events were thus set apart from the more regular COPs in that they conveyed a higher sense of
temporal boundedness, but were also accompanied by a lower overlap across the different
discursive spaces than the regular COPs, thereby decreasing interactional openness.
Event enactment. At high-stakes events, the temporal boundedness produced during event
build-up was reinforced throughout the event itself by highly emotional appeals and speeches,
celebratory moments, drama, intense media coverage, and the appearance of "world leaders" at the
high-level segments. Interactional openness, on the other hand, was mainly achieved through
engagement in various formal and informal arenas. For example, the COP President’s consultations
with Observer constituencies, as well presentations of short statements at the plenary by recognized
Observer constituencies provided formal, albeit limited areas of interaction across discursive
22
spaces. In addition, side events, the "most visible venue for civil society engagement in
international climate negotiations" (Hjerpe & Linnér, 2010: 167), formally allowed the exchange of
ideas and propositions among Observers’ and Parties’ delegates. The nature of these interactions
differed between high-stakes and regular events. A comparison of the issues addressed at side
events at a high-stakes (Bali) and a regular (Poznan) COP showed that 41 percent of the side events
in Bali did not directly refer to the UNFCCC negotiations, a number that dropped to 26 percent for
Poznan (Schroeder & Lovell, 2012). This observation is coherent with our finding that high-stakes
events attracted a larger number and variety of Observer organizations representing a broader set of
issues that may be only indirectly related to the UNFCCC negotiations. At high-stakes COPs, side
events tended to represent "forums in and of themselves" (Schroeder & Lovell, 2012: 34) playing an
important role in information sharing, networking and capacity building.
In addition to these formal interactions, informal interactions, especially among
representatives of Parties and between Party and Observer delegates, occurred when COP
participants interacted while, for example, standing in line or taking shuttle buses, and also at staged
events, such as the annual NGO party, held on the Saturday of the first conference week and
attracting many Observer, Party, and media delegates. Here again, a difference could be observed
between high-stakes and regular COPs. COP 14, in Poznan, for example, was seen be many as a
mere "pit stop" (Santarius et al., 2009) on the road to Copenhagen, but the fact that the negotiation
deadline was a year away created more relaxation and less pressure on negotiators to defend their
positions on issues and allowed for more informal interaction between delegates for Parties and
Observers:
The fact that people believe Poznan to be less important—half-way between Bali and Copenhagen—
is a great opportunity for us, because everyone is more relaxed, and there is more openness for our
issues. (Observer interview, COP 14)
At the high-stakes events, on the contrary, deadlines and expectations pressed country
delegates to concentrate on the formal negotiation process, including coordination within their
country groupings, and on constant briefing and exchange with their ministers and heads of states.
23
Observers, on the other hand, found themselves part of a larger and more diverse array, which
facilitated the experience of novel exchanges and network building within the Observer space.
Moreover, they benefited from the high-stakes events' media exposure that allowed them to address
exceptionally large international audiences.
In the context of the formal negotiation processes, key individuals, whom we label
"negotiation leaders," played an important role for stimulating interactions, primarily among
UNFCCC Parties. The COP President (most often the host country’s environment minister), the
UNFCCC Executive Secretary, and the chairs of the meetings of bodies and contact groups
influenced both the formal set-up of negotiations and the facilitation of informal exchanges.
Negotiation leaders had a crucial role in advancing the Parties’ drafting efforts, as one of our
interviewees highlighted:
The Chairs are extremely important. When I see the names, I know whether it is a tough negotiator
who will get something through, somebody the others listen to. Or ... someone without experience—
there it will be extremely difficult to get any result. (Expert interview)
A key aspect of negotiation leadership at all COPs entailed shifting between formal and
informal negotiation arenas. We observed, for example, how session chairs regularly suspended
formal negotiations and moved to informal exchanges by gathering smaller groups of negotiators.
At many COPs, informal "friends of the presidency" groups were set up during the final days to
unblock controversial issues and enable text adoption. Much of the success in adoption of the Kyoto
Protocol, for example, was attributed to Argentinian Ambassador Raul Estrada's negotiation
leadership. As a chair of the official negotiation group that had worded agreements since COP 1,
Estrada was highly familiar with the key issues and respected by the Parties' negotiators:
The AGBM Chair, Raul Estrada, is expected to take over the task of chairing the QELROs working
group during COP-3. The new role ... will put Estrada in a key position to pursue his proactive
approach to the negotiations and bring his influence to bear on the high level negotiations expected
at the end of COP-3. (ENB 12[67])
At high-stakes COPs, negotiation leaders' ability to achieve (or block) expected outcomes
was more visible for COP participants and more frequently discussed in the ENB reports. The sense
that the stakes were high, the emotionally charged processes, and the high media exposure favored
24
personalization and dramatization of the negotiations. An ENB from Copenhagen shows this:
Several participants were expressing surprise at the appearance of a prominent developing country
negotiator in the delegation of Sudan. This fueled speculation that her role as a "hardline negotiator"
for the South had been in jeopardy following pressure from certain parties. (ENB 12[449])
The overall atmosphere at high-stakes events was tense, feverish, and full of rumors, as
discursive spaces had less overlap than they did at the regular, more technical COPs and the final
negotiation outcomes had a strong impact on field constituents. This tension and drama reached a
climax at the high-level plenary sessions in which policy text was adopted from the negotiation
groups. While the Kyoto closing plenary could build on the consensus achieved in the prior
negotiations, the last hours in both Bali and Copenhagen were filled with a mixture of excitement,
conflict and exhaustion. The following quote provides a sense of the Bali final plenary:
The dramatic highpoint came in the mid afternoon of Saturday... The U.N. General Secretary Ban
Kim-moon ... had returned to Bali to plead with delegates to find a consensus. ... But the United
States, the last speaker, opposed the new formulation. The conference erupted in boos, an
unprecedented occurrence at such otherwise staid diplomatic events ... What followed was another
series of short interventions by several countries who implored the United States to reconsider. ...
The delegate from Papua New Guinea, Kevin Conrad, perhaps most succinctly captured the
sentiment of the conference when he pleaded that "the world is waiting for the U.S. to lead but if for
some reason you are not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please, get out of the way." The
head of the U.S. delegation Under Secretary of State Paula Dobriansky—who was said to have been
in regular contact with the White House—took the floor again, expressed her appreciation for what
had been said, ... before she concluded "we will go forward and join consensus." Now her
intervention was greeted by relieved lengthy applause, when it sunk in that a deal had been
reached."(Clémençon, 2008: 77)
The differences in staging and enactment of regular and high-stakes events led to different
event outcomes. During the long phase dedicated to the negotiation of the Kyoto Protocol
instruments, for example, regular events favored the incremental advancement of specific rules with
low visibility in the wider public. High-stakes events, in contrast, led to highly visible outcomes,
either in the form of new agreements (as in Kyoto or Bali) or in the form of a widely shared sense
of failure (as in Copenhagen). These outcomes, whether positive or negative, created shifts in the
rules, positions, and understandings making up the field and influenced the course of the policy
process (see next section). Table 2 summarizes the main differences between regular and high-
stakes events developed in this first part of our findings.
-----------------------------------
25
Insert Table 2 about here
-----------------------------------
Changes in Event Structures, Processes, and Outcomes over Time
In addition to a difference between regular and high-stakes events, we found that the
temporal boundedness and interactional openness of the COPs decreased as the climate policy field,
after the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol, entered into a second phase oriented towards
defining the future of the regime. Not least because the U.S. had decided not to ratify the Kyoto
Protocol, the COPs in this second phase became layered with numerous parallel negotiation
processes which significantly changed their ability to produce institutional change. Observer
organizations became more and more detached from the UNFCCC negotiation process. In parallel
to these UNFCCC-internal developments, the U.S. under the leadership of newly elected George W.
Bush began setting up several alternative bilateral and multilateral climate-related cooperative
ventures (e.g., Methane-to-Markets, Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate)
(Gupta, 2010). As interactions increasingly took place within specific subgroups and in parallel
arenas, the COPs no longer facilitated interaction across the diverse actors participating in the
climate policy field. These changes contribute to explaining why the staging and enactment of the
Copenhagen COP in 2009 failed to bring about a new and ambitious transnational agreement.
Changes in the field and in COP dynamics after 2005. With the entry into force of the
Kyoto Protocol in 2005, two parallel official negotiation processes, one dedicated to the Convention
itself (including all Parties), and another dedicated to the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol
(CMP; including only the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol) were created. After more than 10 years in
which participants had concentrated on negotiating the Kyoto Protocol instruments and after a
particularly long ratification process, the road was again clear for formally addressing broader
questions about the future of the regime. In order to do so, the Parties to the Convention set up a
first "Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties
3
under the Kyoto
3
"Annex I Parties include those industrialized countries that were members of the OECD (Organization for Economic
Co-operation and Development) in 1992, plus countries with economies in transition, including the Russian Federation,
26
Protocol" (AWG-KP) tasked with negotiating the Kyoto Protocol’s second commitment period. As
a goal of this process, COP 13 in Bali (2007) established a two-year "roadmap" that would take
negotiators to COP 15 in Copenhagen and set up a second future-oriented negotiation process under
the "Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention" (AWG-
LCA) with the goal of defining a new, legally-binding regime. This endeavor was marked by the
challenge that rapid industrialization and the resulting sharp increase of greenhouse gas emissions
by so-called developing countries (especially China and India) had been underestimated in the early
1990s when both the Convention and the Kyoto Protocol were first drafted. Both treaties never
called for any emission reduction targets for non-OECD countries.
With the Kyoto Protocol and its accentuation of market and financial mechanisms, emphasis
in the field shifted from climate change mitigation in industrialized countries to clean development
through emission trading and a new emphasis on adaptation (Gupta, 2010). Although the market
mechanisms were specifically created to support the Clinton Administration in signing the treaty
into law at home, the eventual failure to do so led to profound disagreement and essentially a
deadlock between the U.S. and the EU, an avid supporter of the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto
implementation process also divided developing countries and Observers that defended the market
mechanisms from those criticizing them as inadequate in addressing climate change (Lohmann,
2005).
Although their effectiveness for mitigation of climate change remains highly contested, the
Kyoto Protocol instruments, especially the "Clean Development Mechanism" (CDM), had two
important impacts on the climate policy field. First, they led to an increase in the complexity of the
negotiations, defining a variety of highly specific issues for negotiation and monitoring. Second,
they attracted new actors into the field. Finance, consulting, technology, and development
organizations hoped to benefit financially from the new regime. Civil society actors such as
the Baltic States, and several Central and Eastern European States."
(http://unfccc.int/parties_and_observers/items/2704.php). The term "Annex I Parties" refers to the Annex of the
UNFCCC listing these countries.
27
organizations from the development, anti-globalization and gender movements, trade unions, faith-
based organizations, or research institutes from different academic disciplines wanted to make use
of the growing public awareness of climate change issues. The creation of highly technical policy
instruments for the Kyoto Protocol, the multiplication of negotiation tracks due to the limited
membership in the Protocol, and the growing number and diversity of actors thus led to a situation
in which "the welcome elevation of climate change on the priority list of national and international
agendas went along with a proliferation of issues, concerns, and special interests" so that "no single
individual [could] follow, or even fully grasp, all agenda items negotiated under the UNFCCC"
(Streck, 2012: 53).
Both Parties' and Observers' average COP attendance more than doubled after the 2005
entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol (see Table A5). Whereas the average Observer delegation
size remained stable over time, the average number of Observer organizations present at the COPs
more than doubled from one phase to the next. The increasing diversity of Observer organizations
was mirrored by an increase in officially recognized Observer constituencies from five in 2003 to
nine in 2011. For instance, a farmers and agricultural NGO, a gender, and a youth Observer
constituency were officially established in 2011. The growing number of government delegates, on
the other hand, resulted from a 100 percent increase in the average size of Parties’ delegations.
According to our interviewees, this growth in delegation size was necessary to cope with the
multiplication of negotiation tracks and the increasing emphasis on technical details in relation to
the Kyoto Protocol instruments. The growing size and specialization of delegations fomented
fragmentation within negotiation teams. Furthermore, we found an increase in the number of
country groupings organizing separate press briefings. In Kyoto (1997), 14 groupings organized
briefings, a number that increased to 20 in Bali (2007). The following quote from one of our
interviews highlights the consequences of increasing complexity for the negotiation teams:
There are more and more parallel processes and everything must be negotiated at the same time. The
number of ... negotiation issues has increased and many of these issues ... are discussed in different
places at the same time. That is very inefficient; there are simply too many people involved ... The
delegations become so large that only very few people understand the whole thing. ... Everybody ...
28
[is] defending ... positions that have been identified in advance ..., losing the overall negotiation
outcome out of sight. (Interview with developed country delegation member at COP 14)
Growing specialization, mainly within developed country Party delegations, increased the
need for internal coordination and reduced the time available for interaction with Observers. This is
in stark contrast to the earlier negotiations, where even at the high-stakes Kyoto COP (1997)
Observers played an important role in influencing the negotiations:
NGOs played a pivotal role in identifying and advising receptive delegations on loopholes in the
proposals, notably in emissions trading and sinks. At a meeting with NGOs, Vice President Gore
also proved receptive to advice on moderating the content of his Plenary speech on the need for
developing country commitments. (ENB 12(76))
The multiplication of negotiation tracks and the creation of additional UNFCCC bodies
since 2005 also increased uncertainty (Clémençon, 2008) and demanded more regular and intense
negotiation activities. This called for coordination among field participants to ensure advancement
of detailed technical negotiations as well as harmony between the different negotiation tracks. In
response to this situation, the UNFCCC staged an increasing number of intersessional meetings and
workshops. More and more formal Convention body meetings were held outside COPs to produce
draft texts to be negotiated at the COPs. As well, a growing number of UNFCCC workshops,
seminars, and informal consultations developed, which aimed at capacity building and learning, and
which mirrored the increasing specialization and need to develop and share expertise, in particular
with respect to the Kyoto Protocol instruments. Whereas the objective of these inter-sessional
meetings was to advance technical negotiations and to create as much consensus as possible on the
different issues to be submitted to political decision makers during the COP, they also significantly
reduced the temporal boundedness of the COPs, which were increasingly seen as continuation of
the ongoing intersessional negotiations. Over time, a growing part of the two-week COP time itself
was devoted to ongoing negotiation groups finishing their work before bringing texts into the
plenary.
The increasing field complexity and multiplication of issues after 2005 was also reflected in
the development of side events. While the overall number of side events at the COPs grew, our
29
analysis of UNFCCC side event registration data since 2003 revealed a decline in side events
organized by governments from 22 percent in 2003 to only 13 percent in 2011. More importantly,
the share of Annex I Countries among government-organized events dropped over the same time
period from over 80 percent to less than 30 percent. Side events initially were forums where Parties
and Observers debated alternative courses of action. The diminishing relative weight of Parties at
these events, and more specifically, the diminishing participation of Annex I Countries, reflected
decreased overlap between Parties and Observers as well as between industrialized and developing
country delegations. Observers then began to concentrate on networking, resource acquisition, and
capacity building for their own projects and agendas instead of engaging in a dialogue with the
Parties.
Some civil society groups also tried to leverage the COP's media coverage to attract
attention for actions taking place in parallel to the COPs. Since 2005, for example, NGOs around
the world have organized a "Global Day of Action on Climate" on the Saturday during the annual
COP "to demand urgent action on climate, and climate justice, from the governments of the world
meeting at the annual climate talks" (www.globalclimatecampaign.org). In parallel, the growing
prominence of limited-access intergovernmental forums such as the G20 group of large economies
and the inability of smaller and poorer countries to match the large industrialized nations'
negotiation and lobbying efforts further promoted a divide between industrialized and developing
countries.
Table 3 summarizes the most important changes in the structure and dynamics of the COPs
between the first and second phase of field development, and Figure 3 summarizes the differences
in COP interaction dynamics at high-stakes and regular events in these two phases. Before 2005,
both the Negotiation and the Observer space were relatively clearly structured and the COPs
facilitated interaction among the constituents of the policy field emerging around the issue of
climate change. Afterwards, growing field complexity and issue multiplication implied that the
COPs were no longer able to assemble all field members in a temporally bounded locale and to
30
provide for open exchanges across the diverse participants. Thus, while climate change had become
a more widely shared concern, the transnational policy field that had formed around this issue
fragmented into many sub-fields of which only some intersected and closely related to the main aim
of the UNFCCC, that is, to mitigate climate change.
-----------------------------------
Insert Table 3 about here
-----------------------------------
-----------------------------------
Insert Figure 3 about here
-----------------------------------
The failure of Copenhagen. The consequences of increasing field complexity and issue
multiplication became particularly visible at the 2009 Copenhagen summit, which served as the end
point of the Bali Roadmap and had been staged as a high-stakes event, decisive for the future of
international climate policy. At the Copenhagen COP, it became clear that the ambitions of the Bali
Roadmap would not be met and heads of states swapped the more than 200 pages of text (including
thousands of "brackets", i.e. alternative wordings) that had served as a basis for negotiation over the
previous two years for a brief voluntary target agreement, the "Copenhagen Accords", which failed
to reach consensual approvals.
In the absence of a consensus prior to the conference and in light of the complex and
fragmented dynamics in the field, the Copenhagen organizers decided to stage the Copenhagen
event as particularly decisive. To complement the more technical preparation meetings, the UN set
up a second layer of high-level preparatory meetings. There, participating heads of states made
highly publicized statements that contributed to disconnecting technical negotiations from political
statements before the COP had even started. As the negotiators at the technical preparation
meetings were unable to produce convergent positions among Parties, rumors began to spread that
the high-level preparatory meetings formed a parallel, informal process in which high-level
diplomats sought to develop an alternative political solution to be put forward in Copenhagen:
As Copenhagen approached and as each negotiating session achieved less than what was needed for
an ambitious outcome, many began lowering their expectations, especially concerning a legally-
31
binding outcome. At the same time, rumors circulated about positive progress during various
informal meetings, including between China and the US. (ENB 12[459])
At the beginning of the Copenhagen COP, participants and commentators showed
ambivalence, skepticism and disagreement. Although many experts who had followed the technical
preparation meetings did not believe that the COP would be able to advance substantially,
expectations among the wider public reflected the strong media build-up and the fact that
Copenhagen would, for the first time in the history of the UNFCCC, bring together more than 100
heads of states to negotiate climate policy. Many commentators also expected the new U.S.
administration under President Obama to assume leadership. Negotiators were at the ready, and
some openly expressed their hope that high-level involvement would allow moving forward:
"Now we really are at the center of the world's attention - I do hope we will be able to live up to the
great hopes and expectations," commented one negotiator. (ENB 12[458])
However, the successful high-stakes staging of the Copenhagen COP also led to an
unprecedented and unexpectedly high number of attendees and caused a spectacular logistical
breakdown. The UNFCCC secretariat received more than 40,000 nominations and registered 27,300
delegates on the site, but the conference venue had a maximum capacity of 15,000 (ENB 12[459]).
As a consequence, the organizers decided to restrict access for the Observer delegates to the
conference site, reducing the total number of Observers admitted to the conference center to only
300 during the last two conference days (Sterk et al., 2010) whereas, according to estimates,
between 30,000 and 100,000 demonstrators assembled outside the center (ENB 12[454]). This
contributed to "a carnivalesque atmosphere saturated with dramatic and emotive imagery" (Carter,
Clegg, & Wahlin, 2011: 689). Some of the side events were cancelled, and the media widely
portrayed Copenhagen as a symbol for a widening gap between Governments and civil society. The
de facto exclusion of civil society during the high-level segment of the conference was seen as
representative of the divide between Parties and Observers:
Many NGO representatives were angry, arguing that their exclusion from the negotiations at such a
critical moment was not good for the outcome: "How can we keep up the pressure when we do not
know what is going on and are not even allowed near the building where these crucial negotiations
32
are taking place?" asked one NGO representative during COP President Connie Hedegaard’s briefing
to civil society. (ENB 12[459])
The separation of Parties and Observers was problematic for different reasons. First, on a
symbolic level, it reinforced the overall impression, strongly relayed by the media reporting from
Copenhagen, that the negotiations took place behind closed doors and among the most powerful
governments, violating the UN principle of equity among member states and its emphasis on civil
society involvement. Second, the exclusion of Observers from the conference venue deprived
developing countries of the important capacity-building aspect of Observer-Party interaction events
and made it more difficult for Observer organizations to follow and weigh in on the negotiation
process. The incompatibility between the technical negotiation process and the high-level political
involvement, which had already been visible during the build-up, also came to light during the
conference:
The texts from the AWG-LCA and AWG-KP are too complicated and full of brackets - Ministers
and Heads of State cannot negotiate based on them. (ENB 12[459])
The strong media presence and public interest proved particularly counter-productive as
some of the propositions taking shape in the informal policy discussions leaked into the press, and
both the exclusion of civil society and the difference between the official technical negotiation
documents and the leaked high-level texts enhanced the overall impression of divergence, of the
formal negotiation process as “pure show” (Michaelowa, 2010: 2), and a lack of transparency in the
high-level decision-making behind closed doors:
In the corridors, many were "outraged" at what they described as an attempt to sideline the work
done by the AWGs. "What is going on? What are they doing?" despaired one veteran negotiator.
"Tense backroom discussions" were reportedly occurring behind the scenes during the day to
determine how to proceed. However, most delegates, even many well-known negotiators, appeared
to be unaware of the exact details of these consultations. (ENB 12[457])
The feeling of distrust among Parties grew during the high-level segment, and together with
a widespread feeling of an irregular process and a lack of convergence between technical and
political negotiations, the stage was set for intense debates about procedures and legitimacy:
During COP President Rasmussen's opening remarks, several parties raised points of order. Brazil
sought clarification on the texts proposed by the Danish COP Presidency ... China identified the
issue as "one of trust between the host country and parties," noting that the procedure had not been
33
transparent. He stressed that ... the Presidency could not "put forward text from the sky."... Sudan,
for the G-77/China, emphasized that parties ... were not ready to "rubber stamp text coming out of
the blue."... (ENB 12[459])
The high stakes, uncertainty, and distrust at the COP meant that even more informal
consultations were necessary to bridge divides among Parties. This in turn further hampered the
legitimacy of the process, facilitated obstruction, and increased uncertainty about how to proceed.
COP Vice-President Figueres Olsen clarified that the COP President is "consulting on how to
conduct consultations" and noted that it had been "an extraordinary day" and that the road forward
was not clear. (ENB 12[459])
Growing criticism in the media and civil society together with clearly voiced opposition
from a group of developing countries intensified informal negotiations among Parties involving,
according to some commentators, strong political pressure and financial offers to developing
countries hesitant to subscribe to the logic of the U.S.-led Copenhagen Accords (e.g., Bond, 2011).
The failure of the Copenhagen Summit can at least in part be attributed to event organizers'
futile attempt to stage a high-stakes event in a situation of insufficient interactional openness among
field constituencies. Although the tight deadline set by the Bali Roadmap and the high-level
political involvement were intended to create momentum for a new agreement by increasing the
temporal boundedness of the Copenhagen COP, these staging efforts in fact reduced the sense of
temporal boundedness for negotiators who found themselves under such time pressure to meet the
Copenhagen deadline that they had to engage in a process of almost continuous technical
negotiations. The official run-up involved more than 30 meetings of UNFCCC bodies, including 5
extended negotiation sessions of the parallel UNFCCC Ad Hoc Working Groups and more than 20
other informal consultations, seminars, and workshops, all listed in the official UNFCCC calendar,
making 2009 "one of the most exhausting years of negotiations, meetings and consultations in the
history of environmental diplomatic relations" (Massai, 2010: 104). Furthermore, the high-stakes
staging of Copenhagen not only introduced a strong cleavage between the technical and the political
sides of the negotiation process, but widened the already existing gaps between Parties and
Observers and between developing and developed countries.
34
A very different staging strategy was chosen in the following year for the 2010 COP in
Cancun, where the new COP president deliberately tried to increase overlap among Parties by
enhancing the transparency of the high-level negotiations. The Copenhagen Accords were then
adopted as the "Cancun Agreements". A year later, in December 2011, COP 17 set up the "Ad Hoc
Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action" (ADP) with a mandate to negotiate a
new treaty for adoption by 2015. In addition, the Kyoto Protocol Parties agreed to move toward a
new commitment period prolonging the Protocol until at least 2017. To critics of the UNFCCC
process, these agreements represented yet another shift from substantial negotiation and effective
mitigation of climate change towards mere agreements about negotiation procedures, contributing
to a further delay of a new transnational treaty (Bond, 2011).
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
In this paper, we set out to analyze a field-configuring event series spanning almost two
decades in the field of transnational climate policy to understand why field-configuring events fail
to catalyze institutional change. This specific field setting allowed us to build upon Lampel and
Meyer’s (2008) claim that field-configuring events are not only mechanisms of field configuration
but also products of a field, shaped by field developments in a recursive process. First, we found a
difference between regular and high-stakes events in an event series that enables us to elaborate on
the role of temporal boundedness and interactional openness of field-configuring events in bringing
about institutional change. We highlight the role of agency, the unfolding of change across a series
of events, and the influence of occurrences external to the field-configuring event series. Second,
we found that with growing field complexity and issue multiplication the field-configuring event
series no longer provided temporally bounded and interactionally open discursive spaces so that its
role shifted from a field-endogenous catalyst of institutional change to a mechanism of field
maintenance.
Causes and Effects of Temporal Boundedness and Interactional Openness
Hardy and Maguire (2010) argued that field-configuring events provide multiple discursive
35
spaces that are more temporally bounded and interactionally open than those usually available in
organizational fields, so information can flow between spaces in unpredictable ways, and novelty
can emerge. Our findings suggest the value of disentangling the concepts of temporal boundedness
and interactional openness for understanding how field-configuring events can produce, but
possibly also prevent institutional change.
The existing literature considers field-configuring events as temporally bounded because
they occur rarely in the life of an organizational field and are of limited duration (Hardy & Maguire,
2010; Lampel & Meyer, 2008). In our event series, we found that some events were more
temporally bounded because they were deliberately stylized into critical, symbolic moments within
multiyear negotiation cycles, whereas others were seen as rather regular occurrences in the field.
Similarly, the literature describes field-configuring events as interactionally open because diverse
field members that do not usually interact come together (Hardy & Maguire, 2010; Lampel &
Meyer, 2008). We found that the regular events in our event series were more interactionally open
than the high-stakes events, because they attracted less participants and media attention and thereby
allowed more frequent formal and informal interactions among field constituents. Whereas the
high-stakes events bore the potential to generate momentum for a reordering of positions, the
regular events supported the establishment of trustful ties and the incremental advancement of
concrete agenda items concerning technical rules and instruments.
Institutional change was thus possible through the event series' interplay of high-stakes and
regular COPs. Each kind of event played a particular role in this dynamic. Whereas all events
highlighted both common and divergent positions in the field (Garud, 2008; McInerney, 2008;
Oliver & Montgomery, 2008), the open, informal, and less scrutinized interactions across field
constituents at regular events enabled the development of a mutual understanding and opened
possibilities for making concessions that could not be made publicly (cf. Zietsma & Lawrence,
2010). In turn, the high-stakes events set clear deadlines that had to be reached and increased public
attention for the issues at stake, which introduced a heightened sense of drama and emotionality into
36
the negotiations.
These findings allow us to discuss which other strategies beyond the crafting of powerful
narratives (Hardy & Maguire, 2010; McInerney, 2008) actors can use to influence the outcomes of
field-configuring events. Key individuals such as negotiation leaders, for instance, played a pivotal
role in enhancing the interactional openness of events by shifting between formal and informal
arenas as well as skillfully mediating between inclusion and exclusion, and transparency and
secrecy, so that a consensus could be reached. Furthermore, event organizers played an important
role in developing the dramaturgy (cf. Goffman, 1959) of events by selecting event locations,
inviting different sets of participants, or publicly marketing the event in purposeful ways. Not all of
these strategies were successful, however. In order to meet the deadline set by the Bali roadmap, for
example, some countries attempted to sideline the inclusive UNFCCC negotiation process by
drafting the Copenhagen Accords among a smaller group of governments. This strategy of
exclusion increased discord and lowered trust among country delegations, particularly given they
learned of this informal negotiation through a press leak.
Our findings also highlight the importance of preceding events and anticipated future events
in shaping individual field-configuring events. The contentious and suspended COP 6 in The Hague
(2000), for instance, which was followed by the U.S.’s announcement that it would not ratify the
Kyoto Protocol, paved the way for the adoption of the Marrakech Accords, defining the key
mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol a year later. This observation moves the debate on field-
configuring events closer to the broader literature on the role of triggering events and institutional
change. Hoffman (1999) already reasoned that event chains rather than single events may be
responsible for changes in organizational fields. Sewell (1996), in his essay on the French
Revolution, theorized that for a significant historical event to occur existing structures need to be
disrupted by preceding events. Such a longitudinal perspective may also be necessary to understand
the effects of field-configuring events. In the case studied by Oliver and Montgomery (2008), for
instance, the growing pressure for independence from British control conditioned the 1944 field-
37
configuring event structuring the Israeli legal system. The potency of field-configuring events as
catalysts of change may thus be influenced by the trigger of prior events which disrupt existing
structures—a trigger which can be part of the field-configuring event series itself, or related to other
events in the field or beyond.
This last aspect relates to a final point raised by our analysis of variations among events and
concerns the role of event-external discursive spaces (Hoffman & Ocasio, 2001; Munir, 2005;
Nigam & Ocasio, 2010). In our case, public attention and media reporting, national policy arenas,
and unexpected climate-related events played an important role in influencing the structure and
dynamics of our event series. The high-stakes character of discussions at COP 13 in Bali, for
instance, were strongly influenced by the publication of the International Panel on Climate Change's
(IPCC) fourth assessment report, and overall public interest in the Bali COP rose when the IPCC
and U.S. climate activist Al Gore received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. On the other hand
,
factors
such as successful media campaigns by climate skeptics (see Hoffman, 2011a; b) or the global
financial crisis (Gupta, 2010) provided the backdrop for the failure of the negotiations leading up to
Copenhagen. Finally, a field-configuring event may also only be perceived as one in hindsight when
field conditions have changed, as in the case of a wine classification event in 1855, which has
defined the classification system for leading wines in the French Bordeaux region ever since—an
outcome it had never been designed to achieve (Croidieu, 2011).
In sum, both intentionally organized and unforeseeable field-level events, as well as past and
future events interlink in producing or preventing institutional change. The unpredictability
associated with field-configuring events thus stems not only from the unforeseeable interactions
taking place during field-configuring events, but also from external events in the field and the way a
particular field-configuring process unfolds across a series of events. These aspects mediate the
impact of actors' strategies in trying to shape event outcomes, but also open up multiple possibilities
of influence for actors not directly participating in field-configuring events. In consequence, field-
configuring events are not only moments during which a field crystallizes and change emerges, but
38
temporary organizations embedded in a larger and dynamic stream of field activity. Like other
temporary systems, for instance, projects (e.g., Brady & Davies, 2004; Engwall, 2003; Sydow,
Lindkvist, & DeFillippi, 2004), field-configuring events are influenced by more permanent
institutional and relational structures within a field.
Field-Configuring Events and the Structuration of Transnational Fields
Existing research on field-configuring events can be divided into two traditions. The first
includes studies of unique events in emerging fields or of short event series that have contributed to
field formation by providing opportunities for organizations to interact with each other, develop
their interest in a common issue, and generate cognitive, regulative, or normative frameworks that
guide interaction (e.g., Garud, 2008; Oliver & Montgomery, 2008). The second tradition includes
studies of periodic events set up to coordinate and refine field activities (e.g., Anand & Watson,
2004; Power & Jansson, 2008). In the climate policy field, a long-term field-configuring event
series was mandated to create a new regulatory institution concerning a highly contested issue
(Hoffman, 1999). This specific field setting allowed us to analyze how the results of field-
configuring events in early phases of field development influenced the outcomes of field-
configuring events in later phases as a result of changing rules, positions, and understandings in the
field.
In the field formation phase, the COPs led to an increase in interactions and information
load in the climate policy field and supported the development of a mutual awareness among field
members (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). Patterns of domination were relatively stable with the group
of industrialized Annex I Countries assuming responsibility and leadership. These initial field
structuring dynamics were the basis for a convergence of regulatory, normative, and cognitive
institutions (cf. Hoffman, 1999) towards a new understanding of climate change as a transnational
commons problem and market mechanisms as adequate solutions. Following the entry into force of
the Kyoto Protocol, however, perceptions of what was at stake began to differ fundamentally. A
large number of new actors entered the field whose main aim was not necessarily to combat climate
39
change, but to benefit from the Kyoto regime. Although COP participation grew, interactions and
mutual understandings across field constituents decreased as the events' central discursive spaces
were formally split into multiple parallel tracks. Early patterns of domination changed as rapidly
industrializing developing countries like India, Brazil, and especially China emerged as powerful
actors with their own positions and understandings. As the field became more complex and its
members' issues became increasingly decoupled from the original shared purpose, the COPs ceased
to be both temporally bounded and interactionally open: an ever larger number of meetings was
necessary to coordinate highly specific negotiations on multiple sub-issues, and exchanges
increasingly took place within constituency groupings rather than in unexpected constellations
across different categories of field members.
As a consequence, the field-configuring event series changed from being a catalyst of
institutional change into a site of field maintenance. On the one hand, actors opposed to the regime
had to participate in the transnational arena to undermine progress; on the other, the existence of the
UNFCCC processes decreased the need to develop alternative regulatory approaches. Actors also
benefited in different ways from COP participation. In the Observer space, the field-configuring
events played a role in socializing the many new field members into the field and acted like a trade
fair for new relationships, financial resources, and knowledge (e.g., Glynn, 2008; Hardy & Maguire,
2010). In the negotiation space, delegates engaged in regulatory conversations (Black, 2002) from
which they gained expertise for their work in national or local arenas. These resources could be
used in a way that supported the UNFCCC’s mission, but also to counter any meaningful advances
on regulating climate change. Paradoxically, we observed that the increasing popularity of the
COPs went hand-in-hand with their decreasing effectiveness regarding the UNFCCC's aims. What
Victor (2011) called the "global warming gridlock" may in organizational terms be described as
"social deadlock" (Brunsson, 2007)—a steady state full of activity, but activity that stabilizes a
situation rather than leading to institutional change.
Our study raises the question of whether a different event format could or should have been
40
chosen in the field of climate policy. Victor (2011) argued that a process similar to that used by the
World Trade Organization, not aiming for universal membership and legally binding agreements
but rather starting from concrete agreements among the few largest carbon emitters and moving
"bottom-up" toward wider integration, would have been more effective. Such a less inclusive logic
was unthinkable, however, once the problem of climate change had been framed in terms of
transnational commons (Ansari, Wijen, & Gray, in print). U.S. efforts to shift the UNFCCC logic of
legally binding transnational commitments toward a soft-law pledge and review system may
indicate that the field is slowly moving away from its initial policy choices. However, the long and
ineffective pursuit of an encompassing legally binding agreement among almost all countries in the
world suggests the potential path-dependence (e.g., Pierson, 2000; Sydow, Schreyögg, & Koch,
2009) of a field-structuring regime built around a series of field-configuring events and maintained
by a number of positive feedback mechanisms (Dobusch & Schüßler, in print).
This insight allows us to elaborate on the role of boundary work in institutional change
processes. Zietsma and Lawrence (2010) argued that boundaries protecting field members against
institutional pressures are necessary to enable an alignment of positions because more open
interactions can occur within spaces that are set apart from the rest of the field or the wider public.
Existing research indicated that field-configuring events can provide such spaces because they are
temporally bounded and facilitate interactions among field members that do not usually come
together (Hardy & Maguire, 2010). Our research shows that boundaries around issues and field
membership may additionally be necessary for such field configuration to occur. In Hardy and
Maguire’s (2010) study of the Stockholm Convention, for instance, the field-configuring events
addressed a policy issue that was more clearly delimited than the issue of climate change. The
conferences studied by Garud (2008) led to a new standard for cochlear implants because a
decision-making panel with limited membership was temporarily installed and enforced a
consensus position. In the transnational climate policy field, in contrast, the COPs were designed as
highly inclusive arenas and dealt with a complex, ill-defined and enduring policy issue. A shift into
41
smaller policy forums (Victor, 2011) and the breaking down of complex issues toward more
concrete and tangible policy arenas (Giddens, 2009) could reintroduce some of the boundaries
within which field-configuring events can support the development of a new, encompassing climate
agreement.
Limitations and Further Research
Like all studies, the present one has its limitations. Most importantly, we focused on one
specific and in many ways unique transnational policy field and our findings may not be directly
applicable to other field settings. However, we have identified some characteristics of the climate
policy field that are shared by others, such as field formation around a contested issue, the absence
of clear structures of domination, and increasing field complexity and issue multiplication. We
suggest that our findings on the changing role of a field-configuring event series will apply to such
settings.
Further research could build on our idea of field maintenance and track national and
community activities resulting from and related to field-configuring events, an aspect that was
outside the scope of our research. In climate policy, both policy actors and Observers benefit in
many ways from the networking and learning taking place at the international conferences and draw
on these resources in their local work. In turn, many local activities are geared to developing
positions and generating resources for participation in subsequent field-level events. Studying these
connections in more detail would provide important additional insights into the trickle-up and
trickle-down processes occurring between transnational and local arenas (Djelic & Quack, 2003).
Building on our elaboration of the concepts of temporal boundedness and interactional
openness, further research could investigate how elements of creativity and spontaneity could be
reinstalled even in highly complex and fragmented decision-making processes. Events such as
"unconferences" or "barcamps" (e.g., Ingebretsen, 2008; Wolf, Troxler, & Hansmann, 2011), for
instance, have been used in other contexts to generate new solutions and ideas. Such event formats
could be integrated into a field-configuring event series to better balance coordination with the
42
creativity needed to imagine possible futures (Mische, 2009). This raises the practical question
about how well the UN system serves as an effective template for structuring transnational fields
(Meyer et al., 1997), especially under changing geopolitical power structures. We suggest that
organizers of field-configuring events need to take field structures into account when designing
their events, specifically the complexity and diversity of issues at stake and the boundaries and
authority structures of a field. This also requires a rethinking of the notions of legitimacy,
democracy, and inclusiveness in the governance of transnational fields. For instance, we found
some evidence that the growing technical expertise needed, the growing number of meetings and
negotiation tracks, and the time intensive, often night-long negotiations sessions posed serious
problems to the Least Developed Countries that could often only send one delegate to the COPs.
Our choice to highlight the temporal aspects of boundedness meant that we largely neglected
the role of spatial proximity or distance. Further research on field-configuring events could focus
more on both their spatial and temporal dimensions, especially on the group or individual levels of
analysis. For instance, research could focus on how high-stakes staging affects objective and
subjective representations of time and space among event participants (e.g., Ancona, Goodman,
Lawrence, & Tushman, 2001; Orlikowski & Yates, 2002), or how different time frames affect the
group processes taking place during events (e.g., Bakker, Boros, Kenis, & Oerlemans, 2012;
Schwab & Miner, 2008).
Finally, our findings suggest that the effects of field-configuring events are closely tied to
emotions, so that analyzing such events can enrich recent efforts to understand the emotional
dimension of institutional work (Voronov & Russ, 2012). Ritualistic performances afford shared
emotional experiences and are often deliberately crafted to that end (Dacin, Munir, & Tracey,
2010); social movements partly gain their mobilization potential from emotions such as passion and
feelings of solidarity (Flam & King, 2005; Goodwin, Jasper & Polletta, 2001; Goodwin, 2007). At
the same time, our study has shown that heightened emotionality can also obstruct change under
specific field conditions. Paying attention to the two-sided role of emotions at field-configuring
43
events would improve scholars' understanding of the processes behind institutional change,
specifically in the value-laden context of climate change (Hoffman, 2010).
Final Thoughts
In closing, our study contributes to understanding why, despite the widespread agreement on
the urgency of mitigating climate change and of developing adaptation mechanisms, powerful
actors still seem unwilling and unable to subscribe to a single course of action and to provide an
effective solution (Blühdorn, 2011). From an organization studies perspective, we would argue that
the framing of the issue at stake as a transnational commons problem to be solved with market
mechanisms has created a situation in which multiple and opposing field actors now come together
at the UNFCCC climate conferences not to advance policy, but to define and support their own
activities and interests, some of which only loosely relate to the issue of combating human-induced
climate change.
44
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54
TABLES AND FIGURES
TABLE 1
Dimensions, Themes, Categories, and Data
Second-order themes and
first-order categories
Representative data
Aggregate dimension: Event staging
1. Event calendar
A. Multi-year negotiation cycles and deadlines A1. The Copenhagen Conference marked the culmination of a two-year negotiating
process to enhance international climate change cooperation under the Bali
Roadmap, launched by COP 13 in December 2007. (ENB 12[459], COP 15)
A2. [This year's COP] is also called like 'poor Poznanhagen' - it's like before
Copenhagen, ... however it is a very important intermediate stage, step for
negotiations to present your perspectives and I think this is crucial for those
negotiations. (Observer interview conducted at COP 14)
B. Frequency of inter-COP meetings B1. COP-6 was preceded by numerous formal and informal meetings and
consultations held during 1999 and 2000. The UNFCCC subsidiary bodies held
their tenth sessions in Bonn, Germany ... This work was continued ... at the
eleventh sessions of the subsidiary bodies ... During the first few months of 2000,
several UNFCCC technical workshops on key issues under the Plan of Action
were held to assist the process leading to COP-6. (ENB 12[163], COP 6)
B2.The intersessional meetings do not bode well. The Bonn meeting in June saw a
continuation of the long-drawn-out fight over the agenda, a situation which many
saw as an attempt to unravel the Cancun deal. A seasoned and committed veteran
of global negotiations even asked me, ‘is this really worth it?'. (Grubb, 2011:
1269)
2. Issues and positions
C. Past negotiation outcomes C1. At this COP, we celebrate two major milestones in the climate change process -
the tenth anniversary of the entry into force of the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change, and the forthcoming entry into force of the
Kyoto Protocol. (COP 10 Opening statement by J. Waller-Hunter, UNFCCC
Executive Secretary, 6 December 2004)
C2. What we will now do in Montreal is to formally adopt the decisions contained in
the Marrakesh accords -- the Protocol’s ‘rule book’ -- after many years of hard
work. (R. Kinley, UNFCCC Acting Head, Press release, 28 November 2005)
D. Past negotiation experiences D1. After her election [as President of COP-1], Dr. Merkel said that the Spirit of Rio
would once again be needed in Berlin. (ENB 12[21], COP 1)
D2. Some minds have turned back to the negotiation of the Berlin Mandate and the
lessons to be drawn for Bali. Some believe that too much content if only tacit has
crept into negotiations on the future process, provoking at least one large
developed country to join a chorus of heated warnings that they would entertain
no text that would prejudge outcomes. (ENB 12[352], COP 13)
3. General audience awareness
E. High-level policy build-up E1. In 2007 climate change has moved up to the very top of the world political
agenda. It started with the EU adopting a 20% or 30% reduction target for 2020 ...
It continued with major developing countries like China adopting national climate
change strategies. In 2007 all major summits adopted policy positions on climate
change, starting with the G-8 and including APEC, ASEAN and the
Commonwealth. (Opening keynote statement at the Bali Global Business Day by
Y. de Boer, UNFCCC Executive Secretary, 10 December 2007)
E2. During the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Summit in September over 100
world leaders expressed political will to reach a meaningful outcome in
December. Coming to Copenhagen, many hoped that ... the unique gathering of
international decision-making power would result in a political agreement on the
key issues. (ENB 12[459], COP 15)
F. External climate-related events F1. The Nobel Peace Prize was accorded to Al Gore and the IPCC in 2007 and this
gave a new boost of recognition to the scientific research being carried out.
(Gupta, 2010: 646)
F2. This COP suffers from the uncertainty about the new U.S. administration.
Barack Obama has just won the election, but the Bush delegation still sits at the
negotiation table. (Observation at COP 14 (Poznan, 2008))
Aggregate dimension: Event enactment
4. Opportunities and spaces for interaction
G. Design of formal processes G1. The President noted that the work was organized in two parts: an initial
negotiating segment followed by a Ministerial Segment from 5-7 April. She
hoped that the sessions of the Committee of the Whole (COW) would not seek to
reopen resolved issues but would work on outstanding issues...The COW was
55
asked to deal with the items where consensus was not reached at INC-11.
Consequently, all other decisions recommended by the INC-11 for consideration
by COP-1 were referred directly to the Plenary. (ENB 12[21], COP 1)
G2. President Pronk's proposal to consider outstanding issues by dividing ministers
into three negotiating groups has generated concern within the G-77/China.
However, some observers underlined that it is the prerogative of the COP-6
President to lead the process in a manner he deems most effective. (ENB 12[158],
COP 6)
H. Informal exchanges H1. During the third session of the SBI ... little discussion of difficult issues took
place during open sessions. Delegates noted their objections to several draft
decisions, which were referred immediately to contact groups by the Chair.
Differences were ironed out in closed sessions by Parties, and were considered for
adoption by the open SBI session only after consensus had been reached. (ENB
12[38], COP 2)
H2. On Thursday morning, weary delegates congregated to continue a number of
informal consultations at the Moon Palace after all-night negotiations that had
included an informal ministerial stocktaking at midnight and what a seasoned
negotiator characterized as a “vague” text on mitigation under the Convention and
Protocol tracks. (ENB 12[497], COP 16)
5. Negotiation tactics
I. Agenda work and issue setting I1. Agenda disputes seemed to be the order of the day in other venues, with some
delegates discussing the difficulties faced by parties seeking to streamline SBI’s
agenda. Observers noted that the EU’s efforts to fold two agenda items under SBI
and SBSTA on adverse effects and response measures into just one had received
short shrift from Saudi Arabia and others that place great emphasis on these
particular issues. (ENB 12[310], COP 12)
I2. The US delegation insisted on a clear, symbolic separation between the Kyoto
and non-Kyoto negotiation tracks in the set-up of the COP. (Observation at COP
11 (Montreal 2005))
J. Plenary performance J1.
Saudi Arabia ... reported a lack of transparency throughout the Conference. He
read a formal objection from this group of Parties to the adoption, approval or
acceptance of the draft Ministerial Declaration due to the: lack of opportunity for
the COP to discuss the draft; failure of the draft to reflect the views of many
Parties as stated at COP-2, with the result that the draft reflects only some views
that exist among the Parties; non-objective characterization and selective
reference to some of the information ..., resulting in a draft that is biased and
misleading; and failure to adhere to the customary procedures of UN bodies and
the absence of adoption of rules of procedure for the COP. (ENB 12[38], COP 2)
J2. Sudan condemned the document, stressing that it threatens the lives and
livelihoods of millions of people in developing countries, including the African
continent. He referred to the financial commitment of US$100 billion in the
document as “a bribe,” saying that a commitment to 2°C would ask Africa to
“sign an incineration pact” and was based on values that “funneled 6 million
people in Europe into furnaces.” The UK, Mexico, Canada, Grenada, Norway, the
EU and others called on Sudan to withdraw his offensive references to the
Holocaust. (ENB 12[459], COP 15)
6. Observer roles
K. Observer-Party interaction K1. After the first few speakers, the Plenary was interrupted by a group of protesters
who ran down from the balcony and shouted that the delegates were not doing
enough. Others draped banners and flung leaflets onto the Plenary floor. The
security officers led them away as many supporters applauded. President Merkel
remarked that the group had now heard another opinion, but added that overall
NGOs had played a constructive role. (ENB 12[21], COP 1)
K2. In Buenos Aires, the traditional NGO party, which takes place at the half-way
point of the conference and is organized by CAN, was put under the theme of the
Kyoto Protocol. The organizers announced that coming to the party implied liking
the KP ... It was rumored that the U.S. delegation sent out a memo forbidding any
of its members to attend the party. (Observation at COP 10 [Buenos Aires, 2004])
L. Observer visibility L1. For example, local NGOs may have little clout in relation to their country’s
ministry officials and members of delegation at international climate conferences
in influencing the process. However, teamed up with international NGOs, for
example under the umbrella of the Climate Action Network (CAN), their
positions published by international reporting services are very much taken note
of by state officials. (Okereke, Bulkeley & Schroeder, 2009: 65)
L2. At this COP, we seek to gain attention for gender issues. Some people think they
are marginal, but for us they are really essential [...]. Our exhibit here is next to
the trade unions, and they have clearly adopted some of our ideas in their
statements, such as 'there is no climate justice without gender justice'. (Interview
with Gender NGO delegate at COP 14 [Poznan, 2008])
56
TABLE 2
Regular versus High-stakes Event Characteristics
Characteristics
Regular events
High-stakes events
Participants Number and composition of Observers close to long-
term average
Higher number of Observers and journalists
Event staging Waypoint within an ongoing negotiation period
Mostly technical build-up (Convention bodies)
Low expectations of breakthrough decisions among
Observers and the public
Highly visible start or end-point of a negotiation
period, salience of targets and deadlines
Intense high-level build-up (Convention bodies and
high-level meetings)
High expectations among Observers and the public
Event enactment Frequent interaction between Parties and Observers
during side events and informal encounters
Negotiation and development of consensus on
technical issues and details within the overall
negotiation agenda
High media attention puts pressure on negotiation
leaders and parties
Separation between technical negotiations (first
week) and political statements (second week)
Highly emotional appeals and strong pressure on
Parties to reach a significant agreement
Little overlap between negotiation and Observer
spaces; Oberservers interact mainly with the media
Importance of negotiation leadership for stimulating
interactions
Event outcomes Incremental advancement in the negotiation of rules
Outcomes are less visible in the wider public
New visible agreements (Kyoto and Bali); strong
sense of failure (Copenhagen)
Shifts in the orientation of the future policy process
57
TABLE 3
Changes in COP Characteristics (Phase 1 vs. Phase 2)
Characteristics
Phase 1 COPs
Phase 2 COPs
Participants COP attendance varies strongly between regular and
high-stakes events.
Regular vs. high-stakes difference in attendance is not
as strong as for the pre-2005 COPs
High increase of average COP attendance
Strong increase in average size of Party delegations
Strong increase in the number and diversity of
Observer organizations
Event staging Expectations are strongly marked by the Kyoto
Protocol implementation and ratification process.
Strong emphasis on negotiation deadlines (e.g., Bali
roadmap)
Increasing frequency of inter-COP meetings dealing
with technically complex negotiation issues
Climate change as a highly visible mainstream policy
issue
Event enactment Overlap across discursive spaces can be effectively
created
Annex I countries strongly represented in Side
Events
Growing complexity of the negotiation process
demands high coordination efforts for Parties and
negotiation leaders
Increasing specialization of negotiation tracks and
issues leads to growing importance of experts
Growing divide between technical negotiations and
political statements
Decreasing overlap between negotiation and
Observers spaces
Event outcomes Kyoto Protocol as an early success and “only game
in town”; emphasis on development of
instruments, implementation and ratification of the
Kyoto Protocol
Maintenance of the overall process is secured at the
price of regime multiplicity and postponement of
decisions
Growing frustration; lack of clear sense of progress
FIGURE 1
The UNFCCC and the Climate Policy Field, 1994-2012
FIGURE 2
Data Structure
Aggregate
dimensions
Second-order themesFirst-order categories
Event
staging
Event
enactment
1. Event calendar
2. Issues and positions
3. General audience awareness
4. Opportunities and spaces for interaction
5. Negotiation tactics
6. Observer roles
A. Multi-year negotiation cycles and deadlines
B. Frequency of inter-COP meetings
C. Past negotiation outcomes
D. Past negotiation experiences
E. High-level policy build-up
F. External climate-related events
G. Design of formal processes
H. Informal exchanges
I. Agenda work and issue setting
J. Plenary performance
K. Observer-Party interaction
L. Observer visibility
FIGURE 3
Changes in COP Interaction Dynamics
APPENDIX A
TABLE A1
Climate Policy Events Attended and Role as Participant Observers
Year Events attended, location Role of researchers at event
2000 SB 12, Bonn UNFCCC staff
2001 COP 6.5 / SB 14, Bonn UNFCCC staff
2002 SB 16, Bonn UNFCCC staff
2003 SB 18, Bonn UNFCCC staff
2003 World Climate Change Conference, Moscow Academic researcher and presenter
2004 COP 10 / SB 21, Buenos Aires Policy institute researcher, side event organizer,
presenter, RINGO member
2005 COP 11 / CMP 1 / SB 23, Montreal Policy institute researcher, side event organizer,
presenter, ENGO and RINGO member
2006 SB 24 / AWG-KP 1, Bonn Academic researcher
2006 COP 12 / CMP 2 / SB 25 / AWG-KP 2,
Nairobi
Academic researcher, side event organizer, presenter
2007 SB 26 / AWG-KP 3, Bonn Academic researcher, side event organizer, presenter
2008 COP 14 / CMP 4 / SB 29 / AWG-KP 6 /
AWG-LCA 4, Poznan
Academic researchers, presenters, RINGO and Gender
Equity members
2009 SB 30 / AWG-KP 8 / AWG-LCA 6, Bonn Academic researchers, side event organizers, presenters
2009 COP 15 / CMP 5 / AWG-KP 10 / AWG-LCA
8, Copenhagen
Supervisor of two research assistants reporting from the
COP and the Peoples' Summit
62
TABLE A2
Research Interviews (2008-2011) by Actor Category
Actor category* Interviews during events
Follow up-Interviews
RINGO 7 5
BINGO 2 0
ENGO 5 2
IPO 3 1
OTHER NGO 4 0
NGO total 21 9
UNFCCC staff 1 0
Government Representative Developed Country 4 3
Government Representative Developing Country 2 0
Government Representatives total 6 2
Total for all categories 28 11
* Over time, actors in the climate policy field regularly change from one group to another. The category noted here represents the role of our
interview partners at the time of the interview.
63
TABLE A3
Documents and Utilization in the Research Process
Document type
Description and number of
documents
Utilization in the research process
Secondary sources 58 scholarly articles and COP reports Understanding of overall field
development; refining analytic themes
and categories
UNFCCC documents Directory of participants, COP 1-17
(17 documents)
Analysis of event dynamics
COP Press releases, COP 7-17 (24
documents)
Refining analytic themes and categories
COP Speeches and statement by
UNFCCC Executive Secretary,
COP 8-17 (22 documents)
Refining analytic themes and categories
COP Daily Programmes, COPs 3,4, 13-
17 (87 documents)
Analysis of the number of country and
Observer groupings; identification of
the number of press briefings
Repertory of all Side Events on Side
Event Online Registration System,
COP 9-17 (9 documents)
Analysis of the development of Party
involvement in the organization of
Side Events
UNFCCC Budget Performance reports,
1995-2011 (17 documents)
Analysis of development of UNFCCC
over time (budget, staff)
ENBs Daily Issues, COP 1-17 (187
documents)
Definition of analytic themes and
categories
COP Summaries, COP 1-17 (17
documents)
Definition of analytic themes and
categories
Press articles COP-related articles published in the
New York Times, COP1-17 (52
documents)
Analysis of event dynamics (article
count); refining analytic themes and
categories
64
TABLE A4
High-stakes and Regular COP Attendance Data
COP 3
(Kyoto,
1997)
COP 4
(Buenos Aires,
1998)
COP 13
(Bali, 2007)
COP 14
(Poznan,
2008)
COP category Phase 1,
high-stakes
Phase 1,
regular
Phase 2,
high-stakes
Phase 2,
regular
Parties
Number of participants 2273 1430 3516 3967
Number of Parties 161 161 192 191
Average delegation size 14 9 18 21
Observers
Number of participants 3865 2628 5815 4463
Number of Observer organizations 278 180 413 464
Average delegation size 14 15 14 10
Media
Number of participants 3712 883 1498 819
Ratio Media/Parties and Observers 0.60 0.22 0.16 0.10
Source: Own calculations based on COP Delegate Lists and Daily Programmes published by the UNFCCC Secretariat
65
TABLE A5
Phase 1 vs. Phase 2 COP Attendance Data
Phase 1 average
(COP 1-10)
Phase 2 average
(COP 11-17)
Percentage change
Parties
Number of participants 1998 4834 +142%
Number of Parties (countries) 167 194 +16%
Average delegation size 12 25 +108%
Number of country groupings
1
14 (1997) 20 (2007) +42%
Observers
Number of participants 2833 6248 +121%
Number of Observer organizations 259 563 +117%
Average delegation size 11 11 +0%
Number of Observer groupings
1
2 (1997) 9 (2007) +350%
Media
Number of participants 1150 1365 +19%
Number of official press briefings 101 (1997) 140 (2007) +39%
1
The numbers of country and Observer groupings in this table are based on an analysis of press briefings organized by country and Observer groups
at COPs 3 (1997) and 13 (2007). This number of Observer groupings slightly differs from the officially recognized constituency groupings (see
below).
Source: Own calculations based on COP Delegate Lists and Daily Programmes published by the UNFCCC Secretariat
66
Author bios
Elke Schüßler (elke.schuessler@fu-berlin.de) is an assistant professor of organization theory at the
Management Department at Freie Universität Berlin. She received her doctorate from the Freie
Universität Berlin. Her research focuses on institutional change, creativity, and path dependence in
the context of different industry and policy fields.
Charles-Clemens Rüling (charles-clemens.ruling@grenoble-em.com) is an associate professor of
organization theory at Grenoble Ecole de Management, and leader of the school's Center of
Excellence on Digital Convergence. He earned his doctorate from the University of Geneva. His
research focuses on institutional change and multiplicity, bricolage, and knowledge systematization
in science, audiovisual and entertainment industries.
Bettina B.F. Wittneben (bettina.wittneben@smithschool.ox.ac.uk) is a visiting research fellow at
the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford. She received her PhD
from the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. She researches institutional change
processes and advises governments on energy and climate policy.