Political Competition, Path Dependence, and the Strategy of Sustainable Energy Transitions

Abstract

Previous research emphasizes the importance of path dependence for sustainable energy transitions, but their strategic nature is frequently overlooked. We examine formally how exogenous shocks, such as changes in international energy prices, interact with positive reinforcement factors, such as the growing strength of the renewables advocacy coalition. We find that political competition modifies the effect of path dependence on policy and outcomes. Specifically, while "green" governments can use positive reinforcement mechanisms to lock in policy commitments (by creating green constituencies), "brown" governments strategically underprovide public support for renewable energy (to avoid creating green constituencies). The effect of positive reinforcement also decreases with international energy prices. Our empirical analysis shows that (1) political competition conditions the policy response to exogenous shocks and market failures, while (2) governments strategically exploit path dependence for political gain.

Varieties of capitalism and clean energy transitions in the European Union: When renewable energy hits different economic logics

“…The literature emphasizes the role of country-specific political variables (Aklin & Urpelainen, 2013;Yi & Feiock, 2014) and of socio-technological factors (Park, 2015;Schaffer & Bernauer, 2014;Simmie, Sternberg, & Carpenter, 2014). Overall, the literature suggests that stable and comprehensive policy frameworks, cross-sectoral coordination, and close but transparent state-industry relations together with target education and research, demonstration and development (RD&D) programmes constitute factors that generate sustainable renewable energy development (Lipp, 2007;Negro, Alkemade, & Hekkert, 2012).…”

Facilitadores institucionales y sociales para la gobernanza local de los riesgos medioambientales. Análisis empírico con municipios chilenos

“…La literatura de la democracia de consenso y la descentralización (por ejemplo, Andersson y Van Laerhoven, 2007;Aklin et al, 2013;Freitag, 2006;Pasquini y Shearing, 2014) propone relaciones entre incentivos políticos y decisiones. Los alcaldes con base electoral y posiciones fuertes en el gobierno municipal, pero sin motivación por asuntos medioambientales, no destinan esfuerzos ni recursos para la GMRRD.…”

It Is All about Political Incentives: Democracy and the Renewable Feed-in Tariff

“…The wind energy lobby, both in Germany and Denmark for example, have grown to be politically influential players (Michaelowa, 2005;Vasi, 2011). As Aklin and Urpelainen (2013) show, democratic governments benefit from strategically using renewable energy policy to create constituencies with a strong interest in the political survival of the incumbent government. Specifically, they find that governments in industrialized democracies carefully manage the creation of new constituencies to expand their support coalition.…”

“…To show the robustness of our findings and following Marshall, Jaggers, and Gurr (2010), we code another democratization dummy variable to be 1 if a country's Polity IV score changes from 5 or less in t−5 to 6 or larger in year t. We also create a binary indicator coded 1 for each countryyear when a left-wing government is in power. Previous studies suggest that, in democratic countries, left-wing governments are often more favorable to environmental policy (Neumayer, 2003;Aklin and Urpelainen, 2013). The data come from the World Bank's Database of Political Institutions and allow us to test the effect of party ideology on FIT adoption.…”

“…Finally, we offer insights into the development of renewable energy policy. While the issue has been studied extensively in previous works (Lipp, 2007;Mendonça, 2007;Aklin and Urpelainen, 2013), ours is the first political analysis of a potent political instrument on a global scale.…”