Governance And Coalitions in Energy Politics: Lessons from Latin America to Phase Out Fossil Fuels in Low- And Middle-Income Countries

Achieving the Paris Agreement’s temperature objective requires leaving fossil fuels underground (LFFU), stranding resources, assets, and labour. This challenge is acute for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) that are socioeconomically dependent on fossil fuels, raising justice issues linked to North-South relations and the Right to Development. While domestic disputes over transition pathways intensify, the energy politics of supply-side climate policy in LMICs remain underexplored. Building on institutional analysis and neo-Gramscian political economy of energy transitions, this paper asks: What are the dynamics of energy politics in fossil fuel supply in the Global South, and which actor coalitions can shape policy pathways for phasing out fossil fuels nationally and internationally? Through policy analysis and semi-structured interviews, it examines three Latin American disputes: Argentina’s unconventional gas expansion, Brazil’s offshore exploration near the Amazon, and Colombia’s pledge to halt exploration. The analysis shows how energy coalitions deploy material, institutional, and discursive power to advance competing transition frames, revealing tensions within both incumbent and alternative coalitions. It finds that, under certain political and institutional conditions, Southern governments can advance LFFU policy, though such efforts face strong backlash and reform paralysis, making domestic legitimation crucial. Finally, transformative meta-coalitions, comprising social movements, civil society, leaders and actors within the State contest fossil expansion by reshaping key governance instruments and embedding broader understandings of just transitions. These struggles structure future debates yet remain open-ended: only by grounding them in Global South’s material realities can political trajectories be opened that ultimately end fossil capital hegemony.