7 Comparing Cases: Climate Change Action Across the Climate–Energy Nexus

Comparing Cases: Climate Change Action Across the Climate-Energy NexusTo answer this book's research question and show that climate change action (CCA) is the guiding norm in the processes analysed here, I conducted two case studies with two contestation-legitimation processes each.The previous chapters answered How and why are IOs in the global climate regime able to self-legitimate despite contestation?, while this chapter will deepen the answer to why contestation can be followed by (self-)legitimation and provide an analysis to deconstruct the guiding frame of the processes, the norm for CCA, further.Due to the objective, the refusing nature of contestation, we would expect rather negative consequences to this contestation, such as de-legitimation, which can even lead to a legitimacy crisis and pose an existential threat to IOs.However, in the previous analysis of the two cases, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the International Energy Agency (IEA), I showed that the opposite can be the result, as here contestation was ultimately followed by legitimation.As I argue, this is conditioned by the guiding frame of the norm for CCA.This chapter provides empirical evidence from four contestationlegitimation processes in the global climate regime.In the following, I will compare these four processes, and I will be able to show why contestation can be followed by legitimation in the global climate regime and answer this book's research question.The focus, to compare the UNFCCC's and the IEA's contestationlegitimation processes, will be twofold.On the one hand, I will order the cases by two bigger main issues in global climate governance that were contested.This way, the G77 walkout of the UNFCCC case and the IEA OECD-only membership can be allocated to the North-South divide in global climate governance.The other two processes, the US contestation of the Paris Agreement by former president Trump and the contestation of the