Description
My presentation will consist of the key findings from my recently published (May 2026) PhD thesis. These key findings include:
- In the UNFCCC, populism does not translate into a uniform set of positions or behaviours for right or left wing populists. This is because populists are constrained by (1) their country’s interests being embedded within the UNFCCC’s institutional logic, and (2) their country’s place within the broader hierarchy of power of the international order. As a result, populists magnify existing country positions, rather than dramatically change them.
- When populists are not constrained, they act more overtly instrumentally and in support of their domestic political agenda, and their tactics and rhetoric become more disruptive, assertive and extreme in their tactics and rhetoric
- COP delegates act as ‘mitigating intermediaries' for right-wing populist governments - proactively hedging the more radical aspects of the populist's agenda, and using ’soft signalling’ to preserve their own social capital within the negotiations, and their country’s longer term interests within the negotiations.