An analysis of policy intractability in the climate change mitigation challenge

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 specifically
institutional 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 of
government 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).