Institutions, Climate Change, and the Foundations of Long-Term Policymaking

Abstract

Many policy problems require taking costly action today for future benefits. Examining the case of climate change, this paper examines how two institutions—electoral rules and interest group intermediation—structure the distributional politics of climate change and as a result, drive variation in climate “policy investments” across the high-income democracies. Proportional electoral rules increase electoral safety, allowing politicians to impose short-term costs on voters. Concertation between industry and the state enables governments to compensate losers, defusing organized opposition to policy change. Moreover, the joint presence of both institutions generates complementarities that reinforce their independent effects, pushing countries onto different climate politics trajectories. Newly available data on climate policy stringency provide empirical support for the arguments. Countries with PR and interest group concertation have the highest levels of policy stringency and distribute higher costs toward consumers. The analysis points to causal mechanisms that should structure policy responses to a more general set of long-term challenges.

How inequality fuels climate change: The climate case for a Green New Deal

“…This means that office-seeking political opponents have strong incentives to oppose government policies and weak incentives to reach compromise deals. 62,138 The GND strategy There is good reason to think GNDs will enjoy greater popular support than ambitious carbon-centric policies in isolation. Numerous opinion survey studies find that carbon-centric policies are more popular among respondents when respondents perceive the policy's costs to be borne by others, especially businesses and the relatively wealthy 139,140 ; when benefits are framed in terms of co-benefits that are more proximate, nearterm, and tangible (compared with the benefit of climate change mitigation) 141 ; and when policies are packaged with ancillary measures that offset costs or provide benefits that are valued more highly by respondents.…”

“…150 Cross-national variation in electoral institutions is another reason we should continue to see different patterns in the content and political trajectories of GNDs, as is the case ll OPEN ACCESS with climate policy more generally. 62,138 In the negotiated political economies of continental Europe, for example, we would expect the privileged access to policymaking enjoyed by businesses and unions to moderate grassroots pressure for more radically transformative policy agendas. 62 Perhaps these incumbents will channel that pressure into an industry-focused just transition agenda that lies somewhere between a purely carbon-centric approach and a comprehensive GND.…”

Why nations lead or lag in energy transitions

“…Civil servants in such bureaucracies are better insulated from business and public opposition to costly policies compared to politicians reliant on corporate campaign donations and voter support. Similarly, proportional electoral rules (seats allocated in a legislature proportional to votes shares) tend to better insulate politicians from voter backlash than majoritarian rules ("winner-take-all", whereby a candidate receiving the highest vote share in a district represents the district) (6). During the 1970s oil crises, the Japanese and French governments substantially moderated their reliance on oil consumption.…”

Encouraging Politicians to Act on Climate. A Field Experiment with Local Officials in Six Countries

“…4 The time horizon of climate policy reforms Legislators face intertemporal trade-offs between supporting policies that maximize welfare in the present and investing in the future. In representative democracies, this trade-off poses a political dilemma whenever the benefits of a policy are not visible before the next election (Finnegan, 2022;Jacobs, 2016). Because legislators' ability to remain in office and continue shaping policy is conditional on their performance in the next election, representatives tend to prioritize shorterterm benefits (Sheffer et al, 2018).…”