An analysis of policy intractability in the climate change mitigation challenge

随着2016年成为有记录以来最热的一年，这项研究提出了一个问题：为什么应对气候变化的挑战如此棘手？特别是，鉴于对地球气候变化的破坏性后果的科学评估，它试图理解政府应对气候变化的声明意图与实际表现之间的差异是如何产生的。英国在2008年通过了《气候变化法案》，自称为“世界上雄心勃勃的气候行动的榜样”（2015年12月14日的《英国会议纪要》），本研究以英国为重点，评估了政府减少温室气体排放（并满足碳预算）的政策是否达到了它的目标，以及在哪里可以找到差异的原因。减缓气候变化是否仅仅是一个典型的“邪恶”政策问题，难以解决，因此发展和部署缓慢，这是可以理解的？差异可以用政治妥协、意外后果、政府无能或效率低下来解释吗？或者，是否有可能找出导致其无法解决的另一个更令人不安的根源：一个最好的解释是腐败，更具体地说是机构腐败（IC）？腐败在气候变化政策制定中发挥作用的观点并不新鲜（TI 2011），但对腐败的研究往往将其狭隘地定义为“滥用委托权力谋取私利”，随之而来的是贿赂和交换条件（Beetham 2015）。Thompson（1995）的IC概念扩大并将焦点转向政治或制度上有用的“收益”，强调系统过程而不是一次性的“滥用”行为，并涉及破坏制度主要目的的倾向；因此，能够对可能被认为只是“政治”的做法采取更为批判的方法。气候变化政策非常适合集成电路，因为它具有集成电路可能存在的许多要素、关系和摩擦。气候变化政策制定者不仅肩负着明确的法律目的——减缓气候变化——而且他们的工作对公众利益有着强烈（尽管复杂）的要求，并与强大的既得利益集团（如能源公司）相互作用。然而，IC提出了一个方法上的挑战——如何在一个已经复杂的政策环境中可靠地识别、检查和衡量一种跨越政治照旧和腐败之间的微妙界限的现象。在绘制政策过程和参与者的地图，并根据自己的标准对政府政策进行评估之后，本研究将在四个案例研究中采用政策追踪方法，使用顺序和详细的观察来建立政策如何发展的全面图景。在影响变化的背景、过程或机制范围内，将调查国际合作的观察结果，以了解它们在决策过程中的潜在作用和影响。英国目前正在努力填补其减排法律承诺的重大政策空白，同时准备退出欧盟，其大部分气候政策都与欧盟有关。因此，未来几年可能是气候变化政策分析的高产期，这可能会对更广泛地理解脱欧后英国的政策过程产生影响。这种新颖的气候政策方法也旨在测试IC的局限性，以解释一个机构的民主合法性可能被破坏的方式（Lessig 2013; Thompson 1995）。在这样做的过程中，它加入了旨在扩大我们对腐败的理解并识别发达民主国家腐败的运动——这是一个长期以来“被忽视和低估”的研究领域（Cockcroft和Wegener 2016）。

As 2016 claims the title of the hottest year on record, this study asks why the challenge of counteracting climate change has proven so intractable. In particular, given scientific assessments of the devastating consequences of the planet's changing climate, it seeks to understand how discrepancies arise between governments' stated intentions to tackle climate change and their actual performance. With a focus on the UK - which with the 2008 Climate Change Act styled itself as "an example to the world of what ambitious climate action looks like" (Hansard 14 Dec. 2015) - this study assesses whether government policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (and meet carbon budgets) lives up to its aspirations, and where discrepancies can be found what their causes might be. Is climate change mitigation simply the quintessential "wicked" policy problem, difficult to resolve and so understandably slow to develop and deploy? Can discrepancies be explained by political compromise, unintended consequences, government incompetence or inefficiencies? Or is it possible to identify another more disturbing root to its insolvability: one best explained by corruption and more specificallyinstitutional corruption (IC)? The idea that corruption plays a role in climate change policy-making is not new (TI 2011), but studies of corruption have tended to define it narrowly as the "abuse of entrusted power for private gain", with the consequent focus on bribery and quid pro quo exchanges (Beetham 2015). Thompson's (1995) concept of IC broadens and shifts focus towards political or institutionally useful "gains", emphasises systemic processes rather than one-off acts of "abuse" and engages with tendencies to undermine an institution's primary purpose; thus enabling a more critical approach to practices that might otherwise be considered simply "politics".Climate change policy is a compelling fit for IC because it has many of the elements, relationships and frictions in which IC potentially exists. Climate change policymakers are not only tasked with a clear legal purpose - to mitigate climate change - but also their work has a strong (albeit complicated) claim to the public interest and interacts with powerful vested interests (e.g. energy companies). However, IC presents a methodological challenge - how to reliably identify, examine and measure a phenomenon that straddles the fine line between politics-as-usual and corruption in an already complex policy environment. Following a mapping exercise of policy processes and actors, and an assessment ofgovernment policy measured against its own standards, this research will employ a policy tracing method in four case studies, using sequenced and detailed observations to build up a comprehensive picture of how policy develops. Within the contexts, processes or mechanisms that effect change, observations of IC will be investigated for their potential role and impact in the policy-making process.The UK is currently working to plug a significant policy gap in its legal commitments to reduce emissions and is simultaneously preparing to leave the EU, to which much of its climate policy is bound. As such, the next few years are likely to be productive for analyses of climate change policy with potential implications for a broader understanding of policy processes in post-Brexit Britain. This novel approach to climate policy also aims to test the limits of IC to explain the ways in which an institution's democratic legitimacy can be undermined (Lessig 2013; Thompson 1995). In doing so it joins the movement that seeks to expand our understanding of corruption and identify it in developed democratic countries - an area of research that has long been "overlooked and underplayed" (Cockcroft and Wegener 2016).