The National Politics of Climate Change

Abstract

Much has been written about the international politics of climate change, but rather less on the politics of climate change within nation states, especially in the wake of the global financial crisis and the failure of the Copenhagen COP to reach a meaningful agreement. Even within the EU, there are signs that differences among member states are increasing, both about the priority that should be assigned to climate change, and about the most politically and economically palatable strategies for action. National climate policies are bound up with diverse national situations with respect to resources, energy security and energy-intensive industries. Some of the sharpest domestic conflicts occur in resource-rich countries with energy-intensive industry (Australia, Canada, the US). Other resource-rich countries (e.g., Russia) appear more unambiguously wedded to extraction of fossil fuels despite local evidence of damaging climate change. Rapidly industrialising countries (e.g., China, India, South Africa), though concerned about the impacts of climate change, appear locked into energy-intensive industrialisation. Countries worst affected by economic crisis (e.g., Greece) appear incapable of responding to climate change, but many may be forced into energy-saving measures by economic circumstances. To explore this diversity of responses to climate change in the present and very recent past, it is proposed to bring together 4 or 5 papers on diverse cases to facilitate comparison. Papers on Australia, the US, Russia, China and one or more EU states will be actively solicited, but priority will be given to papers on the states where conflicts over climate policy are most overt and politically consequential (Australia and US?), and final selection will be made on the basis of the quality of the proposals and the state of readiness of papers. It is hoped that the papers will form the basis of a symposium in a major journal.

Title	Details
Treadmills, Modernisation, and the Crooked Path of US Climate Policy	View Paper Details
The Domestic Politics of Climate Policy Failure in Australia	View Paper Details
The Crisis of Climate Change and the Resurgence of Government Capacity	View Paper Details
Political and Economic Capacities in National Climate Policies - A Comparative Analysis of 25 EU Member States	View Paper Details
Diverse Discourses and Local Perceptions on Climate Change in Turkey	View Paper Details
The French Environmental Movement in the Era of Climate Change	View Paper Details
National Climate Politics and the demise of the Australian Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme: A Political Strategy Analysis	View Paper Details