Journal
JOURNAL OF PUBLIC POLICY
Volume 42, Issue 1, Pages 136-164Publisher
CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1017/S0143814X21000088
Keywords
climate change policy; comparative politics; issue salience; policy responsiveness; public demand
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Funding
- Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) within the project Explaining Spatial and Temporal Dynamics in Climate Change Policy Making [100017_135261]
- Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) [100017_135261] Funding Source: Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF)
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The study addresses the debate between normative and positive theories of democracy, focusing on the impact of public demand on climate change policy. Findings indicate that policymakers are responsive to changes in public demand and take predicted actions based on quantified public opinion components.
Normative theories of democracy agree that public demand should be the main guide in policymaking. But positive theories and related empirical research disagree about the extent to which this holds true in reality. We address this debate with an empirical focus on climate change policy. Specifically, we are interested in whether observable variation in public demand for climate change mitigation can help explain variation in adopted national climate policies. Using our own data to approximate public demand, we estimate the responsiveness of policymakers to changes in public demand in six OECD countries from 1995 to 2010. We find that policymakers are responsive and react in predicted ways to variation in our opinion component of measured public demand, rather than to the mere salience of the climate issue. The effect of issue salience is strongest in combination with our opinion measure as this creates a scope for action. The results underscore the importance and usefulness of our concept and empirical measures for public demand, as well as of our disaggregated analysis of climate policy outputs in this area.
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