scholarly journals Global Climate Policy and Collective Action: A Comment

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Kennard ◽  
Keith Schnakenberg
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Climate Policy ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Free Riding ◽  
Climate Politics ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Action Model ◽  
International Climate

In a recent issue of Global Environmental Politics, Aklin and Mildenberger (2020) argue against the prevailing characterization of climate change cooperation as a problem of free riding or collective action. The authors argue that models of collective action imply (1) policy reciprocity and (2) inaction in the absence of formal agreements to limit free riding. They argue that neither empirical implication is supported by an review of states' climate policy to date. In this comment we note that standard collective action models imply neither of the above hypotheses. As a result the empirical tests advanced in the original article are uninformative as to the explanatory power of the collective action model for international climate politics.

scholarly journals Prisoners of the Wrong Dilemma: Why Distributive Conflict, Not Collective Action, Characterizes the Politics of Climate Change

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 4-27
Author(s):  
Michaël Aklin ◽  
Matto Mildenberger
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Climate Policy ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Special Section ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Free Riding ◽  
Climate Politics ◽  
Distributive Conflict

Climate change policy is generally modeled as a global collective action problem structured by free-riding concerns. Drawing on quantitative data, archival work, and elite interviews, we review empirical support for this model and find that the evidence for its claims is weak relative to the theory’s pervasive influence. We find, first, that the strongest collective action claims appear empirically unsubstantiated in many important climate politics cases. Second, collective action claims—whether in their strongest or in more nuanced versions—appear observationally equivalent to alternative theories focused on distributive conflict within countries. We argue that extant patterns of climate policy making can be explained without invoking free-riding. Governments implement climate policies regardless of what other countries do, and they do so whether a climate treaty dealing with free-riding has been in place or not. Without an empirically grounded model for global climate policy making, institutional and political responses to climate change may ineffectively target the wrong policy-making dilemma. We urge scholars to redouble their efforts to analyze the empirical linkages between domestic and international factors shaping climate policy making in an effort to empirically ground theories of global climate politics. Such analysis is, in turn, the topic of this issue’s special section.

scholarly journals How news media (de-)legitimize national and international climate politics – A content analysis of newspaper coverage in five countries

2019 ◽  
Vol 81 (6-8) ◽  
pp. 518-540
Author(s):  
Katharina Kleinen-von Königslöw ◽  
Senja Post ◽  
Mike S Schäfer
Keyword(s):  
Global Climate Change ◽  
News Media ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
National Level ◽  
Newspaper Coverage ◽  
Climate Politics ◽  
Climate Change Policies ◽  
Climate Policies ◽  
Societal Actors ◽  
International Climate

Implementing global climate change policies on the national and sub-national level requires the support of many societal actors. This support depends on the perceived legitimacy of climate policies, which can be sustained by legitimation debates in domestic news media. This article analyses legitimation statements on climate politics in newspapers of five countries for three Conferences of the Parties in 2004, 2009 and 2014 ( n = 369 legitimation statements). According to our data, it is mainly the legitimacy of international climate policies (instead of national ones) which is evaluated in national fora, and it is usually portrayed negatively. However, there is a noticeable shift in the arguments used over our 10-year period of analysis, moving from efficiency as the dominating evaluation criterion to questions of fairness in the distribution of costs and gains.

Environmental Ministries as Climate Policy Drivers: Comparing Brazil and India

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 355-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Solveig Aamodt
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Environmental Policy ◽  
Climate Policy ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Subsequent Development ◽  
Institutional Climate ◽  
Climate Negotiations ◽  
Historical View ◽  
International Climate ◽  
International Climate Negotiations

With the 2015 Paris Agreement, global climate governance increasingly depends on domestic climate policy ambitions, also in large developing countries such as Brazil and India, which are prominent representatives for developing countries in the international climate negotiations. Although the environmental policy literature expects ministries of environment to be important drivers of domestic climate policy, studies find that the climate policy ambitions of the Brazilian and Indian environmental ministries differ considerably. With a long-term analytical approach building on historical institutionalism, this article analyses and compares the climate policy roles of the Brazilian and Indian ministries of environment. The comparative analysis finds that three factors in particular influence the environmental ministries' climate policy ambitions: first, the historical view of environmental policy as a domestic or an international issue; second, the ministry's formal role in international climate negotiations; and third, the subsequent development of institutional climate logics.

scholarly journals Overcoming Inaction through Collective Institutional Entrepreneurship: Insights from Regime Theory

2007 ◽  
Vol 28 (7) ◽  
pp. 1079-1100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Wijen ◽  
Shahzad Ansari
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
Climate Policy ◽  
Kyoto Protocol ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Regime Theory ◽  
Institutional Entrepreneurship ◽  
Institutional Entrepreneurs

Studies on institutional change generally pertain to the agency-structure paradox or the ability of institutional entrepreneurs to spearhead change despite constraints. In many complex fields, however, change also needs cooperation from numerous dispersed actors with divergent interests. This presents the additional paradox of ensuring that these actors engage in collective action when individual interests favor lack of cooperation. We draw on complementary insights from institutional and regime theories to identify drivers of collective institutional entrepreneurship and develop an analytical framework. This is applied to the field of global climate policy to illustrate how collective inaction was overcome to realize a global regulatory institution, the Kyoto Protocol.

scholarly journals BRICS Countries in International Climate Policy

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-78
Author(s):  
Yuri Yurievich Kovalev ◽  
Olga Sergeevna Porshneva
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Policy ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Ecological Modernization ◽  
Carbon Intensity ◽  
Brics Countries ◽  
Climate Policies ◽  
International Climate Policy ◽  
International Climate

The article presents an analysis of the BRICS countries climate policies at the global and national levels. The authors consider the positions of these states within the framework of both international climate conferences (Conference of the Parties) held under the auspices of the UN since 1992, and the summits of BRICS member states in the years 2011-2020. The paper covers strategies and results of national climate policies implemented in these countries. Using structural, comparative, and content analysis methods, the authors emphasize that BRICS countries play a key role in stabilizing the climate of our planet today. It is impossible to achieve the main aim of the Paris Agreement without a comprehensive transformation of environmental practices in these societies. BRICS adheres to the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities in its position towards international climate policy; the BRICS countries stand for sustainable economic growth through the introduction of new environmental technologies, and against restrictive measures that impede their economic development. At the same time, the Russian economys dependence on the extraction and export of fuel resources complicates environmental transformation. Russia is dominated by a negative narrative of climate change, where the urgent ecological modernization of the economy is seen as a threat to key sectors (oil and gas) of the economy. The implementation of international agreements to reduce the carbon intensity of the Russian economy, the creation of conditions for the transition to climate-neutral technologies, would contribute not only to the fight against global climate change, but would become a powerful incentive for the modernization of the economy, accelerating innovation and increasing its competitiveness.

scholarly journals Dynamic climate clubs: On the effectiveness of incentives in global climate agreements

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (45) ◽  
pp. e2109988118
Author(s):  
William Nordhaus
Keyword(s):  
Global Climate ◽  
Free Riding ◽  
Climate Agreements ◽  
Incentive Compatible ◽  
Potential Strength ◽  
Single Period ◽  
International Climate Policy ◽  
International Climate Agreements ◽  
Trade Sanctions ◽  
International Climate

A proposal to combat free riding in international climate agreements is the establishment of a climate club—a coalition of countries in a structure to encourage high levels of participation. Empirical models of climate clubs in the early stages relied on the analysis of single-period coalition formation. The earlier results suggested that there were limits to the potential strength of clubs and that it would be difficult to have deep abatement strategies in the club framework. The current study extends the single-period approach to many periods and develops an approach analyzing “supportable policies” to analyze multiperiod clubs. The major element of the present study is the interaction between club effectiveness and rapid technological change. Neither alone will produce incentive-compatible policies that can attain the ambitious objectives of international climate policy. The trade sanctions without rapid technological decarbonization will be too costly to produce deep abatement; similarly, rapid technological decarbonization by itself will not induce deep abatement because of country free riding. However, the two together can achieve international climate objectives.

scholarly journals Interests, Norms and Support for the Provision of Global Public Goods: The Case of Climate Co-operation

2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 1333-1355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael M. Bechtel ◽  
Federica Genovese ◽  
Kenneth F. Scheve
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Climate Policy ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Global Public Good ◽  
Behavioral Measures ◽  
Percentage Points ◽  
International Climate Policy ◽  
International Climate ◽  
Mass Attitudes ◽  
Specific Interests

Mitigating climate change requires countries to provide a global public good. This means that the domestic cleavages underlying mass attitudes toward international climate policy are a central determinant of its provision. We argue that the industry-specific costs of emission abatement and internalized social norms help explain support for climate policy. To evaluate our predictions we develop novel measures of industry-specific interests by cross-referencing individuals’ sectors of employment and objective industry-level pollution data and employing quasi-behavioral measures of social norms in combination with both correlational and conjoint-experimental data. We find that individuals working in pollutive industries are 7 percentage points less likely to support climate co-operation than individuals employed in cleaner sectors. Our results also suggest that reciprocal and altruistic individuals are about 10 percentage points more supportive of global climate policy. These findings indicate that both interests and norms function as complementary explanations that improve our understanding of individual policy preferences.

The Scope of Action for Local Climate Policy: The Case of Norway

2007 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlo Aall ◽  
Kyrre Groven ◽  
Gard Lindseth
Keyword(s):  
Climate Policy ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Global Environmental Governance ◽  
Municipal Policy ◽  
Local Climate ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
International Climate ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Policy Setting

One of the key features of the post-Rio era has been how global environmental governance is mediated between local, national and global levels of government. In this article, we draw on experiences from local climate policy planning in Norway in order to discuss the ways in which climate change enters into a municipal policy setting. Based on the Norwegian case, supplemented with knowledge gained from an international literature review, we present a typology of six different categories of local climate policy. We highlight that local actors can both play the role as a structure for the implementation of national or international climate objectives, as well as that of being policy actors taking independent policy initiatives. We emphasize how the relationship between national and local authorities is a crucial factor if climate policy as a specific local responsibility should be further strengthened.

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