The changing relevance of policy ideas in the Irish climate change policy network

While some argue that ideas play second fiddle to interests or institutions in policymaking processes, many others contend that the primary reason that people engage in politics is to translate their beliefs into policy. We apply principal component analysis to survey data collected from the members of the Irish climate change policy network in 2013 and then again in summer 2021, to identify groups of policy ideas that subsets of policy actors tend to either co-support or co-reject. Our analysis of the 2014 data shows that i) support for policy ideas related to renewable energy and green jobs, and ii) opposition to nuclear energy, concerns about the cost and the security of the energy transition jointly explain 50% of the variance in respondents’ policy preferences. Our analysis of the data 2021 shows that i) policy ideas that are already enshrined in law, and ii) that are related to curtailing emissions from the agricultural sector jointly explain 55% of the variance in respondents’ policy preferences. The results for the analysis of the 2013 data are best understood by placing them in the context of Ireland’s post- financial crisis and economic crash economy, when jobs and growth where the main concerns of policy elites. The first component of the 2021 result can be explained by the changes that were made to The Climate Action and Low Carbon Development in 2021 to introduce a legally binding path to net-Zero emissions no later than 2050 and a 51% reduction in emissions by the end of this decade. The second component can be explained by the very contentious debate over the extent to which the Irish agricultural sector should be forced to reduce emissions, given that it is the largest share of Irish GHGs.