Political economy in anthropology is the application of the theories and methods of historical materialism to the traditional concerns of anthropology,
including but not limited to non-capitalist societies. Political
economy introduced questions of history and colonialism to ahistorical
anthropological theories of social structure and culture. Most
anthropologists moved away from modes of production analysis typical of
structural Marxism, and focused instead on the complex historical
relations of class, culture and hegemony in regions undergoing complex
colonial and capitalist transitions in the emerging world system.
Political economy was introduced in American anthropology primarily through the support of Julian Steward, a student of Kroeber. Steward's research interests centered on “subsistence”
— the dynamic interaction of man, environment, technology, social
structure, and the organization of work. This emphasis on subsistence
and production - as opposed to exchange - is what distinguishes the
political economy approach. Steward's most theoretically productive
years were from 1946 to 1953, while teaching at Columbia University. At this time, Columbia saw an influx of World War IIveterans who were attending school thanks to the GI Bill.
Steward quickly developed a coterie of students who would go on to
develop Political Economy as a distinct approach in anthropology,
including Sidney Mintz, Eric Wolf, Eleanor Leacock, Roy Rappaport, Stanley Diamond, Robert Manners, Morton Fried, Robert F. Murphy, and influenced other scholars such as Elman Service, Marvin Harris
and June Nash. Many of these students participated in the Puerto Rico
Project, a large-scale group research study that focused on
modernization in Puerto Rico.
Three main areas of interest rapidly developed. The first of
these areas was concerned with the "pre-capitalist" societies that were
subject to evolutionary "tribal" stereotypes. Sahlins' work on
hunter-gatherers as the "original affluent society" did much to
dissipate that image. The second area was concerned with the vast
majority of the world's population at the time, the peasantry, many of
whom were involved in complex revolutionary wars such as in Vietnam. The
third area was on colonialism, imperialism, and the creation of the
capitalist world-system.
More recently, these political economists have more directly
addressed issues of industrial (and post-industrial) capitalism around
the world.
Cultural materialism is a research orientation introduced by Marvin Harris in 1968 (The Rise of Anthropological Theory), as a theoretical paradigm and research strategy. Indeed, it is said to be the most enduring achievement of that work. Harris subsequently developed a defense of the paradigm in his 1979 book Cultural Materialism.
To Harris, cultural materialism "is based on the simple premise that
human social life is a response to the practical problems of earthly
existence".
Harris' approach was influenced by but distinct from Marx.
Harris' method was to demonstrate how particular cultural practices
(like the Hindu prohibition on harming cattle) served a materialistic
function (such as preserving an essential source of fertilizer from
being consumed).
Economic behavior has a cultural side which indicates that the
works of anthropologists is relevant to economics. The Motivation behind
cultural materialism is mainly to show that cultures adapt to the
environment they're produced in.
Structural Marxism was an approach to Marxist philosophy based on structuralism, primarily associated with the work of the French philosopher Louis Althusser
and his students. It was influential in France during the 1960s and
1970s, and also came to influence philosophers, political theorists and
anthropologists outside France during the 1970s. French structuralist
Marxism melded Marxist political economy with Levi-Strauss's structural
methodology, eliminating the human subject, dialectical reason and
history in the process. Structural Marxists introduced two major
concepts, mode of production and social formation, that allowed for a
more prolonged and uneven transition to capitalism than either
dependency or World systems theory allowed for. A mode of production consisting of producers, non-producers and means of production,
combined in a variety of ways, formed the deep structure of a "social
formation." A social formation combined (or "articulated") several modes
of production, only one of which was dominant or determinant. Primary
anthropological theorists of this school included Maurice Godelier, Claude Meillassoux, Emmanuel Terray and Pierre-Philippe Rey. Structural Marxism arose in opposition to the humanistic Marxism
that dominated many western universities during the 1970s. In contrast
to Humanistic Marxism, Althusser stressed that Marxism was a science that examined objective structures.
Cultural materialism
Critical influences on Structural Marxism, primarily from the British Marxist historical tradition, included E.P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm and Raymond Williams.
They criticized the functionalist emphasis in Structural Marxism, that
neglected individuals in favour of the structural elements of their
model. The British school was more interested in class, culture and
politics, and placed human subjects at the centre of analysis. Where
mode of production analysis was abstract, they focused on people. Where
world-systems theory had little to say about the local, the Cultural
Materialists began and ended there. Others connected with this school of
thought concentrated on issues such as ethnic formation, labor
migration, remittances, household formation, food production and the
processes of colonialism.
As anthropologists embraced "mode of production" analysis in the
1950s, they struggled to adapt its evolutionary model to the groups that
they had traditionally worked with. While Marxist analysis was
developed to account for capitalist society and its class dynamics, it
had little to say about "pre-capitalist" societies, other than to define
them by what they were not. One of the first attempts to theorize Hunter-gatherer society was Marshall SahlinsStone Age Economics
(1972) which overturned nineteenth century ideas that characterized
life in such societies as "nasty, brutish and short". Sahlins
demonstrated that actual existing hunter-gatherers lived in "the
original affluent society"; their needs were met with relatively little
work leaving them with far more leisure time than western industrial
societies. Richard B. Lee's work amongst the Dobe !Kung of Botswana provided a detailed case study of the argument, even in one of the most hostile desert environments.
The second part of Sahlins' book applies Chayanov's theories to develop
a theory of a "Domestic mode of production." Given the argument of the
"original affluent society" that many of these societies had abundant
resources, Sahlins argued that the limit on production was the amount of
labour available. Young families with many dependent children had to
work harder, whereas older families with mature children and many
workers worked much less. The final sections developed a theory of reciprocity discussed above.
An alternate model of the Domestic Mode of Production was
developed by Eric Wolf, who rejected the evolutionary implications of
Sahlins' model and argued that this mode of production should be viewed
as the product of developing colonial trade relations.
Several collections addressing the question of mode of production
analysis in classless societies came out in this period, including "The Anthropology of Pre-Capitalist Societies" and "Marxist Analysis and Social Anthropology".
Political economists such as Morton Fried, Elman Service, and Eleanor Leacock
took a Marxist approach and sought to understand the origins and
development of inequality in human society. Marx and Engels had drawn on
the ethnographic work of Lewis H. Morgan,
and these authors now extended that tradition. In particular, they were
interested in the evolution of social systems over time.
Colonialism and imperialism
Articulated modes of production
The
articulation of modes of production within a single formation was meant
to account for the influence of colonialism on lineage modes of
production, primarily in the African context. According to Hann and
Hart, the short lived success of the theory was that
it produced a version of structural-functionalism at once
sufficiently different from the original to persuade English-speakers
that they were learning Marxism and similar enough to allow them to
retain their customary way of thinking, which had been temporarily
discredited by its role in the administration of empire.
Dependency Theory arose as a theory in Latin America in reaction to modernization theory.
It argues that resources flow from a "periphery" of poor and
underdeveloped states to a "core" of wealthy states, enriching the
latter at the expense of the former. It is a central contention of
dependency theory that poor states are impoverished and rich ones
enriched by the way poor states are integrated into the "World-system"
and hence poor countries will not follow Rostow's predicted path of
modernization. Dependency Theory rejected Rostow's view, arguing that
underdeveloped countries are not merely primitive versions of developed
countries, but have unique features and structures
of their own; and, importantly, are in the situation of being the
weaker members in a world market economy and hence unable to change the
system.
Immanuel Wallerstein's "world-systems theory" was the version of
Dependency Theory that most North American anthropologists engaged with.
His theories are similar to Dependency Theory, although he placed more
emphasis on the system as system, and focused on the developments of the
core rather than periphery. Wallerstein also provided an historical
account of the development of capitalism which had been missing from
Dependency Theory.
Both versions of Dependency Theory were critiqued throughout the
1970s for the static historical accounts they provided. Their influence
was slowly replaced by more dynamic and historically sensitive versions,
such as Eric Wolf's "Europe and the People Without History."
Eric Wolf and Europe and the people without history
"Europe and the people without history" is history written on a
global scale, tracing the connections between communities, regions,
peoples and nations that are usually treated as discrete subjects.
The book begins in 1400 with a description of the trade routes a world
traveller might have encountered, the people and societies they
connected, and the civilizational processes trying to incorporate them.
From this, Wolf traces the emergence of Europe as a global power, and
the reorganization of particular world regions for the production of
goods now meant for global consumption. Wolf differs from World Systems
theory in that he sees the growth of Europe until the late eighteenth
century operating in a tributary framework, and not capitalism. He
examines the way that colonial state structures were created to protect
tributary populations involved in the silver, fur and slave trades.
Whole new "tribes" were created as they were incorporated into circuits
of mercantile accumulation. The final section of the book deals with the
transformation in these global networks as a result of the growth of
capitalism with the industrial revolution. Factory production of
textiles in England, for example transformed cotton production in the
American South and Egypt, and eliminated textile production in India.
All these transformations are connected in a single structural change.
Each of the world's regions are examined in terms of the goods they
produced in the global division of labour, as well as the mobilization
and migration of whole populations (such as African slaves) to produce
these goods. Wolf uses labor market segmentation to provide a historical account of the creation of ethnic segmentation.
Where World Systems theory had little to say about the periphery,
Wolf's emphasis is on the people "without history" (i.e. not given a
voice in western histories) and on how they were active participants in
the creation of new cultural and social forms emerging in the context of
commercial empire.
Wolf distinguishes between three modes of production: capitalist,
kin-ordered, and tributary. Wolf does not view them as an evolutionary
sequence. He begins with capitalism because he argues our understanding
of kin-ordered and tributary modes is coloured by our understanding of
capitalism. He argues they are not evolutionary precursors of
capitalism, but the product of the encounter between the West and the
Rest. In the tributary mode, direct producers possess their own means of
production, but their surplus production is taken from them through
extra economic means. This appropriation is usually by some form of
strong or weak state.
In the kin-ordered mode of production, social labour is mobilized
through kin relations (such as lineages), although his description makes
its exact relations with tributary and capitalist modes unclear. The
kin mode was further theorized by French structuralist Marxists in terms
of 'articulated modes of production.' The kin-ordered mode is distinct
again from Sahlins' formulation of the domestic mode of production.
Unfree labour and slavery
Liberal
and neo-liberal market-based societies are predicated upon the concept
of "free labour" - workers enter a labour market freely, and enter into
contractual relations with employers voluntarily. "Unfree labour" -
otherwise known as bond labour, debt bondage, debt peonage, and slavery,
are thought to be archaic forms that will be eliminated with capitalist
development. Anthropologists working in a wide variety of current
situations have documented that the incidence of bonded labour is much
greater than capitalist ideology would lead us to expect.
Tom Brass argues that unfree labour is not an archaic holdover in
today's world, but an active process of deproletarianization of
agricultural workers to provide rural agrarian capitalists with cheaper
labour. In the constant drive to cheapen the cost of agricultural
labour, debt bondage is used to tie workers to specific employers, lower
their wages, and extract further unpaid labour from them. He
illustrates this process at work in Peru and India.
An early study of debt bondage was Ann Laura Stoler's Capitalism and Confrontation in Sumatra's Plantation Belt, 1870-1979
(1985). Stoler examined the tobacco plantations of the Deli
Maatschappij, one of the most profitable Dutch colonial corporations of
the 19th century. The Deli company imported large numbers of Chinese
indentured labourers to Sumatra, Indonesia,
where they were treated not as employees, but as contractors. As
contractors they had to buy all their supplies at inflated prices from
the company, take all the risks of cultivation and processing, and
finally sell their tobacco to the company at prices it set. They were
kept in perpetual debt, unable to change employers, in working
conditions that resulted in extraordinarily high death rates.
Jan Breman extended this analysis of the "Coolie regulation" (which
allowed for indentured labour) to the Dutch mining industry in the Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia).
Slavery is but one form of unfree (or bound) labour. Structural
Marxists sought to theorize it as a mode of production. Claude
Meillassoux has refined this approach in his study of pre-colonial
African slavery. He analyzed the military and aristocratic systems that
organized the capture of slaves and situated it within the politics of
the merchants who organized the trade in slaves. His work focuses on the
forces at play within a kinship organized polity that define slaves
culturally as "anti-kin."
Peasant studies and agrarian change
"Differentiation of the Peasantry": Lenin vs Chayanov
Simple commodity production (also known as "petty commodity production") is a term coined by Frederick Engels to describe productive activities under the conditions of what Marx had called the "simple exchange" of commodities,
where independent producers such as peasants trade their own products.
The use of the word "simple" does not refer to the nature of the
producers or of their production, but to the relatively simple and
straightforward exchange processes involved. Simple commodity production
is compatible with many different relations of production, ranging from self-employment where the producer owns his means of production, and family labour, to forms of slavery, peonage, indentured labour, and serfdom.
Michael Taussig, for example, examined the reactions of peasant
farmers in Colombia as they struggled to understand how money could make
interest. Taussig highlights that we have fetishized
money. We view money as an active agent, capable of doing things, of
growth. In viewing money as an active agent, we obscure the social
relationships that actually give money its power. The Colombian
peasants, seeking to explain how money could bear interest, turned to
folk beliefs like the "baptism of money" to explain how money could
grow. Dishonest individuals would have money baptized, which would then
become an active agent; whenever used to buy goods, it would escape the
till and return to its owner.
The concept of a moral economy was first elaborated by English historian E.P. Thompson,
and was developed further in anthropological studies of other peasant
economies. Thompson wrote of the moral economy of the poor in the
context of widespread food riots in the English countryside in the late
eighteenth century. According to Thompson these riots were generally
peaceable acts that demonstrated a common political culture rooted in
feudal rights to “set the price” of essential goods in the market. These
peasants held that a traditional “fair price” was more important to the
community than a “free” market price and they punished large farmers
who sold their surpluses at higher prices outside the village while
there were still those in need within the village. The notion of a
non-capitalist cultural mentalité using the market for its own ends has
been linked by others (with Thompson's approval) to subsistence
agriculture and the need for subsistence insurance in hard times.
The concept was widely popularized in anthropology through the book,
"The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in
Southeast Asia" by James C. Scott (1976).
The book begins with a telling metaphor of peasants being like a man
standing up to his nose in water; the smallest wave will drown him.
Similarly, peasants generally live so close to the subsistence line that
it takes little to destroy their livelihoods. From this, he infers a
set of economic principles that it would be rational for them to live
by. It is important to emphasize that this book was not based on
fieldwork, and itself proposed a cross-cultural universalistic model of
peasant economic behaviour based upon a set of fixed theoretical
principles, not a reading of peasant culture. Firstly, he argued that
peasants were "risk averse", or, put differently, followed a "safety
first" principle. They would not adopt risky new seeds or technologies,
no matter how promising, because tried and true traditional methods had
demonstrated, not promised, effectiveness. This gives peasants an unfair
reputation as "traditionalist" when in fact they are just risk averse.
Secondly, Scott argues that peasant society provides "subsistence
insurance" for its members to tide them over those occasions when
natural or man-made disaster strikes. Although fieldwork has not
supported many of Scott's conclusions, the book encouraged a generation
of researchers.
Climate change first emerged as a political issue in the 1970s. Efforts to mitigate climate change
have been prominent on the international political agenda since the
1990s, and are also increasingly addressed at national and local level. Climate change is a complex global problem.
Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions contribute to global warming across the
world, regardless of where the emissions originate. Yet the impact of
global warming varies widely depending on how vulnerable a location or economy is to its effects. Global warming is on the whole having negative impact,
which is predicted to worsen as heating increases. Ability to benefit
from both fossil fuels and renewable energy sources vary substantially
from nation to nation.
Different responsibilities, benefits and climate related threats
faced by the world's nations contributed to early climate change
conferences producing little beyond general statements of intent to
address the problem, and non-binding commitments from the developed
countries to reduce emissions. In the 21st century, there has been
increased attention to mechanisms like climate finance in order for vulnerable nations to adapt to climate change.
In some nations and local jurisdictions, climate friendly policies have
been adopted that go well beyond what was committed to at international
level. Yet local reductions in GHG emission that such policies achieve
have limited ability to slow global warming unless the overall volume of
GHG emission declines across the planet.
Since entering the 2020s, the feasibility of replacing energy from fossil fuel with renewable energy sources significantly increased, with some countries now generating almost all their electricity from renewables. Public awareness of the climate change threat has risen, in large part due to social movement led by youth and visibility of the impacts of climate change, such as extreme weather events and flooding caused by sea level rise.
Many surveys show a growing proportion of voters support tackling
climate change as a high priority, making it easier for politicians to
commit to policies that include climate action. The COVID-19 pandemic and economic recession lead to widespread calls for a "green recovery", with some polities like the European Union successfully integrating climate action into policy change. Outright climate change denial had become a much less influential force by 2019, and opposition has pivoted to strategies of encouraging delay or inaction.
Policy debate
Like all policy debates, the political debate on climate change is fundamentally about action.
Various distinct arguments underpin the politics of climate change -
such as different assessments of the urgency of the threat, and on the
feasibility, advantages and disadvantages of various responses. But
essentially, these all relate to potential responses to climate change.
The statements that form political arguments can be divided into two types: positive and normative statements.
Positive statements can generally be clarified or refuted by careful
definition of terms, and scientific evidence. Whereas normative
statements about what one "ought" to do often relate at least partly to
morality, and are essentially a matter of judgement. Experience has
indicated that better progress is often made at debates if participants
attempt to disentangle the positive and normative parts of their
arguments, reaching agreement on the positive statements first. In the
early stages of a debate, the normative positions of participants can be
strongly influenced by perceptions of the best interests of whatever
constituency they represent. In achieving exceptional progress at the
2015 Paris conference, Christiana Figueres
and others noted it was helpful that key participants were able to move
beyond a competitive mindset concerning competing interests, to
normative statements that reflected a shared abundance based
collaborative mindset.
Most 20th century international debate on climate change focused
almost entirely on mitigation. It was sometimes considered defeatist to
pay much attention to adaptation. Also, compared to mitigation,
adaptation is more a local matter, with different parts of the world
facing vastly different threats and opportunities from climate change.
By the early 21st century, while mitigation still receives most
attention in political debates, it is no longer the sole focus. Some
degree of adaptation is now widely considered essential, and is
discussed internationally at least at high level, though which specific
actions to take remain mostly a local matter. A commitment to provide
$100 billion per year worth of funding to developing countries was made
at the 2009 Copenhagen Summit.
At Paris, it was clarified that allocation of the funding should
involve a balanced split between adaptation and mitigation, though as of
December 2020, not all funding had been provided, and what had been delivered was going mainly to mitigation projects. By 2019, possibilities for geoengineering were also increasingly being discussed, and were expected to become more prominent in future debates.
Political debate on how to mitigate tends to vary depending on
the scale of governance concerned. Different considerations apply for
international debate, compared with national and municipal level
discussion. In the 1990s, when climate change first became prominent on
the political agenda, there was optimism that the problem could be
successfully tackled. The then recent signing of the 1987 Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer
had indicated that the world was able to act collectively to address a
threat warned about by scientists, even when it was not yet causing
significant harm to humans. Yet by the early 2000s GHG emissions had
continued to rise, with little sign of agreement to penalise emitters or
reward climate friendly behaviour. It had become clear that achieving
global agreement for effective action to limit global warming would be
much more challenging. Some politicians, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger with his slogan "terminate pollution", say that activists should generate optimism by focusing on the health co-benefits of climate action.
Climate change became a fixture on the global political agenda in the early 1990s, with United Nations Climate Change conferences set to run yearly. These annual events are also called Conferences of the Parties (COPs). Major landmark COPs were the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the 2009 Copenhagen Summit and the 2015 Paris conference.
Kyoto was initially considered promising, yet by the early 2000s its
results had proved disappointing. Copenhagen saw a major attempt to move
beyond Kyoto with a much stronger package of commitments, yet largely
failed. Paris was widely considered successful, yet how effective it
will be at reducing long term global warming remains to be seen.
At international level, there are three broad approaches to emissions
reduction that nations can attempt to negotiate. Firstly, the adoption
of emissions reductions targets. Secondly, setting a carbon price.
Lastly, creating a largely voluntary set of processes to encourage
emission reduction, which include the sharing of information and
progress reviews. These approaches are largely complementary, though at
various conferences much of the focus has often been on a single
approach.
Until about 2010, international negotiations focused largely on
emissions targets. The success of the Montreal treaty in reducing emissions that damaged the ozone layer
suggested that targets could be effective. Yet in the case of
greenhouse gas reductions, targets have not in general led to
substantial cuts in emissions. Ambitious targets have usually not been
met. Attempts to impose severe penalties that would incentivise more
determined efforts to meet challenging targets, have always been blocked
by at least one or two nations.
In the 21st century, there is widespread agreement that a carbon
price is the most effective way to reduce emissions, at least in theory.
Generally though, nations have been reluctant to adopt a high carbon
price, or in most cases any price at all. One of the main reasons for
this reluctance is the problem of carbon leakage
– the phenomena where activities producing GHG emissions are moved out
of the jurisdiction that imposes the carbon price thus depriving the
jurisdiction of jobs & revenue, and to no benefit, as the emissions
will be released elsewhere. Nonetheless, the percentage of the worlds'
emissions that are covered by a carbon price rose from 5% in 2005, to
15% by 2019, and should reach over 40% once China's carbon price comes
fully into force. Existing carbon price regimes have been implemented
mostly independently by the European Union, nations and sub national jurisdictions acting autonomously.
The largely voluntary pledge and review system where states make their own plans for emissions reduction was introduced in 1991, but abandoned before the 1997 Kyoto treaty,
where the focus was on securing agreement for "top down" emissions
targets. The approach was revived at Copenhagen, and gained further
prominence with the 2015 Paris Agreement, though pledges came to be called nationally determined contributions (NDCs). These are meant to be re-submitted in enhanced form every 5 years. How effective this approach is remains to be seen. Some countries submitted elevated NDCs in 2021, around the time of the Glasgow conference. Accounting rules for carbon trading were agreed at the 2021 Glasgow COP meeting.
Regional, national and sub-national
The Climate Change Performance Index
ranks countries by greenhouse gas emissions (40% of score), renewable
energy (20%), energy use (20%), and climate policy (20%).
High
Medium
Low
Very low
Policies to reduce GHG emissions are set by either national or sub
national jurisdictions, or at regional level in the case of the European
Union. Much of the emission reduction policies that have been put into
place have been beyond those required by international agreements.
Examples include the introduction of a carbon price by some individual
US states, or Costa Rica reaching 99% electrical power generation by renewables in the 2010s.
Actual decisions to reduce emissions or deploy clean technologies
are mostly not made by governments themselves, but by individuals,
businesses and other organisations. Yet it is national and local
governments that set policies to encourage climate friendly activity.
Broadly these policies can be divided into four types: firstly, the
implementation of a carbon price mechanism and other financial
incentives; secondly prescriptive regulations, for example mandating
that a certain percentage of electricity generation must be from
renewables; thirdly, direct government spending on climate friendly
activity or research; and fourthly, approaches based on information
sharing, education and encouraging voluntary climate friendly behaviour. Local politics is sometimes combined with air pollution, for example the politics of creating low emission zones in cities may also aim to reduce carbon emissions from road transport.
Non-governmental actors
Individuals, businesses and NGOs can affect the politics of climate change both directly and indirectly. Mechanisms include individual rhetoric,
aggregate expression of opinion by means of polls, and mass protests.
Historically, a significant proportion of these protests have been
against climate friendly policies. Since the 2000 UK fuel protests there have been dozens of protests across the world against fuel taxes or the ending of fuel subsidies. Since 2019 and the advent of the school strike and Extinction Rebellion,
pro climate protests have become more prominent. Indirect channels for
apolitical actors to effect the politics of climate change include
funding or working on green technologies, and the fossil fuel divestment movement.
Special interests and lobbying by non-country actors
There are numerous special interest groups, organizations, and
corporations who have public and private positions on the multifaceted
topic of global warming. The following is a partial list of the types of
special interest parties that have shown an interest in the politics of
global warming:
Fossil fuel companies: Traditional fossil fuel
corporations stand to lose from stricter global warming regulations,
though there are exceptions. The fact fossil fuel companies are engaged
in energy trading might mean that their participation in trading schemes
and other such mechanisms could give them a unique advantage, so it is
unclear whether every traditional fossil fuel companies would always be
against stricter global warming policies. As an example, Enron, a traditional gas pipeline company with a large trading desk heavily lobbied the United States government to regulate CO2: they thought that they would dominate the energy industry if they could be at the center of energy trading.
Financial Institutions: Financial institutions generally
support policies against global warming, particularly the implementation
of carbon trading schemes and the creation of market mechanisms that
associate a price with carbon. These new markets require trading
infrastructures, which banking institutions can provide. Financial
institutions are also well positioned to invest, trade and develop
various financial instruments that they could profit from through
speculative positions on carbon prices and the use of brokerage and
other financial functions like insurance and derivative instruments.
Environmental groups: Environmental advocacy groups generally favor strict restrictions on CO2 emissions. Environmental groups, as activists, engage in raising awareness.
Renewable energy and energy efficiency companies: companies
in wind, solar and energy efficiency generally support stricter global
warming policies. They expect their share of the energy market to expand
as fossil fuels are made more expensive through trading schemes or
taxes.
Nuclear power companies: support and benefit from carbon pricing or subsidies of low-carbon energy production, as nuclear power produces minimal greenhouse gas emissions.
Electricity distribution companies: may lose from solar panels but benefit from electric vehicles.
Traditional retailers and marketers: traditional retailers,
marketers, and the general corporations respond by adopting policies
that resonate with their customers. If "being green" provides customer
appeal, then they could undertake modest programs to please and better
align with their customers. However, since the general corporation does
not make a profit from their particular position, it is unlikely that
they would strongly lobby either for or against a stricter global
warming policy position.
Medics: often say that climate change and air pollution can be tackled together and so save millions of lives.
Information and communications technology companies: say
their products help others combat climate change, tend to benefit from
reductions in travel, and many purchase green electricity.
The various interested parties sometimes align with one another to
reinforce their message, for example electricity companies fund the
purchase of electric school buses to benefit medics by reducing the load
on the health service whilst at the same time selling more electricity.
Sometimes industries will fund specialty nonprofit organizations to
raise awareness and lobby on their behest.
Current climate politics are influenced by a number of social and
political movements focused on different parts of building political
will for climate action. This includes the climate justice movement, youth climate movement and movements to divest from fossil fuel industries.
Divestment movement
Fossil fuel divestment or fossil fuel divestment and investment in climate solutions is an attempt to reduce climate change by exerting social, political, and economic pressure for the institutional divestment of assets including stocks, bonds, and other financial instruments connected to companies involved in extracting fossil fuels.
Fossil fuel divestment campaigns emerged on college and university campuses in the United States in 2011 with students urging their administrations to turn endowment investments in the fossil fuel industry into investments in clean energy and communities most impacted by climate change. In 2012, Unity College in Maine became the first institution of higher learning to divest its endowment from fossil fuels.
By 2015, fossil fuel divestment was reportedly the fastest growing divestment movement in history. As of July 2023, more than 1593 institutions with assets totalling more than $40.5 trillion in assets worldwide had begun or committed some form of divestment of fossil fuels.
Youth movement
School Strike for Climate (Swedish: Skolstrejk för klimatet),
also known variously as Fridays for Future (FFF), Youth for Climate,
Climate Strike or Youth Strike for Climate, is an international movement
of school students who skip Friday classes to participate in
demonstrations to demand action from political leaders to prevent climate change and for the fossil fuel industry to transition to renewable energy.
Publicity and widespread organising began after Swedish pupil Greta Thunberg staged a protest in August 2018 outside of the Swedish Riksdag (parliament), holding a sign that read "Skolstrejk för klimatet" ("School strike for climate").
A global strike on 15 March 2019 gathered more than one million strikers in 2,200 strikes organised in 125 countries.
On 24 May 2019, in the second global strike, 1,600 protests across 150
countries drew hundreds of thousands of strikers. The May protests were
timed to coincide with the 2019 European Parliament election.
The 2019 Global Week for Future
was a series of 4,500 strikes across over 150 countries, focused around
Friday 20 September and Friday 27 September. Likely the largest climate
strikes in world history, the 20 September strikes gathered roughly 4
million protesters, many of them schoolchildren, including 1.4 million
in Germany.
On 27 September, an estimated two million people participated in
demonstrations worldwide, including over one million protesters in Italy
and several hundred thousand protesters in Canada.
Current outlook
Historical political attempts to agree on policies to limit global warming have largely failed to mitigate climate change.
Commentators have expressed optimism that the 2020s can be more
successful, due to various recent developments and opportunities that
were not present during earlier periods. Other commentators have
expressed warnings that there is now very little time to act in order to
have any chance of keeping warming below 1.5 °C, or even to have a good
chance of keeping global heating under 2 °C.
Opportunities
In the late 2010s, various developments conducive to climate friendly
politics saw commentators express optimism that the 2020s might see
good progress in addressing the threat of global heating.
In
this 2022 Pew survey, a majority said climate change is a major threat
to their country, with respondents from almost half the countries
ranking climate change highest of five listed threats.
The year 2019 has been described as "the year the world woke up to
climate change", driven by factors such growing recognition of the
global warming threat resulting from recent extreme weather events, the Greta effect and the IPPC 1.5 °C report.
In 2019, the secretary general of OPEC recognised the school strike movement as the greatest threat faced by the fossil fuel industry. According to Christiana Figueres,
once about 3.5% of a population start participating in non violent
protest, they are always successful in sparking political change, with
the success of Greta Thunberg's Fridays for Future movement suggesting that reaching this threshold may be obtainable.
A 2023 review study published in One Earth stated that opinion polls show that most people perceive climate change as occurring now and close by.
The study concluded that seeing climate change as more distant does not
necessarily result in less climate action, and reducing psychological
distancing does not reliably increase climate action.
Renewable energy is an inexhaustible source of naturally replenishing
energy. The major renewable energy sources are wind, hydropower, solar,
geothermal, and biomass. In 2020, renewable energy generated 29% of
world electricity.
In the wake of the Paris Agreement, adopted by 196 Parties, 194
of these Parties have submitted their Nationally Determined
Contributions (NDCs), i.e., climate pledges, as of November 2021.
There are many different efforts used by these countries to help
include renewable energy investments such as 102 countries have
implemented tax credits, 101 countries include some sort of public
investment, and 100 countries currently use tax reductions. The largest
CO2 emitters
tend to be industrialized countries like the US, China, UK, and India.
These countries aren't implementing enough industrial policies (188)
compared to deployment policies (more than 1,000).
In November 2021, the 26th United Nation Conference of the Parties
(COP26) took place in Glasgow, Scotland. Almost 200 nations agreed to
accelerate the fight against climate change and commit to more effective
climate pledges. Some of the new pledges included reforms on methane
gas pollution, deforestation, and coal financing. Surprisingly, the US
and China (the two largest carbon emitters) also both agreed to work
together on efforts to prevent global warming from surpassing 1.5
degrees Celsius.
Some scientists, politicians, and activist say that not enough was done
at this summit and that we will still reach that 1.5 degree tipping
point. An Independent report by Climate Action Tracker said the commitments were "lip service" and "we will emit roughly twice as much in 2030 as required for 1.5 degrees."
Support for a green recovery in response to the COVID-19 pandemic
has come from multiple political parties, governments, activists, and
academia across the globe. Following similar measures in response to the GFC, a key goal of the packages is to ensure that actions to combat recession also combat climate change. These actions include the reduction of coal, oil, and gas
use, clean transport, renewable energy, eco-friendly buildings, and
sustainable corporate or financial practices. Green recovery initiatives
are supported by the United Nations (UN) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Several global initiatives have provided live tracking of national
fiscal responses, including the Global Recovery Observatory (from Oxford
University, the UN, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)), the Energy Policy Tracker, and the OECD's Green Recovery Tracker.
Delineating between rescue and recovery investment, in March 2021
analysis by the Global Recovery Observatory found that 18% of recovery
investment and 2.5% of total spending was expected to enhance
sustainability. In July 2021, the International Energy Agency supported that analysis, noting that only around 2% of economic bailout money worldwide was going to clean energy.
According to a 2022 analysis of the $14tn that G20 countries spent as
economic stimulus, only about 6% of pandemic recovery spending was
allocated to areas that will also cut greenhouse-gas emissions,
including electrifying vehicles, making buildings more energy efficient
and installing renewables.
Challenges
Despite various promising conditions, commentators tend to warn that
several difficult challenges remain, which need to be overcome if
climate change politics is to result in a substantial reduction of
greenhouse gas emissions. For example, increasing tax on meat can be politically difficult.
As of 2021, CO2
levels have already increased by about 50% since the pre-industrial
era, with billions of tons more being released each year. Global warming
has already passed the point where it is beginning to have a
catastrophic impact in some localities. So major policy changes need to
be implemented very soon if the risk of escalating environmental impact
is to be avoided.
Energy from fossil fuels remains central to the worlds economy,
accounting for about 80% of its energy generation as of 2019. Suddenly
removing fossil fuel subsidies from consumers has often been found to
cause riots. While clean energy can sometimes be cheaper, provisioning large amounts of renewable energy in a short period of time tends to be challenging. According to a 2023 report by the International Energy Agency,
coal emissions grew 243 Mt to a new all-time high of almost 15.5 Gt.
This 1.6% increase was faster than the 0.4% annual average growth over
the past decade. In 2022 the European Central Bank
argued that high energy prices were accelerating the energy transition
away from fossil fuel, but that governments should take steps to prevent
energy poverty without hindering the move to low carbon energy.
Inactivism
While outright denial of climate change
is much less prevalent in the 2020s compared to the preceding decades,
many arguments continue to be made against taking action to limit GHG
emissions. Such arguments include the view that there are better ways to
spend available funds (such as adaptation), that it would be better to
wait until new technology is developed as that would make mitigation
cheaper, that technology and innovation will render climate change moot
or resolve certain aspects, and that the future negative effects of
climate change should be heavily discounted compared to current needs.
Fossil fuel lobby and political spending
The largest oil and gas corporations that comprise Big Oil and their industry lobbyist arm, the American Petroleum Institute (API), spend large amounts of money on lobbying and political campaigns, and employ hundreds of lobbyists, to obstruct and delay government action to address climate change. The fossil fuel lobby has considerable clout in Washington, D.C. and in other political centers, including the European Union and the United Kingdom.
Fossil fuel industry interests spend many times as much on advancing
their agenda in the halls of power than do ordinary citizens and
environmental activists, with the former spending $2 billion in the
years 2000–2016 on climate change lobbying in the United States. The five largest Big Oil corporations spent hundreds of millions of euros to lobby for its agenda in Brussels.
Big Oil companies often adopt "sustainability principles" that are at
odds with the policy agenda their lobbyists advocate, which often
entails sowing doubt about the reality and impacts of climate change and
forestalling government efforts to address them. API launched a public relationsdisinformation campaign with the aim of creating doubt in the public mind so that "climate change becomes a non-issue."
This industry also spends lavishly on American political campaigns,
with approximately 2/3 of its political contributions over the past
several decades fueling Republican Party politicians, and outspending many-fold political contributions from renewable energy advocates.
Fossil fuel industry political contributions reward politicians who
vote against environmental protections. According to a study published
by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United
States of America, as voting by a member of United States Congress turned more anti-environment, as measured by his/her voting record as scored by the League of Conservation Voters
(LCV), the fossil fuel industry contributions that this member of
Congress received increased. On average, a 10% decrease in the LCV score
was correlated with an increase of $1,700 in campaign contributions
from the fossil fuel industry for the campaign following the
Congressional term.
Suppression of climate science
Big Oil
companies, starting as early as the 1970s, suppressed their own
scientists' reports of major climate impacts of the combustion of fossil
fuels. ExxonMobil launched a corporate propaganda campaign promoting false information about the issue of climate change, a tactic that has been compared to Big Tobacco's public relations efforts to hoodwink the public about the dangers of smoking. Fossil fuel industry-funded think tanks harassed climate scientists who were publicly discussing the dire threat of climate change. As early as the 1980s when larger segments of the American public began to become aware of the climate change issue, the administrations of some United States presidents scorned scientists who spoke publicly of the threat fossil fuels posed for the climate. Other U.S. administrations have silenced climate scientists and muzzled government whistleblowers. Political appointees
at a number of federal agencies prevented scientists from reporting
their findings regarding aspects of the climate crisis, changed data
modeling to arrive at conclusions they had set out a prior to prove, and shut out the input of career scientists of the agencies.
Targeting of climate activists
Climate and environmental activists, including, increasingly, those defending woodlands against the logging industry, have been killed in several countries, such as Colombia, Brazil and the Philippines.
The perpetrators of most such killings have not been punished. A record
number of such killings was recorded for the year 2019. Indigenous environmental activists are disproportionately targeted, comprising as many as 40% of fatalities worldwide.
Domestic intelligence services of several governments, such as those of
the U.S. government, have targeted environmental activists and climate
change organizations as "domestic terrorists," surveilling them,
investigating them, questioning them, and placing them on national
"watchlists" that could make it more difficult for them to board
airplanes and could instigate local law enforcement monitoring.
Other U.S. tactics have included preventing media coverage of American
citizen assemblies and protests against climate change, and partnering
with private security companies to monitor activists.
In the context of climate change politics, doomism refers to
pessimistic narratives that claim that it is now too late to do anything
about climate change. Doomism can include exaggeration of the
probability of cascading climate tipping points, and their likelihood in
triggering runaway global heating beyond human ability to control, even
if humanity was able to immediately stop all burning of fossil fuels.
In the US, polls found that for people who did not support further
action to limit global warming, a belief that it is too late to do so
was given as a more common reason than skepticism about man made climate
change.
Lack of compromise
Several climate friendly policies have been blocked in the
legislative process by environmental and/or left leaning pressure groups
and parties. For example, in 2009, the Australian green party voted
against the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, as they felt it did not impose a high enough carbon price. In the US, the Sierra Club
helped defeat a 2016 climate tax bill which they saw as lacking in
social justice. Some of the attempts to impose a carbon price in US
states have been blocked by left wing politicians because they were to
be implemented by a cap and trade mechanism, rather than a tax.
Multi-sector governance
The issue of climate change usually fits into various sectors, which
means that the integration of climate change policies into other policy
areas is frequently called for. Thus the problem is difficult, as it needs to be addressed at multiple scales with diverse actors involved in the complex governance process.
Maladaptation
Successful adaptation to climate change requires balancing competing
economic, social, and political interests. In the absence of such
balancing, harmful unintended consequences can undo the benefits of
adaptation initiatives. For example, efforts to protect coral reefs in
Tanzania forced local villagers to shift from traditional fishing
activities to farming that produced higher greenhouse gas emissions.
Technology
The promise of technology is seen as both a threat and a potential
boon. New technologies can open up possibilities for new and more
effective climate policies. Most models that indicate a path to limiting
warming to 2 °C have a big role for carbon dioxide removal, one of the approaches of climate change mitigation. Commentators from across the political spectrum tend to welcome CO2 removal. But some are sceptical that it will be ever be able to remove enough CO2
to slow global warming without there also being rapid cuts in
emissions, and they warn that too much optimism about such technology
may make it harder for mitigation policies to be enacted.
Solar radiation management is another technology aiming to reduce global warming. At least with stratospheric aerosol injection,
there is broad agreement that it would be effective in bringing down
average global temperatures. Yet the prospect is considered unwelcome by
many climate scientists. They warn that side effects would include
possible reductions in agricultural yields due to reduced sunlight and
rainfall, and possible localised temperature rises and other weather
disruptions. According to Michael Mann,
the prospect of using solar management to reduce temperatures is
another argument used to reduce willingness to enact emissions reduction
policy.
Economic disruption due to phaseout of carbon-intensive activities, such as coal mining, cattle farming or bottom trawling, can be politically sensitive due to the high political profile of coal miners, farmers and fishers in some countries. Many labor and environmental groups advocate for a just transition
that minimizes the harm and maximizes the benefits associated with
climate-related changes to society, for example by providing job
training.
Democrats (blue) and Republicans (red) differ in views of the seriousness of addressing climate change, with the gap widening since the late 2010s mainly through Democrats' share increasing.
The
sharp divide over the existence of and responsibility for global
warming and climate change falls largely along political lines. Overall, 60% of Americans surveyed said oil and gas companies were "completely or mostly responsible" for climate change.
Educated and uneducated Republicans are almost equally likely to think that climate change is not human caused. Whereas opinions favoring becoming carbon neutral declined substantially with age among Republicans, but not among Democrats.
A
broad range of policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has been
proposed, but public support differs consistently along party lines.
National
political divides on the seriousness of climate change consistently
correlate with political ideology, with right-wing opinion being more
negative.
Climate friendly policies are generally supported across the
political spectrum, though there have been many exceptions among voters
and politicians leaning towards the right, and even politicians on the
left have rarely made addressing climate change a top priority.
In the 20th century, right wing politicians led much significant action
against climate change, both internationally and domestically, with Richard Nixon and Margaret Thatcher being prominent examples. Yet by the 1990s, especially in some English speaking countries and most especially in the US, the issue began to be polarised.
Right wing media started arguing that climate change was being invented
or at least exaggerated by the left to justify an expansion in the size
of government.
As of 2020, some right wing governments have enacted increased climate
friendly policies. Various surveys indicated a slight trend for even
U.S. right wing voters to become less sceptical of global warming, and
groups like American Conservation Coalition indicate young Republican
voters embrace climate as a central policy field. Though in the view of
Anatol Lieven, for some right wing US voters, being sceptical of climate
change has become part of their identity, so their position on the
matter cannot easily be shifted by rational argument.
A 2014 study from the University of Dortmund
concluded that countries with centre and left-wing governments had
higher emission reductions than right-wing governments in OECD countries
during 1992–2008.
Historically, nationalist governments have been among the worst
performers in enacting policies. Though according to Lieven, as climate
change is increasingly seen as a threat to the ongoing existence of
nation states, nationalism is likely to become one of the most effective
forces to drive determined mitigation efforts. The growing trend to securitize the climate change threat may be especially effective for increasing support among nationalist and conservatives.
History
The history of climate change policy and politics refers to the continuing history of political actions, policies, trends, controversies and activist efforts as they pertain to the issue of climate change.
Climate change emerged as a political issue in the 1970s, where
activist and formal efforts were taken to ensure environmental crises
were addressed on a global scale.
International policy regarding climate change has focused on
cooperation and the establishment of international guidelines to address
global warming. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
is a largely accepted international agreement that has continuously
developed to meet new challenges. Domestic policy on climate change has
focused on both establishing internal measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and incorporating international guidelines into domestic law.
In the 21st century there has been a shift towards vulnerability based
policy for those most impacted by environmental anomalies.
Over the history of climate policy, concerns have been raised about the
treatment of developing nations. Critical reflection on the history of
climate change politics provides "ways to think about one of the most
difficult issues we human beings have brought upon ourselves in our
short life on the planet".
The politicization of science in the sense of a manipulation of
science for political gains is a part of the political process. It is
part of the controversies about intelligent design (compare the Wedge strategy) or Merchants of Doubt,
scientists that are under suspicion to willingly obscure findings. e.g.
about issues like tobacco smoke, ozone depletion, global warming or
acid rain. However, e.g. in case of ozone depletion, global regulation based on the Montreal Protocol was successful, in a climate of high uncertainty and against strong resistance while in case of climate change, the Kyoto Protocol failed.
While the IPCC process tries to find and orchestrate the findings
of global climate change research to shape a worldwide consensus on the
matter it has itself been the object of a strong politicization. Anthropogenic climate change evolved from a mere science issue to a top global policy topic.
The IPCC process having built a broad science consensus does not stop governments following different, if not opposing goals. For ozone depletion, global regulation was already being put into place before a scientific consensus was established. So a linear model of policy-making, based on a the more knowledge we have, the better the political response will be view is not necessarily accurate. Instead knowledge policy,
successfully managing knowledge and uncertainties as a foundation for
political decision making; requires a better understanding of the
relation between science, public (lack of) understanding and policy.
Most of the policy debate concerning climate change mitigation
has been framed by projections for the twenty-first century. Academics
have criticised this as short term thinking, as decisions made in the
next few decades will have environmental consequences that will last for
many millennia.
It has been estimated that only 0.12% of all funding for
climate-related research is spent on the social science of climate
change mitigation.
Vastly more funding is spent on natural science studies of climate
change and considerable sums are also spent on studies of the impact of
and adaptation to climate change.
It has been argued that this is a misallocation of resources, as the
most urgent challenge is to work out how to change human behavior to
mitigate climate change, whereas the natural science of climate change
is already well established and there will be decades and centuries to
handle adaptation.
Political economy of climate change
Political economy of climate change is an approach that applies the political economy thinking concerning social and political processes to study the critical issues surrounding decision-making on climate change.
The ever-increasing awareness and urgency of climate change
had led scholars to explore a better understanding of the multiple
actors and influencing factors that affect climate change negotiation,
and to seek more effective solutions to tackle climate change.
Analyzing these complex issues from a political economy perspective
helps to explain the interactions between different stakeholders in
response to climate change impacts, and provides opportunities to
achieve better implementation of climate change policies.
Introduction
Background
Climate change has become one of the most pressing environmental concerns
and global challenges in society today. As the issue rises in
prominence the international agenda, researchers from different academic
sectors have for long been devoting great efforts to explore effective
solutions to climate change. Technologists and planners have been
devising ways of mitigating and adapting
to climate change; economists estimating the cost of climate change and
the cost of tackling it; development experts exploring the impact of
climate change on social services and public goods. However, Cammack
(2007)
points out two problems with many of the above discussions, namely the
disconnection between the proposed solutions to climate change from
different disciplines; and the devoid of politics in addressing climate
change at the local level. Further, the issue of climate change is
facing various other challenges, such as the problem of elite-resource
capture, the resource constraints in developing countries
and the conflicts that frequently result from such constraints, which
have often been less concerned and stressed in suggested solutions. In
recognition of these problems, it is advocated that “understanding the
political economy of climate change is vital to tackling it”.
Meanwhile, the unequal distribution of the impacts of climate
change and the resulting inequity and unfairness on the poor who
contribute least to the problem have linked the issue of climate change
with development study, which has given rise to various programs and policies that aim at addressing climate change and promoting development.
Although great efforts have been made on international negotiations
concerning the issue of climate change, it is argued that much of the
theory, debate, evidence-gathering and implementation linking climate
change and development assume a largely apolitical and linear policy
process. In this context, Tanner and Allouche (2011) suggest that climate change initiatives
must explicitly recognize the political economy of their inputs,
processes and outcomes so as to find a balance between effectiveness,
efficiency and equity.
Definition
In its earliest manifestations, the term “political economy” was basically a synonym of economics,
while it is now a rather elusive term that typically refers to the
study of the collective or political processes through which public
economic decisions are made.
In the climate change domain, Tanner and Allouche (2011) define the
political economy as “the processes by which ideas, power and resources
are conceptualized, negotiated and implemented by different groups at
different scales”. While there have emerged a substantial literature on the political economy of environmental policy, which explains the “political failure” of the environmental programmes to efficiently and effectively protect the environment, systematic analysis on the specific issue of climate change using the political economy framework is relatively limited.
Current Context: The Urgent Need for Political Economy
Characteristics of Climate Change
The urgent need to consider and understand the political economy of
climate change is based on the specific characteristics of the problem.
The key issues include:
The cross-sectoral nature of climate change: The issue of
climate change usually fits into various sectors, which means that the
integration of climate change policies into other policy areas is
frequently called for. Thus the problem is complicated as it needs to be tackled at multiple scales, with diverse actors involved in the complex governance process. The interaction of these facets leads to political processes with multiple and overlapping conceptualizations, negotiation and governance issues, which requires the understanding of political economy processes.
The problematic perception of climate change as simply a “global” issue:
Climate change initiatives and governance approaches have tended to be
driven from a global scale. While the development of international
agreements has witnessed a progressive step of global political action,
this globally-led governance of climate change issue may be unable to
provide adequate flexibility for specific national or sub-national
conditions. Besides, from the development point of view, the issue of
equity and global environmental justice would require a fair
international regime within which the impact of climate change and poverty
could be simultaneously prevented. In this context, climate change is
not only a global crisis that needs the presence of international
politics, but also a challenge for national or sub-national
governments. The understanding of the political economy of climate
change could explain the formulation and translation of international
initiatives to specific national and sub-national policy context, which
provides an important perspective to tackle climate change and achieve environmental justice.
The growth of climate change finance: Recent years have
witnessed a growing number of financial flows and the development of
financing mechanisms in the climate change arena. The 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico committed a significant amount of money from developed countries to developing a world in supportive of the adaptation and mitigation technologies. In short terms, the fast start finance will be transferred through various channels including bilateral and multilateral official development assistance, the Global Environment Facility, and the UNFCCC.
Besides, a growing number of public funds have provided greater
incentives to tackle climate change in developing countries. For
instance, the Pilot Program for Climate Resilience aims at creating an
integrated and scaled-up approach of climate change adaptation in some
low-income countries and preparing for future finance flows. In
addition, climate change finance in developing countries could
potentially change the traditional aid mechanisms, through the
differential interpretations of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ by developing and developed countries.
As a result, it is inevitable to change the governance structures so as
for developing countries to break the traditional donor-recipient
relationships. Within these contexts, the understanding of the political
economy processes of financial flows in the climate change arena would
be crucial to effectively govern the resource transfer and to tackling
climate change.
Different ideological worldviews of responding to climate change:
Nowadays, because of the perception of science as a dominant policy
driver, much of the policy prescription and action in climate change
arena have concentrated on assumptions around standardized governance
and planning systems, linear policy processes, readily transferable
technology, economic rationality, and the ability of science and
technology to overcome resource gaps.
As a result, there tends to be a bias towards technology-led and
managerial approaches to address climate change in apolitical terms.
Besides, a wide range of different ideological worldviews would lead to a
high divergence of the perception of climate change solutions, which
also has a great influence on decisions made in response to climate
change.
Exploring these issues from a political economy perspective provides
the opportunity to better understand the “complexity of politic and
decision-making processes in tackling climate change, the power
relations mediating competing claims over resources, and the contextual
conditions for enabling the adoption of technology”.
Unintended negative consequences of adaptation policies that fail to factor in environmental-economic trade-offs:
Successful adaptation to climate change requires balancing competing
economic, social, and political interests. In the absence of such
balancing, harmful unintended consequences can undo the benefits of
adaptation initiatives. For example, efforts to protect coral reefs in
Tanzania forced local villagers to shift from traditional fishing
activities to farming that produced higher greenhouse gas emissions.
Socio-political Constraints
The role of political economy in understanding and tackling climate
change is also founded upon the key issues surrounding the domestic
socio-political constraints:
The problems offragile states:
Fragile states—defined as poor performers, conflict and/or
post-conflict states—are usually incapable of using the aid for climate
change effectively. The issues of power and social equity have
exacerbated the climate change impacts, while insufficient attention has
been paid to the dysfunction of fragile states. Considering the
problems of fragile states, the political economy approach could improve
the understanding of the long-standing constraints upon capacity and
resilience, through which the problems associated with weak capacity,
state-building and conflicts could be better addressed in the context of
climate change.
Informal governance: In many poorly performing states, decision-making
around the distribution and use of state resources is driven by
informal relations and private incentives rather than formal state
institutions that are based on equity and law. This informal governance
nature that underlies in the domestic social structures prevents the
political systems and structures from rational functioning and thus
hinders the effective response towards climate change. Therefore,
domestic institutions and incentives are critical to the adoption of
reforms.
The difficulty of social change: Developmental change in
underdeveloped countries is painfully slow because of a series of
long-term collective problems, including the societies’ incapacity of
working collectively to improve wellbeing, the lack of technical and
social ingenuity, the resistance and rejection to innovation and change.
In the context of climate change, these problems significantly hinder
the promotion of climate change agenda. Taking a political economy view
in the underdeveloped countries could help to understand and create
incentives to promote transformation and development, which lays a
foundation for the expectation of implementing a climate change
adaptation agenda.
Research focuses and approaches
Brandt and Svendsen (2003) introduce a political economy framework that is based on the political support function model by Hillman (1982) into the analysis of the choice of instruments to control climate change in the European Union policy to implement its Kyoto Protocol
target level. In this political economy framework, the climate change
policy is determined by the relative strength of stakeholder groups. By
examining the different objective of different interest groups, namely
industry groups, consumer groups and environmental groups, the authors
explain the complex interaction between the choices of an instrument for
the EU climate change policy, specifically the shift from the green
taxation to a grandfathered permit system.
A report by the Bank for Reconstruction and Development
(EBRD) (2011) takes a political economy approach to explain why some
countries adopt climate change policies while others do not,
specifically among the countries in the transition region.
This work analyzes the different political economy aspects of the
characteristics of climate change policies so as to understand the
likely factors driving climate change mitigation outcomes in many transition countries. The main conclusions are listed below:
The level of democracy
alone is not a major driver of climate change policy adoption, which
means that the expectations of contribution to global climate change
mitigation are not necessarily limited by the political regime of a
given country.
Public knowledge, shaped by various factors including the threat of
climate change in a particular country, the national level of education
and existence of free media, is a critical element in climate change
policy adoption, as countries with the public more aware of the climate
change causes are significantly more likely to adopt climate change
policies. The focus should, therefore, be on promoting public awareness
of the urgent threat of climate change and prevent information asymmetries in many transition countries.
The relative strength of the carbon-intensive
industry is a major deterrent to the adoption of climate change
policies, as it partly accounts for the information asymmetries.
However, the carbon-intensive industries often influence government’s
decision-making on climate change policy, which thus calls for a change
of the incentives perceived by these industries and a transition of them
to a low-carbon production pattern. Efficient means include the energy
price reform and the introduction of international carbon trading mechanisms.
The competitive edge gained national economies in the transition
region in a global economy, where increasing international pressure is
put to reduce emissions, would enhance their political regime’s domestic
legitimacy, which could help to address the inherent economic
weaknesses underlying the lack of economic diversification and global
economic crisis.
Tanner and Allouche (2011)
propose a new conceptual and methodological framework for analyzing the
political economy of climate change in their latest work, which focuses
on the climate change policy processes and outcomes in terms of ideas,
power and resources. The new political economy approach is expected to
go beyond the dominant political economy tools formulated by
international development agencies to analyse climate change initiatives that have ignored the way that ideas and ideologies determine the policy outcomes (see table).
The authors assume that each of the three lenses, namely ideas, power
and resources, tends to be predominant at one stage of the policy
process of the political economy of climate change, with “ideas and
ideologies predominant in the conceptualisation phase, power in the
negotiation phase and resource, institutional capacity and governance in
the implementation phase”.
It is argued that these elements are critical in the formulation of
international climate change initiatives and their translation to
national and sub-national policy context.
Comparison between the new and traditional political economy analysis of climate changeinitiatives
Issue
Dominant approach
New political economy
Policy process
Linear, informed by evidence
Complex, informed by ideology, actors and power relations
Dominant scale
Global and inter-state
Translation of international to national and sub-national level
Climate change science and research
Role of objective science in informing policy
Social construction of science and driving narratives
Scarcity and poverty
Distributional outcomes
Political processes mediating competing claims for resources
Decision-making
Collective action, rational choice and rent-seeking
Ideological drivers and incentives, power relations