Environmental Politics and Policy

Environmental themes are relevant to an increasing number of political research clusters, including (but not limited to) those specialising in public policy, parties and elections, global governance, social movements, and political theory. The overarching aim of this Section is for all Panels to draw together conceptual expertise and rigorous empirical analysis in order to explore, challenge and re-configure theories surrounding environmental problems, both new and old. This Section aims to run eight Panels focusing on current issues in and approaches to environmental politics and policy. We expect to attract a diverse range of Panels from scholars across our Standing Group and the wider political science community. We will call for Panels that reflect both the more established core interests in the study of environmental politics and more recent or emerging areas of academic enquiry. Core topics include green political theory; green parties; environmental protest and civil society; environmental policy and regulation; sustainable development; the interface between environmental science and public policy; global environmental governance, energy policy/politics. Emerging topics include areas such as: climate change politics in a changing international political climate; governance of biodiversity and extinction; theorizing the Anthropocene, eco-political innovations in everyday life, green citizenship and consumerism; and methodologies and pedagogies in environmental politics. For Oslo 2017, we especially encourage Panels that propose innovative designs for encouraging interaction between presenters – as well as between presenters and the audience. This could include round-tables, debates, and shorter Papers with carefully-selected discussants and more time for facilitated discussion. To date, we have had several expressions of interest with regard to Panel proposals, for example: 1. Climate politics meets gender politics: a round-table discussion; Chair: Annica Kronsell (Lund University) 2. Global climate change politics after Brexit/with Trump: a round-table discussion; Chair: Matthew Paterson (University of Manchester) 3. Scaling up everyday environmental activism for broad social change; Chair: Joost de Moor (Keele University) 4. Social innovations of green activists on- and offline: The rising role of web-media and produsage; Chair: Mundo Yang (Universität Siegen) 5. Comparative and cross-national research on politics of green consumerism. Chair: Carolin Zorell (University of Mannheim). The ECPR Environmental Politics Standing Group has over 250 members and its Sections have been vibrant and over-subscribed at all ten of the ECPR General Conferences to date. At the 2016 Prague conference, 37 papers were run between nine Panels, producing a series of high-quality discussions on subjects ranging from democracy and climate change to energy policy to biofuels governance to shale gas controversies. We also ran three very successful workshops at the 2016 Joint Sessions in Pisa. We expect an Environmental Politics Section at Oslo in 2017 to be similarly popular and stimulating. ECPR Environmental Politics Standing Group Convenors: Dr Sherilyn MacGregor (University of Manchester, UK) Prof Brian Doherty (Keele University, UK) Dr Hannes Stephan (University of Stirling, UK)