More than Symbols: The Effect of Symbolic Policies on Climate Policy Support

Theodore Tallent, Malo Jan and Luis Sattelmayer

American Political Science Review, 2026, vol. 120, issue 3, _16

Abstract: As climate change effects become increasingly salient, the need for stringent climate policies becomes more pressing. The implementation of such policies is often met with resistance from the public due to their perceived costs and distributional implications. Scholars have mostly focused on material compensations to increase public support among policy losers. This article goes beyond the existing literature by showing how what we term symbolic policies can enhance support for costlier policies. We define symbolic policies as policies sending meaningful messages to the public but having low material impacts. We argue that without changing the material costs that climate policies impose, symbolic policies increase public support by altering the message that costly policies convey. We demonstrate our argument using survey experiments and qualitative interviews conducted in France, showing that symbolic policies can significantly increase support for costly climate policies and increase perceptions of fairness, elite behavior, and government credibility.

Date: 2026
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