Political Strategies to Overcome Climate Policy Obstructionism

Abstract

Great socioeconomic transitions bring about the demise of certain industries and the rise of others. The losers of the transition tend to deploy a variety of tactics to obstruct change. We develop a political-economy model of interest group competition and garner evidence of tactics deployed in the global climate movement. From this we deduce a set of strategies for how the climate movement competes against entrenched hydrocarbon interests. Five strategies for overcoming obstructionism emerge: (1) appeasement, which involves compensating the losers; (2) co-optation, which seeks to instigate change by working with incumbents; (3) institutionalism, which involves changes to public institutions to support decarbonization; (4) antagonism, which creates reputational or litigation costs to inaction; and (5) countervailance, which makes low-carbon alternatives more competitive. We argue that each strategy addresses the problem of obstructionism through a different lens, reflecting a diversity of actors and theories of change within the climate movement. The choice of which strategy to pursue depends on the institutional context.