학술논문

Unilateral or Reciprocal Climate Policy? Experimental Evidence from China
Document Type
TEXT
Source
Politics and Governance, 4(3)
Subject
Internationale Beziehungen
Politikwissenschaft
spezielle Ressortpolitik
internationale Beziehungen, Entwicklungspolitik
Klimaschutz
Ostasien
öffentliche Meinung
Klimawandel
Global Governance
Reziprozität
internationales Abkommen
Klimapolitik
China
Unilateralismus
International relations
Political science
Special areas of Departmental Policy
International Relations, International Politics, Foreign Affairs, Development Policy
global governance
public opinion
climate protection
international agreement
unilateralism
climate policy
climate change
reciprocity
Far East
Language
English
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 externalities as well as freeriding. The governance architecture of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol uses the traditional approaches of international 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 abandoned 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 climate 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." (author's abstract)