Towards orchestrating normative power in the climate crisis

Introduction

I think that we have a real responsibility in that regard because if there is one region in the world that has the capacity to demonstrate that, it is Europe. Nowhere else could because for the southern countries, development aspects come before climate issues, and for the United States, the economy takes priority over the climate. We are the only ones on the planet today who can really respond to this challenge. (European Parliament, 2012: 6)

The above quote by Corinne Lepage (on behalf of the ALDE Group) from a 2012 debate in the European Parliament (EP) leaves no doubt: when it comes to tackling the climate crisis, the European Union (EU) has long seen itself as the globally most capable and principled actor and has actively cultivated an image of a ‘green normative power’ (Falkner, 2007; Falkner and Buzan, 2019; Tocci, 2022). Moreover, key officials such as former EU-Commission President José Manuel Barroso have publicly affirmed that they think of the EU as ‘the most important, normative power in the world’ (Barroso, 2008), and tackling climate change is noted as a core principle in Article 191 (1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (European Union, 2012).

And indeed, when looking at the international climate negotiations, the EU played key roles in establishing the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the 2015 Paris Agreement (Dröge and Geden, 2015; Schreurs and Tiberghien, 2007; Wurzel and Connelly, 2011b). Beyond that, it has implemented exemplary climate legislation itself such as its Emissions Trading System (ETS) and the Green Deal aimed at ‘turning the EU into the first climate neutral continent by 2050’ (European Commission, 2019). Notwithstanding these achievements however, in a more multipolar and fragmented world and in the context of a diminishing Liberal International Order (LIO) (Ikenberry, 2018; Sjursen, 2023), the EUs attempts to ‘lead by example’, to export its norms and values and to convince others to adopt its specific vision for tackling climate change have increasingly been contested (Aydın-Düzgit and Noutcheva, 2022; Petri and Biedenkopf, 2020; Petri et al., 2020, von Lucke, 2021).The side-lining of the EU by the United States and the BASIC group of states (Brazil, South Africa, India, China) at the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP) in Copenhagen in 2009 and the subsequent failure to facilitate a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol stand out particularly in this regard (Christoff, 2010; Dimitrov, 2010). However, even when it comes to the much-praised 2015 Paris Agreement, the EUs influence on the negotiations was mainly procedural and less substantial, and the EU was not able to prevent the largely voluntary character of the agreement (Christoff, 2016, von Lucke et al., 2021).

As a result, scholars have begun to discuss why the EU has faced so much contestation and to scrutinize whether the EUs specific expression of normative power is still appropriate when it comes to dealing with the manifold problems of the contemporary ‘planetary organic crisis’ (Ahrens, 2018; Diez, 2021; Manners, 2011, 2024). According to Manners, the key characteristic of this new form of planetary crisis – which manifests in many different areas ranging from neoliberal inequality, demographic and intersectional injustice, climate unsustainability, to violent conflict (see the other articles of the special issue) – is its holistic and interconnected nature, which requires equally holistic solutions (Manners, 2024: 1). In the opening article to this special issue, Ian Manners therefore introduces the Normative Power Approach (NPA) that pays greater attention to normative power as ‘empowering actions in concert that reshape conceptions of normal for the planetary good of homeostasis and equality’ (Manners, 2024: 13). Another way to scrutinize the increased contestation and transformation of normative power is to look at it from the perspective of environmental or climate justice (Aggestam, 2008; Caney, 2016; Gardiner, 2004b; Schlosberg, 2013; Shue, 1993). This article aims to add to this debate by exploring the workings and limits of EU (green) normative power on the international stage from the perspective of global political justice and through the lens of ‘orchestration’ (Abbott et al., 2015).

Empirically, the article looks at the EU’s engagement with the global climate negotiations from the late 1980s until the Paris Agreement and its aftermath in the 2020s. Theoretically, it starts out from a threefold conceptualization of global justice consisting of non-domination, impartiality and mutual recognition (Eriksen, 2016; Sjursen, 2023; Sjursen and Vigrestad, 2021). It then links this approach to newer insights on the necessary reconceptualization of both normative power and global justice as ‘agonistic cosmopolitics’ and orchestration when it comes to dealing with what Ian Manners describes as the planetary organic crisis (Manners, 2021b, 2024). The main argument of the article is that the EU ran into problems when it came to projecting its normative power concerning the international climate negotiations because it focused too long on justice as impartiality and at the same time neglected mutual recognition and non-domination, which in turn prevented it from bringing together local needs and global ethics (Manners, 2021b: 72), but also to enhance its capacity for ‘strategic action’ and ‘climate diplomacy’ (Biedenkopf and Petri, 2021; Oberthür and Dupont, 2021: 1096). This was especially consequential in the face of the unfolding planetary organic crisis, which, according to Manners, due to its globally interwoven nature and multidimensionality necessitates holistic and joined solution that foster truly ‘planetary politics’ and tackle global injustices (Manners, 2024: 2).

Thus, in its attempts to strengthen ambitious, supranational and binding mitigation provisions and to lead by example the EU often failed to properly recognize different pathways towards tackling climate change and ignored its colonial legacy as well as Eurocentric tendencies. Only when the Union changed its strategy towards ‘shared leadership’, became more open to different pathways of dealing with the climate crisis, and strengthened its climate diplomacy was it able to regain some of its influence in the climate negotiations. This shift exemplifies the much needed rethinking of normative power in the age of the planetary organic crisis towards what Manners calls ‘action in concert’ (Manners, 2024: 2), or what others have conceptualized as ‘orchestration’ (Abbott et al., 2015; Gordon and Johnson, 2017).

The following section discusses key insights from the existing literature and elaborates on the theoretical approach of the article and how it relates to the debate on normative power. Section ‘The EU in the climate regime: From “leading by example” to “acting in concert” and “orchestration”’ analyses the EUs engagement with the climate regime in the context of the UNFCCC, the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Agreement and its further development. The concluding section then offers a further discussion of the transformation of the EU’s climate strategy and normative power in the context of orchestration and global justice.

From normative to just power Europe

There exists an extensive literature on the EU as a normative power (Diez, 2005; Diez and Manners, 2007; Manners, 2002, 2006, 2021b). Going beyond the conception as a civilian power, the core claim is that in contrast to traditionally interest or power-driven states (Diez, 2005: 615), the EU would anchor its foreign policy to a set of core normative pillars and thus be able to ‘shape conceptions of normal’ in international society (Manners, 2002: 239). Transcending the dominant Westphalian order by being different – a new, hybrid polity (Manners, 2002: 240, 252) – but also by behaving differently, the EU would aim at transforming international politics towards a world of multilateralism and cooperation. It thus itself would become a ‘method for introducing change in international relations’ (Manners, 2006: 182). Besides the EU’s efforts to strengthen international law and human rights (Franco et al., 2015; Groenleer and Rijks, 2009; Schmidt, 2007a), its attempts to tackle climate change have served as central support for the characterization as a normative power (Ahrens, 2018, 2019; Manners, 2021b: 70; Roeck et al., 2016).

This resulted in discussions about the EU as a ‘green power’ (van der Heijden, 2010) or ‘green normative power’ (Falkner, 2007) as well as in a broad literature on the EU as a pioneer and leader in the climate field (Bäckstrand and Elgström, 2013; Oberthür and Roche Kelly, 2008; Wurzel and Connelly, 2011b). Authors have linked the EU’s green normative power to its pursuit of strengthened (regional and international) environmental regulation in several policies fields, including climate change and biodiversity, but also to key norms such as the precautionary principle and sustainable development (see also Dryzek, 2013), which are deeply embedded in the European treaties (Falkner, 2007). In the climate negotiations, other important green normative pillars of the EU have been its strong emphasis on climate science and the associated maximum warming targets as well as its emphasis on intergenerational justice.

Starting out from this overlap between normative power and Europe’s supposed forerunner position when it comes to climate change, I suggest a slightly different theoretical approach that makes sense of the EU’s engagement with the global climate negotiations from the vantage point of global political justice and thus explores the notion of whether the EU can be conceptualized as a (and what kind of) ‘just power’ in the climate field. This directly connects to the burgeoning research on better understanding the ‘planetary organic crisis’ – that is, ‘interacting and deepening structural crises of economy/development, society, ecology, politics, culture and ethics’ (Manners, 2024: 1) – and the necessary reconceptualization of what global justice and normative power ought to be in this context (Manners, 2021b: 72). Thus, due to the number, complexity and scope of simultaneous, interconnected crisis phenomena, no actor alone can be expected to successfully deal with these issues. Instead, it becomes vital to cooperate with and convince others, which in turn necessitates a very different kind of (normative) leadership than what the EU has displayed before.

Taking the justice perspective enables me to carve out a clearer picture concerning which (changing) conceptions of justice underlie the EU’s climate strategy and alleged normative power and at the same time to show how they might clash with competing conceptions of justice and positions of other key actors in the climate negotiations. Given the interconnectedness of more concrete and context dependent norms and broader, allegedly universal conceptions of justice, such an approach also helps to understand the increasing contestation of the EU’s normative power. As the following analysis will show, it clarifies why the EU’s former understanding of normative power as ‘leading by example’ had to give way to a more open, engaging approach resting on ‘acting in concert’, ‘orchestration’ and the idea of ‘shared leadership’. Bringing in the justice perspective is particularly helpful to explore in what way exactly the EU has been a (supposedly morally good) normative power (and how that changed) because in contrast to norms, conceptions of justice – at least theoretically – have a clear universal aspiration towards what is good and fair, whereas norms have a more limited, culturally specific scope and are not necessarily tied to moral principles. Looking through the lens of global justice hence gives me an ethical yardstick to assess and problematize the EU’s normative power in the climate field.

There already exists a vast literature on climate justice, which has primarily discussed how climate change and the associated injustices ought to be alleviated theoretically, based on abstract climate justice principles such as the polluter pays principle, the ability to pay principle, or on distributive and corrective notions of justice (Caney, 2016; Gardiner, 2004a; Heyward and Roser, 2016; Shue, 1993). In this article, I only briefly touch upon these discussions and instead focus more on what others have termed ‘justice in governance’ (Brandstedt and Brülde, 2019; Page, 2013: 232, 241), and on the procedural and political aspects of justice (Schlosberg, 2004: 519, 2013: 47; Young, 2011). This helps me to understand how specific understandings of climate justice and associated norms, for instance the EU’s self-understanding as ‘green normative power’, are propagated and realized politically, and how they become contested (Brandstedt, 2019; Storey, 2019). However, this does not mean that substantive conceptions of (climate) justice are entirely absent in my approach. Thus, as the following paragraphs will show, while I focus particularly on the procedural aspects, the substantive ones still play a role and have informed EU climate policy – and its role as a green normative power – to a considerable extent.

The starting point of the analysis is a tripartite approach to global justice, developed elsewhere (Eriksen, 2016; Sjursen, 2017; Sjursen and Vigrestad, 2021), which understands global justice as oscillating between non-domination, impartiality and mutual recognition (Eriksen, 2016; Nicolaïdis, 2007; Sjursen, 2023). Non-domination (Eriksen, 2016: 8–13) focuses on states and their sovereignty and proposes to alleviate power imbalances in order to strengthen global justice. In the context of climate politics, this could entail supporting weaker states in the negotiations, bilateral agreements and alliances, but also the avoidance of centralized and binding global rules that would curtail the individual freedom of states too heavily. Impartiality, on the other hand, conceptualizes global justice with an emphasis on universal, cosmopolitan ethics, recognizes the rights of individuals, and aims at strengthening, law-based supranational institutions and rules (Eriksen, 2016: 14). It thus retains some of the substantive notions of the climate justice debate, that is, the focus on intragenerational and intergenerational as well as distributive justice aspects. Applied to the climate negotiations, this would mean support for ambitious, scientifically anchored, centralized, top-down, binding emission reductions provisions, climate litigation, the establishment of supranational institutions to govern climate change and mechanisms to tackle non-compliance (Holzgrefe and Keohane, 2003). Finally, mutual recognition (Anderson and Honneth, 2005; Eriksen, 2016: 18–22; Schmidt, 2007b), emphasizes that conceptions of justice will never be universal or unbiased, especially when it comes to their concrete local implementation (Hobson, 2012; Wiener, 2009). Thus, it understands global justice as an intersubjective category, which can only emerge from transparent, inclusive and fair procedures that recognize different voices and knowledges (see also the article by Debusscher on ‘Intersectional Justice’ in this special issue). In the climate field, the focus of mutual recognition lies on improving the negotiations, making sure that all relevant parties are heard, but also on acknowledging the different capabilities and cultural backgrounds of all state and non-state participants.

As the article will show, over time, when it increasingly encountered contestation, the EU’s engagement with the climate negotiations and its own climate policy have gradually moved from a focus on argumentations and political measures linked to impartiality, towards putting more emphasis on those connected to mutual recognition and non-domination. From the perspective of Critical Social Theory (CST) (Manners, 2021a) and NPA (Manners, 2021b), this can be read as a move away from cosmopolitanism – with a focus on the global and universal – towards ‘agonistic cosmopolitics’ (Honig, 2006: 118). The latter links global ethics with local politics, ‘consists of self-reflective culturalism combined with equal access to resources and power, globally and locally’ (Manners, 2021a: 146) and thus might be better suited to address global justice in the context of the planetary organic crisis and in a multipolar world (Litfin, 2003; Manners, 2021b: 72, 2024: 3). Following Nicolaïdis and Youngs: ‘if we believe in agonistic politics, the point is not to co-opt but to converse’ (Nicolaïdis and Youngs, 2014: 1418). In more practical terms, it constitutes a transformation of the style of leadership on parts of the EU from ‘leading by example’ to ‘shared leadership’ and thus strengthens what Manners calls ‘acting in concert’ in the introduction of this special issue (Manners, 2024), and what others have conceptualized as ‘orchestration’ (Abbott et al., 2015; Gordon and Johnson, 2017) (see Figure 1). As argued above, such an approach might be better equipped to deal with the increasingly complex, interconnected crisis phenomena that characterize the planetary organic crisis.

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Figure 1.

The justice triangle and its transformation.

The above shift points to an exercise of (normative) power that does not primarily rely on exporting one’s own norms and values or trying to convince or coerce others to follow suit, but on the ability to openly incorporate difference and to negotiate the consent of others in order to achieve shared goals together (Eckersley, 2004). Moreover, orchestration, developed by Abbott et al. (2015), puts particular emphasis on how actors work through intermediaries or in networks in order to achieve their goals, often in an indirect and non-hierarchical manner and without binding regulation (Gordon and Johnson, 2017: 2). It is thus characterized as a form of governance that lacks ‘coercive authority’ or ‘hard control’, relies on ‘soft inducements’ or ‘nudging’ and works horizontally rather than vertically (Gordon and Johnson, 2017: 7). In the climate field, on the one hand, this is exemplified by the increasing importance of cities or non-state actors in the negotiations and in their often more horizontally organized networks (Marquardt et al., 2022: 7). On the other hand, with the decline of the LIO and in a much more multipolar world, it also became increasingly central in the state-centred climate negotiations and in the EU’s exercise of normative power. In its heyday, the LIO could be characterized as rules-based, focused on international institutions and committed to market liberalism. This largely overlapped with some of the core pillars of the EU and with its vision for the global climate regime and made it easier for the EU to lead by example and to anchor its own norms internationally without considerable coercive power (Sjursen, 2023: 2203). When this order came under pressure by the rise of countries from the Global South, but also from within – for example, the spread of autocratic and right-wing populist government in the West – it became increasingly difficult for the EU to simply internationalize its own norms and ideas, and it had to rely more on horizontal ways of governance such as orchestration (Diez and von Lucke, 2023).

In the following, I use the above-described combination of the tripartite approach to global justice together with the concept of orchestration as an analytical lens to better understand how different approaches to the global climate negotiations relate to (different forms of) normative power and to the reconceptualization of global justice in the context of the planetary organic crisis. The focus of this article is on the EU’s behaviour and strategy in the international climate negotiations because it has been one of the central fields where the EU has (successfully) exerted its normative power. ¹ Moreover, it is also at the global level that the key characteristics and challenges of Manners’ planetary organic crisis manifest, and also where central solutions in line with truly ‘planetary politics’ might be found.

Empirically, the analysis rests on secondary literature combined with a discourse analysis of 56 central EU climate policy documents ² from the period between 1988 and 2023 (see appendix 1). The aim of this analysis was to look for argumentative expressions of the three justice conceptions and to inquire whether their importance has shifted over time. Using the software Maxqda and the above discussed operationalizations of non-domination, impartiality and mutual recognition, I highlighted corresponding argumentations in the EU documents and assessed their (changing) frequency over time. To triangulate these findings, I also conducted 14 semi-standardized expert interviews (conducted between April 2017 and March 2018, ranging between 30 and 90 minutes) with EU officials in the Directorate General Climate Action (DG Clima) and the European External Action Service (EEAS) (see appendix 2). The interviewees were selected based on the relevance of their position for the EU’s international climate strategy and using a snowball-system of referrals by the interviewees. A key outcome of this combined analysis was that although remaining dominant over the whole research period, argumentations, which I associate with impartiality have decreased over time, while those strengthening mutual recognition and non-domination have become more frequent. This shift becomes even more robust, when only looking at the EU’s strategy ³ in the international climate negotiations. The following sections substantiate these findings through a more detailed discussion of the EU’s behaviour in the climate negotiations between the late 1980s and 2023.

The EU in the climate regime: From ‘leading by example’ to ‘acting in concert’ and ‘orchestration’

Is the EU a normative power in the climate field? If so, to what conceptions of justice does this power correspond, how has this changed over the years and does this redesign comes closer to what Manners conceptualizes as NPA adequate for dealing with the planetary organic crisis?

Conclusion: reconceptualizing normative power as orchestration

So does the ‘new reality of the planetary organic crisis’ (Manners, 2024: 2) necessitate a reconceptualization of the EU’s normative power? Resting on a tripartite approach to global political justice oscillating between non-domination, impartiality and mutual recognition in combination with the concept of orchestration, the preceding analysis has exemplified that this is true, especially if the EU wants to continue to play a relevant role in international politics.

The EU’s former approach to green normative power resting mainly on impartiality and the drive to establish an ambitious, largely regulatory, top-down, binding and supranational climate regime has increasingly been contested. The EU had to learn that leading by example and trying to shape conceptions of the international normal according to its own image did not work anymore. In the context of a declining LIO (Ikenberry, 2018), which always had been a prerequisite for the success of normative power (Diez and von Lucke, 2023), and the rise of a much more multifaceted or polycentric international society, the focus had to shift away from trying to export one’s own, allegedly universal norms, towards finding common ground with others and hence to jointly reconceptualize what global order was to become (Manners, 2024: 2). The reconceptualization of the EU’s approach to the climate negotiations after Copenhagen in 2009 towards ‘shared leadership’ and building alliances, which I make sense of as strengthening mutual recognition and non-domination and as moving to a strategy of orchestration and cosmopolitics, exemplify these required changes. Only when the EU began to rethink normative power as acting in concert and hence trying to orchestrate efforts to fight climate change and to truly acknowledge the positions of others did in regain some of its influence on the negotiations – though not necessarily on the content of the regime. Thus, the EU’s normative power does not primarily reside anymore in the EU’s own norms and values or its exemplary behaviour in the climate field, but in its diplomatic leadership and its ability to successfully orchestrate a range of other actors (Gordon and Johnson, 2017: 695) towards an ambitious implementation of the Paris Agreement and its amendments.

The downside of this shift is that the EU had to tone down some of its own normative convictions. It increasingly shifted to a form of ‘principled pragmatism’ (EEAS, 2016) (see also the paper of Juncos and Pratt (2024) on ‘Pragmatist Power Europe’ in this special issue) that puts more emphasis on respecting different approaches and the sovereignty of other actors. Yet, relinquishing too much of its normative power linked to impartiality could eventually mean to diminish what made the EU so central as a normative power in the first place, namely being and acting differently than traditional global powers. Relying mainly on mutual recognition and especially on non-domination, or on ‘pragmatic’, ‘rational’ organizational facades (Çelik, 2022), could test the limits of a cosmopolitical approach and the recognition of local contestation, differences and sovereignty. It exposes the difficult to bridge gap between ‘universal/cosmopolitan versus particular/communitarian values and principles’ (Lucarelli and Manners, 2006; Manners, 2024: 13).

Ultimately, it could become a hindrance for effectively dealing with key transnational, collective action problems of the planetary organic crisis such as climate change. As Manners highlights in the introduction of this special issue, the world faces a ‘accelerating, catastrophic climate emergency’ produced by the long-standing ‘human economic, social and ecological abuse of the planet’ (Manners, 2024: 6). And although some have praised the Paris Agreement as a success, the combined NDCs are still far from sufficient in order to limit global warming below the 1.5 Celsius threshold (Climate Action Tracker, 2023) and its highly questionable whether a voluntary, mainly orchestrating approach will be enough to motivate further emission reduction commitments (Marquardt et al., 2022: 22). Thus, problematizing power imbalances in the climate regime, the EU’s colonial legacy and its often-exuberant Eurocentrism, as well as a more open ear for different approaches from the Global South were certainly in order – and should undoubtedly be carried out even more thoroughly. The same is true for the diplomatic outreach campaign and a more flexible and alliance building oriented strategy. Yet, ultimately, to effectively reign in the climate crisis, the world will need considerable leadership and impartial normative power by powerful progressive actors such as the EU, which will always entail some degree of domination. Otherwise, the worsening climate crisis itself will soon dominate the lives and well-being of all of humanity and particularly the already vulnerable and disadvantaged parts of society.

In the end, the insights of this case study suggest that a timely, yet also effective redesign of green normative power needs to strike a delicate balance. It needs to retain some degree of impartiality (ambitious, binding climate abatement principles and mechanisms, cosmopolitism), while linking this to a more self-critical and flexible ethos based on mutual recognition (recognizing difference, acting in concert, cosmopolitics) and non- domination (alleviating unfair power imbalances and underrepresentation in international society). The EU’s shift towards orchestration and climate diplomacy certainly has been an important first step and has helped to deal with difference and contestation (Wiener, 2017) and to fruitfully act together in concert with others towards addressing the planetary organic crisis. However, it certainly cannot be the endpoint of the development of green normative power.