Reaching Reductions: National Policy Styles and Climate Mitigation Policy

• In Event: Comparative Climate Impacts, Politics, and Policy

Abstract

Why do countries take different pathways to adopting climate mitigation policies? Existing work has provided more extensive explanations focusing on attempting to categorize and measure the relative stringency of countries' climate mitigation policies. Yet these works lack sufficient ability to conceptualize and map variation in these policies, and help explain why variation across countries may occur. This project is focused on creating and testing a theory of climate mitigation policy adoption by domestic governments and conceptualizing and mapping climate mitigation policy styles. In this paper, I provide a new framework for assessing climate mitigation policies and develop a new theory for why countries differ in the climate mitigation policies they choose to adopt. Drawing on theories of the policy process and work on national policy styles, I argue that central to understanding and categorizing climate mitigation policy styles is through the lens of incentives and disincentives. Some countries have a tendency to seek climate mitigation outcomes by leveraging more policy instruments which will incentivize actors to take actions which will reduce emissions. Other countries have a tendency to seek these outcomes by leveraging disincentives for actors to raise the cost of emitting and reduce emissions levels. Further, with climate mitigation policies, governments need to ensure there are enough disincentives and incentives to work towards reducing GHG emissions, but there are limited resources and they need to avoid backlash which threatens progress towards emissions reductions targets. This balance, however, can get distorted when there is a critical juncture, as certain governments are incentivized by specific actors at the costs of others. I discuss this in relation to the politics and climate mitigation policies of Britain and Ireland between 2006 and 2022.

Author

• Dan Ziebarth, George Washington University