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Not Waiting For Washington: Climate Policy Adoption In California And New York, Roger Karapin
Not Waiting For Washington: Climate Policy Adoption In California And New York, Roger Karapin
Publications and Research
In the absence of strong U.S. national climate change policy, California and New York, among other states, adopted relatively comprehensive and ambitious policies to cut greenhouse gas emissions during the 2000s. They adopted these policies despite political-institutional and other structural barriers similar to those found nationally, which shows that political actors have significant scope for taking effective action even under structural constraints. This article explains the adoption of climate policies in these two leading states by using a windows of opportunity approach, which analyzes how the convergence of problem and political events produces policy windows and hence opportunities for advocacy …
Explaining Success And Failure In Climate Policies: Developing Theory Through German Case Studies, Roger Karapin
Explaining Success And Failure In Climate Policies: Developing Theory Through German Case Studies, Roger Karapin
Publications and Research
Theories of environmental outcomes have been developed mostly through large-N cross-national studies, which have a structuralist bias and do not include the mechanisms through which inferred causes operate. Structured, focused case studies can help overcome those limits by incorporating political processes and identifying causal mechanisms. Here, comparisons of climate policy outcomes within Germany are used to test and develop theory, by explaining the differences among nine cases with the help of process tracing. The findings suggest that environmental-outcome theories should be modified to include: external events and advocacy-coalition formation as key processes; multiple causal paths through which green parties improve …