TY - JOUR
T1 - Deliberative Ecologies
T2 - Complexity and Social-Ecological Dynamics in International Environmental Negotiations
AU - Pickering, Jonathan
N1 - Funding Information:
Earlier versions of this paper were presented at a workshop on ?Call for Methodological Diversity: Understanding the Inside of Environmental Agreement Making? at the University of California Berkeley and the Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, University of Canberra. For comments and reading suggestions I am especially grateful to Hannah Barrowman, Pierrick Chalaye, Wendy Conway-Lamb, John Dryzek, Selen Ercan, Hannah Hughes, Mike Jensen, Luke Kemp, Rakhyun Kim, Jonathan Kuyper, Kimberly Marion Suiseeya, Simon Niemeyer, Kate O?Neill, Matthew Paterson, Hayley Stevenson, and Alice Vadrot. This research was supported under the Australian Research Council?s Laureate Fellowship funding scheme (project number FL140100154, led by John Dryzek).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
PY - 2019/5
Y1 - 2019/5
N2 - Theories of complex systems can yield valuable insights for understanding the increasingly intricate networks of actors, institutions, and discourses involved in international environmental negotiations. While analysis of regimes and regime complexes has shed light on macro-level structures and relationships in global environmental politics, systemic analysis has gained less traction in making sense of micro-level interactions—such as communicative exchanges among participants—that occur within the sites of negotiation and how those interactions shape (and are shaped by) the broader dynamics of governance systems. This article shows how the conceptual lens of “deliberative ecologies” can bridge these levels of analysis by integrating theories of deliberative systems with ideas from complexity theory and social–ecological systems analysis. Drawing on evidence from United Nations climate change and biodiversity conferences between 2009 and 2018, I show how methods such as discourse analysis and process tracing can help to apply a deliberative ecologies perspective and thereby advance understanding of how discourses and deliberative practices diffuse through negotiating sites and how deliberation interacts with the social–ecological dynamics of those sites.
AB - Theories of complex systems can yield valuable insights for understanding the increasingly intricate networks of actors, institutions, and discourses involved in international environmental negotiations. While analysis of regimes and regime complexes has shed light on macro-level structures and relationships in global environmental politics, systemic analysis has gained less traction in making sense of micro-level interactions—such as communicative exchanges among participants—that occur within the sites of negotiation and how those interactions shape (and are shaped by) the broader dynamics of governance systems. This article shows how the conceptual lens of “deliberative ecologies” can bridge these levels of analysis by integrating theories of deliberative systems with ideas from complexity theory and social–ecological systems analysis. Drawing on evidence from United Nations climate change and biodiversity conferences between 2009 and 2018, I show how methods such as discourse analysis and process tracing can help to apply a deliberative ecologies perspective and thereby advance understanding of how discourses and deliberative practices diffuse through negotiating sites and how deliberation interacts with the social–ecological dynamics of those sites.
KW - Deliberative democracy
KW - Deliberative systems
KW - Global environmental politics
KW - Deliberative ecologies
KW - International negotiations
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85082861864&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1162/glep_a_00506
DO - 10.1162/glep_a_00506
M3 - Article
SN - 1526-3800
VL - 19
SP - 61
EP - 80
JO - Global Environmental Politics
JF - Global Environmental Politics
IS - 2
ER -