An analysis of policy intractability in the climate change mitigation challenge

由于2016年被称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被证明是如此棘手。特别是，鉴于对地球气候变化破坏性后果的科学评估，它试图了解各国政府所宣称的应对气候变化的意图与其实际表现之间是如何产生差异的。这项研究的重点是英国--英国在2008年的《气候变化法》中将自己标榜为“世界上雄心勃勃的气候行动的典范”(2015年12月14日)--这项研究评估了政府减少温室气体排放(和满足碳预算)的政策是否达到了其愿望，以及在哪里可以找到差异可能的原因。缓解气候变化仅仅是典型的“邪恶的”政策问题，难以解决，开发和部署如此缓慢是可以理解的吗？分歧可以用政治妥协、意外后果、政府无能或效率低下来解释吗？或者，有没有可能找到另一个更令人不安的根源：腐败和更具体地说的制度腐败(IC)是最好的解释？腐败在气候变化政策制定中发挥作用的想法并不新鲜(TI 2011)，但对腐败的研究往往将其狭隘地定义为“滥用受托权力谋取私利”，从而将重点放在贿赂和交换交换上(Beetham 2015)。汤普森(1995)的IC概念拓宽了IC的范围，并将重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，并倾向于破坏机构的主要目的；从而使人们能够对原本可能被简单地视为“政治”的做法采取更具批判性的方法。气候变化政策是一个令人信服的适合IC的政策，因为它包含了IC可能存在的许多元素、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--而且他们的工作强烈(尽管复杂)要求公众利益，并与强大的既得利益集团(如能源公司)相互作用。然而，调查委员会提出了一个方法论挑战--如何可靠地识别、检查和衡量一种现象，这种现象跨越了政治照常和腐败之间的微妙界限，而政策环境已经很复杂。在绘制了政策进程和行为者的地图，并根据自己的标准对政府政策进行了评估之后，这项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，以建立政策如何发展的全面图景。在影响变化的背景、过程或机制内，将调查气候变化委员会的观察结果，以了解它们在政策制定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中的一个重大政策漏洞，同时正准备脱离欧盟，英国的大部分气候政策都与欧盟捆绑在一起。因此，未来几年很可能会对气候变化政策进行分析，这可能会对更广泛地理解英国退欧后的政策进程产生潜在影响。这一气候政策的新方法还旨在测试气候政策委员会的限度，以解释一个机构的民主合法性可能受到破坏的方式(Lessig 2013；Thompson 1995)。通过这样做，它加入了寻求扩大我们对腐败的理解并在发达的民主国家识别腐败的运动--这是一个长期被“忽视和淡化”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).