Who’s Really in Charge? Incumbents, Ministers, and the Energy Transition

• In Event: Incumbents and Veto Players in the Politics of Climate Change

Abstract

How do incumbent politicians allocate energy and environment policy portfolios across cabinet ministers, and how do these allocations influence policy making outcomes? This paper focuses on the role of energy and environmental ministers, underappreciated actors in climate policymaking. These officials often command significant influence over highly technical policy matters, with varying degrees of political salience. As a result, incumbents arguably face varying incentives to manipulate energy and environmental policy portfolios for political reasons, constraining ministers in some cases more than others. Using data from WhoGov matched with an original dataset, we analyze the relationships between portfolio allocation, minister characteristics, and policy outputs. Finally, we leverage plausibly exogenous variation in the timing of executive turnovers to estimate the effect of ministerial turnover on climate policy capacity.

Author

• William Kakenmaster, University of Notre Dame