ABSTRACT
In contrast to many domestic political arenas, the United Nations negotiations on climate change offered an attractive institutional terrain for environmental advocates to challenge the influence on climate policy of the oil industry. In particular, environmental groups used the international negotiations as a forum to “name and shame” oil companies as pursuing particular interests from positions of structural power and challenged them to justify their climate policy positions in terms of the global public good. This essay shows how the environmentalist strategy aligns with and advances a politics of the public sphere, an ideal type deliberative forum that aims to influence rulemaking and is characterized by open access, participatory parity, and rational deliberation about the shared public good.
