Disrupting the Public–Private Distinction: Excavating the Government of Carbon Markets Post-Copenhagen

Eva Lövbrand and Johannes Stripple
Additional contact information
Eva Lövbrand: Centre for Climate Science and Policy Research, Linköping University, 60147 Norrköping, Sweden
Johannes Stripple: Department of Political Science, Lund University, Box 52, 221 00 Lund, Sweden

Environment and Planning C, 2012, vol. 30, issue 4, 658-674

Abstract: This paper draws upon the recent carbon market turmoil to understand how the private realm is imagined in global climate governance. Instead of asking which entities (eg, public or private authorities) govern the carbon economy, we draw attention to the procedures (eg, caps on emissions, techniques of verification, or performance standards) by which carbon markets are made thinkable and governable as administrative domains. When focusing on these ‘calculative practices’, carbon market governance does not signify a retreat of the state. Rather, in this paper we argue that the involvement of nonstate actors in the governance of carbon markets represents a transformation of political rule that replaces formal and hierarchical techniques of government with more indirect regimes of calculation. From this vantage point carbon market governance emerges as an expression of a changing rationality of government where the private realm becomes elevated from being a passive terrain to be acted upon and instead turned into an entity that is both object and subject of government.

Keywords: public–private; climate change; of sets governmentality; carbon markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/c11137 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envirc:v:30:y:2012:i:4:p:658-674

DOI: 10.1068/c11137

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning C
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().