Comparing Climate Change Policy Networks [see his shorter piece on Climate Change that Jeff says is more accesible]

by Jeffrey Broadbent, University of Minnesota

What basic social and cultural conditions foster a proactive national response to global climate change?  The COMPON project seeks to answer this question.  The project responds to a recent call from the IHDP (International Program on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change) for research on “Earth Systems Governance”.¹  In order to learn to manage global climate change, we need to study the vast networks of action and reaction, of signal and response that span the globe, flow within countries and produce our greenhouse gas (GHG) outputs.  Why do states and societies react in different ways to climate change, some taking it more seriously and others effectively disregarding it?  

Answering this key question is the goal of the COMPON project (COMparing climate change POlicy Networks).  Our working hypothesis attributes the differences in national policies and practices to the size, strength and pattern of advocacy coalitions -- networks of organizations that use political tactics to pursue a common political goal.²  To test this hypothesis, the project will collect data on national reactions to global climate change in (about) 17 countries and at the international level, implemented by national research teams using a modified “policy network” method (see Figure One below).  Other cases will be added as advisable and feasible.

Climate change is a giant collective action problem.  As in any collective action problem, more immediate and personal incentives hinder protecting the common long-term good.^3,4  Such hindrances bedevil the formation of a planetary carbon management “regime.” Even the societies that ratified the Kyoto Protocol – a global regime aiming to reduce each national GHG output to below its 1990 level -- has had limited success.  All societies have access to the same highly-certified analyses of the problem and its future effects organized and promulgated by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).  But they react differently.  Now we face an even tougher task-- designing the post-Kyoto global climate change regime that will include the US and the developing world. 

The solutions to collective action problems require the right mixture of institutions, networks, actors, moral commitments and material incentives.^3,4  But no one size fits all.  For any given society, what “works” depends very much upon the setting.  That is, the mobilization of social change occurs in ways “embedded” in particular social “ontological” formations.⁵  At the same time, some common tendencies may appear.  To capture these processes, we need methods sensitive to culturally-defined ways of knowing and doing, institutionalized role and relational formations, and the agency of actors to reshape those formations.   

Moving beyond static institutions and top-down control, the new concept of governance speaks to these concerns.  It signifies inclusion of dynamic and informal inter-actor relationships at all levels of global and national society.⁶  Multi-level governance includes international, regional, national and local levels.  Given the weakness of the global climate change regime so far, researchers have called for attention to national level reactions.^7,8  National network configurations hook differently into the global and regional (such as EU) networks of belief, negotiation and pressure, with implications for their reactions to climate change.  National mixtures of institutions, networks, actors, moral commitments and material incentives bring about different responses to the diagnoses and predictions posed by climate science.  The policy network approach allows us to study this deep and wide range of factors as they interact to produce national policies (presence of climate science claims and advocacy frames as policy imperatives) and practices (levels of GHG emissions). 

Dredged from these rich national mixtures, the project will compare the formation and effect of advocacy coalitions on policies and practices across different national cases that represent different impinging contextual factors.  The fit between coalition and context will affect the national response, but certain common cross-national similarities may also appear.  The strength of the scientific community and culture will no doubt be significant.  Also, the way that national networks hook into global networks will impinge strongly.  The policy network method allows us to study these coalitions and their political effects in unprecedented empirical detail.     

Project Conception

Global climate change is not like factory smoke, where you can see the cause of local asthma.  Each producer and consumer produces relatively small amounts of the cause, while the effects appear indirectly and indistinctly through changes in vast climate systems.  This situation is a great barrier to collective action (movements, national legislation) on the problem.  The classic “dilemma” of collective action is that, because they will not gain direct profit, individuals will refuse to act to protect the common good.^3,4  The more uncertain the threats and the more diffuse the benefits, the higher the barriers to collective action.     

Research on mobilization has found factors that help overcome the collective action problem: clear target, costs for inaction, moral rewards, social influence, resources and opportunities, belief in a common “frame.”.^9,10  A frame provides a diagnosis, prognosis and rationale for an issue.¹¹  Concerning climate change, the science frame promulgated by the IPCC provides both target and costs: a clear, strongly verified diagnosis (primarily greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activity) and prognosis (increasing disaster).  Moral impulses have been found to prompt altruistic behavior and provide satisfaction even in the absence of immediate personal material rewards.¹⁰  Social networks based on mutual “knowing,” such as friendship, acquaintance, reciprocity and trust, play important roles in conveying beliefs and recruiting members and supporters.¹²  Other types of exchanges among actors, such as information, support, and money, also contribute to mobilization and political power.  Institutions, already shaped and energized by existing moralities and relationships, as relatively stable “coral reefs,” provide threats and opportunities to mobilizing actors.¹³  Existing distributions of wealth, status and prestige also do the same.  

Concerning the problem of climate change, to an unprecedented degree science itself, rather then common sense or traditional beliefs, offers the most verified diagnosis (analysis of the mechanisms) and prognosis (predictions of its future development).  Therefore, the COMPON project focuses on the social and cultural factors that affect the absorption of global climatological scientific diagnoses and prognoses into national polities and national GHG outputs.¹⁴  The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations agency supported by governments around the world to reach consensus among hundreds of climatologists, promulgates what is widely agreed as the most thoroughly scientifically-verified claim about the diagnosis and prognosis of climate change.  The IPCC information is equally available to all societies and polities around the world. 

The IPCC “frame,” formed by the consensus of hundreds of climatological scientists, tells us that human activities produce the “greenhouse gasses” (GHG) that cause most of global climate change.  The frame states that we have set in motion a vast mechanism of ecological change that will unavoidably continue to raise the global climate for several centuries, with many attendant disasters from heat, drought, intense storm and sea level rise.¹⁵  These disasters could lead to vast migrations, social chaos and war.  However, the frame indicates, if we sharply reduce human output of greenhouse gasses, we can still avoid the worst outcomes.¹⁶ 

The IPCC frame has meet with considerable acceptance, but also a lot of denial, rejection and lack of concern.  This is partly because the solutions seem so costly and “inconvenient.”  They threaten established sources of profit and pleasure by producers and consumers.  Requiring new technologies and life-styles, they shake up established institutions; requiring global cooperation, they weaken the sovereignty of the state.¹⁷  Ironically, the transition to a sustainable society might not actually impose such heavy costs, and in many ways could be profitable.¹⁸  But entrenched interests, habits and values die hard. 

Some countries have produced relevant policies and supportive public opinion, worthwhile steps in themselves.  But as yet only a few countries have, by intentional policy, reduced their GHG levels to below 1990 levels (Sweden, England and Germany).¹⁹  (Former Soviet Union countries have reduced GHG output as an accidental byproduct of economic recession.) 

Hypotheses

Drawing upon social scientific theory, the project will test alternative hypotheses about the social and cultural conditions that facilitate or hinder proactive national response to the claims of climate change science.  Our key hypothesis is that advocacy coalitions -- networks of belief in the climate change science, energized by moral concern, facilitated by mutual reciprocity and cooperation and politically empowered -- will be the crucial vehicle for this transmission. The conditions generating such networks appear not only at the national level, but also at the level of the partially-formed global climate change governance system.⁸  The relevant networks exist as linkages between national and international levels as well as at distinctly national or international levels. 

Science is our only compass here, but its needle waggles in response to social and cultural magnetisms.^20,21  In order to stabilize or reverse climate change, global and national leaders and publics need to believe deeply in the validity of the IPCC-type scientific diagnosis (anthropogenic) and prognosis (global disaster if left unchecked) of the problem.  But simple cognitive belief is not enough.  They also need to frame the issue as a moral one and feel an urgent call to action.²²  Then those actors need to find allies they can trust and build an advocacy coalition.  This coalition needs to attain sufficient political power to gain control over the steering mechanism of the society, ultimately at both national and international levels.  Any advocacy coalition can seek to expand its power either through persuasion to accumulate more allies, or by attaining authority in the political institutions to compel obedience of resisters by legal-coercive means (barring of course coup or revolution).  Coalitions usually expand by persuasion until they can dominate by authority.      

National collective effort to follow scientific guidance can come about due to competitive threats to national power and prestige, as in the US atom bomb and moon-landing projects.  But climate change is different.  It is not a matter of international competition, nor would a nation reap great national “selective incentives” from its solution – except perhaps in terms of international prestige.  To the contrary, as in all collective action problems, in the short run, nations benefit from increasing their GHG outputs.  Therefore, collective action fails and long run collective costs mount.  This “Doomsday Machine” can only be stopped by a global as well as national GHG “armistice” of unprecedented strength and inclusiveness. 

Constructing such GHG reduction regimes will require not just widespread belief in the science, but also impelling moral concern,¹⁰ networks of reciprocity between engaged actors,^23-25 and political empowerment.  In network terms, the belief network must align with the moral framing network and the reciprocity network to produce a strong advocacy coalition.^2,26  The resulting advocacy coalition must then find political empowerment. 

Any given advocacy coalition can pursue power either through persuasion and cooperation, or through contention and domination.  Neo-institutional ecological modernization theory argues that rational persuasive communication, or forms of deliberative democracy, could build the reciprocity and cooperation among many actors needed to bring about such self-imposed changes.^27-29  But contention-oriented “Treadmill of Production” and related theories counter that the interests of producers, business and labor, are too dependent upon fossil-fuel intensive energy sources to budge.^30-32  Hence, only massive popular movements would be able to seize power and force them into adjustment to a new sustainable regime.   

The cooperative position leads to the hypothesis that, in any nation, if scientific belief (in the IPCC-type scientific frame), moral and reciprocity networks can be spread across the major interest divisions in society, this will result in proactive response to climate change.  Venues for participation and dialogue among “stakeholders” would be central in such spread.³³  Participation has become a buzzword, with the U.N. Agenda 21 adopting this premise. 

The contention viewpoint, though, leads to the contrary hypothesis that the relative power of opposed advocacy networks to attain political authority and control would decide the outcome.  The relative presence, power and interplay of cooperative or contentious climate change politics in a nation would be affected by a number of social and cultural factors: the way culture shapes the collective credibility of science as a claim and frame;²¹ the existing institutions as they define opportunities;³⁴ the number, resources and placement of interest groups directly dependent upon fossil fuel profits versus those driven by interests more aligned to a proactive response; the technological and governmental capacities of the nation;³⁴ the level of economic development; and the perceived vulnerability of the nation to near-term costs from climate change. 

Research Design

The COMPON project will trace networks of scientific climate change claims and frames from a common global source into differently configured national polities.  The climatological diagnoses and prognoses organized and distributed by the IPCC provide a common information source available to all countries.  Variation in national policy output and changes in “practice” -- actual GHG emission levels -- provides a measurable dependent variable. Variation in social and cultural factors across the included national cases (about 17) provides evidence on the “intervening variables.”  These intervening social and cultural factors affect the impact of the IPCC scientific “claims” upon national policies and practices. 

To capture the needed information, we will use two main approaches, qualitative content analysis and quantitative policy network surveys.  The purpose of the content analysis will be to identify the concepts and frames that make up the “discourse space” at international and national levels.  The analysis will reveal the major terms of debate at those levels and how actors cluster around different positions in these spaces.  Each team will use special software (Nvivo or Atlas TI) to assist in coding documents and interview transcripts.  The texts will include UNFCCC negotiations, national-level climate change debates, and also transcripts of in-depth interviews with the respondents to the network survey.  The content analysis of the UNFCCC debates, currently under way, will reveal the major debates, issues and “frames” prevalent in international climate change debates.  This information will help define the questions on the basic common network survey about these international issues. 

The quantitative policy network survey will be based on several rounds of preceding research.  The policy network approach has been developed over the last several decades.^35-37  We adapt this method and survey form to meet our research objectives.  The basic survey includes questions about an organization’s relationships with other actors (networks), resources, perceptions of actor influence, stances on national and international climate change debates and values, and political activities to affect specific national policy decisions.  A large range of activities and contextual factors can be operationalized as “network” questions.  In this wider sense, perhaps the term “social relationship” should be replaced with “vector of influence.”  The types of networks questioned include vital information, specific claims and frames, negotiation, political support, reciprocity, trust, mediation, sources of impinging legal authority, and sources of inspiring moral models. 

The COMPON project has organized national teams led by highly-qualified social scientists to carry out the study in each included national case.  Currently, the cases include 17 societies: China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, United States, Canada, Brazil, England, Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Austria, Greece, Italy, Russia, India and New Zealand. The project also includes the “international case” defined as organizations involved in pressuring and shaping the ongoing United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change at the successive Conferences of Parties (COP).  The cases represent variation on “intervening variables” including institutional, interest group and socio-cultural qualities.  We draw eclectically upon a range of theories and substantive studies for hints and hunches about factors that might affect the flow of climate science claims from the IPCC source into national policy and practice.  The voluminous data will allow the researchers to analyze and examine the effects of a wide range of possible intervening factors at the national and international levels.  To discern the effect of conditions on outcomes, we will employ the method of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), well suited to a medium number of cases (from 10 to 20).³⁸       

The Compon project will take great strides in explaining variation in the appearance and centrality of IPCC-type climate science claims in national policies and their ultimate effects upon practices – levels of GHG emissions.  A beneficial spin-off of this project will be suggestions for effective institutional design to facilitate the proactive national response to global climate change.    

In January, 2007, the COMPON project inaugurated its activities with a four-day conference at the University of Minnesota. Findings of existing social science research about failures and successes in responding to climate change around the world were presented. Former Vice-President Walter Mondale made the opening remarks at the conference. Speaker presentations can be viewed at <igs.cla.umn.edu/research/conferences.html>. Case-investigators, graduate students, conference and workshop speakers, and interested Minnesota faculty discussed how to draw upon the wealth of research to bring evidence to bear upon these questions. The COMPON project continued with two panels at the annual meeting of the International Network for Social Network Analysis held in Corfu, Greece, in May.  We are currently organizing a panel at the upcoming conference of the IHDP in Berlin (February 2008).  The PI is also working with Joane Nagel and Tom Dietz to organize a climate change workshop for sociologists preceding, as well as a panel within the 2008 ASA meeting in Boston.   

By June 2008 to June 2010, as case data becomes available, COMPON researchers will commence analysis and publication.  Case teams will publish analyses of their own data and collaborate with other case-investigators for comparative analysis, including a comprehensive comparative analysis addressing the central hypotheses.  Case teams will also work to establish national centers for social scientific research and education concerning global climate change.  After a limited time, the COMPON data will be placed in the public domain.  The COMPON project is interdisciplinary; investigators include sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, and mathematicians. We plan to continue this project through repeated waves of survey collection, to institutionalize a research network to monitor and analyze the reaction of national and global society to the increasing intensity of climate change effects.  As the survey is modular, researchers who would like to add a societal case to the project should contact the organizer (broad001@umn.edu).  

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