Political enablers of ambitious climate policies: a framework and thematic review

2025/02/14 by Simon Montfort, Lukas Fesenfeld, Karin Ingold +2 · 1 voice
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Environmental Science · Social Sciences · #Climate Change Policy and Economics #Sustainability and Climate Change Governance #Social Acceptance of Renewable Energy

paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s44168-024-00206-1

openalex publication_date 2025/02/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29

Abstract

Currently, most research explaining why countries lead or lag in climate policy assumes a problem-oriented perspective, focusing on barriers to climate policy adoption. Here, we argue that correcting for past failures, solving problems, and bringing climate policies back on track for the Paris Agreement requires a solution-oriented perspective on the political enablers of ambitious climate policies. We unite a growing research community that has previously been scattered across disciplinary subfields with various ontological and epistemological assumptions. Rooted in a thematic review of the scientific literature, we introduce a framework with a typology of six political enablers for ambitious climate policy at its core. For each enabler, we summarize key policy implications. We illustrate our framework with a case study on the adoption of emission trading systems in the transport and building sectors in Germany and the European Union (EU) allowing future solution-oriented research to build on our effort.

Citations

• Political Competition, Path Dependence, and the Strategy of Sustainable Energy Transitions
• Polycentric systems for coping with collective action and global environmental change
• A tale of two tails: Commuting and the fuel price response in driving
• How does framing affect policy support for emissions mitigation? Testing the effects of ocean acidification and other carbon emissions frames

Discussions

• National #ClimatePolicies are falling short of targets pledged in the #ParisAgreement. Rather than focus on barriers, Montfort et al. look for solutions & identify 6 political #enablers, e.g., communi [bsky, 2 points, 0 comments]

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