Comparative Climate Change Policy Networks
This chapter explains the method of policy network (PN) analysis and its benefits (and limits) for cross-national comparative analysis. The purpose of the PN approach is to understand how the structure of relationships among organizations engaged in a policy domain affects the content of policy and outcomes. The chapter illustrates the use of the PN method with reference to the ongoing cross-national project Comparing Climate Change Policy Networks (Compon). Global climate change constitutes an (un)naturally occurring quasi-experiment; in the face of a common threat, the various societies have exhibited divergent responses to reducing the cause, carbon emissions. This research project and network method can provide knowledge helpful to global negotiations as well as open up new vistas on thorny theoretical questions about the behavior and outputs of political systems.