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Deep Decarbonisation: The Democratic Challenge of Navigating Governance Traps

Project description

A closer look at why decarbonisation is so challenging

Long-term political challenges are often characterised by a chasm between the scale of action required and the adequacy of current political commitments. In the debate on decarbonisation, for instance, politicians avoid binding policies for fear these may come at a political cost to themselves, while citizens appear to want decarbonisation but expect politicians to lead. The EU-funded DeepDCarb project will analyse the relationship between politicians, citizens/voters and other actors. The project will create and use 13 new data-sets and analyse them using time-sensitive statistical techniques to investigate the policy instruments used by governments to engineer greater societal commitment to deep and rapid decarbonisation. DeepDCarb will also explore how far politicising and/or depoliticising contentious issues such as the delivery of deep decarbonisation enables more effective policy delivery.

Objective

The standard advice to politicians confronting long-term challenges such as decarbonisation is to adopt time-consistent commitment devices such as binding policies. Yet politicians appear unable to do this, greatly imperilling the achievement of the 1.5 and 2oC limits in the landmark Paris Agreement.

The state-of-the art struggles to explain the causes, and hence the solutions, to this impasse. Political scientists argue that politicians fear retribution at the next election; psychologists claim that citizens understand what is at stake, but expect politicians to lead. The untested assumption is that both are locked into a governance trap which greatly reduces the political feasibility of rapid change.

DeepDCarb seeks to significantly advance the academic state-of-the-art by directly interrogating the relationship between politicians, citizens/voters and other actors in a uniquely detailed and comparative manner, drawing on an unconventional combination of methods and unrivalled new data sets.

It will establish a new subfield of interdisciplinary research that:
Explores the commitment devices that all states in the world have adopted, via a nested array of 13 new datasets and time-sensitive statistical techniques;
Opens up the black box of societal commitment formation in a sample of large emitters (including the EU-28) to explore the relationship between politicians and citizens (1990-2020);
Investigates the scope for unlocking traps by bringing actors together in deliberative fora such as citizens assemblies, thus confronting the uncomfortable question of how far societal commitment is more effectively engendered by depoliticising or politicising contentious issues.

The findings, to be widely disseminated through a programme of publication and public engagement, will contribute significantly to understanding the scope for unlocking the profound impasse in societys struggle to deliver deep decarbonisation.

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Keywords

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

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ERC-ADG - Advanced Grant

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) ERC-2019-ADG

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Host institution

UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 864 275,00
Address
EARLHAM ROAD
NR4 7TJ NORWICH
United Kingdom

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Region
East of England East Anglia Norwich and East Norfolk
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 864 275,00

Beneficiaries (2)

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