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

By M. Aklin, Johannes Urpelainen. 2013

237 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/041f6ad78dd4e9bf57fe5a7b52f5372328e42373

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Citations in the corpus

Valuing the Contributions of Nonstate and Subnational Actors to Climate Governance (2017, unknown): “Of course, when focusing on entrenchment processes, it is equally important to pay attention to counter-dynamics — when, for example, the targets of an intervention experience costs and organize against it (Aklin and Urpelainen 2013).”
Beliefs about Climate Beliefs: The Importance of Second-Order Opinions for Climate Politics (2017, background): “…Leiserowitz 2013 32Kahn and Kotchen 2011; Scruggs and Benegal 2012; Tvinnereim and Ivarsflaten 2016 33Dryzek 2013; Kahan 2015 34Wood and Vedlitz 2007; Aklin and Urpelainen 2013a; Linden et al. 2014 35Shamir and Shamir 1997; Todorov and Mandisodza 2004; Epley and Gilovich 2006; Leviston, Walker,…”
Institutions, Climate Change, and the Foundations of Long-Term Policymaking (2019, background): “…shaped by national policy styles (Andersen, 2019), the balance of political power between “green” (low carbon) and “brown” (carbon-intensive) sectors (Aklin & Urpelainen, 2013; Cheon & Urpelainen, 2013; Hughes & Urpelainen, 2015), veto points (Madden, 2014), and countries’ locations in…”
Partisan Politics: The Empirical Evidence from OECD Panel Studies (2017, unknown): “Aklin and Urpelainen (2013) examine whether leftwing governments pursue cleaner energy policies than rightwing governments.”
Varieties of capitalism and clean energy transitions in the European Union: When renewable energy hits different economic logics (2016, background): “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).”
The political logics of clean energy transitions (2018, background): “20 Pierson (2000); Levin et al. (2012); Aklin and Urpelainen (2013).”
Historical institutionalism and the politics of sustainable energy transitions: A research agenda (2017, background): “8 Aklin and Urpelainen (2013) argue that governments in such systems can deliberately over or under-invest in areas such as renewable energy because they are aware that successive governments may try to undo their policies.”