Virtual Panel: Political Economy of Environmental Policy

Abstract

This panel approaches environmental governance as a political economy problem. Its papers ask who is held responsible for acting on environmental problems and who accepts that responsibility; how states exercise regulatory power over firms when conventional enforcement is slow, costly, or politically constrained; and how the structure of the state itself, its administrative institutions, its fiscal condition, and the distribution of authority across levels of government, shapes what environmental policy actually achieves. The panel combines survey research on politicians and citizens, cross-national quantitative analysis, and case-based work grounded in elite interviews and administrative records. Its cases run from British climate politics to reputational regulation of corporations, to comparative evidence on decentralisation, to environmental governance under prolonged austerity. What holds them together is a shared scepticism towards explanations that stop at policy design or public opinion, and a shared interest in the institutional conditions that determine whether ambition has consequences. The panel should interest scholars of environmental politics, regulation, public administration, and comparative political economy.

Title	Details
Taking Responsibility: is There a Climate ‘Governance Trap’ in the UK and Does it Matter?	View Paper Details
Regulatory Shaming and the Climate Crisis	View Paper Details
Economic Crisis and Environmental Governance Under Austerity: Evidence from Greece, 2010–2022	View Paper Details
The Bureaucratic Politics of Environmental Decentralisation Outcomes	View Paper Details