Pushing for more: Policy norms and climate clubs in global politics

Normative clubs have emerged as a prominent governance tool in global politics. Such clubs are a voluntary, minilateral form of international cooperation whereby members make a normative commitment to certain policy objectives. Particularly within climate and energy governance, normative clubs seek to influence state behaviour not primarily through material incentives or sanctions, but through shared norms and expectations of appropriate conduct. But scholarship on clubs has generally ignored International Relations theory and research on norms. This paper develops a typology of norms mobilized by such clubs to examine how different norm types forge, stabilize, and diffuse behavioural expectations in global climate politics and governance. We distinguish three types of policy norms: (1) appropriateness - conferring norms , which define what it means to be a responsible and legitimate actor; (2) prohibitive norms , which delineate practices that are no longer acceptable; and (3) aspirational norms , which articulate forward-looking goals toward which members are encouraged to work. Using illustrative case studies of the Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action, the Powering Past Coal Alliance, and the Climate Neutrality Coalition, the paper shows how these norm types operate in practice. The analysis highlights how normative clubs combine soft obligations, persuasion, and benchmarking to influence policy debates and international expectations, even in the absence of formal enforcement. By disaggregating the normative mechanisms at work, the paper contributes to scholarship on transnational climate governance, norm diffusion, and the growing role of voluntary coalitions in steering and pushing states and other actors toward more ambitious energy transition policies and outcomes.