Despite a reputation for climate policy leadership, European states vary markedly in their responses to climate change. During the 2010s, a “conglomerate of crises” afflicted Europe, stymying climate ambitions to varying degrees. Yet climate change had ascended European political agendas by the decade’s close, championed by new social movements and voices and mirrored by innovative policy approaches, such as “Climate Emergency” declarations. In turn, this peak of engagement was followed by the COVID-19 pandemic. In such a tumultuous setting, the literature on comparative European environmental politics faces a complexity crisis as it seeks to map multiple axes of ambition across multiple levels. In this chapter, the authors problematize the identification of leaders and laggards within climate mitigation studies, as well as identify the challenges inherent to comparing state performance. They also examine recent policy and research trends, analyze the importance of policy resilience during crises, and emphasize the utility of multilevel understanding in national climate analysis.
Municipal climate mitigation policy and policy learning - A review
