What drives national support for multilateral climate finance? International and domestic influences on Australia’s shifting stance

Special issue: managing fragmentation and complexity in the emerging system of international climate finance

“…Yet it is also instructive to focus on the ''vertical'' dimension of fragmentation; that is, on the extent to which actor constellations, norms and institutions involved in climate finance are fragmented across national and subnational levels of governance, rather than purely on the international (''horizontal'') level. 4 In particular, the special issue highlights the role of political dynamics within individual countries (see for example Skovgaard 2017; Pickering and Mitchell 2017;Pickering et al 2015b). …”

“…Thus, it comes as no surprise that there are norm conflicts, for instance between developing and developed countries on the role of private finance (Pauw 2017), among finance ministries on the rationales for climate finance (Skovgaard 2017), or among political parties on the level of climate finance that contributor countries should provide (Pickering and Mitchell 2017). Yet the articles also find some evidence for synergies and shared norms.…”

“…A further question concerns how domestic fragmentation-for example, in the form of norm contestation among or within bureaucratic agencies or political partiesinfluences and drives international fragmentation (Skovgaard 2017;Pickering and Mitchell 2017).…”

“…Convergence and divergence of preferences across similar ministries (in this case finance ministries) from different countries may increase as well as reduce fragmentation (Skovgaard 2017). Political polarization within contributor countries may increase fragmentation by undermining the predictability of financing flows and eroding support for multilateral funding channels (Pickering and Mitchell 2017).…”

“…Thus, international pressure from contributor and recipient countries may reduce fluctuations in support within countries where climate change remains politically polarized (Pickering and Mitchell 2017).…”