Political Spaces of Climate Change Governance: Towards a Theoretical Model of Agendas, Arenas and Discursive Contestation

As climate change has increased in salience through the proclamation of Green Deal agendas, two major trends are discernible that affect its political framing and contestation. One is a dynamic broadly captured by the concept of politicization, defined as an increased scope and contentiousness of controversy on climate change (Homeyer et al. 2022). Another is an increased variability of agendas and discursive framings, addressed in the workshop outline by reference to policy integration of climate targets beyond the environmental field. This trend is reinforced more recently through exogenous shocks such as the Covid pandemic, the war in Ukraine and scope conditions described as turbulence (Dupont/Torney 2021). Against this background, a major task for extant research is to investigate how decision-making by agents and institutional settings with different legacies of policy stability (Paterson et al. 2022) – observed as a drastic contrast in comparison between the EU and US – respond to the expanding and more variable politics of climate change. The paper seeks to promote ongoing research on the link between the politics and policy-making on climate change by presenting a theoretical framework centered on the concept of political space. This term is harnessed to relate three components of climate governance that include aspects of space and dimensionality: namely, the scope and framing of political agendas proposed to deal with the climate crisis; the format and stability of institutional venues that are selected as relevant for negotiating policy issues; and the discursive depth and logic of controversies evolving from these issues between involved policy-making agents and coalitions. In its empirical part, the paper will demonstrate the utility of this framework for synergizing and promoting further research by presenting a comparison between the promotion of ‘green’ recovery packages from the Covid-19 crisis in the EU and US, with the latter focused on the controversial passing of legislation promoted by the Biden administration. This comparison builds on previous research by the author (Wendler 2022) but includes further review of legislative documents and field research carried out for the EP and both chambers of US Congress. In conclusion, the paper will add to emerging theoretical work on the politics of climate change (Paterson 2021), while integrating key insights of the extended literature on mainstreaming and policy integration of climate action into related fields. References Dupont, Claire, und Diarmuid Torney. 2021. „European Union Climate Governance and the European Green Deal in Turbulent Times“. Politics and Governance 9 (3): 312–15. https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.v9i3.4896. Homeyer, Ingmar von, Sebastian Oberthür, und Andrew J. Jordan. 2021. „EU climate and energy governance in times of crisis: towards a new agenda“. Journal of European Public Policy 28 (7): 959–79. https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2021.1918221. Paterson, Matthew. 2021. In Search of Climate Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Paterson, Matthew, Paul Tobin, und Stacy D. VanDeveer. 2022. „Climate Governance Antagonisms: Policy Stability and Repoliticization“. Global Environmental Politics, https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_a_00647. Wendler, Frank. 2022. Framing Climate Change in the EU and US Since the Paris Agreement. Basingstoke [u.a.]: Palgrave Macmillan.