Strange Bedfellows: What Really Defines Coalitions in International Climate Change Negotiations?

The purpose of this paper is to enhance our understanding of international climate change negotiations by providing insights into the structure and internal coherence of negotiation groups at COP 17 in Durban, with special reference to the relative importance of various negotiation issues. Discourse analysis is used to code the opening statements of participating countries in order to identify which negotiation issues are stressed. Statistical tools such as principal component analysis and cluster analysis are then used to identify the most important issues as well as to identify which negotiation groups emerge ‘naturally’ from the data. The coalitions uncovered in the analysis differ from existing negotiations groups and are more robust according to various measures. Existing coalitions are not homogenous (which has been demonstrated in the literature, e.g. Roberts, 2011; Vihma et al., 2011), nor are countries homogenous by region. This paper adds to our understanding by presenting a method of identifying groups and determining their internal stability. Our results demonstrate that the primary characteristic distinguishing coalitions was the degree that they emphasize the issues under negotiation.