The politics of climate change: The origins and development of climate policy in the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States

Between 1990 and 1997 the international community negotiated two major agreements to begin to address the potentially devastating problem of human induced climate change. International relations scholars have extensively analyzed these negotiations. What has been less well documented is the interaction between international climate negotiations and domestic climate policy. International agreements to cut greenhouse gas emissions are intimately linked to domestic policies to achieve emission reductions. Domestic programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions necessarily involve reform of transportation, energy, taxation, and/or industrial policy. These policies lie at the heart of modern economies and create difficult political, environmental, and economic tradeoffs for decision-makers. The focus of this study is the nexus of international and domestic climate politics. It is structured around comparative case studies of climate policy development in three advanced industrial states: the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany. A two-level game framework is utilized to structure the analysis, but the primary focus is an investigation of the contributions of international relations and comparative domestic political theories to understanding the development of domestic and foreign climate policies within each state. The study proceeds from a set of propositions derived from international relations theory and domestic institutional theories. The study concludes that, despite significant variation in the political salience of climate policy and important domestic institutional difference across the three states, the forces shaping the development of climate policy were remarkably similar and heavily constrained by concerns of economic competitiveness.