Paul Tobin

The University of Manchester · Department of Politics

In this article, we highlight a discord in strategies around climate change policy and politics. On one hand, there is widespread concern for the pursuit of climate policy stability: stability in the design of policy and institutions, but particularly making policy and institutional development irreversible. However, much recent literature has revi...

During the 2010s, research focusing on the dismantling of policies grew considerably and contributed to a better understanding of the dynamics of policy change. Policy termination, that is, the complete deleting of policies, is a separate but equally relevant concept, yet it has been overlooked due to the difficulty of obtaining the extensive datas...

Scholars have undertaken much conceptual development of “polycentric” climate governance (PCG). Yet, there has been limited empirical examination of whether this descriptive, analytical, and normative concept can aid climate change mitigation; it may even undermine our efforts in certain contexts. Thus this special issue examines the empirical real...

Much existing empirical research on polycentric climate governance (PCG) systems examines small-N examples. In response, we aim to advance studies of PCG by exploring, and reflecting on, the use of large-N data sets for analyzing PCG. We use Python (a programming language) to create a novel data set from the United Nations’ Global Climate Action Po...

The authors explore the role of leadership in environmental governance. During recent decades, insights from the International Relations and Comparative Politics literature have been combined to improve our understanding of the different motives, positions, types and styles of leadership. A basic distinction can be made between leaders, who activel...

This book assesses the interactions between climate leaders, pioneers and followers, across multilevel and/or polycentric climate governance contexts. Examining the state and sub-state levels in both the Global South and Global North, as well as regional, supranational EU and international climate governance levels, the authors explore 16 countries...

The European Green Deal (EGD) aims to transform the European Union (EU) into a climate neutral continent by 2050, requiring significant changes within carbon-intensive sectors. In this article, we examine EU Member States’ climate strategies in the aviation sector, where greenhouse gas emissions have doubled since 1990. We analyse EU National Energ...

Veto players hold the capacity to decline a choice being made, making them powerful actors within legislative systems. During 2016–2020, Ireland was governed by a minority government, reliant on confidence and supply votes from other parliamentarians, thus it did not hold a veto during parliamentary votes. However, if the independent Bills Office a...

In 2019, Ireland declared a ‘Climate Emergency,’ receiving plaudits from across the political spectrum for doing so. Some argued the country was experiencing an era of ‘new climate politics’: In 2017, Ireland had established the first Citizens’Assembly on Climate, and in 2019 its Parliament debated a Climate Emergency Measures Bill, which was groun...

The 2015 Paris Agreement, which is based on a bottom-up approach and requests that states put forward voluntary national pledges in the form of Nationally Determined Contributions, has arguably increased further the importance of climate leaders and pioneers. Global climate change governance has always taken place within multilevel governance (MLG)...

This volume has identified instances of climate leadership, pioneership and followership across the globe. Alongside this focus, authors have highlighted instances of multilevel governance (MLG) and polycentricity. This Conclusion draws together the findings from this nuanced theoretical framework and is structured in five parts. We begin by explor...

Policy makers debate whether responding to climate change can be complementary to economic growth. New research tracking competing economic ideas across the environmental debate shows that climate change is increasingly seen as an opportunity; however, many still argue that growth and climate action are in conflict.

The European Union (EU) is reputed to be a climate pioneer. However, the EU has been beset by crises, with potentially negative consequences for climate ambition. Analysis and coding of EU climate legislation between 1998 and 2015 reveal that while the rate of climate policy creation has increased since the onset of the crisis, the ambition of thes...

Scholars have found it difficult to identify the impact of austerity on policy outputs. This difficulty may have arisen because studies tend to focus on the content of national and EU legislation, or budgetary responses to fiscal constraint, rather than taking a holistic view of ‘policy’. Drawing on fieldwork in two English cities, we show how ‘dis...

The European Union (EU) has sought to establish itself as a global environmental leader but was hit by the combined effects of the economic and financial crisis from 2007-8 leading some to question whether the EU could continue to adopt ambitious environmental policy. This volume brings together leading environmental policy scholars to analyse the...

The European Union (EU) has been buffeted by a range of crises since 2007, not least the economic and financial crisis. One potential victim of this economic malaise is environmental policy ambition. It is well-established that during economic crises environmental policy slips down the agenda with long term consequences for environmental quality. T...

This edited volume brings together key scholars to investigate the impact of the 2007–8 economic crisis upon environmental policy in Europe, which has been identified as a source of environmental leadership. In this introductory chapter the editors outline the key questions that the volume investigates: has policy been affected by the crisis, in wh...

This concluding chapter brings together the findings of the volume in order to address our key questions. We find that, while there have been examples of both policy expansion and dismantling, the general pattern is one of stasis. The role of the EU is ambiguous—there is no strong evidence of policy dismantling at the European level—but it is equal...

The European Union has been hit by a range of crises since the late 2000s. The global financial and economic crises have led to the pursuit of austerity measures across the European Union (EU) limiting the ability and willingness of political elites to pursue ambitious environmental policy. This chapter reviews the impact of these crises upon the E...

Prior to the 2015 Paris Conference of the Parties (COP), every state was requested to submit a pledge of their own design. To date, there has been a lack of large-n studies that provide a broad picture of these pledges. We employ Discourse Network Analysis to examine critically the climate pledges of all 162 actors at the Paris COP. Our research of...

In 1992 the United Nations identified twenty-four “Annex II” states as being “developed” and holding the greatest responsibility for reducing emissions. Since then, the ambitions of these states toward mitigating climate change have varied significantly. This article is the first to employ fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to analy...

The ongoing European economic crisis provides a focus for academics wishing to understand the relationship between major exogenous shocks and changes to environmental protection. Yet, measuring change, particularly to policies, is notoriously fraught with difficulties. This research note explores the conceptual and methodological challenges associa...

The Paris climate conference is 21st century politics in action. The mega-conference approach is evolving into a more effective model, but too slowly to mitigate the worst effects of climate change, writes Paul Tobin.

The Paris climate conference in December 2015 has been heralded as a crucial opportunity for achieving global agreement on climate change. Paul Tobin analyses the structure of these negotiations and identifies the key barriers to striking a deal on climate change. The Paris climate conference in December 2015 has been heralded as a crucial opportun...

This guide is designed for A-level and Scottish Higher teachers searching for an up-to-date overview of events and scholarship (both classic and contemporary) in the field of UK environmental politics and policy. The study of environmental policy in the UK covers a broad range of actors, issues and dynamics. We present here three guiding questions...