Seminar: “Why distributive conflict, not collective action, characterizes the politics of climate change.”

Abstract: 
Climate change policy is generally modeled as a global collective action problem struc-
tured by free-riding concerns. Drawing on quantitative data, archival work, and elite inter-
views, we review empirical support for this model and find that the evidence for its claims
is weak relative to the theory’s pervasive influence. We find, first, that the strongest collec-
tive action claims appear empirically unsubstantiated in many important climate politics
cases. Second, collective action claims—whether in their strongest or in more nuanced
versions—appear observationally equivalent to alternative theories focused on distributive
conflict within countries. We argue that extant patterns of climate policy making can be
explained without invoking free-riding. Governments implement climate policies regard-
less of what other countries do, and they do so whether a climate treaty dealing with free-
riding has been in place or not. Without an empirically grounded model for global climate
policy making, institutional and political responses to climate change may ineffectively
target the wrong policy-making dilemma. We urge scholars to redouble their efforts to
analyze the empirical linkages between domestic and international factors shaping climate
policy making in an effort to empirically ground theories of global climate politics. Such
analysis is, in turn, the topic of this issue’s special section.

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