National Climate Policy: A Multi-field Approach

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 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.