Prisoners of the Wrong Dilemma: Why Distributive Conflict, Not Collective Action, Characterizes the Politics of Climate Change

Whereas scholars have typically modeled climate change as a global collective action challenge, we offer a dynamic theory of climate politics based on the present and future revaluation of assets. Climate politics can be understood as a contest between owners of assets that accelerate climate change, such as fossil fuel plants, and owners of assets vulnerable to climate change, such as coastal property. To date, obstruction by “climate-forcing” asset holders has been a large barrier to effective climate policy. But as climate change and decarbonization policies proceed, holders of both climate-forcing and “climate-vulnerable” assets stand to lose some or even all of their assets' value over time, and with them, the basis of their political power. This dynamic contest between opposing interests is likely to intensify in many sites of political contestation, from the subnational to transnational levels. As it does so, climate politics will become increasingly existential, potentially reshaping political alignments within and across countries. Such shifts may further undermine the Liberal International Order (LIO); as countries develop pro-climate policies at different speeds and magnitudes, they will have incentives to diverge from existing arrangements over trade and economic integration.

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“…Aklin and Mildenberger 2020 offer a similar argument to ours in this section. We developed our argument independently and perhaps simultaneously.…”

supporting

confidence: 74%

Asset Revaluation and the Existential Politics of Climate Change

Colgan¹,

Green²,

Hale³

2020

Int Org

149

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“…However, these also reflected the more diluted US federal vehicle emission standards of the Bush era. As observed by Aklin and Mildenberger (2020), this reflected the Harper government's expressed position that Canadian climate policy should not surpass US efforts.…”

Section: Comparing Flexible Low‐carbon Transport Regulations In California and Quebecmentioning

confidence: 72%

Climate and transportation policy sequencing in California and Quebec

Purdon

Witcover

Murphy

et al. 2021

Review of Policy Research

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We compare flexible low‐carbon regulations in the transportation sector and their interaction and sequencing with greenhouse gas emissions trading systems in California and Quebec. As momentum builds for greater climate action, it is necessary to better understand how carbon markets and other low‐carbon transportation policies influence one another. First, we demonstrate that emissions trading between California and Quebec has been asymmetric, with linking having little influence on carbon prices from California's perspective but leading to a considerable cost reduction from the point of view of Quebec. Second, we present evidence that Quebec has replicated many of California's low‐carbon transportation policies that promote increased electric vehicle use, where Quebec has an advantage, while deferring to the Canadian federal government with regard to policies that incentivize the production of other low‐carbon transportation fuels. Third, we demonstrate that while the stringency of the policy mix of carbon pricing and flexible transportation regulations has increased over time in both jurisdictions, the stringency of flexible regulations has been more aggressively ratcheted up and is expected to continue to dominate. Overall, our findings suggest that the policy sequence observed in California and Quebec can be attributed to the political economy benefits that the selected instruments confer to governments seeking to move from the middle towards the bottom of the clean technology experience curve. We discuss a number of important research questions and associated hypotheses emanating from our findings, which provide the basis for more in‐depth studies involving a larger universe of cases and economic sectors.

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“…In such a weakly institutionalized setup, national willingness to act was pushed to the center of attention (Keohane and Victor, 2016). Climate change has since moved from only being perceived as a global collective action problem towards a more domestic focus for its distributional effects on national economies (Aklin and Mildenberger, 2019;Beiser-McGrath and Bernauer, 2019;Falkner, 2016).…”

Section: The Relevance Of Individual Beliefs About Climate Actionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beliefs About Consequences from Climate Action Under Weak Climate Institutions: Sectors, Home Bias, and International Embeddedness

Bayer

Genovese

2020

Global Environmental Politics

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Climate policy has distributional effects, and ratcheting up climate ambition will only become politically feasible if the general public believes that their country can win from ambitious climate action. In this article, we develop a theory of belief formation that anchors distributional effects from climate action at the sector level. Specifically, we study how knowing about these impacts shapes public beliefs about collective economic consequences from climate policy—not only in a home country but also abroad. A nationally representative survey experiment in the United Kingdom demonstrates that respondents are biased toward their home country in assessing information about winning and losing sectors: while beliefs brighten for good news and worsen for bad news when the home country is involved, distributional effects from abroad are discounted for belief formation. We also show that feelings of “international embeddedness,” akin to globalization attitudes, make UK respondents consistently hold more positive beliefs that the country can benefit from ambitious climate action. Ruling out several alternative explanations, these results offer a first step toward a better understanding of how distributional effects in one issue area, such as globalization, can spill over to other issue areas, such as climate change.

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Prisoners of the Wrong Dilemma: Why Distributive Conflict, Not Collective Action, Characterizes the Politics of Climate Change

Cited by 17 publications

References 51 publications

Asset Revaluation and the Existential Politics of Climate Change

Asset Revaluation and the Existential Politics of Climate Change

Climate and transportation policy sequencing in California and Quebec

Beliefs About Consequences from Climate Action Under Weak Climate Institutions: Sectors, Home Bias, and International Embeddedness

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