Unilateral or reciprocal climate policy? Experimental evidence from China

Bernauer, Thomas, Dong, Liang, Beiser-McGrath, Liam F. ORCID: 0000-0001-9745-0320, Shaymerdenova, Irina and Zhang, Haibin (2016) Unilateral or reciprocal climate policy? Experimental evidence from China. Politics and Governance, 4 (3). 152 - 171. ISSN 2183-2463

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Abstract

The traditional political economy account of global climate change governance directs our attention to fundamental collective action problems associated with global public goods provision, resulting from positive or negative externali-ties as well as freeriding. The governance architecture of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol uses the traditional approaches of in-ternational diplomacy for addressing such challenges: legally binding commitments based on principles of reciprocity and (fair) cost/burden sharing via formalized carbon-budgeting. Yet, the 2015 Paris Agreement has essentially aban-doned this approach, as it now operates on the basis of internationally coordinated and monitored unilateralism. On the presumption that public opinion matters for government policy, we examine how citizens view this shift in climate policy from reciprocity to unilateralism, after many years of exposure to strong reciprocity rhetoric by governments and stakeholders. To that end, we fielded a survey experiment in China, the world’s largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter. The results show that there is, perhaps surprisingly, strong and robust public support for unilateral, non-reciprocal cli-mate policy. To the extent China is interested in pushing ahead with ambitious and thus costly GHG reduction policies, our results suggest that China can leverage segments of public support in order to overcome domestic obstacles to GHG mitigation policies.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernan...
Additional Information:	Funding Information: The research for this article was financially supported by European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant no. 295456 bel (Sources of Legitimacy in Global Environ-mental Governance). The authors are grateful to Mike Hudecheck for excellent research assistance. Publisher Copyright: © 2016 by the authors; licensee Cogitatio (Lisbon, Portugal).
Divisions:	LSE
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GE Environmental Sciences J Political Science > JQ Political institutions Asia, Africa, Australia, Pacific
Date Deposited:	28 Aug 2024 11:18
Last Modified:	20 Dec 2024 00:46
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/124878

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