Do international factors influence the passage of climate change legislation?

Abstract

The number of climate change laws in major economies has grown from less than 40 in 1997 to almost 500 at the end of 2013. The passage of these laws is influenced by both domestic and international factors. This article reviews the main international factors, drawing on a powerful new dataset of climate legislation in 66 national jurisdictions. We find that the propensity to legislate on climate change is heavily influenced by the passage of similar laws elsewhere, suggesting a strong and so far under-appreciated role for international policy diffusion. International treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol work in two ways. The impact of the Kyoto Protocol itself is limited to countries with formal obligations under the treaty. In addition, the prestige of hosting an international climate summit is associated with a subsequent boost in legislation. Legislators seem to respond to the expectations of climate leadership that these events bestow on their host.

Policy relevance

A global solution to climate change will ultimately have to be anchored in domestic legislation, which creates the legal basis for countries to take action. Countries are passing climate legislation in a growing number. This article asks to what extent they are motivated to do so by international factors, such as existing treaty obligations. We find that the Kyoto Protocol has been a less important factor in explaining climate legislation outside Annex I than the passage of similar laws elsewhere. This suggests that international policy diffusion plays an important and so far under-appreciated role in global climate policy, complementing formal treaty obligations.

Keywords:

• climate change legislation
• international policy diffusion
• political economy

Notes

1. The data are available on http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Legislation_Dataset.pdf

2. The case of countries with a general tendency to update laws (i.e. generally high legislative activity) is captured statistically by the inclusion of a fixed effect (see Appendix). If updates are driven by the same factors as the original legislation, our results might underestimate the power of these factors, but only slightly. Results would be biased if the tendency to update laws was completely uncorrelated with initial adoption, but this seems unlikely.

3. The literature on the drivers of Kyoto ratification (Neumayer, 2002; Sauquet, 2014; Von Stein, 2008) finds that ratification behaviour is correlated with domestic legislation activity.

4. Note that many laws address more than one issue and therefore feature in several of the narrower specifications. For example, renewable energy, energy efficiency, and carbon pricing may all be addressed in the same law.