Research project Social inequality and the legitimacy of global climate governance

Global climate governance has a frontline role in combating climate risks for societies and ecosystems. Multilateral institutions, such as the African Union (AU) or United Nations (UN), have in recent decades increasingly mainstreamed climate change. The expectations on global climate institutions to deliver are growing, and as a consequence these institutions appear to be more contested than ever before. This makes it difficult for global institutions to engage governments in ambitious climate action and to ensure compliance with joint norms and rules. 

This project examines why some individuals believe in the legitimacy of global climate governance while others do not, focusing on an understudied factor: social inequality. The working hypothesis is that income inequality is a persistent structure in which the poorest are consistently among the most vulnerable to climate risks, and often feel precarious and left behind, which might shape their legitimacy perceptions. Effects of income inequality on legitimacy perceptions are likely to be magnified by intersecting factors such as gender and ethnicity, which previous research has shown to be linked to high vulnerability to climate risks. 

The theory will be examined by using novel subnational-level survey data, combined with socioeconomic and other contextual data in a cross-national study. Moreover, the project will rely on survey experiments in four countries to study social inequality effects on legitimacy at the individual level. Taken together, these empirical inquiries will enhance understanding of individual-level opinion formation toward global climate governance, and help to address the challenges and opportunities to legitimize global climate governance in the face of rising inequality.