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Invidiual Preferences for International Environmental Cooperation
Type
fundamental research project
Start Date
01 October 2011
End Date
01 September 2013
Status
ongoing
Keywords
global climate policy
climate agreements
comparative politics
public opinion
political behavior
political economy
international institutions
Description
Scientists and pundits emphasize that addressing today's most pressing environmental problems requires international cooperation and multi-country opinion polls suggest that the majority of individuals on this globe generally support international efforts to deal with environmental problems. Previous work on the design of international institutions and contract design highlights the role of participation, burden sharing, and enforcement for the evolution of lasting and successful cooperation. While scholarship acknowledges that in democratic systems domestic support for international cooperation eventually determines its long-term prospects, we know very little about how the design of international agreements affects individual support for establishing and joining such institutions. Our comparative research project starts filling this gap.
We explore how three key dimensions of international environmental cooperation affect mass support for these institutions. Current debates about the feasibility of a global climate policy architecture have identified participation, distribution of costs, and enforcement as the three key issues in addressing global warming that results from CO2 emissions. The project examines how these factors influence individual preferences for international environmental agreements using randomized experiments embedded in representative surveys in four economically important democracies (United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany), since the scientific community agrees that these countries will have to make particularly high initial contributions to curb emissions responsible for global warming.
The findings speak to the current debates about the design of a global climate policy architecture and the general literature on the design of international institutions and cooperation. It will provide policymakers with important knowledge about which types of international environmental cooperation are likely to have long-term prospects in democracies and which will not.
We explore how three key dimensions of international environmental cooperation affect mass support for these institutions. Current debates about the feasibility of a global climate policy architecture have identified participation, distribution of costs, and enforcement as the three key issues in addressing global warming that results from CO2 emissions. The project examines how these factors influence individual preferences for international environmental agreements using randomized experiments embedded in representative surveys in four economically important democracies (United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany), since the scientific community agrees that these countries will have to make particularly high initial contributions to curb emissions responsible for global warming.
The findings speak to the current debates about the design of a global climate policy architecture and the general literature on the design of international institutions and cooperation. It will provide policymakers with important knowledge about which types of international environmental cooperation are likely to have long-term prospects in democracies and which will not.
Leader contributor(s)
Partner(s)
Stanford University, ETH Zurich, UNEP
Funder(s)
Topic(s)
Political science
environmental sciences
Method(s)
Experimental methods
Range
Institute/School
Range (De)
Institut/School
Principal
Swiss Network for International Studies
Division(s)
Eprints ID
222438
2 results
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1 - 2 of 2
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PublicationInterests, Norms, and Mass Support for Global Climate Cooperation( 2015-06-26)
;Genovese, FedericaScheve, Kenneth F.Type: conference paper -
PublicationMass Support for Climate Cooperation Depends on Institutional DesignEffective climate mitigation requires international cooperation and these global efforts need broad public support to be sustainable over the long run. We provide estimates of public support for different types of climate agreements in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Using data from a large-scale experimental survey, we explore how three key dimensions of global climate cooperation---costs and distribution, participation, and enforcement---affect individuals' willingness to support these international efforts. We find that design features have significant effects on public support. Specifically, our results indicate that support is higher for global climate agreements that involve lower costs, distribute costs according to prominent fairness principles, encompass more countries, and include a small sanction if a country fails to meet its emissions reduction targets. In contrast to well documented baseline differences in public support for climate mitigation efforts, opinion responds similarly to changes in climate policy design in all four countries. We also find that the effects of institutional design features can bring about decisive changes in the level of public support for a global climate agreement. Moreover, the results appear consistent with the view that the sensitivity of public support to design features reflects underlying norms of reciprocity and individuals' beliefs about the potential effectiveness of specific agreements.Type: journal articleJournal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of AmericaVolume: 110Issue: 34
Scopus© Citations 190