Research
My research is broadly motivated by the interest in democratic legitimacy in global governance and the role of non-state actors.
My research seeks to understand the function, strategies, and implications of non-state actors’ participation in transnational issues like climate change and human rights. I am particularly interested in understanding their strategies to build and shape norms while at the same time seeking organizational survival and autonomy, as well as the extent to which they can enhance democracy at global governance venues.
I employ a mixed-methods approach in my research. I apply methods and techniques such as network analysis, statistical modeling, computational text analysis, and in-depth interviews.
Book project:
Climate Change Discourse at the UNFCCC: Frames and Power of Specialized NGOs.
Cambridge University Press, Element Series on “Organizational Response to Climate Change: Business, Governments, and Nonprofit.”
To understand how NGOs contribute to the global climate change governance, I am working on a co-authored book project that examines the framing strategies of smaller, specialized NGOs at the UN climate change conferences. Titled "Climate Change Discourse at the UNFCCC: Frames and Power of Specialized NGOs," this book is expected to be published under Cambridge University Press’ Element Series on "Organizational Response to Climate Change: Business, Governments, and Nonprofit." In this book, we draw on and further the literature on organizational ecology and apply a mixed-methods approach to examine the construction of gender-climate and indigenous-climate frames by different NGOs. In the finished theoretical and quantitative chapters, we use automated text analysis and statistical models to explore the Twitter data generated by all non-state actors during UN climate change conferences. We theorize that specialized NGOs, though small, often have a significant contribution to the framing of climate change. We identify two mechanisms through which the NGOs shape the climate framing: self-representation and crossover-representation. In the former, NGOs frame climate issues according to their specialization strictly. In other words, the members of NGOs tell their own stories about climate change, such as the women’s groups. In the latter, when some NGO sectors do not have their stories fully developed, for example, the indigenous people, we observe other specialized NGOs to cross over and fill the narrative gap for them. We plan to finish the book's manuscript by November 30, 2023.
Non-state actors and the democratic quality of global climate change governance
Motivated by the aspiration to understand the role of NGOs in global governance and its implication for democracy at the global level, I use the United Nations climate change conferences as a primary governance venue for research. The annual Conference of Parties (COPs) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are known for their relative accessibility to non-state observers. Existing studies often suggest that non-state actors can potentially enhance democratic legitimacy in international decision-making. I argue that unequal representation and power asymmetry among NGOs, in fact, undercut the intrinsic value of democracy. As such, my dissertation focused on the women’s groups at the UNFCCC COPs. Using network analysis, statistical models, and in-depth interviews with the NGO representatives, I show that while global governance venues keep opening up to NGOs and the latter has rapidly increased their participation, there is also inequality in substantive, meaningful participation. The uneven participation is driven by the capacity and connections of individual actors. Furthermore, as NGOs work in a shared space such as the COPs, they inevitably interact with one another. They form collaborative relationships, often based on the issue focus and their overall goals. These relationships render some groups more powerful than others.