National Climate Policy

Failed attempts at producing ambitious global climate commitments and instruments have made it increasingly important for nation states to deliver climate policies. This in turn requires a better understanding of national climate policymaking. In this book, Elin Lerum Boasson develops an innovative and well-grounded analytical framework for assessing national climate-policy development. Why do national climate policies emerge and change? This question is underpinned by the role played by different actors and the kind social mechanism at work. Boasson asks, to what extent and how is the emergence and change of climate policy influenced by: politicians and the national political fields; business and organizational fields; EU policy and the European environment; social and entrepreneurial mechanisms? Combining policy studies with sociological new institutionalism, and drawing on three climate policy sub-areas in Norway: renewable energy, low-energy buildings and carbon capture and storage, Boasson presents a multi-field framework that allows the reader to capture the entire policy cycle, explaining policy initiation, policy adoption and the long-term, social feedback effects resulting from implementation (or lack of implementation).

"Elin Boasson is one of a growing number of scholars who are responding to the gridlock in the international governance system to urge us to bring states and national climate policies back into our analytical frames of reference. By focusing on the often neglected activities of policy entrepreneurs, she deftly reveals how they process critical and often very complex issues of authority, legitimacy and policy effectiveness. Highly recommended."—Andrew Jordan, Tyndall Centre, University of East Anglia"National Climate Policy: A Multifield Approach is dazzlingly rigorous and highly innovative comparative study that breaks new ground in explaining how and why national climate policies emerge, evolve and change. Based on four meticulous policy case studies from Norway, Elin Lerum Boasson explains climate policy developments as the result of the interaction between the activities of policy entrepreneurs and the multiple fields and larger environment in which they operate. One of the many key findings is that the degree of national political steering of climate policy can vary considerably across different sub-issue areas, and this should make policy analysts think carefully before they fall back on the staple explanation of ‘political will’ as the key variable accounting for climate policy development. "—Robyn Eckersley, University of MelbourneAt a time when scholars have been busily cataloguing the rapid growth in national climate policy legislation in recent decades, this contribution takes the crucial next step to begin explaining how such policies actually emerge and develop over time. -- Jonas J. Schoenefeld, University of East AngliaIn my opinion, this book represents an impressive and noteworthy contribution to the comparative study of climate policy ... Boasson’s new book should serve as inspiration to all of us who study the formulation of public policy – also beyond the specific areas of climate and environmental policy -- Sissel Hovik, Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, "Elin Boasson is one of a growing number of scholars who are responding to the gridlock in the international governance system to urge us to bring states and national climate policies back into our analytical frames of reference. By focusing on the often neglected activities of policy entrepreneurs, she deftly reveals how they process critical and often very complex issues of authority, legitimacy and policy effectiveness. Highly recommended."—Andrew Jordan, Tyndall Centre, University of East Anglia"National Climate Policy: A Multifield Approach is dazzlingly rigorous and highly innovative comparative study that breaks new ground in explaining how and why national climate policies emerge, evolve and change. Based on four meticulous policy case studies from Norway, Elin Lerum Boasson explains climate policy developments as the result of the interaction between the activities of policy entrepreneurs and the multiple fields and larger environment in which they operate. One of the many key findings is that the degree of national political steering of climate policy can vary considerably across different sub-issue areas, and this should make policy analysts think carefully before they fall back on the staple explanation of ‘political will’ as the key variable accounting for climate policy development. "—Robyn Eckersley, University of Melbourne At a time when scholars have been busily cataloguing the rapid growth in national climate policy legislation in recent decades, this contribution takes the crucial next step to begin explaining how such policies actually emerge and develop over time. -- Jonas J. Schoenefeld, University of East Anglia In my opinion, this book represents an impressive and noteworthy contribution to the comparative study of climate policy ... Boasson’s new book should serve as inspiration to all of us who study the formulation of public policy – also beyond the specific areas of climate and environmental policy -- Sissel Hovik, Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences

Elin Lerum Boasson is a senior researcher at the CICERO Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo, Norway. Boasson has specialized in climate policy studies, combining assessment of national climate policymaking with insights into EU climate policymaking.