Presidents and intermediaries: insights from clean energy policy processes in Mexico

ABSTRACT

We assess whether different presidents have different “styles” of involving intermediary organizations such as trade unions or business associations in the policy process. Given that temporal variation in the relationship between presidents and intermediaries can be observed, to what extent can the intermediaries included in the policy process be explained by the respective president’s leadership style and/or political ideology? We concentrate on the process by which clean energy policies were formulated under three Mexican presidents between 2006 and 2022. We draw on original data collected through 18 semi-structured interviews carried out with intermediaries between January and July 2022. Our findings show that the different presidents had different policy styles and therefore varied in how they included climate intermediaries in the policy process. This finding has important implications for research on policy styles as well as climate intermediation. Regarding policy styles the results presented call for theorizing of the dynamics observed. As concerns climate intermediaries the corresponding literature is invited to pay more attention to the political context in which they operate.

KEYWORDS:

• Clean energy
• climate action
• intermediaries
• policy styles
• presidentialism

Acknowledgements

We thank Pirmin Bundi, Laurence Crumbie, Gonzalo Diéguez, Alejandro Miguel Estévez, Fay Farstad, Emiliano Levario Saad, Paul Tobin, and Philipp Trein as well as three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. The fieldwork was funded by the PAPIIT research grant IA302721 “AMLO’s populist frame: a transversal study of the 4T’s public policy (POPUL4T)”, provided by the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Interviews were transcribed by POPUL4T trainees Ángel Jaramillo and Erick Ortiz.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Autonomous University of Mexico [grant number IA302721 – POPUL4T].

Notes on contributors

Israel Solorio

Israel Solorio is Associate Professor at the School of Political and Social Sciences, National Autonomous University of Mexico. His research focuses on the interlinkage between climate and energy policies, having expertise on energy transitions, the promotion of renewable energy and the democratization of energy, policy integration and national climate policies and socio-environmental conflicts around energy projects.

Jale Tosun

Jale Tosun is Professor of Political Science at Heidelberg University. Her research spans a wide range of topics in comparative public policy, public administration, international political economy, and European integration. She is the editor-in-chief of Climate Action, an associate editor of Policy Sciences and an executive editor for special issues of the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice.