A Contest for Legitimacy: The Divestment Movement and the Fossil Fuel Industry

Abstract

The divestment movement has sought to influence attitudes to fossil fuels by framing producer companies as pariahs and as unnecessary and redundant. In response, the fossil fuel industry has engaged in a direct and aggressive attack on the divestment movement. This article considers the relationship between the movement and the industry as a contest for legitimacy for both the organizations and the norms they advocate. Through a case study of the coal discourse in Australia from 2013 to 2016, it explores how each party has attempted to undermine the other's legitimacy and to build or defend its own. It concludes that the contest for legitimacy is complex, being conducted at multiple levels (pragmatic, moral, legal, and cognitive) and before multiple audiences. For the movement to “win” the contest, it will require more than a simple rebalancing of the legitimacy scales.

Anti-fossil fuel norms

“…While activist groups cannot come close to matching the fossil fuel industry's financial resources, its elite political relationships or its Bstructural^power in our fossil fuel-dependent global economy, they typically do enjoy considerable Bdiscursive^and Bsymbolic^power, meaning battles over ideas and legitimacy tend to be less one-sided (Gunningham 2017b, 382-85;Ayling 2017). Moralized anti-fossil fuel frames therefore play to activists' comparative advantage, threatening to stigmatize the fossil fuel industry in the eyes of the wider public (Ansar et al 2013;Seidman 2015) and to sap its legitimacy-a crucial intangible resource affecting its ability to realize its objectives (Ayling 2017, 351).…”

Coal and climate change

“…Work on the fossil fuel divestment movement (FFDM) has more consistently framed contests over coal as normative conflicts, perhaps because as Seidman (, p. 1029) argues, “In most divestment campaigns, institutional divestment is not the ultimate goal; activists' broader aim is to spark a sense of moral urgency and support for strong intervention.” Though its genesis lies in a campaign by North American students for their colleges to divest from coal stocks in 2011 (Ayling & Gunningham, ), the FFDM literature has tended to focus more on oil than coal. In one coal‐focused study, though, Ayling analyzes media releases from the Australian Coal Association, Minerals Council of Australia and http://350.org Australia between 2013 and 2016, arguing that they reveal a contest of legitimacy between the coal lobby and climate movement, in which “each party attempts to represent itself as deserving the grant of cognitive, moral, pragmatic, and legal legitimacy” (Ayling, , p. 362). Indeed, Healy and Barry () argue that divestment is an issue which brings together work from diverse literatures on supply side climate policy, the just transition, and climate and energy justice.…”

“…Like in other literatures, justice emerges both as an object of analysis and a normative commitment on the part of scholars; a means to an end and an end in itself (Edwards, ). Lazarus and van Asselt (, p. 4) see “moral pressure” and “public support for climate action” as inextricably interlinked outcomes generated by implementation of supply‐side policies, Pearse (, p. 58) argued a decade ago that to most Australian voters “the quality and morality of Australia's emission cuts does matter a great deal,” and Green (, p. 449) argued that bans on fossil fuel exploitation “send a clear signal that practices of large‐scale fossil fuel exploitation are categorically wrong, and implicitly cast aspersions on the moral character of actors who engage in such practices.” As social movements, civil society groups and scholars have increased moral pressure on the coal industry, it too has increasingly started to formulate normative counter‐arguments (Ayling, ; Jamieson, ; Green, ; see e.g., Knights & Hood, ). Writing in the American context, Seidman recounts how the coal magnate Charles Koch framed the issue:

Koch warned conservative audiences that if they want to shape national policy, they need to put forward their own moral claims to counter those being put forward by environmentalists.

…”

Review Essay: Divestment, Nonstate Governance, and Climate Change

“…There are, in fact, a variety of moral arguments employed by the movement, each of which has its strengths and weaknesses (Moss ). Certainly, the fact that some institutional investors respond to its exhortations (consenting to be “governed”) (Dellas, Pattberg, and Betsill ) increases its authority, but so, too, does the movement's capacity to build networks between its own constituents (the various campaigns that comprise the movement) and other “legitimacy networks” (Ayling ). For example, the endorsement the movement has received from the highest echelons of a number of international organizations, including the World Bank, the United Nations Environment Program, and the International Energy Agency, have served to increase its legitimacy and authority, underpinning the credibility of its message as well as providing leverage and resources not otherwise available.…”

“…For example, in subsequent articles in this special issue, Gunningham () examines the movement though the lens of the social movement literature, exploring its role in stimulating changes in beliefs and norms, its use of cognitive framing and symbolic politics, and (intersecting with the governance literature) the importance of networks in realizing its aspirations. Ayling (), in contrast, examines the divestment campaign as a contest for legitimacy between an incumbent industry and a fast‐growing social movement conducted at multiple levels (pragmatic, moral, legal, and cognitive) and with multiple audiences. Moss () examines the importance of using robust norms to give the movement its desired impact, while Franta () takes a different approach, showing how litigation can provide an important tool in the armory of a social movement, offering transparency, directness, enforceability, and the ability to build directly on precedent.…”