Developing climate policy in ‘old’ sectors – Explaining the dynamics of policy change and early phase climate policy development in the Norwegian agricultural sector

Public policy research has traditionally assumed that policymaking happens within specialized policy communities, such as policy sectors. Climate change emerging as a cross-sectoral issue emphasizes how new actors and interests are increasingly participating in policy making in new policy areas. The wicked nature of the climate challenge, combined with its urgency, complexity and contentiousness, necessitates comprehensive and integrated efforts across all policy sectors. This implies that policy areas and sectors that have previously been left untouched, such as agriculture, also need to radically cut emissions. This paper investigates how early-stage climate policy development occurs in new sectors, by using the climate agreement between the agrarian interest organizations and the Norwegian state from June 2019 as a case. Historical institutionalism largely assumes that policy tends to persist on specific trajectories explained through path dependency, unless there is a major shock or critical juncture. Even so, the defining characteristics of critical junctures and path dependency remains unclear and disputed. This paper contributes to clarifying these concepts and provides a detailed conceptualization of how critical junctures and path dependency could be understood within sectoral policy. By conducting a process tracing of the climate agreement and investigating how it came about, the paper contributes to conceptualizing how early phase climate policy development occurs. Specifically focusing on how critical junctures and path dependency can be understood in sectoral policy.