Description
In recent decades, the traditional, state-based, top-down model of global climate governance has increasingly struggled to meet the immense challenges posed by climate change. In response, various new carbon governance arrangements have emerged, where non-state actors collaborate with state actors to provide collective goods, and thereby adopt governance functions that have formerly been the sole authority of sovereign states. This shift has fundamentally redefined the configuration of authority in global climate governance, pulling the practice of global governance towards the inclusion of multiple stakeholders. A new multistakeholderism norm emerges and gets institutionalized. Despite the growing body of literature on this emerging norm, we still have limited knowledge about its impact on governing authority structures and normative understandings of good governance within national jurisdictions.
Taking a constructivist norm localization theoretical approach, this research aims to investigate the translation and practice of multistakeholderism in the local context of China. To achieve this, this study examines the experimentation process of low carbon transitions at the city level in China. As a process of governing by trial, the experimentation allows the public authorities break down organizational insularity to cooperate with actors outside of the confinement of political structures. During the cooperation, how the decision-making and implementation authority is distributed between different actors provides a scope for us to observe China’s response to the emerging new multistakeholderism norm. Through an empirical investigation of the low carbon experiments in China, this research will provide a clear understanding of what multistakeholder inclusion means in the domestic settings of China and how this localized normative notions about legitimate political authority shapes the local governance arrangements in the area of climate change.
