@article{3275f9ceaa6c444285a0adce21849e06,
title = "Predicting paris: Multi-method approaches to forecast the outcomes of global climate negotiations",
abstract = "We examine the negotiations held under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change in Paris, December 2015. Prior to these negotiations, there was considerable uncertainty about whether an agreement would be reached, particularly given that the world{\textquoteright}s leaders failed to do so in the 2009 negotiations held in Copenhagen. Amid this uncertainty, we applied three different methods to predict the outcomes: an expert survey and two negotiation simulation models, namely the Exchange Model and the Predictioneer{\textquoteright}s Game. After the event, these predictions were assessed against the coded texts that were agreed in Paris. The evidence suggests that combining experts{\textquoteright} predictions to reach a collective expert prediction makes for significantly more accurate predictions than individual experts{\textquoteright} predictions. The differences in the performance between the two different negotiation simulation models were not statistically significant.",
keywords = "Climate policy, Climate regime, Expert survey, Forecasting, Global negotiations, Paris agreement, Prediction, Simulation",
author = "Sprinz, {Detlef F.} and {De Mesquita}, {Bruce Bueno} and Steffen Kallbekken and Frans Stokman and H{\aa}kon S{\ae}len and Robert Thomson",
note = "Funding Information: We greatly appreciate the comments received from two anonymous reviewers and Frederica Genovese on an earlier version of the manuscript as well as the guidance offered by the journal editors. We also appreciate comments received during presentations on occasion of the 16th Annual Policy Conference “Designing Effective Climate Policy in the EU and the U.S.,#x201D; 3-4 May 2016, University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA, and the 2016 Berlin Conference on Global Environmental Change #x201C;Transformative Global Climate Governance 'Apr{\`e}s Paris,'[#x201D; 23-24 May 2016, Free University Berlin, Berlin, Germany. We are grateful to the Research Training Group WIPCAD (Wicked Problems, Contested Administrations: Knowledge, Coordination, Strategy; DFG Research Training Group 1744/1) at the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences, University of Potsdam, Germany, for hosting the public presentation of our threefold predictions on 18 November 2015, funding Frans Stokman's participation in this event, and for supporting the presentation of exploratory research results by Detlef Sprinz at the International Scientific Conference “Our Common Future Under Climate Change,” 7-10 July 2015, at Paris, France. Steffen Kallbekken and H{\aa}kon S{\ae}len gratefully acknowledge funding from CICEP-Strategic Challenges in International Climate and Energy Policy (Research Council of Norway, Project No. 209701). The Exchange Model employed in this article was developed in close cooperation with Reinier Van Oosten, who also developed the software, financed by the company Decide (now part of the dutch group). Moreover, we appreciate the advice and feedback we have received from scholars and political practitioners throughout this project. Finally, we acknowledge that institutional funding received by our respective home institutions allowed us to undertake this project. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2016 by the authors; licensee Cogitatio (Lisbon, Portugal).",
year = "2016",
month = sep,
day = "8",
doi = "10.17645/pag.v4i3.654",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "4",
pages = "172--187",
journal = "Politics and Governance",
issn = "2183-2463",
publisher = "Cogitatio Press",
number = "3",
}