Translating the norm bundle of an international regime: states’ pledges on climate change around the 2015 Paris conference

Abstract

International regimes contain norm bundles with several distinct norms that jointly define what is expected from parties. As states engage with these regime-inherent norms, they attribute meanings to them. Moreover, they can also translate norms extraneous to the regime. Here we take a theoretical middle ground between full-fledged norm adoption and approaches that emphasize the novelty of each translation. We argue that norm translations may be largely shared among states with similar domestic contexts. This includes individual translations of norms as well as prioritizations between them. Empirically, we focus on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) by applying unsupervised quantitative text analysis (topic modeling) to the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) submitted around the 2015 Paris conference. Studying these implementation pledges, we find that states have mostly engaged in regime-inherent norm translations, indicating normative stability of the regime. This occurred in distinct forms, such as by translating mitigation responsibilities in the form of absolute or relative emission reduction targets. We find hints that norm translations indeed vary in line with states’ domestic context factors: Beyond broad differences between industrialized and developing countries, we show the relevance of factors like vulnerability to climate change and emissions levels.