The sound of one hand clapping: transparency without accountability

Does increasing government transparency in an authoritarian regime, absent electoral forms of accountability, change outcomes? The case of China, which has adopted a number of open governance and public information laws, is examined to see whether increased transparency by local environmental protection bureaus affects key environmental outcomes, specifically reductions in air and water pollution. Several unique environmental performance measurements, developed by the authors, are used to supplement standard government-reported measurements of environmental outcomes, and a widely used environmental transparency index (the PITI). By testing information that is newly supplied to the public, but already available to government, government and public monitoring are distinguished from one another, and the effect of public knowledge of government functions is tested. In the absence of a mechanism for the public to hold local government accountable, public transparency alone has no impact on outcomes other than information provision itself.     

States,coalitions, and the legalization of the global climate regime: negotiations on the post-2020 architecture

Why do some states and state coalitions, acting within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), support harder legalization of the global climate regime? In order to explain why, the effects of four causal factors are considered: climate vulnerability, the emission intensity of the national economy, a state’s power position, and socialization into climate norms. To identify the legalization positions of UNFCCC actors, an original content analysis is conducted of all the submission and meeting statements made at the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform during the years 2012–2015. Subsequently, a qualitative comparative analysis is carried out to find out which combinations of the causal factors offer a sufficient explanation for the analyzed outcome, leading to the identification of two causal pathways that lead states to endorse harder legalization of the climate regime.     

Extractivism and the rights of nature: governmentality, ‘convenient communities’ and epistemic pacts in Ecuador

Ecuador’s recently adopted conflict resolution techniques have aggravated the always tense encounters between Amazonian indigenous communities, oil companies and the state. The state’s governmentality project portrays these socio-environmental conflicts as mere technical–managerial issues while societal coalitions re-politicize them through territorial defense struggles. The Cofán Dureno case highlights how the self-proclaimed ‘Citizen’s Revolution’ government seeks to redefine socio-natural relationships and territorial identities, devising ‘communities of convenience’. These correspond to the state’s own images, political structure and ideology, promoting ‘community participation’ to facilitate oil extraction. Ecuador’s constitutionally recognized Rights of Nature (paradoxically installed by the same government) are analyzed with a focus on their potential for resisting socio-environmental injustice. The internationally celebrated inclusion of these rights in the Constitution was advocated by nonindigenous intellectual activists but influenced and supported by the indigenous movement. Beyond legal implications, these rights might foster an epistemic pact between indigenous and nonindigenous society to defend territories from extractive industries.     

Varieties of market-based policy: Instrument choice in climate policy

Since the 1970s, European and US regulators have used different varieties of market-based environmental policy, which are rooted in competing types of liberalism: price instruments and quantity instruments, respectively. In the case of climate change, however, the EU and the US have converged on hybrid policy mixes. This convergence in instrument choice is examined in two cases: the emergence of the EU Emission Trading Scheme, i.e. the import of quantity regulation to the EU; and the creation of California’s feed-in tariff, i.e. the import of price regulation to the US. Increasing convergence in instrument choice is the result of international diffusion through learning and shifting domestic coalitions. This demonstrates that the two varieties of market-based environmental policy increasingly blend, and how policy import is driven by domestic government–producer coalitions rather than by policy-maker ideas of ‘best practice.’     

Frame alignment and environmental advocacy: the influence of NGO strategies on policy outcomes in China

ABSTRACT

The link between environmental frames and policy outcomes in China is explored. Environmental nongovernment organizations’ (ENGOs) issue interpretation and presentation affect environmental policy changes. The notion of ‘frame alignment’ is introduced, and it is argued that it can serve to link ENGOs’ advocacy needs and frame resonance among different stakeholders, thus successfully promoting advocacy. Based on in-depth interviews and analysis of news reports over a span of 10 years, it is found that where ENGOs are able to align their issue frames with those of the central state and media, the resulting frame resonance smooths policy change. In contrast, where ENGOs adopt conflict frames critical of state authorities, the absence of alignment leads to a slim chance of policy change. The findings shed light on why some ENGOs successfully create linkage and achieve their desired outcomes while others fail to do so.     

The indecisive role of the market in China’s SO2 and COD emissions trading

Governmental intervention is essential to combat environmental pollution, a phenomenon classically explained as market failure, while market-based environmental policy instruments have provided cost-effective alternatives. By examining five pilot air pollution (sulfur dioxide) and water pollution (chemical oxygen demand) trading schemes in China through a market-based theoretical framework and extensive empirical analysis, this research analyzes where a state-market boundary is defined, whether the market is performing effectively, and, critically, what leads to underperformance. Constrained by policy design, policy conflicts, and excessive state intervention, the market has not played an effective and ‘decisive’ role, resulting in low market thickness for participants and transactions, market congestion on prices, and inadequate market safety for genuine emissions trading. Better emissions trading for conventional pollutants and CO₂ requires better market-oriented rules, improved policy coordination, and stronger implementation while minimizing state intervention.     

Divergent neighbors: corporatism and climate policy networks in Finland and Sweden

ABSTRACT

Previous research has suggested that corporatist polities tend to enact more ambitious environmental policies than others. Here it is argued that the macro concept of corporatism can be dissected into three components: inclusiveness, consensualism and strength of tripartite organisations. These components of corporatism can be measured at the meso-level of policy networks. It is proposed that inclusiveness and consensualism are related to ambitious climate policy but exclusive tripartite coalitions can be detrimental for the ambitiousness of climate policy. This argument is backed by evidence from policy network surveys in two similar corporatist countries where climate change policies diverge: Sweden, where policies are ambitious, and Finland, where they are less so. It is found that in Sweden the climate change policy network is more consensual and slightly more inclusive, while in Finland tripartite organisations play a strong role.     

Who got their way? Advocacy coalitions and the Irish climate change law

Which organisations saw their positions on two contentious issues reflected in the Irish climate law of 2015, and what role did advocacy coalitions play in the policy process? These questions are answered drawing theoretically from the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) and by conducting a network analysis of survey data collected from the organisations involved in the national climate policy process. The study finds that several institutionally important or economically powerful organisations, particularly those involved in the agricultural sector, as well as the government parties saw their preferences reflected in the law. This resulted in legislation that excluded binding emission reductions targets, differentiating it from similar laws introduced in other European countries. Organisations in favour of stronger regulation formed a coalition to advocate for their positions, but they largely failed to get their way.     

De-Europeanising or disengaging? EU environmental policy and Brexit

ABSTRACT

The European Union (EU) has had a profound effect upon its members’ environmental policy. Even in the United Kingdom (UK), the EU’s most recalcitrant member state (historically labeled the ‘Dirty man of Europe’), environmental policy has been Europeanised. As the UK moves to the EU’s exit door it is timely to assess the utility of Europeanisation for understanding policy dynamics in the UK. Drawing upon interviews and extensive engagement with stakeholders, this article analyses the potential impact of Brexit upon environmental policy and politics. The analytical toolkit offered by de-Europeanisation is developed to identify the factors that drive and inhibit de-Europeanisation processes, thereby providing insights that may be applicable in other settings. Disengagement and policy stagnation are presented as more likely environmental outcomes of Brexit, with capacity emerging as a central explanatory variable.     

National identities,international roles,and the legitimation of climate leadership: Germany and Norway compared

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) confers an obligation on developed states to lead in mitigation. This obligation challenges traditional conceptions of the modern state by calling forth a more outward looking state that is able to serve both the national and international communities in the service of global climate protection. Yet, the more skeptical theories of the ecological state suggest that climate leaders will only emerge if they can connect their climate strategy to the traditional state imperatives of economic growth or national security. How the governments of Germany and Norway, both relative climate leaders with ongoing fossil-fuel dependencies, have legitimated their climate policies and diplomacy is examined through a comparative discourse analysis. While both governments rely heavily on discourses of Green growth, they also construct national identities and international role conceptions that serve purposes beyond themselves.     

What makes for good and bad neighbours? An emerging research agenda in the study of Chinese environmental politics

Tackling China’s grave environmental problems increasingly turns on questions of sub-national interjurisdictional relations. What are the conditions under which neighbouring localities cooperate in stewardship of the natural environment? What factors give rise to interjurisdictional conflict such as pollution spillovers? Through a combination of empirical and theoretical reflections, a research agenda to better understand these issues is outlined. First, China’s recent innovative approaches to the promotion of interjurisdictional cooperation are examined. An in-depth case study of interjurisdictional ecological protection ‘redline’ zones underscores the difficulties of inculcating environmental neighbourliness between local governments. Yet, a precise diagnosis of the problem remains elusive because too little is known about the underlying drivers of interjurisdictional relations in China. An analytical framework that draws insight from contemporary China studies and comparative environmental governance scholarship is offered for the study of interjurisdictional environmental relations in China.     

Cities as leaders in EU multilevel climate governance: embedded upscaling of local experiments in Europe

ABSTRACT

The success of local climate governance in Europe depends not only on leading cities but also on the dynamics between leaders, followers, and laggards. Upscaling local experiments helps to close the gap between these actors. This process is driven by the increasing embeddedness of cities and their networks in EU multilevel governance. Embedded upscaling combines horizontal upscaling between leading cities with vertical upscaling between leaders and followers that is mediated by higher levels of government, and hierarchical upscaling that even reaches the laggards. Various types of upscaling, their combinations, and their impacts are analyzed. Networks have become denser and networking has intensified. City networks and their member cities have become embedded in national and EU governance, lost authority and depend more and more on regional, national, and European authorities.     

Environmental policy innovations in China: a critical analysis from a low-carbon city

The Chinese state is squarely ‘back’ in the business of environmental governance with an increasing number of policy innovations or experiments to resolve environmental issues. These have been mostly enacted through the ‘experimentation under hierarchy’ framework, undergirded by compensation-for-performance incentive structures for local agents. Based on on-site ethnography in local China, a critical analysis is presented of low-carbon city policy experiments – one of the most prominent environmental policies introduced in the past decade. Using lessons from the agency theory, it is hypothesized that outcomes of these policy innovations are contingent on different policy dimensions. Although a number of positive outcomes have been achieved in output-oriented dimensions, the fundamental difficulty of specifying all aspects of complex, multidimensional work tasks involved in low-carbon city development has frequently led to policy unmaking. The findings raise important questions about China’s tendency to rely excessively on compensation-for-performance structures to promote environmental policies.     

“No fences make bad neighbors” but markets make better ones: cap-and-trade reduces cross-border SO2 in a natural experiment

The clean air interstate rule (CAIR) was a regional cap-and-trade program announced in 2005 which covered 27 eastern US states and sought to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. The rule was later vacated after a court found that the non-targeted design of the program did not comply with the Clean Air Act provision to regulate interstate air pollution. Using a custom air pollution dispersion model, I calculate the interstate SO₂ pollution from 493 coal-fired power plants across the United States between 1997 and 2020. In a difference-in-differences setup with plants not covered by CAIR in the control group, I estimate the treatment effect of the program on overall- and cross-border SO₂ emissions and find a 24% reduction in overall emissions and reduces the risk that a plant violates air quality standards across state borders by 2–4%. I report evidence of heterogeneous treatment effects where the reduction in overall emissions attributed to CAIR is lower among plants transporting SO₂ in excess of 1% of the National Air Quality Standards to another state.

     

Leadership and lesson-drawing in the European Union’s multilevel climate governance system

ABSTRACT

The important role that climate leaders and leadership play at different levels of the European Union (EU) multilevel governance system is exemplified. Initially, climate leader states set the pace with ambitious policy measures that were adopted largely on an ad hoc basis. Since the mid-1980s, the EU has developed a multilevel climate governance system that has facilitated leadership and lesson-drawing at all governance levels including the local level. The EU has become a global climate policy leader by example although it had been set up as a ‘leaderless Europe’. The resulting ‘leadership without leader’ paradox cannot be sufficiently explained merely by reference to top-level EU climate policies. Local-level climate innovations and lesson-drawing have increasingly been encouraged by the EU’s multilevel climate governance system which has become more polycentric. The recognition of economic co-benefits of climate policy measures has helped to further the EU’s climate leadership role.     

What’s ‘evangelical’ got to do with it? Disentangling the impact of evangelical Protestantism on environmental outcomes

Empirical research on the relationship between evangelical Protestants and the environment has generated a range of divergent findings. Measurements of evangelical Protestants vary greatly, as do the dependent environmental outcomes they are used to predict. Serious questions remain concerning when and how ‘evangelicals’ diverge from others in their environmental views and behaviors. Here, two foundational questions concerning the relationship between evangelical Protestants and the environment are explored. First, do religious effects differ based on how evangelicals are defined and measured? Second, does the relationship vary with the outcome variable used? Utilizing 14 dependent variables from two nationally representative data sets, among the measures of evangelical Protestantism, biblical literalism is the most important predictor of environmental outcomes. Negative religious effects are more pronounced when questions concern future environmental outcomes, but not current environmental concerns, and when outcomes are related to collective actions rather than individual ones.     

Does size matter? Comparing the party politics of climate change in Australia and Norway

ABSTRACT

The implications of state size for the party politics of climate change are examined, and in particular its effect in facilitating or impeding cross-party consensus on the issue. This issue is explored through an in-depth, qualitative comparison of Australia and Norway, which are shown to be comparable in important respects yet differ in terms of their size and climate politics. Original primary data is presented from 44 interviews with policymakers and policy-shapers in both countries, which shows that, to the limited extent that state size moderates the parties’ behaviour, it is the countries’ geographical – not economic – size that matters. Institutional factors are found to play a more significant role, however, and the corporatist features of state-business cooperation, strong ENGOs and compensatory welfare arrangements are highlighted as particularly important.     

Compliance with EU environmental law. The iceberg is melting

ABSTRACT

The European Union (EU) has become the main driver for environmental policy output for its member states whose number has more than tripled over the past four decades. The EU’s deepening and widening has led researchers to expect more non-compliance with EU environmental legislation. In fact, however, the implementation gap has narrowed over the past 25 years. Except for Southern enlargement, taking on new member states has not exacerbated the EU’s compliance problem in the field of environmental policy. Nor has the expansion of the environmental acquis. This is explained by the European Commission’s strategies of managing and enforcing compliance. EU environmental policy has become less demanding on member states since it increasingly tends to amend existing rather than set new legislation. Simultaneously, the Commission has developed new instruments to strengthen member state capacities to implement EU environmental legislation.     

Follow the leader? Conceptualising the relationship between leaders and followers in polycentric climate governance

ABSTRACT

Existing scholarship on climate governance has not sufficiently considered the relationship between climate leaders/pioneers and followers. Because of the global commons nature of climate change, unilateral leadership or pioneership by one or a small number of actors will be insufficient to combat climate change effectively. The need to take seriously the relationship between leaders and followers is all the greater in the wake of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which emphasises diffuse, bottom–up action. The relationship between leaders and followers in polycentric climate governance is unpacked in this contribution. What types of actors can be climate followers? Through what pathways can followership emerge and how can we capture the essential characteristics of leader–follower relationships? What conditions facilitate (or hinder) followership? The utility of the approach is illustrated using cases of EU climate leadership and (non-) followership of other actors.     

Greener governments: partisan ideologies,executive institutions,and environmental policies

Why do some governments have more environmentally friendly policies than others? Part of the answer involves governing parties’ ideological positions on environmentalism and the constraints imposed by executive institutions. Here, this party-based explanation is elaborated and tested with uniquely comparable indicators of national environmental policies for governments in 27 countries in the European Union (EU). The findings show that governments with parties that emphasized environmental protection in their manifestos are more likely to propose pro-environment policies during EU-level negotiations. However, the effect of ideology is mediated by the centralization of the national executive branch. In centralized national executives, the environmental positions of prime ministers’ parties affect policies, while in decentralized national executives, the positions of environment ministers’ parties are relevant. The findings have implications for understanding the impact of parties’ environmental positions on government policies, as well as for policy making in coalitions more generally.