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Misperceiving political opponents as more influential and evil than they are has been described as the devil shift. More recently, the opposite phenomenon known as the angel shift has been recognised where political allies are misperceived as more influential and virtuous than they are. However, research on the devil and angel shifts has been hampered by the lack of measures that separate these mechanisms analytically. We analyse the misperception of influence and differentiate between the devil and angel shifts. Furthermore, previous research has failed to take notice of how social network positions contribute to these phenomena. We argue that conceptualising the different roles that brokers play between advocacy coalitions helps explain the occurrence of the devil and angel shifts. Our findings demonstrate that the devil and angel shifts are not dyadic but triadic phenomena between advocacy coalitions and that network factors accentuate both ‘shifts’.

Policy scholars have increasingly focused on collaborative and competitive relationships between stakeholder coalitions. The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) in particular has directed scholarly attention toward such relationships. The ACF defines advocacy coalitions as groups of actors who share beliefs and coordinate their action. However, previous research has been inconsistent in defining and measuring coalitions, which has hampered comparative research and theory building. We present a method called the Advocacy Coalition Index, which measures belief similarity and the coordination of action in a manner that makes it possible to assess the extent to which advocacy coalitions are found in policy subsystems, whether subgroups resemble coalitions, and how individual actors contribute to coalition formation. The index provides a standardized method for identifying coalitions that can be applied to comparative research. To illustrate the effectiveness of the index, we analyze two climate change policy subsystems, namely Finland and Sweden, which have been shown to differ in terms of the association of belief similarity with coordination. We demonstrate that the index performs well in identifying the different types of subsystems, coalitions, and actors that contribute the most to coalition formation, as well as those involved in cross-coalition brokerage. published

Private actors are important for urban climate action, because the public sector can control the carbon footprint of a city only partly. Public-private partnerships have been created through different voluntary approaches, such as city-level voluntary networks for companies with the aim to engage private actors in climate change mitigation and to support learning processes by bringing different actors together. If these processes are to happen, network members should connect with each other through voluntary networking activities. These connections can be studied using methods from network science. As a case example, we study the event-participationbased structures of the Climate Partners network of the City of Helsinki between 2011 and 2018, and develop an index to measure whether active event participation by a company is associated with taking more ambitious mitigation measures. The results show that the network manages to bring together companies from different fields but has difficulties with engaging them and encouraging ambitious climate goals. Our results can help to further develop networking activities. The tools we develop and share allow the replication of the analysis for other data sets, offering a basis for a comparative analysis of different networks. This opens new horizons for studying public-private networking and its effects. Funding Agencies|Tiina and Antti Herlin foundation [20170005]; Kone Foundation [201710272]; Academy of Finland [332916]

The COVID-19 pandemic emerged against the backdrop of the longer-term climate change crisis and increasing global awareness of the imperative for climate action, disrupting the post-Paris trajector...

Collaboration between public administration organizations and various stakeholders is often prescribed as a potential solution to the current complex problems of governance, such as climate change. According to the Advocacy Coalition Framework, shared beliefs are one of the most important drivers of collaboration. However, studies investigating the role of beliefs in collaboration show mixed results. Some argue that similarity of general normative and empirical policy beliefs elicits collaboration, while others focus on beliefs concerning policy instruments. Proposing a new divisive beliefs hypothesis, we suggest that agreeing on those beliefs over which there is substantial disagreement in the policy subsystem is what matters for collaboration. Testing our hypotheses using policy network analysis and data on climate policy subsystems in 11 countries (Australia, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Germany, Finland, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Portugal, Sweden, and Taiwan), we find belief similarity to be a stronger predictor of collaboration when the focus is divisive beliefs rather than normative and empirical policy beliefs or beliefs concerning policy instruments. This knowledge can be useful for managing collaborative governance networks because it helps to identify potential competing coalitions and to broker compromises between them.

In this paper, we examine the centrality of policy actors and moral justifications in media debates on Arctic climate change in Finland and Canada from 2011–2015. We take a network approach on the media debates by analysing relations between the actors and justifications, using discourse network analysis on a dataset of 745 statements from four newspapers. We find that in both countries, governments and universities are the most central actors, whereas business actors are the least central. Justifications that value environmental sustainability and scientific knowledge are most central and used across actor types. However, ecological justifications are sometimes in conflict with market justifications. Government actors emphasize new economic possibilities in the Arctic whereas environmental organizations demand greater protection of the vulnerable Arctic. Ecological justifications and justifications that value international cooperation are more central in the Finnish debate, whereas justifications valuing sustainability and science, as well as those valuing national sovereignty, are more central in the Canadian debate. We conclude that in addition to the centrality of specific policy actors in media debates, the use of different types of moral justifications also reflects political power in the media sphere.

Policy learning can alter the perceptions of both the seriousness and the causes of a policy problem, thus also altering the perceived need to do something about the problem. This then allows for the informed weighing of different policy options. Taking a social network perspective, we argue that the role of social influence as a driver of policy learning has been overlooked in the literature. Network research has shown that normatively laden belief change is likely to occur through complex contagion—a process in which an actor receives social reinforcement from more than one contact in its social network. We test the applicability of this idea to policy learning using node-level network regression models on a unique longitudinal policy network survey dataset concerning the Reducing Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) initiative in Brazil, Indonesia, and Vietnam. We find that network connections explain policy learning in Indonesia and Vietnam, where the policy subsystems are collaborative, but not in Brazil, where the level of conflict is higher and the subsystem is more established. The results suggest that policy learning is more likely to result from social influence and complex contagion in collaborative than in conflictual settings.

For national governments to meet their international climate change obligations they need to develop and implement plans that involve coordinating the actions of local, regional and national level actors from across multiple sectors. When this occurs, it can lead to the formation of a policy implementation network. Surprisingly, there is a limited understanding of the characteristics of the members of such networks, the structure of the multi-level and cross-sectoral ties among them, and about how they relate to how these networks are governed. This paper initiates the development of such knowledge by calculating a variety of network statistics to analyse the policy implementation network formed to carry out Ireland's signature climate policy-The Climate Action Plan 2019. Results show that national level actors dominate, and that cross-level and cross-sectoral collaboration are limited. The plan is governed by a network administrative organisation (NAO), with the Department of the Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) filling the role. How the network is structured and governed increases the likelihood that the network will be stable, have a unity of purpose and be able to meet its objectives. However, the dominance of national-level actors and its centralized structure are likely to make it challenging for the NAO to gain the support of local-level actors. This paper's methodological approach can be applied in other contexts to understand inter-actor relations and how these affect the responsibilities, challenges and opportunities of the actors involved in the implementation of a national environmental policy.

Previous research has suggested that corporatist polities tend to enact more ambitious environmental policies than others. Here it is argued that the macro concept of corporatism can be dissected i...

Competing coalitions can stabilise policymaking and hinder policy changes that are required to address the mounting pressures on land use systems across the globe. Thus, understanding the driving forces of coalition formation is important. This paper builds on the Advocacy Coalition Framework to determine the relative contributions of two sets of beliefs (more general policy core beliefs and more specific beliefs concerning policy instruments) to coalition formation in South African tree plantation politics and to identify coalitions therein. Discourse Network Analysis was used to code 656 statements regarding 40 beliefs to create network data from 55 interviews with organisational elites. Results from a network analysis of the twelve most salient beliefs indicate that dissimilar policy core beliefs about the validity of environmental regulation, social costs of tree plantations, and the conditionality of land reform in South Africa divide actors into two coalitions: the hegemonic “business-as-usual” coalition and the minority “justice and change” coalition. These boundaries were confirmed by comparing the network based on shared policy core beliefs with a co-ordination network. Dissimilar beliefs concerning policy instruments, including eco-certification and an indicative zoning, also divide actors, yet actors’ reasoning for or against these instruments differ to the degree that united fronts are unlikely to form. Hegemonic coalitions that combine selected state and business interests with labour arguments and prioritise short-term economic efficiency threaten to delay the necessary changes away from business-as-usual across land use systems in South Africa and beyond.

The extent to which a policy actor is perceived as being influential by others can shape their role in a policy process. The interest group literature has examined how the use of advocacy tactics, such as lobbying or media campaigns, contributes to an actor’s perceived influence. The policy networks literature, in turn, has found that network ties and occupying certain institutional roles can explain why actors are perceived as influential. When investigating what explains perceptions of influence, interest groups scholars have not accounted for network interdependencies and network scholars have so far not examined the advocacy tactics used by interest groups. This paper addresses the gap at the intersection of these two literatures by investigating the relationship between network ties, institutional roles, advocacy tactics and the presence of influence attribution ties in climate change policy networks. Exponential random graph models are applied to network data collected from the organisations participating in the national climate change policymaking processes in six EU countries that vary by the extent to which they are majoritarian or consensual democracies: Czechia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Portugal, and Sweden. The results show that network ties and institutional roles are better predictors of influence attribution ties than advocacy tactics and that there is no pattern in the relationship between advocacy tactics and influence attribution ties across different institutional contexts. These findings suggest that because influence is primarily associated with structural factors (network ties and institutional roles) that more established policy actors are likely to have more influence, which may inhibit the need for a significant step change in climate policies.

Building on the framework of electoral contention, we investigate the interaction dynamics between social movements and political parties during elections. We argue that social media today is an important venue for these interactions, and consequently, analysing social media data is useful for understanding the shifts in the conflict and alliance structures between movements and parties. We find that Twitter discussions on the climate change movement during the 2019 electoral period in Finland reveal a process of pre-election approaching and post-election distancing between the movement and parties. The Greens and the Left formed mutually beneficial coalitions with the movement preceding the elections and took distance from one another after these parties entered the government. These findings suggest that research on movement-party interaction should pay more attention to social media and undertake comparative studies to assess whether the approaching-distancing process and its constituent mechanisms characterise movements beyond the climate strikes in Finland.

First published online: 12 December 2019 Overcoming common-pool resource dilemmas requires learning across different sectors of society. However, policy actors frequently entrench themselves in so-called echo chambers by preferring to rely on information from those whose policy beliefs resemble their own. Policy forums can reduce the limiting effects of echo chambers by encouraging actors with diverse knowledge bases to exchange information and learn from one another. This paper applies exponential random graph models to network data from the South African tree plantation policy domain to investigate how belief homophily, reputational influence, and forum co-participation shape information exchange behavior. Results show that echo chambers are important determinants of information exchange ties and that reputational influence is likely to "deepen" the echo. Results also show that the more forums that a pair of actors co-participate in, the more likely they are to exchange information. This applies to information exchange generally, as well as information exchange with trusted partners. Findings indicate that forums enable both cognitive learning (as knowledge gains) and relational learning (as improved relations). Nonetheless, when echo chambers are strong, and many forums are polarized, then forum co-participation may not break up echo chambers.

Scientifically informed climate policymaking starts with the exchange of credible, salient, and legitimate scientific information between scientists and policymakers. It is therefore important to understand what explains the exchange of scientific information in national climate policymaking processes. This article applies exponential random graph models to network data from the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, and Portugal to investigate which types of organizations are favored sources of scientific information and whether actors obtain scientific information from those with similar beliefs as their own. Results show that scientific organizations are favored sources in all countries, while only in the Czech Republic do actors obtain scientific information from those with similar policy beliefs. These findings suggest that actors involved in climate policymaking mostly look to scientific organizations for information, but that in polarized contexts where there is a presence of influential denialists overcoming biased information exchange is a challenge.

© 2020 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. The Treadmill of Production Theory (TPT) argues that in advanced capitalist societies, business organizations, trade unions, and state actors form a constellation that prioritizes economic growth over environmental concerns. We combine this perspective with the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) and use methods of social network analysis, survey data on key organizations in Finland and Australia, and in-depth interviews to map the policy network structures that resist low carbon transitions, and identify potential for change in these structures. We find that a coalition of economic, labor, and governmental organizations resists a low carbon transition in both countries. However, we also find several possible avenues of incremental change through changes in the network structures and the beliefs held by actors in the networks. Theoretically, this suggests that the TPT is correct in its diagnosis of the current situation, but the ACF may be a more fruitful perspective for identifying potential for change.

The conditions under which policy beliefs and influential actors shape collaborative behaviour in governance networks are not well understood. This article applies exponential random graph models to network data from Finland and Sweden to investigate how beliefs, reputational power and the role of public authorities' structure collaboration ties into the two countries' climate change governance networks. Results show that only in Finland's conflictual climate policy domain do actors collaborate with those with similar beliefs and with reputational power, while only in Sweden's consensual climate policy domain do public authorities play central impartial coordinating roles. These results indicate that conflict is present in a governance network when beliefs and reputational power determine collaboration and that it is absent when public authorities occupy central roles. They also suggest that relative success in climate policy action is likely to occur when public authorities take on network manager roles.

Research has repeatedly shown that individuals and organisations tend to obtain information from others whose beliefs are similar to their own, forming “echo chambers” with their network ties. Echo chambers are potentially harmful for evidence-based policymaking as they can hinder policy learning and consensus building. Policy forums could help alleviate the effects of echo chambers if organisations with different views were to participate and to use the opportunities that forums provide to learn from those outside their networks. Applying exponential random graph models on survey data of the Irish climate change policy network, we find that policy actors do indeed tend to obtain policy advice from those whose beliefs are similar to their own. We also find that actors tend not to obtain policy advice from the those that they encounter at policy forums, suggesting forums are not enabling policy learning.

Expectations of cooperation between local authorities, the private sector, and citizens in climate change adaptation in cities are high because involvement of many actors is seen as critical to success. Scholars and policymakers argue that the private sector could be more efficient than the public authorities in implementing adaptation measures and argue for the need to engage citizens to ensure legitimacy of adaptation and inclusion of locally relevant knowledge. To what extent do cities address the private sector and citizens in their adaptation initiatives? What modes of governance do they use to do this? What kinds of cities are the most likely to address the private sector and citizens? Going beyond the existing case study approaches, this paper answers these questions using a large N data set covering 402 cities around the world. We find that a majority of adaptation initiatives focus exclusively on the public sector and do not address the private sector or citizens. In the cases where they do, the private sector is more often governed through partnerships and participation, whereas citizen participation is relatively rare. Initiatives involving citizens rely more often on a provision of information that encourages citizens to adapt. We find that the more advanced a city is in its adaptation process, the more likely it is to address the private sector than citizens in its initiatives to adapt to climate change. Whereas with partnerships and participation the private sector can influence urban adaptation arrangements at a broader scale, the provision of information allows citizens only to implement individual adaptation measures according to their capacities.

In light of the relatively modest achievements of international climate change governance, high hopes are being placed on global city networks as an essential solution to problems in climate change adaptation and mitigation. The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, in particular, promotes itself as a network that enables cities to learn from each other in their efforts to confront climate change. Very little is known, however, about what kind of change the network promotes and how transformative the proposed solutions are. We assess the degree of (anticipated) change based on a stratified sample of twelve cities participating in the C40 network, signalled by adaptation and mitigation actions described in their policy documents. Our findings indicate that most proposed measures support the status quo, with the majority of actions focusing on infrastructure and technology, and only a few transformational climate measures are envisaged by the cities.

National climate policies are shaped by international organizations (IOs) and global norms. Drawing from World Society Theory and the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), we develop two related arguments: (1) one way in which IOs can influence national climate policy is through their engagement in mass-mediated national policy debates and (2) national organizations involved in the policy process may form advocacy coalitions to support or oppose the norms promoted by IOs. To examine the role of IOs in national policy debates and the coalitions that support and oppose them, we use discourse network analysis (DNA) on over 3500 statements in 11 newspapers in Canada, the United States (US), Brazil, and India. We find that in the high-income countries that are high per capita emitters (Canada and the US), IOs are less central in the policy debates and the discourse network is strongly clustered into competing advocacy coalitions. In the lower-income countries that are low per capita emitters (Brazil and India), IOs are more central and the discourse network is less clustered. Relating these findings to earlier research, we suggest that the differences we find between high and low per capita emitters may be to some extent generalizable to the relevant country groups beyond our four cases.

Prior research shows that public opinion on climate politics sorts along partisan lines. However, they leave open the question of whether climate politics and other politically salient issues exhibit tendencies for issue alignment, which the political polarization literature identifies as among the most deleterious aspects of polarization. Using a network approach and social media data from the Twitter platform, we study polarization of public opinion toward climate politics and ten other politically salient topics during the 2019 Finnish elections as the emergence of opposing groups in a public forum. We find that while climate politics is not particularly polarized compared to the other topics, it is subject to partisan sorting and issue alignment within the universalist-communitarian dimension of European politics that arose following the growth of right-wing populism. Notably, climate politics is consistently aligned with the immigration issue, and temporal trends indicate that this phenomenon will likely persist., Comment: Working paper, 30 pages, 6 figures

This review essay focuses on the American Sociological Association (ASA) Task Force on Sociology and Global Climate Change final report, Climate Change and Society: Sociological Perspectives. We take the report as a jumping off point to provide an overview of research on climate change in the media sphere and in the political sphere. The political sphere and the media sphere are key sites for the politics of climate change, where the meaning of the causes and consequences of climate change, as well as policy responses for mitigation and adaptation, are contested and negotiated among policy makers, corporate interests, environmental scientists, environmental movements and counter-movements. While there are substantial bodies of research on climate change within both the political and media spheres, less research specifically addresses how the social dynamics of one of these spheres shapes social interaction in the other sphere. Insights into the relationships between these spheres are suggested by the ASA Task Force report, but this area is under examined in current research. As such, we argue that there is a need for more research that bridges policy-oriented and media-oriented perspectives on climate change.

The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) asserts that disagreement over policy core beliefs divides organizations into competing coalitions. We apply Discourse Network Analysis to 1,410 statements in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and USA Today to investigate what kinds of beliefs contribute to coalition formation in the climate change policy debate in the news media in the United States. We find that the beliefs concerning the reality of anthropogenic climate change, the importance of ecology over economy and desirability of governmental regulation divide organizations into three advocacy coalitions: the economy, ecology and science coalitions. Policy preferences such as cap and trade do not; they find support across coalition lines. Based on these findings, we suggest that ACF theory could be clarified to better account for how beliefs concerning policy instruments contribute to coalition formation. In some policy domains, policy instruments are where opposing coalitions find agreement. In others, they are more divisive.

This paper argues that periodic waves of crowding-in to 'hot' issue fields are a recurring feature of how globally networked civil society organizations operate, especially in countries of the Global South. We elaborate on this argument through a study of Indian civil society mobilization around climate change. Five key mechanisms contribute to crowding-in processes: (1) the expansion of discursive opportunities; (2) the event effects of global climate change conferences; (3) the network effects created by expanding global civil society networks; (4) the adoption and innovation of action repertoires; and (5) global pressure effects creating new opportunities for civil society. Our findings contribute to the world society literature, with an account of the social mechanisms through which global institutions and political events affect national civil societies, and to the social movements literature by showing that developments in world society are essential contributors to national mobilization processes.

Corporatist Nordic welfare states are largely thought to have exemplary environmental policies. Finland, however, was labeled "a failing ecostate" by a recent study owing to its weak climate change policy. Why is Finland different? We use data from a survey of organizations belonging to the Finnish climate change policy network to investigate two alternative explanations related to policy networks. According to the Cooptation Thesis, inclusive corporatist polities, where environmental NGOs (ENGOs) have support from and access to the state, formulate less ambitious policies because environmentalists moderate their views to secure state funding and political access. Second, according to the Treadmill of Production Theory, the decisive feature of Nordic corporatism with regard to environmental policy is the tripartite system linking business interests, labor unions, and the state in a coalition that prioritizes economic over ecological values. The results indicate that the ENGO Coalition is the least influential, least resourceful, smallest, least linked to the others, and not particularly moderate. The Treadmill Coalition is the most influential, most resourceful, second largest, well linked to the state, and least ecological in its beliefs. Thus, of the two policy network explanations, the dominance of the Treadmill Coalition rather than cooptation of ENGOs gets support.

This article introduces Justifications Analysis, a methodological approach for studying moral evaluations made in public debates. Established approaches to content analysis, most often building on the concept of framing, tend to overlook the moral dimension of public deliberation. We draw on Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot's justification theory to present a typology of moral justifications, that is, ways of justifying arguments referring to varying understandings of the common good. We illustrate the use of the method through two case studies, one on the media debate on globalization and another on local political conflicts. We argue that this approach is particularly useful for understanding the differing degrees of institutionalization of moral categories and power relations within and across cultural contexts.

Cities have increasingly recognised the risks posed by climate change and the need to adapt. To support climate action, cities have formed cooperative networks such as the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, the Global Covenant of Mayors and the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives. However, a lack of scientific evidence exists when it comes to the actual impact of network participation, especially in the context of adaptation. This study is the first to test statistically the association between network membership and progress in adaptation planning in 377 cities globally. The results show that network members are more likely to have started the adaptation process than other cities, and that being a member of multiple networks is associated with higher levels of adaptation planning. Moreover, cities in wealthier countries are more likely to be more advanced in adaptation planning than others. We consider the possible explanations for these results based on the previous literature and information gathered from the networks. The main implications of our study are that network organisations should consider how to encourage the adaptation process among their members and the increased involvement of cities from lower-income countries.

Why do some countries enact more ambitious climate change policies than others? Macro level economic and political structures, such as the economic weight of fossil fuel industries, play an important role in shaping these policies. So do the national science community and the national culture of science. But the process by which such macro-structural factors translate into political power and national climate change policies can be analyzed through focussing on meso level policy networks. The Comparing Climate Change Policy Networks (COMPON) research project has studied climate change policy networks in twenty countries since 2007. Along with some findings, this paper presents some methodological challenges faced and the solutions developed in the course of the project. After a presentation of the project, we first outline some practical challenges related to conducting cross-national network surveys and solutions to overcome them, and present the solutions adopted during the project. We then turn to challenges related to causal explanation of the national policy differences, and propose Qualitative Comparative Analysis as one solution for combining different levels of analysis (macro and meso) and different data types (quantitative, network and qualitative).

The literature on new social risk (NSR) groups, such as single parents and temporary workers, has argued that they are less likely to join trade unions than other employees. It has been suggested that this is due to the unions’ incapacity or unwillingness to promote policies that mediate NSRs. We argue that there are differences in unionization between different NSR groups, and that country-level institutional structures, operationalized here as industrial relations (IR) regimes, have effects on how likely NSR groups are to unionize. Our multilevel logistic models using European Social Survey (ESS) data produce three main results: (1) family policy-related NSR groups (single parents, female employees with children and female caregivers) are more – not less – unionized than the average worker; (2) precarious workers (low-skilled service employees, temporary employees and part-timers) are, indeed, less unionized than average but (3) this result concerns mostly the liberal and transitional IR regimes.

Which organisations saw their positions on two contentious issues reflected in the Irish climate law of 2015, and what role did advocacy coalitions play in the policy process? These questions are answered drawing theoretically from the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) and by conducting a network analysis of survey data collected from the organisations involved in the national climate policy process. The study finds that several institutionally important or economically powerful organisations, particularly those involved in the agricultural sector, as well as the government parties saw their preferences reflected in the law. This resulted in legislation that excluded binding emission reductions targets, differentiating it from similar laws introduced in other European countries. Organisations in favour of stronger regulation formed a coalition to advocate for their positions, but they largely failed to get their way.

This paper argues that periodic waves of crowding-in to 'hot' issue fields are a recurring feature of how globally networked civil society organizations operate, especially in countries of the Global South. We elaborate on this argument through a study of Indian civil society mobilization around climate change. Five key mechanisms contribute to crowding-in processes: (1) the expansion of discursive opportunities; (2) the event effects of global climate change conferences; (3) the network effects created by expanding global civil society networks; (4) the adoption and innovation of action repertoires; and (5) global pressure effects creating new opportunities for civil society. Our findings contribute to the world society literature, with an account of the social mechanisms through which global institutions and political events affect national civil societies, and to the social movements literature by showing that developments in world society are essential contributors to national mobilization processes.

The most striking feature of the Finnish parliamentary elections in April 2011 was the rocket-like rise of the populist Perussuomalaiset, the True Finns. Previously one of the smallest parliamentar...

There is a strong belief in Finland, expressed in academic texts and the wider public debate, that consensual decision making and consensus-oriented public debate are central features of Finnish political culture. Along with the other Nordic countries, Austria, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, Finland has been categorized as one of Europe’s small consensual states (Becker 2003). The globalization debate at the turn of the millennium marks a break in this tradition of consensus and an attempt at remaking it. We will show that in comparison with the media debates on globalization in other countries, two features of the Finnish debate stand out. First, in Finland the Global Justice Movement (gjm) got exceptional attention in the debate. Second, in Finland the debate went on longer and got new dimensions. Elsewhere, the peak of the globalization debate coincided with mass demonstrations of the gjm, especially at the Seattle World Trade Organization (wto) meeting in 1999. The use of the word ‘globalization’ steadily declined after this peak (for the us, see Rauch et al. 2007; for France, India, and Bolivia, see Beyeler and Kriesi 2005; for the Associated Press global coverage, see Marks, Kalaitzandonakes, and Konduru 2006). In Finland, a second, even more heated phase of the debate occurred in 2004 and 2005. Here, national elites, divided into a proregulation camp and a pro-competitiveness camp, engaged in a debate over appropriate national political responses to globalization. Paradoxically, the economic elite that promoted further increasing economic openness had a tendency to suggest that open public debate on globalization should be contained in the national interest. They focussed their argumentation on forging consensus around the idea of national competitiveness, a concept that has been more influential in Finland than in the other Nordic countries. Instead of open debate, this segment of the elite called for strong leaders who would rely on experts and not pay too much attention to public opinion. In some ways Finland, like the other Nordic countries, has been an open society both in economic and political terms for most of the post-war period (Katzenstein 1985). However, until the neoliberal turn of the late 1980s, economic openness was limited to trade openness and politically a ‘regulated

This paper examines the differences in the values that are evoked to justify arguments in the media debate on climate change in USA and France from 1997 to 2011. We find that climate change is more often discussed in terms of justice, democracy, and legal regulation in France, while monetary value plays a more important role as a justification for climate policy arguments in the USA. Technological and scientific arguments are more often made in France, and ecological arguments equally in both countries. We argue that understanding these national differences in argumentation at least partly as reflections of deep–seated cultural conceptions about what is worthy may help in understanding why disagreement persists in the global politics of climate change.

If a government’s policies are planned from a bird’s-eye view with insufficient knowledge of local conditions and livelihoods, they can go wrong. Civil society organisations on their part have the capability to act as a link between locals and decision-makers. CSOs are worth listening to because they might just have seen something that the state cannot see. Non