Middle-income climate frontrunners: Chile and Morocco cases

Aside from international coordination, domestic climate policies are central to curbing global warming. Research has analyzed climate change policy successes and failures in high-income countries, finding that political institutions, socioeconomic structures, and political processes shape climate action. As a result, a rich literature on climate change politics has explained how Western democratic countries have become climate leaders or laggards. However, research on climate change politics has overlooked middle-income countries' performance. As leading nations of this kind, Chile and Morocco's climate action stands out. They have enacted significant policies to develop renewable energy (RE) sources and have tried to stimulate the generation of RE electricity for agriculture and mining activities. Price-based mitigation instruments like the carbon tax in Chile and phasing-out subsidies for fossil fuels in Morocco are part of their climate action. This paper seeks to identify the structural factors and political processes behind Chile and Morocco's performance. I argue that, first, an exceptional lack of fossil fuel resources and dependence on imports has encouraged RE transformation. Second, the institutional evolution in both countries has enabled climate action. Further, political actors’ decisions to act by promoting public-private partnerships and strengthening inter-governmental collaboration have determined the climate change policymaking outcomes. The paper thus uses a study of the cases of Chile and Morocco to speak to the thus-far small literature on the politics of climate policymaking in middle-income countries. It draws on previous literature on climate change politics and methodologically relies on a comparative case study based on documentary analysis.