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Summit theatre: exemplary governmentality and environmental diplomacy in Johannesburg and Copenhagen
Carl Death
Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University
Penglais, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, SY23 3FE
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Global summits – such as the 2002 Johannesburg Summit and the 2009 Copenhagen COP15– can be seen astheatrical techniques of environmental governmentality. Summits such as these, which do not produce new international agreements or strengthen environmental regimes,are commonly regarded as failures.However,they can also be viewed as moments of political theatre, performative enactments of legitimacy and authority, and sites for the communication of particular examples of responsible conduct. This political theatre is not a distraction from the real business of governing the global environment, but rather it is a primary technique of government at a distance. Summits function as ‘exemplary centres’ for a global audience, although their mobilisation of particular stages, scripts, casts and audiences remains open to subversion and conflict. The symbolic, theatrical and performative dimensions of summitry are rarely theorised, but their implications are profound, not only for responses to the ecological crisis, but for the nature and character of global politics, and the potential for resistance and dissent.
Key words: global environmental governance, summits, Johannesburg Summit 2002, Copenhagen COP15.
Introduction
Global summits and major conferences – from Stockholm through Rio to Johannesburg, and from Kyoto to Copenhagen – have become firmly established as landmark moments of environmental governance. The announcement of a ‘Rio+20 Summit’ in Brazil in 2012 confirms their continued prominence as benchmarks ‘forgauging the character of world environmental affairs’ (Wapner 2003: 1). Yet the prevailing opinion is that recent mega-conferences like the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development (2002) and the COP 15 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference (2009) have been failures, certainly in terms of delivering substantial agreements on the protection of the global environment (see, for example, Christoff 2010,p.651, Lean 2002, Zadek 2009). Their apparent ‘failure’ begs the question as to why summits continue to retain such a central role in global environmental governance. I argue that the symbolic, performative and theatrical roles that summits play in persuading global audiences that political elites are serious about issues such as sustainable development or climate change are a crucial element of their continued prominence. In this sense they are a key technique through which ‘advanced modern capitalist consumer democracies try andmanage to sustain what is known to be unsustainable’ through ‘the performance of seriousness’ and symbolic politics (Blühdorn and Welsh2007, p.198). Environmental sustainability – like justice – must be seen to be done, and summits are one of the primary sites where this performance is played out. The theatrical rationality on which summitry rests has a number of political implications, including the reinforcement of dominant hierarchical, state-centric, elitist and rationalist models of politics, as well as for shifting relationships between the rulers and the ruled, or the actors and the audience. This article therefore examines the forms and rationalities of political leadership and global governance constituted through such summits, and argues that these summit-based forms of theatrical and exemplary government work as ‘translation mechanisms’ (Rose 1999, p.48-51) within broader regimes of advanced liberal governmentality (Dean, 1999, Foucault, 2007). Whilst this paper is primarily analytical, it ends by concluding that the forms of exemplary government at work in summits like Johannesburg and Copenhagen pose certain political dangers. These dangers include their questionable efficacy in addressing some of the structural and discursive power relations which have produced the contemporary crises of environment and development, as well astheir reliance on a highly individualised model of political agency, the sidelining of more democratic and collective forms of politics, and the disciplining of political participation toward norms of consensus and cooperation. As a result the theatrical character of summit politics risks de-politicising issues of environment and development, whilst also, paradoxically, providing opportunities for re-politicising global environmental governance.
Summits are highly complex and often contradictory political mega-events (Roche 2000, Seyfang and Jordan 2002). Characterised by diplomacy at the highest level, involving the participation of heads-of-state or the highest executive authority (Dunn 1996), they are distinct from the more continuous and day-to-day processes of environmental negotiations and regimes (Dimitrov 2010, p.18). Whilst Robert Putnam (1988) famously described the ‘two-level games’ that are played at summits, mega-events like Johannesburg and Copenhagen involve not only international negotiations and politicians playing to domestic audiences, but also diplomats interacting with scientists and lawyers, ministers interacting with other departments, and heads-of-state playing to the global media, fellow world leaders, and their subordinates, often simultaneously, as well as to their own domestic audiences. Summits also emerge from very specific contexts, histories and backgrounds. Despite these differences and specificities, recent summits have been characterised by their increasingly theatrical and performative character. This theatrical dimension plays a key part in inspiring, directing and governing the conduct of global politics, and this functional role is one important explanation for the continued existence of summitry as a tool of global environmental governance, even in the face of the apparent failure of these meetings to produce new agreements or environmental regimes.
This article begins by setting out the theoretical context for this argument, locating the literature on political theatre and environmental governmentality in relation to the broader literature on summitry. The argument is then illustrated through empirical examples drawn from the Johannesburg World Summit and the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference. It is not possible to provide a comprehensive overview of these summits here, and their role is rather to illuminate the theoretical argument through showcasing the stages, scripts, casts and audiences at work at these summits. The final part of the article considers some of the implications and effects of an exemplary rationality of government in terms of the broader politics of environment and development.
Approaching the summit: Theoretical perspectives
Summits seem like natural places to begin to ask how environmental politics is governed, and there is a fairly conventional history of global environmental governance that proceeds through the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) in 1972, the Rio Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) or ‘Earth Summit’ in 1992, ‘Rio+5 in New York in 1997, through to the 2002 Johannesburg Summit. Similarly, the history of climate change governance is often told through reference points such as the high-level meetings in Kyoto (COP3, 1997) and Copenhagen (COP15, 2009). The apparent naturalness of such a history is itself a reflection of the dominance of statist discourses of international relations. Yet despite this proliferation of summits, it is frequently observed that they have not produced the expected improvement in global environmental indicators (Death 2008, Haas 2002, Seyfang and Jordan 2002).
In trying to explain this popularity of summitry in the face of its apparent failure, the political thought of Michel Foucault proves useful. In his seminal account of the history and development of the prison he was not content merely to observe the apparent failure of penal techniques to ‘solve’ crime. Rather he asked ‘what is served by the failure of the prison?’ (Foucault 1991, p.272).This article asks ‘what is served by the failure of environmental summits?’ It draws upon the Foucauldian governmentality literature to de-naturalise the apparent centrality of summitry in global environmental governance, as well as asking what rationalities or mentalities of government are at work at these summits; what aspects of environmental politics are made visible and invisible through the conventional histories of summits; and what formations of power/knowledge are implicated in the production of these privileged sites and actors. There is a growing body of recent literature which has also focussed on the implications of Foucault’s thought for environmental politics (Agrawal 2005, Bäckstrand and Lövbrand 2006,Lövbrandet al 2009, Oels 2005, Okereke et al 2009, Paterson and Stripple 2010). A key insight of these engagements with Foucault is that the ‘global environment’, and ‘environment problems’ do not exist a priori, but are constructed as sites for intervention and governance through formations of scientific knowledge, calculative measurement, and governmental technologies (Lövbrandet al 2009, p.8, Paterson and Stripple 2010, p.346). Furthermore, drawing on Foucault’s lectures on governmentality (Foucault 2007; see also Dean 1999), it has been argued that power relations within these fields are often not best conceptualised as power over, or the sovereign imposition of law or coercion, but rather as decentred and diffuse networks of power relations that work through the establishment of particular codes of conduct, standards of responsible behaviour, and the production of particular kinds of subjects (Oels 2005, p.193, Bäckstrand and Lövbrand 2006, Paterson and Stripple 2010, p.342).
As yet, however, far less attentionhas been given to the role and function of the procedures and routines of global diplomacy, and the spectacular theatrics of major summits and mega-events, from a Foucauldian-inspired perspective. The eco-governmentality literature has tended to focus on the day-to-day, micro-practices of environmental governance, and the productive hegemony of certain regimes of scientific knowledge. Yet the very theatricality and prominence of summit mega-events has an important role to play within broader formations of eco-governmentality. In many respects the emergence of the discourses of sustainable development and climate change are bound up with the emergence of mega-conferences as a distinct technology of government in the 1990s. Whilst there is no space here to develop a genealogy of environmental summitry, it is significant that the Rio ‘Earth Summit’ in 1992, under the direction of Conference Secretary-General Maurice Strong, was instrumental in bringing the discourse of sustainable development, as well as the science of climate change, within the remit of international diplomacy (Seyfang and Jordan 2002, p.21). Rio inaugurated the hey-day of the era of mega-conferences, and between 1992 and the turn of the millennium there were nine major UN summits or mega-conferences, includingCairo on Population and Development, and Barbadoson Small Island Developing States (1994); Copenhagen on Social Development,and Beijing on Women and Development (1995); Istanbul on Human Settlements, and Vienna on Food (1996); Earth Summit II in New York (1997); and General Assembly reviews of Cairo and Barbados in 1999 (Haas 2002, p.83).
Such summits are familiar subjects within the IR literature, but a Foucauldian perspective can provide a distinctively different perspective on their roles and functions. For example, liberal institutionalists see summits as providing a negotiating forum for the coordination of solutions to self-evident collective action problems such as climate change, poverty or environmental degradation, and part of a ‘broader process of multilateral governance’ (Haas 2002, p.74; see also Chasek 2001, pp.11-13, Schechter 2005, p.18). Summits which do not manage to contribute to the formation of environmental agreements or regimes are thus often seen as ‘failed’ or inconclusive meetings. The likelihood of such failures in areas where substantial conflicts of interest exist between major states is predicted by realist perspectives on summit negotiations (Kaufmann 1988, p.168, Dunn 1996, Chasek 2001, pp.14-15).
Political economy or neo-Gramscian accounts have much more in common with a Foucauldian perspective, and focus on how summits function as structures (or even super-structures) which cement dominant political and economic interests through ideological and rhetorical means, creating some degree of popular or hegemonic legitimacy and consent through their nod to environmental and development concerns but doing little to change material relations of exploitation (Chatterjee and Finger 1994, Drainville 2002, Paterson 2009, p.99). Yet such accounts still tend, in the last instance, to regard summits as failures if they do not change the material balance of power. For Patrick Bond, the Johannesburg Summit in 2002 ‘will be remembered, at best, as just another site for UN blahblah, and at worst, as the amplification of corporate control over both nature and everyday life’ (2002, p.382). In the aftermath of the Copenhagen negotiations, Frank Furedi argued ‘that international conferences have a solid track record of achieving next to nothing’, and that
[g]lobal jamborees are essentially talking shops that provide political leaders with an opportunity to strike a statesman-like pose. These are essentially photo opportunities for politicians who want to be seen to be doing something. … Negotiations carried out in public invariably turn into a routine of play-acting and posturing … After all, it was meant to work as a spectacle rather than as a venue for the conduct of global diplomacy (Furedi 2009).
What these perspectives underestimate is the productive and creative function of environmental summits like Johannesburg and Copenhagen, and the ways in which their very theatricality constitutes an important technique for the conduct of global politics and diplomacy.
Furedi’s dismissal of the spectacle of ‘play-acting and posturing’ in Copenhagen is typical of what has become known as the ‘anti-theatrical prejudice’, in which the theatrical metaphor has been used to decry insincerity and political mimesis ever since Plato (Barish 1981). Murray Edelman famously argued that ‘the most conspicuously “democratic” institutions are largely symbolic and expressive in function’, (1964, p.19) and that ‘decision-making at the highest levels is not so much literal policy-making as dramaturgy’ which serves to promote political quiescence and stability(ibid, p.78).With reference to the Johannesburg Summit, Middleton and O’Keefe argued that ‘as in all other summits, there is a degree of theatricality since much of the bargaining takes place before the event’ (2003, p.95). This implies that summits are merely ‘talkshops’, or no more than photo opportunities, hand-shakes and sound-bites, and thus ephemeral to the main business of global politics (Chasek 2001, p.26, Fomerand 1996, p.365,Seyfang and Jordan 2002, p.19). Yet, a Foucauldian perspective can help to show how these aspects of summitry are not merely sideshows to the main business of negotiations, but are rather essential to the manner in which summits govern the conduct of global politics.
The power of the theatre can be seen, from a governmentality perspective, as a form of power at a distance, through which patterns of conduct are directed by particular discursive horizons of intelligibility, or expectations of responsible behaviour, rather than through sovereign force, legal maxims, or disciplinary regulation (Foucault 2007, Miller and Rose 2008, p.16). The power of theatrical techniques and inspirational examples is described vividly by Clifford Geertz in his classic study of the theatre-state in nineteenth century Bali.He describes how the royal court – the Negara – functioned as an ‘exemplary centre’ of theatrical ritual and symbolism (1980, p.13). Court life was centred on pageantry and pomp, and these ‘were not means to political ends: they were the ends themselves, they were what the state was for’ (ibid, p.15). Thus
the state ceremonials of classical Bali were metaphysical theatre: theatre designed to express a view of the ultimate nature of reality and, at the same time, to shape the existing conditions of life to be consonant with that reality; that is, theatre to present an ontology and, by presenting it, to make it happen – make it actual (ibid, p.104).
He argues that ‘statecraft is a thespian art’ (ibid, p.120), and one should not dismiss status and stateliness as mere ‘artifices, more or less cunning, more or less illusional, designed to facilitate the prosier aims of power’ (ibid, p.122). His famous conclusion was that the ‘dramas of the theatre state, mimetic of themselves, were, in the end, neither illusions nor lies, neither sleight of hand nor make-believe. They were what there was’ (ibid, p.136).
Geertz’s account thus rejects the distinction between‘real politics’ and illusionary ritual, which was especially pronounced in Edelman’s earlier work (e.g. 1964, p.4, see also Blühdorn 2007, p.254). Rather, by acknowledging the discursive and performative dimensions of power relations (Butler1990, p.146; Hajer 2005), the symbolism and dramaturgy of diplomacy can be understood not merely as illusions or masks for real (i.e. material) power, but as reifying particular subjectivities, relationships and world-views. From this perspective, even apparently ‘failed’ summits which do not produce binding legal agreements or formal injunctions can still work to conduct global politics in certain ways, and according to certain norms. Thus Costas Constantinou echoes Geertz when he argues that ‘the fictions and the dramas of diplomacy never end … they become the world of diplomacy, they are what there is’ (1996, p.103).When asked whether US President Barack Obama was all style and no substance, speechwriter Ted Sorensen cautioned commentators not ‘draw such a sharp line between speechmaking and governing. Presidents govern through speechmaking’ (BBC 2009d).
These symbolic, theatrical and exemplary dimensions of summitry can be regarded as techniques of advanced liberal government (Dean 1999, Miller and Rose 2008). Advanced liberal government is a rationality of government characterised by the extension of the logic of the market to all other spheres of social and political life, and a shift away from interventionist and regulatory techniques towards a more enabling or facilitative approach. As Foucault explained, ‘[t]he essential objective of this management will be not so much to prevent things as to ensure that the necessary and natural regulations work, or even to create regulations that enable natural regulations to work’ (2007, p.353). According to thisrationality of advanced liberal government, the population becomes ‘a pool of resources whose potential for self-optimizationneeds to be unleashed’ (Oels 2005, p.191). The theatrical summit becomes a tool of government in this regard, an attempt to inspire and conduct the self-optimization of the watching global audience.
Thus the rituals of diplomacy, the speeches, media statements, rolling news coverage and routine confrontations between protestors and police are used to communicate particular norms, expectations, and standards of conduct to watching audiences. These are, of course, highly contested and directed by different actors towards different audiences, at different times. However, the dominant message of a successfully performed summit is that political elites have risen to the challenge and are hard at work resolving the differences that stand in the way of effective action on environmental problems. Summits are thus ‘translation mechanisms’, or ‘loose and flexible linkages … made between those who are separated spatially and temporally’ (Rose 1999, pp.48-51), which communicate particular standards of responsible conduct and performatively enact particular constructions of environmental politics and authoritative actors.Summits are ‘idealised representations of order’ (Drainville 2002, p.22) which function as ‘exemplary centres’; by acting as an ideal model for the conduct of international society they are, like Geertz’s Balinese court, ‘an illustration of the power of grandeur to organise the world’ (1980, p.102). The following section draws upon the Johannesburg World Summit and the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference to illustrate how the theatre of the summit – the stage, the script, the cast, and the audience – functions within regimes of advanced liberal government.