Chris Methmann

Delf Rothe

Benjamin Stephan

Global climate change is perceived to be one of the biggest challenges for international politics in the 21st century. This work seeks to fuse a global governance perspective together with different interpretive approaches, offering a novel way of looking at international climate politics. Equipped with a common interpretive tool-kit, the authors examine different issue-areas and excavate the contours of an overall pattern – the depoliticisation of climate governance. It is this concept which represents the overarching theme connecting the different contributions, addressing issues such as how the securitization of climate change conceals its socio-economic roots; how highly political decisions and value-judgements are couched in the terms of science; how the reframing of climate change as a matter of economic calculation and investment narrows the scope of political action; and how the prevailing concentration on technological solutions to climate change turns it into a mere administrative issue to be tackled by experts. Highlighting the depoliticisation of highly political issues provides a means to bring the political back into one of the most important issue areas of 21st century world politics. The editors have assembled a series of 14 interpretive inquiries into discourses of global climate governance which aim to flesh out an interpretive methodology, demonstrating the value it offers to those seeking to achieve a better understanding of global climate governance. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental politics, political theory and climate change.

(De)constructing the Greenhouse

Interpretive Approaches to Global Climate Governance

Annette Jünemann

Jakob Horst

The ’Arab Spring’ triggered paradigmatic shifts but, despite these changes, much in the Euro-Mediterranean region remains the same. Utilising ’Logics of Action’, an innovative theoretical framework designed to capture the complexity of political interaction in one of the fastest changing regions in the world, this book discusses developments in the region before and after the Arab Spring that can be characterised by a continuation of the norm. Expert contributors identify patterns of interaction between governmental institutions, economic entrepreneurs, religious groups and other diverse actors that withstood these historical changes and explore why these relationships have proved so robust. Connecting a unique sample of case studies on changing and persistent ’Logics of Action’ within the Euro-Mediterranean space this book provides a pivotal contribution to our understanding of political interaction between North Africa, the Middle East and the European Union. Offering a completely new perspective on the events of the ’Arab Spring’ it identifies something that seems paradoxical at first sight; persistence in times of radical change.

Persistence in Times of Change

Euro-Mediterranean Relations after the Arab Spring

This book explores the reasons for a recent securitization of climate change, and reveals how the understanding of climate change as a security threat fuels resilience as a contemporary political paradigm. Since 2007, political and public discourse has portrayed climate change in terms of international or national security. This increasing attention to the security implications of climate change is puzzling, however, given the fact that linkages between climate change and conflict or violence are heavily disputed in the empirical literature. This book explains this trend of a securitization of global warming and discusses its political implications. It traces the actor coalition that promoted the idea of climate change as a security issue and reveals the symbols, narratives and storylines that make up this discourse. Drawing on three detailed case studies at the international level of the United Nations, the regional level of the Euro-Mediterranean and the national level of the UK, the book reveals how climate change is turned into a non-linear and unpredictable threat. The resulting complexity discourse prevents the adoption of any exceptional measures and instead presents resilience as the only way to cope with the climate threat. This book shows that we can only grasp the complexity of the securitization process and its implications in the climate change case by comparing it at different political levels over a longer period. By developing a securitization framework the book makes an important contribution to the ongoing debate on security and resilience in critical security studies. This book will be of much interest to students of critical security studies, resilience, environmental studies, global governance and IR in general.

Delf Rothe

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