Department Environmental Social Sciences

Mitigating climate change is a complex policy problem. Sources of harmful greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can be found in almost all societal and economic sectors. Likewise, the group of polluters is diverse ranging from the industry enterprise to the individual. Effective climate policies must be designed to cope with this diversity in target groups. Hence, when formulating and implementing climate policy, the responsible decision-makers necessarily coordinate with a wide range of stakeholders like administrative entities from different sectors, political parties, interest groups, civil society organization, or science institutions. These actors participate in different formal political events (e.g. hearings, votes, committee meetings), informal meetings, express their opinions publicly in the press, or actively launch political initiatives to advocate for their interests and to coordinate their activities with likeminded alters. In this project, we aim to disentangle this complexity, by identifying the stakeholders, analyzing their beliefs and interests, and studying factors that influence their coordination behavior at the different arenas of policymaking. Moreover, we go a step further and compare if, how and why political actors behave differently at different policy arenas, i.e. pursue divergent coordination strategies, form deviant alliances, or even adjust their beliefs. To study the drivers of coordination in such a complex policy-setting, we investigate multiplex networks that comprise different relations (e.g. information, collaboration, resource exchange) for the same set actors. To this end, we use different types of data sources and methods like surveys, interviews, document, and media analysis. With Switzerland and Germany, we selected two countries that are similarity in the political system and policy subsystem, but different in the larger socio-economic structure. Based on these findings, the project will give more practical evidence about how a joint problem understanding, or how bringing diverse stakeholders around one table, might enhance climate policy coordination at the domestic level. And, this should then finally translate in effective and efficient solutions to tackle the climate change dilemma.

This project is part of the Compon Project.