The political sustainability of climate policy: The case of the UK Climate Change Act §

By M. Lockwood. 2013

245 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper assesses the forces working for and against the political sustainability of the UK 2008 Climate Change Act. The adoption of the Act is seen as a landmark commitment to action on climate change, but its implementation has not been studied in any depth. Recent events, including disagreements over the fourth carbon budget and the decarbonisation of the electricity sector, shows that while the Act might appear to lock in a commitment to reducing emissions through legal means, this does not guarantee political lock-in. The assumption, made by some proponents of the Act, that accountability of political leaders to a public concerned about climate change, via Parliament, would provide the main political underpinning to the Act is criticised. An analysis of alternative sources of political durability is presented, drawing on a framework for understanding the sustainability of reform developed by Patashnik. It is argued that the Act has helped create major institutional transformations, although the degree to which new institutions have displaced the power of existing ones is limited. The Act has produced some policy feedback effects, especially in the business community, and some limited investment effects, but both have been insufficient to withstand destabilisation by recent party political conflicts. The Climate Change Act remains at risk.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/af02c9ca1bdaa12ac75852146e2f1e274d11207d

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Citations in the corpus

Creative Destruction or Mere Niche Creation? Innovation Policy Mixes for Sustainability Transitions (2016, unknown): “This is an open access article u Magro and Wilson, 2013; Quitzow, 2015) as well as policy makers from the European Commission (Nauwelaers et al., 2009).”
Why are policy innovations rare and so often negative? Blame avoidance and problem denial in climate change policy-making (2014, unknown): “The record of both innovations and failures to innovate in the sector raises a host of questions about which variables have caused many climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts to succeed or fail and why this has happened (Compston and Bailey, 2012; Lockwood, 2013).”
Historical institutionalism and the politics of sustainable energy transitions: A research agenda (2017, background): “For example, the recommendation of the Committee on Climate Change for the fourth carbon budget was overshadowed in 2011 by political interventions on grounds of cost (Lockwood 2013).”
Path dependence, innovation and the economics of climate change (2014, background): “Clean technologies give rise to new industrial lobbies and constituencies, which, for better or worse, can help drive green policies and give rise to new regulatory institutions (Lockwood, 2013).”