El acervo literario en Puebla

Most historical institutionalist analyses take the form of a temporally constructed narrative, using information on policy and institutional developments to demonstrate how institutional design has persisted and/or a policy path has been created and reinforced (Gerring 2011, p. 1135). When considering the UNFCCC as the research focus, this approach needs some adjustment in order for historical institutionalism to be useful in analysis of an institution in which re-negotiation of policy is constantly taking place. Each year the UNFCCC holds one main and several intermediate rounds of negotiation, and produces official policy after each main annual round (COP), so it is not possible to discuss UNFCCC policy in the same way as one might a piece of domestic legislation, which, once enacted, sits static on the statue book until amended or replaced. To make sense of the multiple layers of UNFCCC policy and provide a sound basis from which to look for periods of stability and change, this project will make use of qualitative analysis of institutional design and the

process of policy development. There are no comprehensive criteria that can conclusively confirm institutional change or stability (Duit 2007, p. 1099) and the causal complexity underlying outcomes in a political environment such as the UNFCCC makes constructing knowledge statements challenging; in this context qualitative research in a case study format is a useful approach even when only one case is studied (Bennett and Elman 2006, p. 251).

As Sydow et al. (2012, p. 162) explain, policy paths are socially constructed phenomena that it is not possible to measure objectively, so qualitative study facilitates investigation of how actors have behaved and been influenced by institutional structures, and ‘how actors and incidents on different levels are related to each other’. It is the complex landscape of and nuances within statements and negotiating positions that are the key to identifying how policy paths and actor behaviour have been influenced; it would be very difficult to draw meaningful conclusions from statistical analysis of the simple presence of key words, such as “finance” or “new and additional”, or a binary measure of which countries were for or against particular proposals. The very question here is what actors’ statements in negotiations and policy wording as a whole, including the presence or absence of such key words and the context in which they are used, tells us about how policies are related to other actors, prior choices and institutional design. Only by taking this cohesive, longitudinal qualitative approach can the way actors present their ideas, interests and priorities over time be tracked, and consequently the micro-processes that reinforce or modify the influence of institutional structures be identified (Hall 2016).

A historical review also makes it difficult to use participatory methods in a practical and meaningful manner. The time period is long and there are at least five key phases of negotiations, so any meaningful contribution offering insight into changes and stability of negotiations and structures over time would have required a significant number of interviewees. Identifying a sufficient number of negotiation participants involved in each phase and representing a variety of countries, planning and conducting the interviews potentially in numerous countries, and processing and integrating the interview data would have constituted a significant methodological component and added considerable additional time to the project. In addition, participants in negotiations, particularly from developing countries, are likely to report that developing countries have struggled to achieve their objectives or have experienced limitations on their bargaining power within negotiations, since this is well-documented and forms a key part of the motivation for the project. The aim of using a historical institutionalism approach is to reveal features of the institutional design and development that have shaped the experience of participants within, thereby providing a new angle and insight that will add to existing analysis and observation of the North-South dynamic within negotiations and the experiences of

participants over time, adding to our understanding of why participants experienced what they experienced and why the North-South division has remained prominent.

Qualitative analysis in this thesis takes the form of a longitudinal case study using processual data from negotiations and policy output, with the UNFCCC as the subject. In terms of the UNFCCC as an institution, there is a clear temporal boundary to the beginning of the case study, since the founding treaty was signed in 1992 following a series of organised negotiations under the UN. Analysis covering the period from creation of the Convention to the Paris COP-21 in 2015 is a long time, but will allow the greatest depth of analysis possible and is necessary to fully investigate the process whereby institutional design and initial rule creation led into ongoing policy development, and ultimately facilitates comment on the influence of institutional factors in policy making that includes the most recent milestone in the regime’s progression, cemented at Paris. The significance of COP-21 means it provides a natural temporal boundary to end the case study. Based on its centrality to negotiations as a whole and the justice of climate governance more specifically, the focus of the project on climate finance has been explained above. In practical terms, when UNFCCC policy covers a wide range of themes and areas, the focus on climate finance makes a detailed assessment of how the UNFCCC functions possible within the time and space constraints of this project.

First, all relevant sections and references to climate finance policy were extracted from official COP policy documents. Then the relevant ENB issues for the COP meetings were searched using a consistent set of key words to identify commentary about and statements from Parties relevant to climate finance. These were extracted and matched with corresponding sections of final policy from the official UNFCCC documents. Party submissions and other processual documentation on relevant policy topics referenced in either the ENB issues and UNFCCC policies were obtained and used to add additional evidence to official policy output and ENB commentary. Supplemented by secondary research and other external commentaries on negotiations from NGOs, for example, these multiple sources allowed a form of triangulation in the absence of viable quantitative or multiple methods. The objective was to identify evidence from matched data that initial institutional design and subsequent structural influences have shaped actors’ interaction in the policy process and the outcomes from it, building up a detailed picture of policy development and institutional functioning that facilitates generation of a temporally constructed narrative offering an insight into the role of institutional rules and actor behaviour within the UNFCCC. A detailed step-by-step plan for undertaking the analysis is set out below.