A Model for Generative Comparative Climate Research

Why do some countries enact more ambitious climate change policies than others? Macro level economic and political structures, such as the economic weight of fossil fuel industries, play an important role in shaping national policies. But there is great variation in how macro-structural factors translate into political power and national climate policy. The COMPON project focuses on the impact of national-policy networks on climate policy, studying climate change policy networks and media discourse networks in twenty countries. It investigates what organizations exert influence on policy-making, what beliefs they carry, what kind of coalitions these organizations form to push for their agenda, how they are connected to state organizations and how their opponents are organized. Identifying these actor constellations makes it possible to assess the prospects of change towards less carbon intensive societies.

Over the last decade the COMPON project has developed a unique and generative modular approach to undertaking comparative research. COMPON researchers collaborate to develop surveys, undertake media analysis and conduct in-depth interviews, applying a common frame across countries. Over time additional researchers have joined the project, expanding the range of countries covered. Uniquely, the project centres on a data-sharing with attribution of publications to country researchers. In the process the project has been able to create an intellectual commons across participants, where cross-national data is interpreted and re-interpreted. The project offers a model for undertaking cross-national research on the basis of common interest and intellectual inquiry. Much of the research is unfunded and driven by participant commitment to establishing a knowledge base, as a common endeavour.

Tuomas Ylä-Anttila is Chair of the 20-country COMPON project. He is Associate Professor in Polical Science at the University of Helsinki. He particularly interested in the role of policy networks and media discourse networks in the making of climate change policy and has also published on media, social movements and globalization. He has been a Visiting Fellow at University of California, Irvine and the European University Institute Florence, as well as at FASS-UTS.