Five Worlds of Political Strategy in the Climate Movement

Sugandha Srivastav and Ryan Rafaty

INET Oxford Working Papers from Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford

Abstract: The chasm between required and actual emissions abatement continues to grow in part because stringent climate laws and policies have repeatedly been blocked, repealed or weakened by obstructionist lobbies. Lobbying by the climate change countermovement dwarfs that by the climate movement. To make meaningful progress towards global emissions abatement, smart political strategies are needed. Drawing on evidence from current and past sociotechnical transitions and social movements, we propose a taxonomy of five strategic paradigms for overcoming obstructionism: antagonism ("name, shame, boycott and sue"), appeasement ("compensate the losers"), co-optation ("change from within"), institutionalism ("change the rules of the game") and countervailance ("support the alternative"). Each "world" of strategy addresses the problem of obstructionism through a different lens, reflecting a diversity of actors, tactics, and theories of change within the climate movement. We develop a heuristic model to explore how these strategies change a politician's incentives across different institutional contexts, both statically and dynamically.

Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2021-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env and nep-isf
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:amz:wpaper:2021-07

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