New Publication – Partisan and Electoral Incentives in Climate Policy-Making

Why do vote seeking politicians pursue climate policies if they are usually not perceived as a vote winner? Professor Kai Schulze investigates this question in a new open access article published in the leading international journal Global Environmental Politics. The study finds that climate policy production in fact tends to increase as the election approaches due to increases in “soft” policies, such as subsidies, research grants, and information instruments. Regarding partisan politics, left governments are found to produce more “hard” policies like taxes and regulations than center and right governments, especially before elections. This suggests that partisan and electoral incentives play an important role for a better understanding of climate policy change. The paper is publicly available on the Internet.