The Comparative Politics of Climate Change

Abstract

The authors use a comparative politics framework, examining electoral interests, policy-maker's own normative commitments, and domestic political institutions as factors influencing Annex 1 countries' decisions on Kyoto Protocol ratification and adoption of national policies to mitigate climate change. Economic costs and electoral interests matter a great deal, even when policy-makers are morally motivated to take action on climate change. Leaders' normative commitments may carry the day under centralized institutional conditions, but these commitments can be reversed when leaders change. Electoral systems, federalism, and executive-legislative institutional configurations all influence ratification decisions and subsequent policy adoption. Although institutional configurations may facilitate or hinder government action, high levels of voter concern can trump institutional obstacles. Governments' decisions to ratify, and the reduction targets they face upon ratification, do not necessarily determine their approach to carbon emissions abatement policies: for example, ratifying countries that accept demanding targets may fail to take significant action. (c) 2007 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Non-governmental Organisations and Citizen Action on Climate Change: Strategies, Rationales and Practices

“…They prefer to focus on the positive benefits of citizen action, rather than on compelling behaviour change (whether by regulatory enforcement or moral coercion). This stress on the co-benefits of climate protection -and on the need to communicate on those co-benefits, particularly in the current period of economic adversity -has been endorsed by other strands of social science research on climate (see, for example, Bailey and Compston, 2012;Harrison and Sundstrom, 2010).…”

Limiting costs or correcting market failures? Finance ministries and frame alignment in UN climate finance negotiations

“…Since climate finance does not affect domestic vested interests to the extent that mitigation commitments do (Bailer and Weiler 2015: 60-62), finance ministries have (all things equal) better possibilities for influencing national negotiating positions than in the case of mitigation commitments (for a comparative study of the domestic drivers of mitigation policy and negotiation positions, see Harrison and Sundstrom 2007).…”

Current and Future Friends of the Earth: Assessing Cross-National Theories of Environmental Attitudes

“…Additionally, postmaterialism was measured with valence questions that allowed people simply to express their general values rather than their willingness to protect the environment when faced with real trade-offs [21]. Despite these limitations postmaterialism quickly gained pre-eminence, perhaps because it predicted an increasingly wealthy world becoming more supportive of environmentalism, a much rosier future than other projections of global environmental politics.…”

“…Globally, the current struggle to reach a workable agreement on greenhouse gas emissions reveals 'generally increasing antagonism between North and South' [28] (p. 137). In the North, even pro-environment voters are often 'strongly resistant to the reality of higher taxes or energy prices' [21] (p. 15).…”

“…This agreement made Europeans (and especially Germans) appear better 'green citizens' than they really were. Closing down East German industries created a post-reunification emissions reduction 'windfall' that enabled Germany to easily meet its obligations while leaving room for other EU states' emissions to grow, sometimes significantly [21,58]. As this dividend has now been consumed, further reductions will require economic sacrifices that are likely to be increasingly unpalatable to European mass publics.…”