European Union (EU) climate politics have polarised over the past decade. Poland especially stands out as the EU member state that has most vehemently opposed numerous decisions to increase the EU’s ...level of ambition, stirring some turbulence in EU climate politics. Yet, with the publication of the European Green Deal (EGD) in 2019, the European Commission has likewise created turbulence in the Polish parliament’s climate debate. This article analyses those debates and identifies three distinct policy narratives: Poland is in a unique situation, Poland pursues an alternative pathway, and climate policy endangers competitiveness. The alternative pathway narrative, which advocates for the continued use of coal while capturing emissions, faded at roughly the same time when the EGD was proposed at the EU level. Simultaneously, the unique situation narrative, which calls for recognition of Poland’s uniqueness in combination with increased (financial) support, became stronger. The analysis confirms the dominance of the governing party’s narratives, but contrary to previous studies, detects nascent polarisation on climate policy between the right-wing political parties, on the one hand, and the centre-right and centre-left parties, on the other.
The systems of policies impacting climate change mitigation are complex. Yet, to date, we have limited conceptual and empirical knowledge on the dynamics within these. We address this gap by ...employing a systems lens to untangle the interactions between the policies affecting climate change mitigation in the electricity generation space. We conceptualise climate policyscapesfor electricity generation as systems populated with policies whose means impact decarbonisation in the electricity generation space. The impacts under analysis include both support and obstruction of climate change mitigation. We analyse the evolution of the UK climate policyscape from 1956 to 2022. Methodologically, we combine qualitative content analysis and network analysis. We populate the policyscapes with pieces of legislation in the electricity generation space and employ qualitative content analysis to identify the policy means affecting climate change mitigation. Our network analysis of the 2022 climate policyscape reveals that policies hindering climate mitigation remain largely present, which renders the climate policyscape incoherent. We show that policies supporting mitigation are more likely to behave as a group than policies hindering climate mitigation. Climate policies tend to be adopted as packages, whilst fossil policies remain a steady process throughout the history of the UK climate policyscape.
This article argues that European Union (EU) risk regulation of hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) was both a trigger and formative factor in the development of similar ...Chinese regulation. The attractiveness and global interdependence of the EU market in EEE impelled a response from Chinese policy-makers. Fostering the domestic industry's global competitiveness was one of the driving factors behind Chinese substance restriction regulation. Additionally, symbolic emulation and growing domestic environmental problems related to waste EEE infl uenced the Chinese policy agenda. Chinese substance restriction rules are not, however, a mere copy of EU regulation. The limited domestic capacity of the Chinese economy, administration, and legal structure to adopt policies similar to those of the EU explains, to a large extent, the emergence and partial persistence of differences between EU and Chinese risk regulation. In the course of the implementation and evaluation of Chinese substance restriction regulation, lessons learned from the EU’s experience increasingly contributed to shaping the policy, leading to growing convergence.
Capacity-building projects can be a vehicle for fostering policy diffusion. They should not, however, be considered as exclusively externally driven; the receiving jurisdiction’s receptiveness and ...leverage to steer the design of those projects can be crucial factors, shaping the process of infusing different external policy expertise and experiences into domestic policy design and implementation. This article shows that the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has played a key role in steering the capacity-building efforts of external financiers in the case of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions trading. The focus here is twofold: analyzing, on the one hand, the interaction among capacity-building projects financed by different external financiers, and on the other, the role that central actors and brokers can play in the complex structure of interacting projects.
The European Union (EU) faces two parallel trends of growing polarization. Externally, ambitious climate action has become more contested and global power relations are shifting. Internally, European ...elections brought more Eurosceptics to Parliament, altering its political majorities and making it more difficult for mainstream parties to continue the European Parliament's (EP) long-standing policy positions such as ambitious climate policy. We analyze the impact of growing internal and external polarization trends on Members of European Parliament (MEPs) and political group's positions on EU foreign climate policy ambitions between 2009 and 2019. Using an original dataset of plenary debates, we find that the EP as a whole has remained surprisingly stable in its support of ambitious foreign climate policy. Yet, when looking at the qualitative details of MEPs' positions, we uncover significant variance in the ways in which MEPs from various political groups perceive the EU's global role over time.
Abstract
Trust in the chairs of global negotiations is a decisive factor facilitating successful outcomes. When negotiators trust the chair, they allow her to go beyond her formal procedural role by ...acting as a mediator, fostering the reaching of agreement. Negotiating parties must consent to a chair assuming substantive mediation functions. They cede parts of their control over the process to the chair when they are confident that the chair is competent and acts in good faith and everyone's interest. In this article, we develop a detailed conceptualization of trust in chairs of global negotiations and demonstrate its impact in two cases of United Nations negotiations that aimed to deliver a universal deal on climate change: the failed 2009 round in Copenhagen, and the 2015 round that culminated in the adoption of the Paris Agreement.
Policy‐makers are increasingly recognising that the promotion of more sustainable consumption patterns is an indispensable prerequisite for achieving sustainable development in the long term. Policy ...documents and action plans have been published, and a wide array of policy instruments has been implemented with the aim of reducing the environmental and social burdens of consuming goods and services. But what are the latest trends and innovative approaches in sustainable consumption (SC) policies? What could be learnt for future policy‐making? Based on an overview of European policy instruments and several case studies, the paper discusses instructive examples of SC policy instruments, in particular the Danish information campaign “One Tonne Less”, the Dutch tax incentive scheme “Green Funds”, the British “Red/Green calculator”, and the pan‐European internet platform “TopTen”. Important features of novel policies — such as adaptability and collective action — are identified, and recommendations for future policies are presented. The recommendations refer to the foundation of SC policies, to the specific approach taken, to the applied instruments, and to the proper documentation of the implemented policies.
This article provides an explanation for the adoption and partial abandonment of subnational regional greenhouse gas emissions trading systems on the United States’ East and West Coasts as well as ...the country's Midwest by focusing on gubernatorial entrepreneurship. The analysis is twofold: On the one hand, the article explores the motivations of governors to act as entrepreneurs, pushing for the adoption of the policy innovation ‘greenhouse gas emissions trading systems’. On the other, it examines the interaction between contextual factors and gubernatorial entrepreneurship, arguing that this can explain the adoption and abandonment of subnational regional greenhouse gas emissions trading systems. The analysis suggests that strong gubernatorial entrepreneurs can seize windows of opportunity for ambitious climate policy that are opened by a federal-state context in which the federal government is inactive, creating a regulatory void. In doing so, they take a risk due to the uncertainty of whether the policy will be (politically) successful. Since politicians often are risk averse, trying to avoid blame for policy failure, such proactive gubernatorial entrepreneurship requires strong motivations. With the increasing likelihood of imminent federal policy, additional governors can become active but their entrepreneurship tends to be weaker since they react to a different window of opportunity in which they take a lower risk than the strong gubernatorial entrepreneurs. Also their motivations tend to differ from those of the proactive gubernatorial entrepreneurs.
The European Union's (EU) Delegations and Offices that represent the Union in 144 countries have evolved into important satellites, implementing EU external relations. Their activities are manifold ...and are implemented in various ways. Building on substantive interview data, this article provides the first expansive mapping of EU climate diplomacy practices of EU Delegations and explains the surprising variance therein. It shows that the intensity and quality of contacts between individual Delegations and individual (parts of the) Brussels-based institutions - most importantly DG Climate Action - in combination with individual Delegation staff members' expertise and host country characteristics can explain the observed variation among EU Delegation activities. These factors can contribute to better understanding the nature of the EU as an international actor.
This article assesses the European External Action Service’s (EEAS’s) role in the evolution of EU climate diplomacy over the past decade and considers its future agenda. We distinguish between the ...EEAS headquarters and the EU Delegations/Offices in third countries. The EEAS headquarters has found a role as coordinator among the Council and Commission services as well as between ‘Brussels’ and the EU Delegations. What is more, the EU Delegations have engaged in various climate diplomacy activities and coordinate among Member State embassies. Despite its reliance on only a few staff members specialized in climate issues – both at the headquarters and Delegation level – the EEAS contributes to EU climate diplomacy formulation and implementation by providing a centralized venue for coherent geographic and thematic messaging and action.
European External Action Service, EEAS, climate diplomacy, EU Delegations
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