Transformation disrupted? The contested legitimacy of change and stability in climate governance

Realising transformative climate action is a key challenge in domestic politics across advanced democracies. Failures to achieve this to date have been attributed to factors such as conflicting interests, lock-ins, and knowledge politics (e.g. denialism), among others. However, an important aspect which has so far been overlooked is contestation over what constitutes the legitimate wielding of public authority itself within attempts to reconfigure political systems in a changing world. Structural stress accumulates in political systems that are increasingly mismatched with shifting contexts particularly under climate change. Different actors make different claims about the proper role and scope of public authority (i.e. the formal power to make and enforce rules by a democratic government) in response. For example, both climate activists and right-wing populists, in very different ways, contest the wielding (or not) of public authority on climate change. These conflicts concern not only the form and ambition of climate action (e.g. instruments, targets), but also more fundamental ideas about what constitutes legitimate regulation of collective behaviour in the first place.

This creates a ‘double bind’ because climate change threatens the legitimacy of existing political systems (by exposing a chronic failure to address the problem), but the legitimacy of transformation is also contested as it threatens the existing political order. Both the status quo and radical alternatives are objectionable to different constellations of actors (i.e. mass publics, political elites, organised groups) due to differing views about the rightful wielding and scope of public authority. As a result, both change and stability in governance systems are deeply contested, even while stress in political systems continues to accumulate.

This paper focuses on the question: How are attempts to mobilise public authority to regulate collective behaviour on climate change legitimated and delegitimated, by whom, and with what consequences for climate governance? It draws on examples of climate advocacy and resistance to show how various forms of contestation witnessed in contemporary climate politics (e.g. pro-climate action protests, reactions against specific policy proposals, backlash movements) can be traced back to underlying claims of involved actors about the rightful wielding of public authority. It implies a need to simultaneously consider complex questions of ‘legitimate coercion’ and ‘legitimate resistance’ within the broader problematique of adapting inert political systems to profoundly changing contexts. The paper contributes to understanding adverse political dynamics involved in ‘Accelerating Just and Inclusive Transitions’.