Conference Agenda

The role of policy interventions in accelerating low-carbon transitions has been widely acknowledged in innovation and transition studies. Within a policy mix, the relationship between policies and the interactions among key actors behind them have significant implications for policy outcome and effectiveness. However, network effects among different policies in a policy mix and their evolution remain underexplored in the existing literature on policy mix. To what extent the design of new policies depends on preexisting policies, and what shapes the links between policies? The answers to these questions would help researchers understand how policies are designed and feedback in a given regulatory context. We address these questions using a novel dataset of 342 national climate policies in China between 2016 to 2022. By combining social network analysis and process tracing, our study assesses the links between policies within and across key sectors developed by different ministry-level governing entities in the post-Paris Era. More specifically, our study shows the durability and change in China’s climate policy by investigating: 1) focal policies linking various sectors to ensure consistency in broad policy goals and objectives; (2) key governing entities driving the focal policies and the mechanisms through which they influence policies in different sectors and issue areas; (3) path dependency phenomena in key sectors where policies become sticky and strengthened over time. Our findings identify the temporal consistencies and inconsistencies in China’s climate policy as well as the focal actors influencing policy design. By unpacking China’s national policy mix on climate change, the paper not only makes theoretical contributions to the climate policy literature through a network approach to investigate policy interconnectedness and feedback and also presents important empirical evidence on path dependent policy processes in the world’s largest carbon emitter.

The global landscape of development cooperation has been evolving with the increasing involvement of Southern countries in the transfer and exchange of resources, technology, and knowledge. Middle-income countries that actively invest in South-South cooperation (SSC), such as India and Indonesia, play‌ a pivotal role in accelerating the achievement of global and national sustainable development goals (SDGs). The new approach of development cooperation includes donor countries willing to engage in SSC schemes through triangular partnerships. However, scholars have yet to fully consider how middle-income countries respond to the SDGs, particularly SDG 17 (Partnerships for the goals), in their foreign development policies and practice. It is important to consider whether their responses (or lack thereof) support or hinder SSC in delivering inclusive development partnerships alongside their pragmatic objectives, such as gaining resources, the influence of development models, and status and legitimacy as development partners. Equally, there has been insufficient attention given to the extent to which donor countries use the SDGs to shape triangular cooperation.

This study focuses on India and Indonesia, examining their SSC and triangular cooperation’s social infrastructure, especially the political and institutional processes. It assesses various types of steering and the roles of actors in operationalising SSC. Document analysis on Indian and Indonesian SSC and Triangular Cooperation policies, institutional setup, and strategies of their donor countries is conducted, and qualitative studies from SSC and triangular cooperation-driven projects on infrastructure development supplement the analysis.

The findings demonstrate how types of steering and roles vary according to the context-specific nature of national foreign diplomacy, domestic economies, politics and development approaches, institutions and governance, and the specific project needs. While proponents of SSC and triangular cooperation, including the larger SSC partners and donors, use the SDGs selectively, they have not entirely leveraged the SDGs as an attractive narrative framing tool. The social infrastructure around SSC has yet to catch up with inclusive development partnerships, where the complexities of deepening SSC mean that proponents of SSC may find it challenging to ensure ownership of development priorities of smaller SSC partners and exercise multi-stakeholder partnerships. Overall, this study contributes to understanding the key factors shaping SSC and triangular cooperation and the realities of the political discourse surrounding SDGs in emerging nations’ development cooperation policies. By examining the social infrastructure of SSC and triangular cooperation, the study provides insights into the challenges and opportunities in achieving inclusive development and ownership of priorities by smaller partners.

Since the 2007 Bali Climate Conference, a proliferation of climate mitigation strategies and targets has occurred in the Global South. While very vulnerable states such as island nations and developed countries had early on demanded ambitious climate actions by all parties, particularly emerging economies resisted this perspective by arguing that they face trade-offs with their economic development and are not responsible for climate change. However, India and Indonesia adopted national climate action plans in 2008 and 2011, communicated mitigation targets in 2009, and submitted Intended Nationally Determined Contributions prior to the Paris Climate Conference in 2015, alongside other emerging economies such as Brazil or China. What can explain this rise and advancement of climate policies in emerging economies?

Despite multiple influences, such as international pressure or lesson drawing from peers, I argue that one factor has recently remained underexplored: Strategic mimicry regarding the norm of climate mitigation contributions from developing countries. Strategic mimicry is characterized by the mimicking of an engagement with an international norm for strategic reasons. Actors instrumentally use arguments and actions to persuade others of the validity of their own engagement with that international norm. It is activated in order to shine internationally and to receive international legitimacy so that these actors can advance other preexisting strategic goals beyond that international norm (e.g. in other policy fields), which they pursue based on preexisting dominant domestic norms.

In this paper, I argue that we can best understand the emergence and advancement of climate policies in these countries from such an International Relations’ norm perspective, which takes the foreign policy goals of these countries into account. Both countries have strived to advance their foreign policy goals, such as international recognition as a nuclear power and as a member in the United Nations Security Council in India’s case, through mimicking an engagement with climate mitigation. Based on interviews in India and Indonesia and extensive analysis of primary and secondary document, I explain the emergence and evolution of their climate policies from 2007 until 2015. This research, therefore, contributes to the conference theme of architecture and agency by “address[ing] institutional frameworks and actors implicated in earth system governance and how they resist or respond to change and evolve over time”.

“Net zero” refers to a state in which the greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere are balanced by their removal out of the atmosphere. Since 2020, the term has quickly shifted from a mere scientific concept to a mainstream organizing principle for climate change mitigation plans of states and other actors across the globe. To date, net zero targets cover 91% of the global GDP and 80% of the global population. Such wide coverage is not possible without pledges made by large emerging economies, which are new engines of the global economy as well as major carbon emitters. Despite the rise of a burgeoning literature on net zero governance, the question of how the concept of net zero has been adopted and has gained traction in the Global South remains largely understudied. What are varying processes through which “net zero" has emerged and diffused as a guiding principle for climate mitigation in emerging economies? We address this question through a comparative study of China and India – the world’s two largest emerging economies. In both countries, net zero targets have been made not only by national governments but also a range of subnational and private actors. Drawing upon the theory on varieties of climate governance, we argue that new transnational normative contexts, market environments, and pre-existing domestic governance jointly shape the uptake of the net zero concept in emerging economies. Our empirical study uses policy documents and key informant interviews with practitioners to first map out the processes through which net zero targets have been increasingly used in the two countries, and then identify the forces driving the relevant net zero movement. Our close examination of the policy processes in the two countries reveal divergent patterns. In India, despite the importance of a national pledge announced at COP-26, there has been a bottom-up process for subnational jurisdictions and businesses to leverage market and political opportunities through net zero commitments. In contrast, the net zero movement in China has been largely orchestrated by the central government with subnational and non-state actors following the directions set by the top leaders. The paper presents novel insights into climate governance in non-Western contexts and further advances the literature on comparative climate politics.