Changing Carbon Coalitions – The Politics of the Climate Welfare State in the EU

The transition to a carbon-neutral economy has massive distributive consequences, leading to opposition to crucial climate policy among negatively affected groups. In the European Union (EU), policy-makers increasingly call for and adopt policies that take into account the welfare dimension of climate policy. ‘Climate welfare policy’ aims to address social risks stemming from the transition without holding up the transition itself. This paper makes three contributions to the growing literature on the interface of climate and welfare. First, I offer a conceptualization of (distributive) climate welfare policies, based on which sector (carbon-intensive versus carbon-neutral) and which agent (corporates or individuals) the policy addresses. Second, I propose an analytical framework for the politics of climate welfare policies, paying in particular attention to the role of public opinion and presenting different possible coalitions of political actors that lead to different policy outcomes. Third, I explore my arguments with empirical evidence from a comparative case study of the implementation of the EU Just Transition Mechanism in two extremely carbon-intensive regions in the Netherlands. Overall, the paper contributes to our understanding of the conditions under which governments invest in the long-term.