Achieving consensus in multilateral international negotiations: The case study of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to propose a dynamical model describing the achievement of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. To represent the complex, decade-long, multiparty negotiation process that led to the accord, we use a two time scale dynamical model. The short time scale corresponds to the discussion process occurring at each meeting and is represented as a Friedkin-Johnsen model, a dynamical multiparty model in which the parties show stubbornness, i.e., tend to defend their positions during the discussion. The long time scale behavior is determined by concatenating multiple Friedkin-Johnsen models (one for each meeting). The proposed model, tuned on real data extracted from the Paris Agreement meetings, achieves consensus on a time horizon similar to that of the real negotiations. Remarkably, the model is also able to identify a series of parties that exerted a key leadership role in the Paris Agreement negotiation process.