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ABSTRACT
Credible commitment is central to regimes for climate mitigation policy. In the climate policy literature, it is widely argued that the solution to the credible commitment problem is legislation and delegation of goal-setting to a technical body insulated from political incentives, and the UK’s Committee on Climate Change is in part modelled on this approach. However, drawing on the comparative politics literature, this paper argues that the focus on legislation and delegation as the solution to the credible commitment problem is too narrow. Seen within the context of comparative political institutions, it is a response that fits the political logic in countries with majoritarian electoral systems. By contrast, in countries with electoral systems based on proportional representation, while legislation plays a role, an important element in the creation of credible commitment comes in the form of negotiated long-term agreements between political parties. This contrast is explored through a comparison between the Climate Change Act and associated Committee on Climate Change in the UK on the one hand, and a series of Energy and Climate Agreements in Denmark over the 2010s. Both approaches appear to have worked to date. However, while negotiated long-term agreements typically have an internal process for managing conflicts that inevitably arise after the respective mechanisms have been put in place, disputes arising following legislation and delegation must be resolved within the more informal processes of intra-party politics. Mechanisms of accountability also differ between the two approaches.
Key policy insights
Legislation and delegation is widely seen as the key route to credible commitment for climate policy, but other routes are possible.
Legislation and delegation is particularly suited to countries with majoritarian, or first-past-the-post electoral systems and resulting political dynamics.
In countries with proportional representation, an alternative route to credible commitment is possible via formal agreement between political parties.
Both routes can work well, but political agreements tend to have internal mechanisms for mediating conflicts that subsequently arise, whereas delegation relies on intra-party politics.
Acknowledgements
The author is grateful to Neil Carter, Paul Tobin, Benjamin Sovacool, Tim Foxon and two anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier versions. Responsibility for any errors remains with the author.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
2 Both Powell (Citation2000) and Lijphart (Citation2012) use Gallagher’s index of disproportionality. In Powell (Citation2000), Denmark scores 1.7 and the UK 14.4. In Lijphart (Citation2012), Denmark scores 1.71 and the UK scores 11.7.
3 There were indeed calls for the repeal of the CCA during the first half of the 2010s, although only from fairly marginal figures (Lockwood, Citation2013)
4 For example, there was a series of abrupt and unexpected policy changes to support for some renewables in the UK in 2015 (Energy and Climate Change Committee of the House of Commons [ECCC], Citation2016; Lockwood, Citation2016), and a subsequent collapse in investment in 2018. There have also been sudden changes and reversals in carbon price floor and fuel duty policy, the framework for carbon capture and storage, and energy savings schemes, leading to the Chair of the Committee on Climate Change writing to the government in 2015 to express concerns about policy uncertainty and resulting ‘stop-start investment’ (Letter from Lord Deben to Amber Rudd, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, 22 September 2015, Available at: https://www.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/220915-CCC-letter-to-Rt-Hon-Amber-Rudd-MP.pdf, (accessed 3 October 2018))
10 In turn the 2018 Agreement requires a successor Agreement to be negotiated by 2024.
12 In Birchfield and Crepaz’s (Citation1998) terminology, these are ‘commitment’ veto rights, whereas those created by delegation are ‘competitive’ veto rights.
13 According to Duverger’s law, there will be only two
14 This dynamic can be seen clearly in the attempts at cross-party negotiations on a Brexit model in 2019.
15 Although even this is unclear- see Fankhauser et al. (Citation2018) and Brunner et al. (Citation2012)
16 This can be seen through what happened when the government delayed publishing its plans for meeting the fifth budget, which was set in July 2016, until October 2017. When it was published, this plan (HM Government, Citation2017) also did not fully meet the budget. Precisely along the lines discussed, the role of supporters of the Act in civil society was crucial. There were multiple calls from environmentalist groups for the plan to be produced, and energy industry actors complained of the uncertainty created by the delay. The group Client Earth threatened legal action against the government.
17 Excluding Malta and Luxembourg
18 Following the financial crisis, economic growth was lower than was expected at the time that the carbon budgets were set in 2009. Conversely, fossil fuel prices were higher than had been assumed in 2009, leading to lower demand than would otherwise have been the case. Additionally, a change in accounting for the UK’s share of the EU ETS cap meant that emissions attributed to the UK were cut by almost 300 MtCO2e, almost 11% of the second budget. In the absence of these factors, the first and second budgets would not have been met (Cambridge Econometrics, Citation2019).