Achieving consensus in multilateral international negotiations: The case study of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change
Carmela Bernardo, Lingfei Wang, Francesco Vasca, Yiguang Hong, Guodong Shi, Claudio Altafini
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to propose a dynamical model describing the achievement of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. To represent the complex, decade-long, multiparty negotiation process that led to the accord, we use a two time scale dynamical model. The short time scale corresponds to the discussion process occurring at each meeting and is represented as a Friedkin-Johnsen model, a dynamical multiparty model in which the parties show stubbornness, i.e., tend to defend their positions during the discussion. The long time scale behavior is determined by concatenating multiple Friedkin-Johnsen models (one for each meeting). The proposed model, tuned on real data extracted from the Paris Agreement meetings, achieves consensus on a time horizon similar to that of the real negotiations. Remarkably, the model is also able to identify a series of parties that exerted a key leadership role in the Paris Agreement negotiation process.