Preference Attainment: Determinants of Bargaining Success in the Context of Climate Change Negotiations

The process of negotiating climate change, as any bargaining process according to realism as well as liberalism, can be viewed a power game between the parties involved. Whether states are concerned with absolute gains or care more about relative gains is still widely debated. Analyzing the negotiation outcome of Cancun empirically, I explore which variables actually determine bargaining success. Are external power sources such as economic strength key for countries to achieve their negotiation goals, or are internal power sources such as negotiation skills equally important? And to what extent does the choice of hard vs. soft bargaining strategies matter for accomplishing these goals? Moreover, I examine whether variables intrinsically tied to countries, such as vulnerability to climate change, have an effect on negotiation success. These questions are answered using a novel dataset on the current climate change negotiations for which data on success, positions, and strategies of participating parties were collected. The results indicate that external power (measured by total GDP), extremity of positions, and vulnerability to climate change impacts are the most important determinants of success.