The Czech Republic’s approach to the EU 2030 climate and energy framework

ABSTRACT

The East-West divide within the EU over climate policy has been frequently discussed. There is a tendency in the literature to focus on Poland and ignore the other countries in the central and eastern European region. Here it is argued that the institutionalised cooperation between the four countries in the Visegrad Group (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) provides a crucial component for an understanding of how the participating countries approach EU climate negotiations. Here it is suggested that the group is important as a bargaining coalition but also as a reference point for the development of shared ‘Visegrad’ norms in the field. This is based on a case study of the Czech Republic’s approach to the 2014 negotiations on the 2030 climate and energy framework and the country’s cooperation with the other Visegrad countries on the issue.     

The importance of compatible beliefs for effective climate policy integration

ABSTRACT

European climate policy faced increasing constraints during the economic and Eurozone crises (2008–2014). The European Commission subsequently refocused policymaking toward integrating climate objectives into other policy areas such as energy and the 2014–2020 European Union (EU) budget. The conditions for successful climate policy integration (CPI) are analyzed, focusing on the compatibility of key actors’ beliefs. In renewable energy policy, CPI was successful as long as the co-benefits and related policy-core beliefs of energy security, rural economic development and climate action coexisted harmoniously. Once conflict among these policy-core beliefs emerged during the biofuels controversy, CPI was weakened as actors with competing economy-focused beliefs controlled the decision-making process. The case of EU budget climate mainstreaming illustrates how actors can add climate objectives into legislation despite meaningful discussion being ‘crowded out’ by other priorities. The findings highlight the importance of low conflict between departments, compatible beliefs and policy priorities for successful CPI.     

Voluntary instruments for ambitious objectives? The experience of the EU Covenant of Mayors

ABSTRACT

Over the last decade, innovative governance architectures have been progressively promoted across European Union (EU) environmental and climate policies with the purpose of improving the effectiveness of intervention through better cross-sectoral policy integration and increased involvement of sub-state and non-governmental actors in the policy process. By combining the theoretical insights of polycentric governance and the concept of usage, the case of the Covenant of Mayors (CoM) is analysed to uncover the extent to which this voluntary programme has empowered local authorities within the EU strategy for sustainable energy by encouraging coordination and learning. This illustrates how a range of policy variables determined the dynamics of the programme’s implementation in Italy and the United Kingdom.     

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.     

Measuring and explaining the EU’s effect on national climate performance

ABSTRACT

To what extent has the European Union (EU) had a benign or retarding effect on what its member states would have undertaken in the absence of EU climate policies during 2008–2012? A measurement tool for the EU policy’s effect is developed and shows a benign average EU effect with considerable variation across countries. The EU’s policy effectiveness vis-à-vis its member states is explained by the EU’s non-compliance mechanism, the degree of usage of the Kyoto flexible mechanisms, and national pre-Kyoto emission reduction goals. Time-series cross-sectional analyses show that the EU’s non-compliance mechanism has no effect, while the ex-ante plans for using Kyoto flexible mechanisms and/or the ambitious pre-Kyoto emission reduction targets allow member states to escape constraints imposed by EU climate policy.     

Drivers of political parties’ climate policy preferences: lessons from Denmark and Ireland

ABSTRACT

Political parties are important actors in domestic climate politics. What drives variation in parties’ climate policy preferences? To contribute to a growing literature on the party politics of climate change, we focus on the roles of public opinion, party competition, and parties’ traditional policy preferences in shaping parties’ climate policy preferences in Denmark and Ireland. In case studies that draw on in-depth interviews with policy practitioners, we show how parties respond to public opinion, accommodate issue-owners, and are powerfully constrained and enabled by their existing preferences. These mechanisms also help to explain different responses on climate policy across the left-right spectrum. Competition between mainstream parties is particularly powerful, but can constrain as much as it enables ‘greener’ climate policy preferences. While climate change may be a distinctive problem, the party politics of climate change features similar incentives and constraints as other domains.     

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.’     

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.     

Moving targets: Carbon pricing,energy markets,and social movements in Australia

Reporting on the origins and directions of social movement strategy on climate and energy issues in the last decade, the shifts in ‘climate movement’ practice are discussed using a neo-Polanyian account of the political economy of climate change combined with sociological analysis of the strategic decisions campaigners reported making. Since the mid-2000s, Australia’s climate movement has been engaged in three concurrent arenas of political contestation. The longest-standing arena of movement activity has been negotiations over climate policy. More recently, activists and communities are engaged in a struggle over the expansion of fossil fuels. A third contest has been waged over the present and future position of renewable energy technologies in Australia’s electricity market. In the wake of climate policy failure, energy campaigns have been deepened, and it seems that a broader energy justice agenda is being forged. New strategic dilemmas are visible in the field.     

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.     

Environmental policy evaluation in the EU: between learning,accountability, and political opportunities?

ABSTRACT

Policy evaluation has grown significantly in the EU environmental sector since the 1990s. In identifying and exploring the putative drivers behind its rise – a desire to learn, a quest for greater accountability, and a wish to manipulate political opportunity structures – new ground is broken by examining how and why the existing literatures on these drivers have largely studied them in isolation. The complementarities and potential tensions between the three drivers are then addressed in order to advance existing research, drawing on emerging empirical examples in climate policy, a very dynamic area of evaluation activity in the EU. The conclusions suggest that future studies should explore the interactions between the three drivers to open up new and exciting research opportunities in order to comprehend contemporary environmental policy and politics in the EU.     

Who shapes local climate policy? Unpicking governance arrangements in English and German cities

A new framework for analysing subnational policymaking is applied to climate governance in the ‘twin towns’ of Newcastle upon Tyne and Gelsenkirchen. Low levels of resource interdependence between central and local government in England mean that Newcastle Council has to rely heavily on other horizontal actors to achieve its climate objectives. In contrast, Gelsenkirchen Council receives substantial support from higher tiers of government, which gives it greater control over policymaking within the locality. Greater independence between tiers of government can make it more difficult for subnational bodies to adopt the kind of ambitious policies that may be necessary to combat wicked and/or significant policy challenges such as climate change. Instead, interdependent ‘joint-decision’ systems, which facilitate mutual support across tiers of government, may be better equipped to ensure that subnational public bodies have the capacity to act appropriately.     

Right-wing populism and the climate change agenda: exploring the linkages

The rise of right-wing populism (RWP) poses a challenge for the climate agenda, as leaders and supporters tend to be climate sceptics and hostile to policy prescribing action on climate change. However, there is a surprising dearth of research that investigates the nature and causes of this association. Two kinds of explanation are considered, drawing on the literature on populism. One is termed ‘structuralist’, drawing on accounts of the roots of populism in economic and political marginalisation amongst those ‘left behind’ by globalisation and technological change. A second focuses on the ideological content of RWP, especially its antagonism between ‘the people’ and a cosmopolitan elite, with climate change and policy occupying a symbolic place in this contrast. It is argued that there are limits to the structuralist approach, and that an ideologically based explanation is more compelling. An agenda for future research on RWP and climate science and policy is proposed.     

The politics of climate change policy design in Korea

The climate change policy design of the Lee Myung-bak administration was the outcome of interest group politics around the greenhouse gas and energy target management scheme, carbon taxes, and the emission-trading scheme. Using qualitative methods, this research examines powerful stakeholders and their interests at play in Korea’s climate change policymaking processes. It also links the political economy of climate change policy to the legacy of the ‘developmental state’ and examines environmental developmentalism in the design of the three climate change policies. The Lee administration strongly promoted environmental developmentalism, which created a new growth engine in an environmental field, while bolstering manufacturing businesses and excluding the views of environmental non-governmental organisations from the target-management and the emission-trading schemes. The Lee administration also sought to facilitate pro-business measures such as low taxes, which led it to reject a carbon tax. Therefore, environmental developmentalism was central to the politics of the Lee administration’s climate change policy design.     

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.     

Back-pedaling or continuing quietly? Assessing the impact of ICLEI membership termination on cities’ sustainability actions

Over the past decade, cities have emerged as leaders in sustainability and climate protection in the United States. ICLEI, a voluntary network of local governments, played an important role driving this trend. After years of steady growth, ICLEI became a target of political opposition and its membership dropped significantly from 2010 to 2012. This begs the question of whether cities’ termination of their ICLEI affiliation diminishes their implementation of sustainability actions. Two surveys administered in 2010 and 2014 provide data on cities’ implementation of an array of sustainability actions. Using a difference-in-differences (DiD) method, the impact of ICLEI termination on local governments’ administrative and policy commitments to sustainability is assessed. The results suggest that ending ICLEI membership does not significantly impact local sustainability actions, and also indicate that the durability of policy actions may be only loosely linked to the policies that justify them.     

Carbon border adjustment mechanism in the transition to net-zero emissions: collective implementation and distributional impacts

As an instrument to minimize carbon leakage, the effects and feasibility of Carbon Border Adjustments Mechanism (CBAM) will depend on multiple design options. While the EU has committed to introducing CBAM as part of its green climate deal, pursuing climate efforts to successfully limit global warming requires a collective implementation involving major emitters China and the US. This paper quantifies the distributional impacts of a joint CBAM implementation of in a climate alliance or a club of the EU, the US, and China. Differing from a myriad of studies that focus on unilateral CBAM, this analysis emphasizes collective implications on leakage, sectoral competitiveness, and welfare by projecting climate neutrality relative to current policies and climate targets. Our findings confirm that coalition reduces leakage, improves production on energy-intensive industries, and increases club’s welfare relative to a non-CBAM and a unilateral implementation. These are in contrast with some unilateral analytical studies, especially for the US. It is further proof of the potential of CBAM as collective instruments to facilitate mitigation and trade competitiveness.

     

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.     

When do climate change,sustainability, and economic development considerations overlap in cities?

Overlaps between economic development, sustainability and climate change objectives have both political and practical implications for the development of policies addressing climate change mitigation and adaptation. However, little empirical research has systematically investigated factors underlying these overlaps. Here, survey responses from 287 cities in the US are used to explore associations between the presence of such overlaps and these cities’ policy actions and contextual conditions. Patterns in the presence of these overlaps are described, which help shed light on the political economy underlying policymakers’ considerations about overlapping climate change mitigation and adaptation considerations with economic development or sustainability. Policymakers’ considerations about the possible political co-benefits and political trade-offs of these objective overlaps will play a critical role in shaping interconnected policy responses to complex challenges like climate change in the years ahead.     

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.