A closer look at the information provision rationale: Civil society participation in states’ delegations at the UNFCCC

The previous literature contends inter alia that states may welcome the participation of civil society groups in global environmental governance due to their provision of information. The following research takes this argument as a starting point for a closer examination of its validity within the international climate change regime (UNFCCC) and, specifically, with regard to civil society involvement in states' negotiation delegations. First, the author theoretically unfolds the information provision argument from a demand, i. e., state perspective along the bureaucratic quality of a country, the salience of a negotiation issue, and regime type. From this foundation, secondly, new data on the composition of states' negotiation delegations in the UNFCCC is analyzed. The results seem to indicate that the information provision mechanism is unlikely to apply in the context under study. The paper, thus, concludes by providing alternative explanations. © 2012 Springer Science+Business Media New York.