The Architecture of Climate Change Mitigation: Patterns and Consequences of Institutional Engineering

The Architecture of Climate Change Mitigation: Patterns and Consequences 

Climate change represents one of the greatest and most pressing challenges faced by our political systems, and humanity at large. Forecasts indicate that current reductions in emissions will not be rapid enough to meet objective goals, such as stopping global warming at two degrees above pre-industrial levels. In the social sciences, discussions as to how to improve climate change mitigation and adaptation (two sides of the same coin) have focused on three elements: (1) the different types of actors, (2) their wider institutional environments, and (3) the resulting interactions between the two in terms of outcomes and processes. This project contributes to all three elements. To do so, it proposes the first systematic and fully integrated measure of legal authority on climate-related issues. This measure is unprecedented in that it captures variation on who is formally responsible for what at the five main territorial scales of government, from the local to the international. It is comprehensive in that it encompasses the five main policy domains responsible for greenhouse gas emissions in the EU. It is nuanced in that it breaks down legal authority over five phases of the policy cycle, from policy initiation to implementation. It is ambitious in that it measures and codifies such legal authority on these three dimensions (scales, domains, phases) for 31 European countries and over time (1950-2018). Finally, it is feasible, as it builds on a pilot study which has demonstrated the viability of its coding scheme. Such new and original data allow CLIM-ARCH to assess two critical questions. First, what patterns can be detected in the institutional architecture of climate change mitigation? Second, what are the consequences of varying mixes of institutional arrangements for (a) policy outputs and outcomes and (b) perceptions and attitudes?

Michaël Roberet Tatham is Professor at the Department of Comparative Politics at UiB, and co-editor of the journal Regional and Federal Studies, and the Palgrave Macmillan book series on Comparative Territorial Politics. His research has mainly focused on European Union studies, Public Policy/Public Administration, and Territorial Politics. 

All interested are welcome!

Lunch will be served, so please let us know if you are coming by sending an e-mail to johan.elfving@uib.no