Framing “the climate issue”: Patterns of participation and prognostic
frames among climate summit protestors
Mattias Wahlström
University of Gothenburg
Department of Sociology and Work Science
Box 720, 40530 Gothenburg
Sweden
mattias.wahlstrom@gu.se
Magnus Wennerhag
University of Gothenburg
Department of Sociology and Work Science
Box 720, 40530 Gothenburg
Sweden
magnus.wennerhag@gu.se
Christopher Rootes
University of Kent
School of Social Policy, Sociology & Social Research,
Cornwallis NE,
University of Kent, CANTERBURY, Kent CT2 7NF
UK
C.A.Rootes@kent.ac.uk
Accepted for publication in Global Environmental Politics (2013)
1
Framing “the climate issue”:
Patterns of participation and prognostic frames among climate summit
protestors
Abstract
Who protests at climate summits? We analyze responses to surveys of three large
demonstrations in Copenhagen, Brussels and London, organized in connection with
the 2009 UN Climate Change Conference (COP-15) in order to determine who
demonstrated, and how and why the collective action frames employed by
demonstrators varied. The demonstrations were products of the mobilization of broad
coalitions of groups, and we find significant variation in the demonstrators’
prognostic framings, most notably a tension between system-critical and more
individual action-oriented framings. A large proportion of demonstrators expressed
affinity with the global justice movement (GJM), but we find little evidence of an
emerging “climate justice” frame among rank-and-file protesters. The individual
variations in framing may be attributed in part to differences between the
mobilization contexts of the three demonstrations, the perspectives and values of
individual participants, and the extent of their identification with the GJM.
2
Introduction
Protests at and around climate summits are not new, but the patterns of participation in those
protests have not been systematically investigated. The 2009 UN Climate Change Conference
in Copenhagen centered around the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP-15). Attended by 190 national delegations,
with 30,123 participants registered,1 formal negotiations among political leaders were
surrounded by meetings and seminars involving politicians, scientists and representatives of a
wide range of NGOs. The summit also prompted extraordinary protest mobilizations, both in
Copenhagen and elsewhere. Although, as many of the protesters expected, the summit ended
without agreement on an effective regime to address global climate change, it provided an
important opportunity for networking and mobilization with potentially enduring
consequences for the development of a transnational climate movement.
The events surrounding COP-15 provide a unique opportunity to explore the demographic
characteristics and political goals of protesters mobilized around the most compelling
transnational environmental issue of our time—global climate change. By surveying different
demonstrations related to a single transnational summit, the climate movement may be
examined from the perspective of rank-and-file participants, which is an important
complement to the images conveyed by the slogans and rhetoric of the social movement
organizations (SMOs) engaged with climate change.
Here we analyze data on participants in the three largest European climate demonstrations
focused around COP-15: those in London and Brussels on 5 December 2009, the international
1. Fisher 2010, 12.
3
day of action designed as a concerted display of demands for action by world leaders at COP15, and the Copenhagen march on 12 December, during COP-15 itself.2
Our focus is on how the participants in these three large demonstrations understood the issue
about which they were demonstrating. More specifically, what collective action framing did
the participants employ concerning solutions to climate problems? In other words, we focus
on the so-called “prognostic” aspect of collective action framing.3 If the “climate movement”
had not yet found a unifying frame to bridge its various factions,4 a strong candidate is
“climate justice”—with roots in the broader frame “environmental justice”5—which has lately
become increasingly salient, at least within parts of the movement.6 Nevertheless, collective
action framing of a campaign is seldom uniform among SMOs, and still less so among
individual participants.7 Considering the divisions within the climate movement, the broad
range of organizations in protest coalitions, and participants’ different backgrounds, we
expected to find significant variation among individual participants’ framings, despite the
relative unity that some might expect to find in an internationally coordinated protest
campaign.8 We aim to illuminate coherence and variation within the (European) climate
movement and the relative significance of factors that hypothetically explain differences in
framing among participants in climate demonstrations. We focus on three distinct types of
2. The three demonstrations were surveyed as part of the international research program Caught in the act of
protest—Contextualizing contestation (hereafter CCC) (see van Stekelenburg et al. 2012) by its British, Belgian
and Swedish teams, using the standardized method for surveying demonstrations developed within this research
project.
3. Benford and Snow 2000.
4. Moser 2007, cf. Newell 2006.
5. Capek 1993; Taylor 2000.
6. Chatterton et al. forthcoming; Newell 2006.
7. Cf. Benford 1993.
8. Hadden 2012.
4
solutions to the climate crisis found in participants’ frames: action at the system level and
through increased global justice (reflecting the emergent climate justice frame); individual
action (either reformist or the “life politics” associated with “new” social movements); policy
changes within existing political systems (reformist factions).9
After briefly describing the three protests, we shall turn to our theoretical and methodological
approaches and data analysis, focusing on: who demonstrates; how demonstrators frame
solutions to the climate problem; and the relationship between demonstrators’ sociodemographic and organizational affiliations, and their framing of the climate issue.
Three climate demonstrations
The Copenhagen demonstration, largest of the numerous protests in Copenhagen during COP15, attracted between 50,000 and 100,000 people. It was organized by a coalition of
environmental, religious, political, trade union, and solidarity organizations, embracing 538
organizations from 67 countries.10 The march, from central Copenhagen to the summit venue,
proceeded peacefully, but in one section of the march a skirmish broke out between some
demonstrators and police, precipitating the arrest of nearly 1,000 protesters, almost all of
whom were released without charge. Other notable protests were mounted during the
summit11 but, because it is the broad climate movement in which we are most interested and
9. Reitan and Gibson 2012.
10. Available online at http://12dec09.dk, accessed 27 July 2011. Respondents to our questionnaire named 19
different countries of residence, including Denmark (51.2 percent), Sweden (21.3 percent), Germany (8.3
percent), UK (3.8 percent), France (2.9 percent), Belgium (2.9 percent), and Norway (2.5 percent). In contrast,
99.6 percent of London respondents named the UK, and 99.1 percent of marchers in Brussels gave Belgium as
their country of residence respectively.
11. Cf. Reitan 2011.
5
whose manifestations we seek to compare, we surveyed the demonstration on 12 December.
This was by far the largest and likely included most who participated in smaller protests.
The Brussels march, which attracted 15,000 participants, was organized by “the Climate
Coalition”, established in 2007 and comprising 70 organizations, including environmental,
trade union (Socialist/social democratic and Christian), and youth organizations. One of the
largest environmental demonstrations in Belgian history, the lightly policed march was
peaceful and notable for the participation of prominent people such as Belgian Prince Laurent
and his family.
The London march on the same day attracted over 40,000 participants. The largest
demonstration on an environmental issue in British history, the march was co-ordinated by the
Stop Climate Chaos coalition12 and the Campaign Against Climate Change, and supported by
a wide range of organizations, from large international aid, development, human rights and
environmental NGOs to small local groups, with more modest participation from trade unions
and student groups. It too was peaceful and with a low-key, facilitative police presence. The
organizers employed private security to marshal demonstrators and provided large quantities
of printed placards but, whilst the large NGOs were especially prominent, there was also a
large number of homemade placards with idiosyncratic slogans.
As expected, the platforms and themes of the three demonstrations were very similar. In each
case, organizers called for strong resolutions at COP-15 and urgent action, and all mentioned
the need to support countries with fewer resources. However, in all three demonstrations
12. Rootes 2011; Saunders 2008.
6
individual participants’ slogans were more varied, which underlines the importance of our
participant-oriented approach to movement framing.
Collective action framing and transnational protest coalitions
The concept of framing has been employed to illuminate how movements define problems
(diagnostic framing), devise solutions to them (prognostic framing), and mobilize new
followers for their cause (motivational framing).13 These different aspects are often linked in
various ways in the interpretive frameworks of movements, but here we are interested in
prognostic framing as an analytically distinct dimension. Frames are frequently portrayed as
the outcomes of strategic activities of “critical communities” and the leaderships of SMOs.14
Examining the aggregated patterns of collective action framing among participants in
demonstrations is a way of mapping the distribution of old and emergent collective action
frames among grassroots activists whilst taking the latter seriously as active contributors to
the identity and goals of a movement. Although movement leaders and intellectuals are
principal disseminators of frames and interpreters of the meaning of collective actions,
participants’ framings may differ, be more or less complex and thus may affect the
development of the movement. Participants’ framing—especially when expressed in less
public contexts, as in an anonymous survey—can also be expected to differ from public
organizational framing by being less strategically adjusted to resonate with salient public
framings. 15
13. Benford and Snow 2000; Gamson 1992; Johnston and Noakes 2005; Snow et al. 1986.
14. Brulle and Benford 2012; Noakes and Johnston 2005; Rochon 1998.
15. Cf. Kubal 1998.
7
In line with other research on activism around COP-15, we expected “climate justice” to be an
emergent—if not yet fully established—master frame for climate protesters in Copenhagen,
Brussels, and London.16 The concept of ‘master frame’ is commonly used to designate more
general frames that serve to bridge the differences among diverse social movement groups
and organizations during campaigns or entire cycles of protest. 17 Climate justice functions as
a master frame in the sense that it fuses notions of climate protection with global justice. It
thus bridges the concerns of groups associated with the “global justice” or “alterglobalization” movement with those more specifically motivated by concerns with climate
change and, with increasing mutual recognition of the interconnections among their agendas,
the “climate justice” frame has become more central since the late 2000s.18
Environmental groups and issues were already present in the wave of protests brought to
public attention in 1999 by demonstrations against the World Trade Organization in Seattle
and summit meetings in years thereafter, but the justice framing then was primarily a critique
of social injustices on a global scale and the democratic deficit of supranational bodies.19
While new social movements of the 1960s and 1970s often promoted a form of “life politics”
disconnected from traditional political institutions, the activists of the GJM have combined an
emphasis on individuals’ own actions toward creating a more just world with concrete
proposals to reform and democratize political institutions on global and national levels.20
According to Pleyers, these frames of the GJM have also infused in the climate movement a
16. Chatterton et al. forthcoming; Fisher 2010.
17. Snow and Benford 1992; Snow 2004:390.
18. Pleyers 2010, 251–256; Reitan and Gibson 2012.
19. della Porta 2007; Wennerhag 2010.
20. Sörbom and Wennerhag 2012.
8
focus on issues of global governance and social justice alongside individuals’ responsibility to
promote alternative ways of life.21
However, the broad climate movement is still divided in respect of its frames and discourses
concerning the climate issue and what to do about it.22 Bäckstrand and Löfbrand identified
three general discourses of climate governance – “green governmentality” (broadly
emphasizing steering instruments connected to national and international governmental
organizations), “ecological modernization” (envisaging free market and technological
solutions), and “civic environmentalism” (stressing equity and broad participation in
solutions) – arguing that a reformist version of the latter was emerging as the dominant
discourse, despite the lasting impact of “ecological modernization” in contemporary political
practice. 23 In line with the reformist civic environmentalist discourse, Reitan and Gibson
observe how the leading civil society network in the COP-15 protest campaign—Climate
Action Network (CAN)—promoted regulation through “‘fair, ambitious and binding’ targets
and treaties, sustainable economic growth supported by technology and aid transfers to the
South, and individual behavioral change.”24 Meanwhile the other major network, Climate
Justice Now! (CJN), bridged frames of “social, ecological, and gender justice”25—associated
with the GJM—expressed in a climate justice frame. In sum, in view of widespread criticism
by the climate movement of the “ecological modernization” discourse, we focus specifically
on comparing three important tendencies within the movement: framing solutions in terms of
21. Pleyers 2010, 251–256.
22. Newell 2006. Following Johnson (2002), we regard discourses as comprehensive meaning structures
governing what it is sensible to say and do, whereas frames refer to more specific aspects of a discourse, often
used strategically.
23. Bäckstrand and Löfbrand 2007.
24. Reitan and Gibson 2012, 403.
25. Ibid.
9
systemic changes involving global justice; policy changes within existing institutions; and
individual behavioral changes.
Hypotheses
Variation in the ways participants in demonstrations frame the climate issue might be
explained in terms of a variety of significant factors operating on different levels. The
Copenhagen demonstration included people who were sufficiently motivated to travel from
abroad, a category of protesters who in similar mobilizations have been demonstrably more
radical and less satisfied with democracy in their home countries.26 Demonstrations are also
located in specific mobilizing contexts, and are shaped by local and event-specific
circumstances. Therefore, both the location of the demonstration and the barriers that filter out
certain kinds of non-domestic demonstrators but possibly attract others might be expected to
be reflected in participants’ collective action framing. Since frames are proposed by social
movement organizations (SMOs), the different organizational affiliations of participants
might be presumed to entail dissimilarities in their framing of the problem. However, social
movements can also be considered as networks of people and organizations held together by
collective identities and, sometimes, shared ideologies.27 Individuals’ framing of an issue
might therefore be connected to their ideological stance as well as their identification with the
movement (or rather, with one of the sometimes plural definitions of a specific movement).
We retain as a point of reference the “climate justice” frame, which, as well as being the
leading contender to function as a master frame for these demonstrations, is the one that
26. Bédoyan et al. 2004.
27. Diani 1992.
10
previous research indicates to be most strongly associated with the radical left and groups
rooted in the GJM.28 This leads us to formulate the following five hypotheses:
Hypothesis 1:
Individuals’ framings will be affected by the mobilizing contexts of the
demonstrations.
Hypothesis 2:
Participants who have travelled from abroad to protest will articulate more
radical frames, framing the climate issue in terms of system change and
climate justice.
Hypothesis 3:
Organizational affiliation will impact significantly on collective action
framing, with active members of global justice and leftist political
organizations having more system-critical perspectives (in opposition to the
global neoliberal economy) on solutions to the climate problem.
Hypothesis 4:
Protesters who place themselves on the left of the political spectrum will
more often frame solutions to the climate problem in terms of system change
or climate justice.
Hypothesis 5:
Individuals who identify with the GJM will more often frame solutions to the
climate issue in structural terms, or as a matter of climate justice.
Method
Sampling
Respondents were sampled using the standardized method of the CCC research program.29 At
each demonstration, to minimize sampling bias, potential respondents were systematically
selected according to a common protocol. All selected respondents were given a questionnaire
28. Reitan and Gibson 2012.
29. van Stekelenburg et al. 2012.
11
with a reply-paid envelope, and every Nth respondent was additionally interviewed face-toface, using a short, single-sheet schedule, to collect basic data about the demonstrators in
order to facilitate control for non-response bias. Because non-response to the oral questions
was very low, respondents interviewed could be regarded as broadly representative of the
sampled population (for numbers of interviews, see Table 1).
Table 1: Basic data on the three demonstration surveys
Brussels
Copenhagen
London
Oral interviews conducted
143
72
90
Mail-back questionnaires
distributed
Response rate—mail-back
questionnaire (%)
825
789
606
40%
31%
40%
To test for non-response bias, we compared the answers to certain questions between those
respondents who were interviewed face-to-face and returned the self-completed questionnaire,
and those who were interviewed but did not return it. There were no significant differences
between these two groups in respect of gender, year of birth, university education, level of
interest in politics or whether the respondent was a member of the organization staging the
demonstration.
Operationalization of the dependent variable
Most frame analytic studies of social movements employ a qualitative approach; quantitative
survey studies of framing are still very rare.30 A secondary aim of our investigation is
therefore to demonstrate how open survey questions may be used to map the distribution of
protest participants’ framings. Since we focus on climate protesters’ prognostic framing, we
used the question: “What should be done to address this issue [climate change/global
30. See however, e.g., Marullo et. al. 1996, and the quantitative analysis of speech acts by McCammon 2012.
12
warming]?” Two of the authors were involved in the coding of each response, to ensure the
reliability of the result. These codes are inductive in the sense that we did not begin with a
preconceived set of theoretically motivated codes, but instead added codes when necessary to
encompass the various positions expressed by respondents. Because many respondents
answered by listing several things, we gave each code a separate dummy variable. Answers
that expressed uncertainty or were too vague to code are treated as missing. The initial coding
produced agreement about 91 percent of cases; remaining discordances were then carefully
negotiated. We assigned the following codes:31
System change may designate the classic socialist conception of abandoning the
capitalist economy. We also include those asserting that the economy/society should be
radically changed in other ways, e.g., to a steady state or “de-growth” economy,
including responses ranging from “Consider a transition from our economic model
towards a more sustainable model” (Brussels demonstrator) to “getting rid of
capitalism” (London demonstrator).
Global justice includes only explicit mentions of this or synonymous terms, as well as
references to the relationship between richer and poorer countries. Arguably, this
implies a system change, but we kept this separate code in order to single out more
explicit references to a global justice frame. Below we collapse this and the System
change code for analytic purposes.
31. Apart from the codes described below, a small number of respondents also mentioned “protest activities” and
“reducing world population” as solutions to climate problems. Another 8.8 % mentioned an unspecified
reduction of CO2.
13
Change individual behavior / raise awareness. A relatively broad category, this
includes statements focusing on general changes of individuals and their behavior, e.g.:
“We know how we can’t go on, so let us change our way of life” (Copenhagen
demonstrator). Also included are those who explicitly mention information and
education (“raising awareness”), as well as changes in values. Reducing consumerism
(without mentioning any kind of political regulation) is included, since it is assumed to
be related to lifestyle. This frame can be based in everything from liberal ideology –
seeing individuals as atomized actors (and being skeptical towards collective action) –
to the “life politics” attitude towards collective action found in the “new” social
movements, stressing the everyday role of individuals in reproducing and/or
counteracting structural injustices.
Technological change / investments reflects views that climate problems should be
wholly or partially solved through technological (and scientific) development. Includes
statements that investments should be made in technology, and statements about belief
in the power of expertise to solve climate problems: “leave it to experts—politicians
can’t fix it” (Copenhagen demonstrator).
Legislation / policy change includes political measures, such as changes in legislation
and taxation. “Legislation, as not enough people are prompted by information to do the
right thing—especially big business” (London demonstrator). “International
agreements” are included, as well as more or less specified notions of “regulation” and
“limitation,” and those mentioning changes obviously based on political measures, such
as “increased public transport.”
14
Change industry / production: industry/production ought to change in ways not
explicitly involving technological development, instead implying actions such as
downsizing, shifting to existing climate-friendly alternatives, and simply following
regulations, e.g.: “replace fossil fuels by solar, wind, wave, tidal and nuclear energy
rapidly!” (London demonstrator). As distinct from “system change,” “change
industry/production” does not necessitate drastic changes in the economic system at the
overall level of ownership and societal planning.
Our dependent variables focus on the distinction between variables indicating individual
action-oriented frames of the climate issue (“change individual behavior”), system-oriented
perspectives including those indicating notions of global justice (“system change”, and
“global justice”), and the framing of solutions in terms of “legislation and policy change”
(which is perhaps closest to the type of outcome one might have expected from COP-15). To
operationalize a “system-critical global justice” perspective, we created the combined variable
“system change and/or global justice.”
Operationalization of the independent variables
Organizational affiliation was operationalized by responses to a battery of questions about
whether the respondent had been an active member of different types of organizations during
the previous 12 months. The item measuring membership in political organizations was
disaggregated since it is reasonable to assume that membership in green or “red”
(Socialist/Social Democrat, Left-Socialist, and Communist) parties and organizations has a
different impact on framing the climate issue than membership of liberal or right-wing parties
or organizations.
15
As a drastically simplified indicator of individuals’ ideological orientation, we used
respondents’ self-placement on an 11-point scale from left (0) to right (10). We used dummies
representing “far left” (0–2 on this scale), “center-left” (3–5), and “right” (6–10). Affiliation
with the GJM was measured by asking whether respondents consider themselves to be “part
of the global justice movement.”
Data analysis
In the descriptive analysis, we cluster the data on the basis of the three demonstrations. To test
our hypotheses we used the standard statistical software package SPSS to conduct two
separate binary logistic regressions for each of the three dependent variables. For each
dependent variable, the protest locations were included as dummies in the first model, as well
as a dummy for non-domestic demonstrators and a number of individual control variables. In
the second model, we also included a number of variables related to hypotheses 3-5 to see to
what extent the impact of the local mobilization context and being a non-domestic
demonstrator was reduced. Such reductions, in turn, would arguably indicate that differences
in framing between the three demonstrations could be in part attributable to differences with
respect to the introduced variables.32
Results
Descriptives—independent variables
The socio-demographic characteristics of participants in the three demonstrations are
consistent with previous research about who participates both in demonstrations33 and in the
32. Aneshesel 2002.
33. Van Aelst and Walgrave 2001.
16
new social movements from the 1960s through the recent mobilizations of the GJM.34
Participants were quite equally divided between men and women, were mostly natives of their
countries of residence, and 70 percent were either students or had previously studied at
university (Table 2). Three-quarters of protesters identified themselves as middle class; since
so few identified themselves as either “upper class” or “lower class”, in the regressions we
collapsed these in the dummy “other class”. There were nevertheless some differences
between participants in the three demonstrations: protesters in Copenhagen were significantly
younger; fewer Brussels protesters had a university education; London protesters were more
highly educated and included a higher proportion of women.
34. E.g., Wennerhag 2008, 190–193.
17
Table 2. Socio-demographic characteristics of climate summit protesters (percent and
mean values)
Cramer’s V /
Eta
Brussels
Copenhagen
London
Total
45.2
46.9
60.6
50.1
.134 ***
Mean age
44.3
37.9
46.8
43.1
.152 ***
Median age
45.5
31.5
47.5
42.5
.152 ***
10.2
15.1
17.6
13.8
.091 *
53.6
75.4
87.8
70.0
.318 ***
Middle class
80.9
72.9
68.3
74.8
.124 **
Working class
7.0
13.6
10.4
9.9
.092 *
Lower class
0.3
0.8
1.3
0.8
n.s.
Upper class
1.2
1.3
0.9
1.1
n.s.
None
10.3
11.4
16.7
12.5
n.s.
Count
330–334
236–241
231–240
802–811
Gender
Women
Age
Ethnicity
Born in country other than
country of residence
Education
University degree / study at
university
Subjective class
Comment: Measure of significance for gender, ethnicity, education, and subjective class: Cramer’s V; for age we
used Eta. * = 5%, ** = 1%, and *** = 0.1% significance. n.s. = not significant.
When we consider the demonstrators’ activism in different types of SMOs during the year
preceding the event (Table 3), one in four was active in an environmental organization, while
between 10 and 15 percent respectively were active in a political party, church or religious
organization, humanitarian or charitable organization, or an organization working on global
justice, Third World, or peace issues. On average, 9 percent of protesters were active in a
trade union. Overall, the single largest category of organization in which protesters were
18
active was environmental SMOs, but, overall, no single type of SMO accounted for more
than one-fourth of protesters. Thus, these three demonstrations shared the pluralism that has
often been ascribed to earlier mobilizations of the GJM.35
Table 3. Organizational/demonstration experience and political orientation of climate
summit protesters (percent and mean values)
Brussels
Active in organization (during last 12
months)
Environmental organization
21.0
Cramer’s V /
Eta
Copenhagen
London
Total
22.7
31.3
24.6
.103 *
Green party
11.4
4.3
5.2
7.4
.127 **
‘Red’ party
Global justice, Third world
or peace organization
Church or religious
organization
Charity or humanitarian
organization
Trade union
Not active in any
organizations (of the types
mentioned above)
Not member in any
organizations (of those
mentioned above)
3.5
12.8
3.0
6.1
.181 ***
12.6
11.2
20.2
14.4
.108 **
4.2
5.0
31.3
12.5
.370 ***
7.2
6.6
23.0
11.7
.229 ***
12.9
7.4
5.3
9.0
.115 **
48.6
53.2
31.3
44.8
.181 ***
15.9
17.0
10.3
14.6
n.s.
Global Justice Movement identification
Identify with the GJM
43.8
43.9
55.2
47.1
.103 *
Do not identify
31.1
17.8
14.8
22.5
.176 ***
3.2
2.6
3.3
3.0
.077 *
302–334
216–242
208–243
735–819
Left–Right self-placement
Mean (Left=0, Right=10)
Count
Comment: Measures of significance for organizational affiliation, demonstration experience, and identification
with the GJM: Cramer’s V; for Left-Right placement Eta was used. * = 5%, ** = 1%, and *** = 0.1%
significance. n.s. = not significant.
35. della Porta 2007; Sörbom and Wennerhag 2012.
19
There are some notable differences between the patterns of organizational activities of
participants in each of the three demonstrations. Most conspicuous is the much greater
participation in church / religious groups of London demonstrators, who were also
significantly more likely to have been active in charitable, humanitarian, global justice, Third
World or peace organizations, somewhat less likely to have been active in a trade union, and
markedly less likely to have been active in no organizations at all. Thus, to a great extent,
participants in the London demonstration appear to have been activists affiliated to the
organizations that contributed to the Stop Climate Chaos coalition, the principal organizer of
the event, and probably influenced by the earlier experience of the Make Poverty History
coalition,36 which in 2005 drew together many of the same strands to demand action on Third
World poverty. The Brussels demonstrators, by contrast, were much more likely to be active
in a trade union or Green party, which reflects the specificity of the Belgian mobilization,
where the socialist trade union ABVV (Algemeen Belgisch Vakverbond) had a prominent
role, and a mobilizing context in which Green parties were relatively prominent and where
only two weeks previously the Flemish government conceded to Greenpeace's campaign and
promised to build no new coal-burning power stations.37
We also asked whether respondents were members of (as distinct from being active in) any of
the organizations staging the demonstration. The majority (53 percent) were members of one
or more relevant organizations, but the patterns of membership varied between
demonstrations. The organizations of which more than 5 percent of Brussels demonstrators
were members were Greenpeace (25 percent), Natuurpunt/Natagora (15 percent), the
36. Rootes and Saunders 2007.
37. http://www.greenpeace.org/belgium/fr/actualites-blogs/actualites/coal-film/, accessed 12.12.2012
20
Christian trade union ACV-CSC (11 percent), WWF (7 percent), Oxfam (7 percent), and the
green party Ecolo (6 percent). The corresponding figures for Copenhagen were Greenpeace (7
percent), Friends of the Earth (6 percent), and the Danish red-green party Enhedslisten (5
percent). For the London demonstration, the corresponding figures were Co-op (16 percent),
Friends of the Earth (16 percent), Christian Aid (11 percent), Oxfam (9 percent), the Catholic
development aid organization CAFOD (7 percent), the Royal Society for the Protection of
Birds (7 percent), and Greenpeace (5 percent). Although it was, in all three demonstrations,
environmental groups in which participants were most likely to be active, almost half of
demonstrators in both Copenhagen and Brussels were not active in any organization. Thus,
even though the climate marches organized around the Copenhagen summit can be considered
part of the same transnational mobilization, different constellations of SMOs, their activists
and supporters were mobilized in each city.
Asked whether they considered themselves “to be part of the global justice movement,”
overall, 47.1 percent of participants in the three demonstrations said yes, while only 22.5
percent said no, with 30.4 percent answering “not sure/don’t know.” However, although
organization members more often identified with the GJM, there is considerable variation by
type of SMO. Of those active in an environmental organization, 58.1 percent considered
themselves part of the GJM. Among active members of other types of organizations,
“identifiers” varied between 54.4 percent (green parties) and 80.0 percent (global justice, third
world or peace organizations). Of the large minority of protesters (41.1 percent) who said that
they had not been active in any organization during the previous twelve months, only 33.5
percent identified with the GJM. If the London marchers were more likely than those in
Copenhagen or Brussels to identify with the GJM, it appears to be because in London a higher
21
proportion of marchers had been active in organizations closely associated with that
movement.
In line with previous evidence about the political composition of the GJM,38 most participants
(82.2 percent overall) in the three climate marches placed themselves on the left of the
political spectrum, and only 5.5 percent placed themselves right of center. There was
remarkably little difference between demonstrations; Copenhagen demonstrators placed
themselves only slightly further to the left.
Descriptives—the framings of climate protesters
The solution to the climate crisis most frequently mentioned by demonstrators in Brussels was
“changing individual attitudes and behavior” (Table 4). Copenhagen and London
demonstrators, however, rated legislation and policy change highest, followed by changing
individual behavior. A significantly higher proportion of Copenhagen protesters than in
Brussels or London mentioned “global justice,” “system change” and “technological change /
investment” frames.
38. della Porta 2007; Wennerhag 2008.
22
Table 4. Climate summit protesters’ framing of how to solve or counteract the climate
crisis (percent)
Change individual behavior
Brussels
52.8
Copenhagen
35.2
London
41.9
Total
44.4
Cramer’s
V
.149 ***
Legislation / policy change
37.2
43.5
44.9
41.4
n.s.
Change industry / production
Technological change /
investments
System change
19.5
11.2
24.2
18.6
.130 **
9.9
22.4
18.8
16.2
.147 ***
11.9
24.2
10.0
14.9
.168 ***
Global justice
3.3
17.2
10.5
9.5
.196 ***
301–306
213–215
227–229
741–750
Count
Comment: Measure of significance: Cramer’s V. * = 5%, ** = 1%, and *** = 0.1% significance. n.s. = not
significant.
Explaining climate protesters’ framing
The regressions for each of the three dependent variables (Tables 5–7) were conducted in two
steps, first including only dummies for location (with Brussels as reference category) and the
control variables, only in a second step adding the other focal explanatory variables.
Brussels demonstrators stand out as significantly more likely to use the frame “change
behavior” than those in London and Copenhagen (Table 5). This is explained neither by
demonstrators’ active membership in different categories of organizations, nor by their
identification with the GJM, and only marginally by their left-right self-placement. Among
the individual control variables, both gender and age have a significant effect; women and
people aged 30–49 were more likely to use the “change behavior” frame, as were those who
admitted to “no class identification”.
23
Table 5. Binary logistic regression of predictors for use of the “change behavior” frame.
Model 1A
Control variables and location
B
S.E.
Exp(B)
Variable
Control variables
Age (>30 years = ref.)
30–49 years
0.581
50≤ years
0.271
Gender: Woman
0.518
Non-domestic demonstrator
0.070
Ethnicity: Born in other country
-0.222
University degree / study at
university
-0.024
Subjective class (middle class =
ref.)
Working class
-0.566
Other class
0.932
No class identification
0.701
Location (Brussels = ref.)
Copenhagen
-0.595
London
-0.516
Active in organization
Environmental org.
Global justice org.
Green party
‘Red’ party
Trade union
Charity or Humanitarian org.
Church or religious org.
Left–Right self-placement (far left = ref.)
Centre-left
Right
No L–R position
Identification with GJM
Constant
-0.508
Observations
Nagelkerke’s pseudo R2
**
Model 1B
Accumulated model
B
S.E.
Exp(B)
0.209
0.208
0.161
0.289
0.232
1.788
1.311
1.678
1.072
0.801
0.519 *
0.253
0.688 ***
0.189
-0.277
0.229
0.232
0.178
0.321
0.256
1.680
1.288
1.990
1.208
0.758
0.186
0.977
-0.087
0.202
0.917
**
0.302
0.597
0.239
0.568
2.540
2.016
-0.367
1.204 †
0.856 **
0.341
0.674
0.268
0.692
3.333
2.353
*
**
0.235
0.201
0.551
0.597
-0.503 †
-0.622 **
0.260
0.236
0.605
0.537
0.230
-0.455 †
0.084
-0.663
0.038
0.015
0.254
0.203
0.267
0.322
0.456
0.323
0.283
0.294
1.258
0.635
1.088
0.515
1.039
1.015
1.289
0.499 **
0.358
-0.309
-0.189
-0.735 *
0.189
0.395
0.508
0.186
0.289
1.646
1.431
0.735
0.828
0.479
**
†
*
0.234
713
0.089
0.601
646
0.145
† p<10%, * p<5%, ** p<1%, and *** p<0.1%
Copenhagen protesters were more than twice as likely as those in Brussels to use the “global
justice” and “system change” frames (Table 6). We attribute the fact that the odds of the
Copenhagen protesters are slightly reduced in model 2B, and that the London protesters are
no longer significantly different from those in Brussels, to the inclusion of three (at least
24
weakly) significant variables in the model: “left-right self placement,” which means that part
of the difference between Copenhagen protesters and those in other places is the slightly more
leftist complexion of the former; active membership in organizations, where only “active in
‘Red’ party” has a weakly significant effect (p<10 percent); and identification with the GJM.
Female demonstrators were significantly less likely than men to want to change the system or
mention the importance of global justice in relation to solutions to the climate problem. The
opposite is true of non-domestic demonstrators, a correlation which appears only marginally
attributable to leftist self-placement and identification with the GJM.
25
Table 6. Binary logistic regression of predictors for use of the “system change and/or
global justice” frame.
Model 2A
Control variables and location
Variable
B
Control variables
Age (>30 years = ref.)
30–49 years
-0.207
50≤ years
0.137
Gender: Woman
-0.604
Non-domestic demonstrator
0.881
Ethnicity: Born in other country
0.182
University degree / study at
university
-0.077
Subjective class (middle class =
ref.)
Working class
0.563
Other class
-0.801
No class identification
-0.079
Location (Brussels = ref.)
Copenhagen
0.892
London
0.460
Active in organization
Environmental org.
Global justice org.
Green party
‘Red’ party
Trade union
Charity or Humanitarian org.
Church or religious org.
Left–Right self-placement (far left = ref.)
Centre-left
Right
No L–R position
Identification with GJM
Constant
-1.518
Observations
Nagelkerke’s pseudo R2
Model 2B
Accumulated model
S.E.
Exp(B)
B
S.E.
Exp(B)
0.250
0.240
0.193
0.292
0.269
0.813
1.147
0.547
2.413
1.200
-0.357
0.051
-0.683 **
0.783 *
0.188
0.281
0.270
0.215
0.334
0.306
0.700
1.052
0.505
2.187
1.207
0.226
0.926
-0.031
0.245
0.969
†
0.297
0.819
0.288
1.756
0.449
0.924
0.301
-1.113
-0.065
0.340
1.106
0.326
1.351
0.328
0.937
***
†
0.267
0.259
2.440
1.584
0.301
0.307
2.324
1.638
-0.373
0.086
0.382
0.730 †
-0.155
0.167
-0.191
0.254
0.302
0.369
0.388
0.372
0.348
0.363
0.689
1.090
1.466
2.075
0.857
1.182
0.827
-0.224
-1.541 *
-0.348
0.517 *
-1.552 ***
0.230
0.764
0.632
0.225
0.343
0.799
0.214
0.706
1.676
0.212
**
**
***
0.279
718
0.136
0.219
0.843 **
0.494
650
0.186
† p<10%, * p<5%, ** p<1%, and *** p<0.1%
The last regression (Table 7), regarding the frame stressing “legislation / policy change,”
shows that left–right self-placement matters only marginally. However, London
demonstrators were more likely than those in Brussels to frame climate problems as matters
that should be addressed by political decisions and agreements. Of individual control
26
variables, age matters most, with demonstrators aged 50 or older less likely than younger
demonstrators to frame solutions as a task for politicians.
Table 7. Binary logistic regression of predictors for use of the “legislation / policy
change” frame.
Model 3A
Control variables and location
Variable
B
Control variables
Age (>30 years = ref.)
30–49 years
-0.381
50≤ years
-0.830
Gender: Woman
0.107
Non-domestic demonstrator
-0.300
Ethnicity: Born in other country
-0.300
University degree / study at
university
0.206
Subjective class (middle class =
ref.)
Working class
-0.497
Other class
-2.230
No class identification
-0.358
Location (Brussels = ref.)
Copenhagen
0.272
London
0.356
Active in organization
Environmental org.
Global justice org.
Green party
‘Red’ party
Trade union
Charity or Humanitarian org.
Church or religious org.
Left–Right self-placement (far left = ref.)
Centre-left
Right
No L–R position
Identification with GJM
Constant
-0.078
Observations
Nagelkerke’s pseudo R2
†
***
†
*
†
Model 3B
Accumulated model
S.E.
Exp(B)
B
S.E.
Exp(B)
0.204
0.205
0.160
0.280
0.234
0.683
0.436
1.113
0.741
0.741
-0.408 †
-0.902 ***
0.073
-0.281
-0.238
0.221
0.226
0.173
0.306
0.252
0.665
0.406
1.076
0.755
0.788
0.186
1.228
0.196
1.142
0.290
1.051
0.240
0.608
0.108
0.699
-0.426
-2.108 *
-0.292
0.313
1.073
0.262
0.653
0.122
0.747
0.231
0.201
1.312
1.428
0.268
0.482 *
0.252
0.233
1.307
1.620
-0.041
0.058
-0.043
-0.406
-0.183
-0.539 †
-0.405
0.200
0.258
0.327
0.386
0.321
0.293
0.297
0.960
1.060
0.958
0.667
0.833
0.583
0.667
0.140
0.672 †
-0.557
0.119
0.012
0.187
0.391
0.529
0.182
0.279
1.150
1.959
0.573
1.127
1.012
0.232
714
0.071
0.925
0.133
647
0.092
† p<10%, * p<5%, ** p<1%, and *** p<0.1%
27
In sum, the regressions provide general support for our first hypothesis that the local
mobilizing context matters for collective action framing. Most prominently, the Copenhagen
context has an independent positive effect on demonstrators’ use of “global justice” or
“system change” in their prognostic framing. Our second hypothesis is also confirmed:
demonstrators who traveled from abroad to protest were more likely to use “system
critical/global justice” frames, even when controlling for all the variables in the model. We
found little support for hypothesis 3—that being active in different types of organizations has
an independent effect on collective action framing. However, in accordance with our fourth
hypothesis, left-right self-placement had a significant effect; the main cleavage is between farleft and center-left protesters, the latter being more likely to embrace a “change behavior”
frame and less likely to propose to change the system or promote global justice. Supporting
our fifth hypothesis, those identifying with the GJM were more likely to employ the system
change / global justice frame.
Discussion
Dana Fisher suggests that COP-15 “marked the emergence of the ‘climate justice
movement.’”39 Around half the protesters we surveyed considered themselves to be part of the
GJM, which confirms that the mobilizing networks of the climate campaigns substantially
overlap with those of the GJM.40 The different types of political demands made by climate
protesters include “life politics” frames stressing the contribution of individual actions to
social change, demands for concrete policy changes directed towards existing political
institutions, and more radical demands for changes in the economic system or the distribution
of wealth and power between the global South and industrialized countries. Even though
39. Fisher 2010, 15.
40. Reitan and Gibson 2012, 399.
28
climate protesters who consider themselves part of the GJM were relatively more likely to
frame the climate issue in more radical terms, demanding changes on the system level, others
who identified with the GJM saw climate change as something that has to be solved through
individual actions and policy changes within existing political institutions. However, on the
whole, global justice-related frames were hardly salient. In contrast to what might have been
expected of a protest dominated by slogans of “global justice and climate justice,” relatively
few protesters named solutions to climate change that involve system change or global justice
(although significantly more did so in Copenhagen than in Brussels or London). Instead,
among the protesters, the dominant prognostic framing was that climate change must be dealt
with by changing the attitudes and behavior of individual citizens and / or by legislation and /
or policy change.
Among participants in the 2009 climate demonstrations, there are significant differences in
framing between the three protest events. Thus the mobilizing context and embeddedness of
the protest event in specific protest networks influences which of the frames present within a
transnational movement are locally predominant.
In London and Copenhagen, the climate justice frame appears to have been more prominent in
the organizers’ rhetoric than in Brussels, which may have contributed to the less frequent
climate justice framings among Brussels demonstrators. Nevertheless, although we cannot
rule out the effect of different constellations of organizations in the protest coalitions, the
marginal effects of demonstrators’ active participation in different types of organizations lend
no support to that conjecture. More plausibly, differences may be an artifact of the informal
mobilizing networks of the coalitions that staged the demonstrations.
29
The Copenhagen demonstration, held during the conference itself, was a deliberate attempt by
an ad hoc organizing committee to mobilize in the streets the largest possible number of those
who had come from across the globe to demand a global agreement to effectively address
climate change. It attracted a relatively large number of leftist transnational protesters, and the
vicinity of the “critical community” of the alternative climate summit (Klimaforum09)
probably increased the salience of system-critical and global justice frames among
Copenhagen protesters. The surprise is that it did so only rather modestly.
The London demonstration preceded the conference and was an attempt to draw attention to it
by a formal campaign coalition formed in 2005 and dominated by well-established national
aid, development and humanitarian as well as environmental NGOs. The partners in Stop
Climate Chaos, the demonstration’s principal organizer and a lineal descendent of Make
Poverty History, made considerable efforts to mobilize their members. The Brussels
demonstration was organized by established SMOs, NGOs and trade unions, and was
legitimized by the participation of members of the royal family; mainstream environmental
organizations were significantly more prominent than in London or Copenhagen, which is
very likely to have affected the mobilization pattern.
Our analysis underlines that rank-and-file participants in a movement do not necessarily
frame political solutions to a problem as do its “movement intellectuals,” or according to the
official stances of the SMOs to which they belong. When studying mobilizations claiming to
express the will of the many, there is a particular need to illuminate differences between the
official framings of SMOs and those of activists, as well as participants who have no
organizational affiliation. Above all, however, close attention should be paid to the local and
recent historical contexts of particular demonstrations, even where those demonstrations are
embedded in transnational mobilizations against a common transnational target, and to the
30
character and organizational efforts of the groups and / or campaign coalitions that organize
them.41 On this evidence, announcements of the birth of a transnational climate justice
movement appear premature. At best, if it is a movement, it is one better embedded among
organizations and movement intellectuals than among rank-and-file activists.
41. Research on environmental protest in western Europe during the 1990s (Rootes 2003) reached similar
conclusions.
31
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