The systemic obstruction of climate change governance: The case of the Netherlands

Climate obstruction is often studied as the strategies and tactics that actors (such as fossil fuel companies, NGOs, and states) use to hamper climate action, such as lobbying, advertising, greenwashing, and so on. In this paper, we introduce the concept of systemic obstruction. Systemic obstruction refers to the often less visible, non-strategic or tactical ways of thinking and acting that are part of societies and cultures and are embedded in individuals, institutions, organisations and their relationships. To analyse and illustrate our understanding of systemic obstruction, we present three cases: 1. the case of Royal Dutch Shell and its historical legacy of association with the Dutch state. 2. The case of the Groningen gas field, which is jointly owned by Shell and Exxon and managed in close collaboration with and proximity to the Dutch state. 3. The case of the ‘Climate Assembly’ (2019) which was installed to discuss the new governmental climate policies to reduce GHG emissions, the major emitters were invited and joined. To deepen our understanding of the nested rigidities and constrains that hamper the implementation of climate change policies we use the concepts of path- inter- and goal dependencies to analyse these cases. We conclude that systemic obstruction, seen as the interplay between these three dependencies, can help us with an ongoing mapping of the evolution of systemic obstruction in any governance system, can help us to make visible the power relations and ideologies within governance that are often unnoticed and taken for granted, and provides us with a framework for deepening our understanding of more explicit and strategic forms of obstruction, which we believe can only be understood in relation to systemic obstruction.