From snapshot to unfolding process: Analysing the dynamics of policy backlash

Socio-political backlash to climate policy has become an increasing concern in recent years due to a sporadic but growing number of instances of strong negative reactions against climate and environmental policy. For example, backlash to policy action has occurred in Australia, France, Canada, Sweden, The Netherlands, and the United States, among others. Such experiences threaten efforts to advance ambitious climate action and realise societal transformations towards decarbonisation. But we still have limited understanding of why and how backlash to policy action occurs, especially as it is sometimes confounding (e.g., a seemingly small policy action might trigger backlash, whereas a larger one does not). Crucially, backlash is often treated – explicitly or implicitly – as a snapshot, rather than as an unfolding process involving complex political dynamics of generation and escalation. This limits our ability to explain why and how socio-political backlash occurs, and how it may be addressed. In this paper, I adopt a processual view of backlash, recognising it as more than just a static moment of opposition or pushback, and instead as a complex political phenomenon that plays out over a period of time involving a variety of spontaneous and strategic practices and processes of escalation within a particular social, economic, and political context. I comparatively analyse two prominent empirical cases of backlash to national climate policy action in Australia and Canada. I apply an analytical framework emphasising the central role of delegitimation of policy action in the generation and escalation of backlash. I examine an 8-year period in both cases to capture an extended timeframe spanning before, during, and after the backlash event/s in each case in order to analyse backlash as an unfolding process. I draw on a large systematic sample of media articles in each case (n=~1200 Australia, n= ~500 Canada) coded to identify important contextual features, attributes of policy debate, practices of (de)legitimation of policy action (i.e., argumentative, structural, behavioural), escalation of contention, and near-term policy effects. Findings reveal substantial temporal variation in the emergence, escalation, and dissipation of backlash, whereby backlash in the Australian case was more protracted than in the Canadian case. In both cases, a variety of delegitimation practices were mobilised by various actors, especially opportunistic political elites, in the generation of contention. However, escalation varied between the two cases, and was particularly pronounced in the Australian case through take up of grievance among audiences (both mass public and elite). Nonetheless, policy effects in both cases (e.g., policy repeal) were contingent on not only political behaviour but also institutions and subsequent coalitional struggles. Overall, tracing the temporal unfolding of backlash to policy action over an extended timeframe demonstrates the need to see backlash as a process rather than a snapshot. This helps to illuminate fractious post-adoption dynamics in contemporary climate and environmental policymaking, encouraging close attention to time and complex causation in context.