Japan and Global Climate Change: The Intersection of Domestic Politics and Diplomacy

　

Hiroshi Ohta

　

Abstract

　

        In Chapter 4, Hiroshi Ohta examines Japanese foreign policy on global climate change to illustrate the intersections between domestic politics and environmental diplomacy. Ohta argues that Japan’s domestic political framework, as well as its quest to make a greater contribution to international affairs (using non-military means), generated rationales for it to undertake new initiatives in environmental diplomacy. Ohta describes several important events in the recent history of Japan’s diplomacy and politics on global climate change, particularly its adoption of the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC). He does this from the perspective of Robert Putnam’s ‘two-level game’ analysis (Putnam, 1988). Putnam proposed a conceptual framework for the analysis of international negotiations, whereby diplomats try to negotiate agreements that satisfy the demands of their domestic interest groups while minimizing the adverse effects of their counterparts’ domestic interests. After using the conceptual framework of the two-level game to reconstruct the stories of Japan’s domestic politics related to international climate change negotiations, Ohta evaluates the implications of this approach. In the process he highlights the importance of political leadership, public opinion and the active participation of environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs).