Constructing a ‘Representative Claim’ for Action on Climate Change: Evidence from Interviews with Politicians

Abstract

At the 2015 Paris Summit, global leaders agreed a strategy to tackle climate change. Under the agreement, each country must prepare a national plan. What challenges does this pose for politicians? How do they reconcile their representative role with understandings of climate change and measures required to address it? This article analyses interviews with UK politicians, through the framework of the 'representative claim' developed by Michael Saward, seeing representation as a dynamic interaction between politicians and those they claim to represent. Thus, politicians need to construct a 'representative claim' to justify action on climate. Four different types of claims are identified: a 'cosmopolitan' claim, a 'local prevention' claim, a 'co-benefits' claim and a 'surrogate' claim. The analysis shows that it is not straightforward for a politician to argue that action is in the interests of their electorate and that climate advocates need to support efforts to construct and defend claims.

Motivating Society-wide Pro-environmental Change

“…1 Because decision makers (e.g., political leaders and managers) often have to represent their group, their decisions and actions are likely to be guided by the values they perceive to be prioritized within their group, particularly when their evaluation or re-election depends on it. 14 Underestimations of group members' biospheric values could therefore explain why political leaders often appear hesitant to take pro-environmental actions, unless such actions are explicitly demanded by the public, as was the case for the plastic-reduction policy in the UK, for example.…”

Can citizen pressure influence politicians’ communication about climate change? Results from a field experiment

“…MPs may think of their representative role as "promissory" (fulfilling election promises), "anticipatory" (attempting to please future voters), "gyroscopic" (acting as a trustee with internal motivations), or "surrogate" (representing nonconstituents) (Mansbridge 2003). Because climate legislation creates benefits that are spread across the globe and across generations, but concentrates costs, elected officials may struggle to act in promissory or anticipatory fashion while supporting ambitious climate legislation (Willis 2018). How Canadian MPs view their role as representatives can therefore be critical to how they legislate on climate change.…”

“…Such misperceptions have also proven difficult to correct, as officials are unwilling to revise their estimates of constituent preference even in the face of strong public polling data (Kalla and Porter 2019). In the UK, research suggests that silence from constituents on climate change discourages Members of Parliament from acting on climate change, since they do not believe that doing so would be representing the needs of their electorate (Willis 2018). As there is broad evidence that citizen concern for climate change is partially driven by cues from elites (Brulle et al 2012;Carmichael and Brulle 2017;Merkley and Stecula 2020;Rinscheid et al 2020), there is value in either group jumpstarting a feedback loop where increased expressions of concern by elites or the public amplify concern and action in the other group.…”

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