Protecting Future Generations Through Minilateralism: Climate Clubs and Normative Legitimacy

Robert Huseby, Jon Hovi and Tora Skodvin
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Robert Huseby: Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, Norway
Jon Hovi: Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, Norway
Tora Skodvin: Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, Norway

Politics and Governance, 2024, vol. 12

Abstract: Despite three decades of global climate negotiations and high expectations for the 2015 Paris Agreement, global emissions continue to grow. To protect future generations from severe harm, scholars, environmentalists, and politicians alike explore potential supplements to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change process. One potential supplement is climate clubs of a type where a small number of “enthusiastic” countries embark on ambitious mitigation efforts while encouraging other, more “reluctant” countries to join. Previous research has shown that this club type possesses a significant potential for expanding membership and eventually becoming highly effective in reducing global emissions. A common criticism of climate clubs, however, is that they lack legitimacy. Assessing this criticism, we argue that climate clubs of the type considered here can be normatively legitimate. The main challenge for normative legitimacy concerns climate clubs’ use of incentives, particularly negative incentives, to attract members. However, we argue that even negative incentives for participation can be legitimate, assuming they meet a set of relevant legitimacy criteria—including that the club respects human rights, provides a comparative benefit, maintains institutional integrity, implements only proportional incentives, and fulfills a requisite set of epistemic criteria. We also argue that the normative legitimacy of climate clubs’ use of incentives for compliance is less challenging than the normative legitimacy of their use of incentives for participation.

Keywords: climate change; climate clubs; democracy; future generations; legitimacy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:poango:v12:y:2024:a:7674

DOI: 10.17645/pag.7674

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