Is it Only Interests That Matter? How Collaboration and Belief Conflict Affect Climate Policy Stringency

Variation in the stringency of national climate policies has been widely documented, yet explanations are typically developed within distinct analytical traditions. Structural conditions, institutional configurations, and societal beliefs have each been identified as relevant determinants, but they are seldom brought together within a common explanatory framework. In this paper, we integrate these perspectives by jointly considering macro-level interests, meso-level political networks, and micro-level beliefs of political actors. We propose that material interests related to resilience and abatement costs condition the scope for ambitious climate action, while the feasibility of realizing such ambition is shaped by the configuration of policy networks and the belief constellations of key actors. This framework is assessed through a qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) of 16 cases across 10 OECD and G20 democracies. Climate policy stringency is measured using the Climate Actions and Policies Measurement Framework (CAPMF), and original political network survey data are employed to calibrate four causal conditions: belief conflict among key actors, the level of actor involvement in national climate policy networks, change in countries’ resilience, and change in abatement costs. The preliminary results indicate that multiple causal pathways are associated with both stringent and weak policy outcomes. Decreasing resilience is identified as a necessary condition for the adoption of stringent policies, although it is not found to be sufficient. Low levels of belief conflict, and to a lesser extent high actor involvement, are associated with pathways leading to stringent climate policy, even in the presence of rising abatement costs. In contrast, weak climate policy is associated with configurations characterized by high belief conflict, low actor involvement, and increasing abatement costs. Thus, the results suggest that political network structures and belief alignment play a decisive role in determining whether structural incentives translate into ambitious climate action.