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Published on: July 24, 2016
Political enablers of ambitious climate policies: a framework and thematic review
Simon Montfort1,2,3, Lukas Fesenfeld1,2,4, Karin Ingold1,2,5
1Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Hochschulstrasse 4, Bern, 3012 Bern Switzerland.
Abstract:
Currently, most research explaining why countries lead or lag in climate policy assumes a problem-oriented perspective, focusing on barriers to climate policy adoption. Here, we argue that correcting for past failures, solving problems, and bringing climate policies back on track for the Paris Agreement requires a solution-oriented perspective on the political enablers of ambitious climate policies. We unite a growing research community that has previously been scattered across disciplinary subfields with various ontological and epistemological assumptions. Rooted in a thematic review of the scientific literature, we introduce a framework with a typology of six political enablers for ambitious climate policy at its core. For each enabler, we summarize key policy implications. We illustrate our framework with a case study on the adoption of emission trading systems in the transport and building sectors in Germany and the European Union (EU) allowing future solution-oriented research to build on our effort.
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