The Politics of Formulating and Implementing Climate Policies
Overview
EGAP launched the Climate Change Governance Priority Theme in 2022 to organize research on strategies for moving climate policy formulation and implementation processes forward. The priority theme steering committee includes EGAP members Evan Lieberman, Melina Platas, Tara Slough, and Linda Stern, and EGAP Executive Director Cyrus Samii. The work is supported by EGAP Sr. Methods Manager, Matt Lisiecki. The steering committee has engaged in discussions with researcher and practitioner stakeholders, including a February 2023 workshop at University College London.
Based on these discussions, the focus of future work will be the politics of climate policy, with special emphasis on the factors that influence the decisions of leaders and officials in a position to formulate or implement climate adaptation or mitigation policies.
The steering committee identified the following as topics for further research:
- Ways that electoral incentives affect, and possibly interfere, with elected leaders’ commitment to long-term climate policy planning and implementation (in the context of either international or domestic frameworks), and strategies to reinforce such commitment in democratic contexts;
- Beyond elections, other institutional or organizational reasons for heavily lagged or incomplete implementation toward mitigation or adaptation goals (again, defined in terms of international or domestic frameworks), and strategies for sustaining officials’ commitment to implementation;
- How political leaders respond to special interests and in particular, how those with a vested interest in limiting mitigation or adaptation might capture policy processes and strategies to limit the potential of such capture;
- Reasons that some communities may be marginalized in mitigation or adaptation policies, and strategies to limit the extent to which inequalities are exacerbated by such policies.
Case Studies
The steering committee is commissioning a set of case studies to offer insight into the priority topics listed above. The case studies will highlight patterns of within-case variation in politics and policy-making over time. Drawing from the list of countries in the concept note, 6 cases were selected for inclusion.