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Introduction

The climate change problem has become the greatest environmental challenge facing the world today. At the international, national and even individual level, it is perceived as an important threat for human lives and accordingly, actors are implementing measures in order to adapt to climate changes and to reduce its future effects (examples can be UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol, national policies and public informational campaign designed to raise peoples’ awareness about their role in climate change problem). Yet, there are opinions sustaining that climate change is not perceived as a priority by domestic actors, moreover it is considered a “pseudo” agenda item (Gupta 1997, 52) while, at the international level, “the long-term effectiveness of the FCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) run the risk of horizontal negotiation deadlock between countries and the risk of vertical standstill within countries”
(Idem: viii).

In this sense, the analysis of governments’ response to combating climate change problem and to regulating carbon emissions, the main greenhouse gas (GHG), and of factors that interact
in this process, has been part of larger studies that provide an overview of the possible difficulties and opportunities in implementing the environmental measures. There have been studies paying attention to the influence of institutional factors over environmental policies (Scruggs 1999, Scruggs 2003), to the importance and the nature of public opinion regarding environmental problems (Dunlap & Scarce 1991, Scruggs 2003, Rohrschneider 1988, Inglehart 1995) or to the responses of states as part of international organisation or agreements (Falkner 2005, Gupta 1997). The government can be seen as a rational actor trying to maximize its utility in interaction with other governments on the international scene, where the collective action problem (Olson, 1964) can occur regarding states’ choice in regulating carbon emissions and respecting international conventions. Moreover, the government is part of a structure influenced by internal or external constraints (international legislation, market incentives) and, in a democracy, it represents public’s interests, so the public opinion on climate change should count in the final decision government makes. Other fact that should be taken into account is that, governmental actions take place in an institutional context (pluralism, corporatism) and political institutions should be considered in order to see the “barriers to the articulation, aggregation, and representation of environmental interests in the political arena” (Scruggs 2003, 178).

This article investigates the response of different governments to regulating carbon emissions and climate change from two perspectives above mentioned, using the structural and behavioural approaches. In anticipation to the discussion below,
I consider that governments decide which policies to implement regarding
regulation of carbon emissions influenced by their position in the
international and national system and that, from other perspective, citizens’ opinions about climate changes and its importance are directly related to these decisions.

The article is structured as follows. In the next section, I use theoretical evidence and researches in scholarly literature in order to justify the choices I made on analyzing this issue and I compare the two approaches and the way they can be used in this paper. Then, I make an overview of the actual situation of the climate change problem, describing the context on which I will test empirically the two approaches. Following that, I discuss each perspective separately, first at a theoretical level and then applying cross-nationally the model to the empirical evidences. In the final part of the paper, I will present the implication of my results, highlighting the relationship between the two approaches and their interaction in explaining the issues of governmental response to regulating carbon emissions and climate changes.

Considering the choices…

In order to study the problem of carbon emissions and climate changes I propose the use of two perspective: the structural approach and the behavioural approach with a view to drawing a complete picture covering the national level (behavioural approach), but also
the international one (structural approach), paying attention to citizens behaviour and to government’s power in a structure.

There have been opinions that “the institutions of a democratic political process should be structured to respond to the citizenry” (Dalton & Klingemann 2007: 3) and even if their critics have blamed the poor political abilities of  the electorate and the quality of citizens participation, this perspective is still available since “democracy is a method of government based upon the choices of people”(Lupia and McCubbins 1998: 3) and governmental actors are empowered by people to make collective decision on their behalf” (Idem). Therefore, in the ideal model of democracy, government’s decisions regarding carbon emissions and climate change will follow public opinion, supposing that in this utopian model the interests of citizens are taking into account by government and that citizens are as the supercitizens Dalton(2002) talked about.

Since we are not talking about utopian models, we have to test before if the government policies are following the public opinion. Page and Shapiro (1983) tested whether there is a causal relationship between this two elements and found out that opinion changes are important causes of policy change, since there is a substantial congruence between opinion and policy (especially when changes are large and sustained, and issues are salient) and opinion tends to move before policy more than vice versa (Ibidem: 189) Even if the study was among American citizens it bears out the view that it can be a causal relationship between these two variables, fact that might be considered for my study.

In this new context, the behavioural approach can explain why different governments respond different to regulating carbon emissions as result of public opinion influences. Moreover this approach focuses on the questions as “What do the actors involved actually do?” and “How can we best explain why they do it?” (Sanders 1995: 58), which offers us the framework to understand why people support or not the implementation of environmental policies and therefore, why some governments respond to regulating carbon emission, while others do not. The main hypotheses will be that countries with a high concern about carbon emission and climate changes among citizens tend to perform better in combating these problems. At the same time, I will discuss the factors that influence people’s opinion about these problems and how they vary across countries. In anticipation to the discussion, studies before demonstrated that estimated effect of concern on environmental performance, once income is controlled, is not close to statistical significance (Scruggs 2003: 114).

For our model built on structural approach, we will resort to structuralism, for which the relationship between structure and agency is dominated by structure largely seen to constrain and even determine agency. Moreover, the definition of political structure and their implication are quoted from David Easton’s book “The Analysis of Political Structure”(1990) and we will make references to the formal structures that can be refer to “the fact that a concrete set of political relationships – the empirical or behavioural structure – may have arisen out of a legal document, or from some ritualistic procedures” or to “prescriptions or rules for the behaviour of political actors [agencies] in their relationship to each other” (Ibidem: 95). This perspective might offer us an explanation for the different governments’ responses to regulating carbon emissions and climate changes at the international level. In addition, the new international context regarding climate change has changed recently, fact that offers us the condition to test the hypothesis that governments’ response depends on the position that country has in the international system.

Describing the context…

“There are either enough natural resources for everyone to use, or there are not. If the perception is that there are enough resources for everyone and these resources are accessible to all, then there is no problem. If, however, the perception is that there are not enough resources for everyone, there is a serious problem” (Gupta 1997: 1). Environment and climate conditions are collective goods shared by everyone without restriction. However, over a decade ago the problem of climate change became a global problem and it was seen that there were limited resources and that actions of every human being affects the rest of the world. Most countries began to pay more attention to climate changes and joined an international treaty — the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
– considering what can be done to reduce global warming.

Only recently the international agreement among these countries became an imposed measure against carbon emissions. Since 2005, the Kyoto Protocol entered into force and “the ultimate objective of the Convention is the stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”. Governments
must meet their targets of GHC emissions (primarily carbon emissions) and since 2005, the Protocol commits them to do so, while the Convention encouraged industrialised countries to stabilize GHG emissions. In this sense, the governments’ performance in this area can be compared before and after 2005, when Kyoto Protocol entered into force, to observe if this document had induced changes, knowing that “in the early years these policies tended to be rather fragmented; now they are becoming more coherent and linked to sustainable development”(The first ten years).

In the Appendix 1, it can be seen the performance of governments regarding emissions of GHG, considering that the level of increased or decreased level of GHG is a result of environmental policies. In addition, it is important to note that negotiations into the Convention and regarding Kyoto Protocol proved difficult, because
there were many different points, particularly between developing and developed countries. “The developing countries, insisting on their right to development were reluctant to make commitments to reduce or limit greenhouse gas emissions that might jeopardize economic growth. Climate change, they argued was a problem that had been caused mainly by the developed countries that had the corresponding responsibility to solve it within their own territories.”

The climate change problem has become a global problem among citizens, as well. Environmental protection is a valence issue (something that no one is or would say they were actually opposed to), “even as far back as 1976, more than 85 percent of respondents in each European Community country answered “very important” or “somewhat important””( Scruggs 2003: 84). However, in 1995 only an average of 15% of European citizens would indicated support for environmental protection even if it meant lower economic growth or
higher prices, while the United States would clearly fall into the low support category (Idem: 93). Nowadays, 62% of Europeans think that climate change is one of the most important problems in the world (ranking second after poverty), while only 18 percent of American people strongly believe that climate change is real, human-caused and harmful. Contrary to the previous opinions, people are more prepared to pay more in order to fight the climate changes, as it can be seen in Table 3, Appendix 1 quoted from the Special Eurobarometer 300 – Europeans’ attitudes towards climate change. In

It is important to make some observations in this case: in the survey in 1995 there was analyzed citizens’ perception towards environmental protection, while Eurobarometer 300 had as main topic the climate change. Moreover, the fact that the last one was only about climate change can have an effect over people’s choice, because “public opinion is always and unavoidably dependent on the way questions have been framed and ordered” (Zaller 1992: 95). People could have answered positively at this question because the previous questions highlighted a friendly-environment attitude.

Structural Approach explains….

To understand how the response to regulating carbon emissions varies across countries, it’s important to discuss the position these governments have within structural framework. The formal structure at the international level towards climate change is Kyoto Protocol and the first variation is seen between governments that signed this
protocol and governments that did not. The formers have to implement national policies in order to regulate the carbon emission with a specific amount, while the others can choose whether to take action or not against climate change. An example in this sense is the difference US and Greece. I chose this example because they are two extreme cases, first, US refused to ratify the Protocol in 2001 claiming that the treaty has political motives and not scientific reasons and second, Greece was excluded from the Kyoto Protocol due to unfulfilled the commitment. Accordingly, the American government can decide whether to cut the level of carbon emissions, while Greek government faced external constraints to create the adequate mechanisms of monitoring and reporting emissions and due to the fact that they didn’t respect the structural constraints have been excluded
from the structure.

The second discussion about the role of structure in explaining the variation in governmental behaviour is about the differences between developed countries and developing countries. As I previously mention, the negotiation between these two types of countries was difficult and the power or the authority every governments poses in this relationship are elements of regulation. Even if  China and India are considered booming economies and important growing polluters, they do not have any reduction obligations due to the fact that they are developing countries. The governments that have ratified the Protocol can have different responses to reduction carbon emissions but only in the parameters of this document. Further, Russia can choose to sell emissions credit to other countries in the Kyoto Protocol, since its current emission levels are substantially below its limitations, while Norway’s idea for carbon neutrality is to finance reforestation in China.

Another difference between governments, that can be explain by the fact that governments play the role of agencies in different structures, is the choice they make to participate or not in Kyoto Protocol. United States motivated their decision by the fact that “Kyoto Protocol is fundamentally flawed, and is not the correct vehicle with which to produce real environmental solutions” (United
States Policy on the Kyoto Protocol). In fact, “one of the defining characteristics of US foreign environmental policy is the degree to which it is driven by domestic concerns” (Falkner 2005: 62). The position Canada held in ratifying the Protocol was influenced by Bush’s decision, being concern that Canadian companies would have problems since U.S. companies would not be affected by the Kyoto. The new pattern can be discussed from a structural approach, supposing that economy is not influencing only the public opinion, as
we have seen in the previous sections, but also the governmental performance on this issue. Studies have shown that market is seen as a prison for governmental actions and environmental protection policy is similarly imprisoned, examples used by the author are that Congress and the White House sacrificed environmental protection to the needs of the market enterprises and some “academics and other scholars considered market as a fixed element around which policy must be fashioned and not as a variable” (Lindblom 1982: 333).

Behavioural Approach explains…

As noted above, environmental protection is a value issue and people have positive opinion about measures taken to cut carbon emissions. From the beginning, it is important to notice the distinction between environment protection and regulating carbon emissions  issues. First, because the former is just a part of environmental protection, and second, because climate change has indirectly effects on people life, while other environmental problems, like water pollution and rain forest deconstruction, can be empirically observed and people can experience anxiety, that determine them to react and to become more informed about the issue (Marcus, Neuman, MacKuen 2000).

In order to analyze how variation in public opinion can justify the variation in governmental policies between countries, we have to measure the correlation between “climate change” mobilization and “performance in regulating carbon emission”. The information that we have (the national reports from UNFCCC and the Special Eurobarometre 300) do not offer us a complete database to test statistically this relationship between these two variables, but future research could investigate whether this pattern is tested. Scruggs found out that bivariate correlation between mobilization and performance is moderate (.49), but, at the same time in his study for the period 1990-1995, all countries with high or moderate levels of environmental mobilization – the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark – had good environmental performance, while results are more varied for countries with lower mobilization. Moreover, his study emphasizes that “support for environmental goals fluctuates with economic cycles, but there is a trend toward greater environmental concern”.

In our case (knowing that the weaknesses of my study is unavailability of data), among countries with people what declared that they would pay more in order to fight the climate change, Greece was excluded from Kyoto Protocol and Denmark keeps the same trend as in Scruggs study, while Germany, one of the countries with the most remarkable performance in regulating carbon emission, there is a balance between people who accepts to pay more for an environmental-friendly source of energy and those who rejects this idea.

Knowing that there are different factors that influence public opinion about climate change, as age, education, culture, level of information, partisanship (Eurobarometer 300) it might be useful for our analysis to see if one of those elements has a statistical influence. Scruggs claimed that “the final facet of public support for environmental organizations that is likely to have an effect on environmental outcomes is electoral support for Green parties” (Scruggs 1999: 103). Furthermore, the results of the Special Eurobarometer 300 indicate that those who position themselves at the left end of the political scale appear to mention climate change considerable more often among serious problems and to take more frequently action aimed at helping to fight climate change, then respondents at the right end of the scale. In addition, the left-wing respondents disagree more often than those on the right that the impact of carbon emissions on climate change is only marginal and they more often think that national governments are not doing enough to fight climate change than those to the right of the political spectrum.

Even if this result, that public opinion over climate change problem is divided on political spectrum with left-wing respondents more concern about carbon emissions than people at the center or right end of the scale, should be statistically tested before used, we can suppose that this evidence is a reason for governments to act different depending on the internal political context, the nature of cabinet and even the electoral system (ex, in UK and U, electoral system strongly
discourage the development of new parties like Green Parties). This fact is obvious in US, where there is a significant partisan divide in concern about climate change. Overall, 73% of Americans believe that global warming is happening, but only 54% of Republicans agree with this opinion versus 90% of Democrats. However, this pattern can be just a phase into a fluctuating trend, because, “in the United States, an environmentally insensitive Republican administration is sometimes credited with remobilizing the environmental movement and undermining environmental policy” (Andrew 1999 quoted in Scruggs 1999). Accordingly, it can true that the influence of public opinion about climate change can affect governmental outcome if we consider the fact that vote-seeking politicians would try to adapt policy to the desires of public opinion and government would take into account public’s concern as long as the public opinion is stable within a long period of time and represents the view of majority.

Conclusions:

At one global problem, climate change, national governments found many and different responses depending on different factors at the international and national systems. In this context, there should be cooperation or consensus between actors at the international level. There is one structure – the Kyoto Protocol, but different alternatives;
governments can be in or out of this system and their behaviour is influenced by it. Moreover, the global problem has a different image in every country depending on the national features and people and governments act accordingly with these features.

In this sense, the approaches that I chose to use in this paper, offer us the framework of governments’ influence and these two approaches are completing each other explanation. Accordingly, governments have to implement at the national level policies as a result of international constraints, but at the same time, their position in the international system is partially dictated by national features (national economy, national market, the preferences of governmental actors, their partisan affiliation).

One of the weaknesses of this article is the unavailability of data and the lack of statistical tests that can confirm my results. Further, future researches could verify if there is a causal relationship between people’s concern over climate change, their mobilization to and governmental performance. Moreover, it would be interesting to see if public opinions about climate change are linked with partisan preferences and this could be an element confirming the pattern of different responses from different governments for the same problem.

Appendix 1

Table 1 – Changes in total aggregate emissions of
individual Annex I Parties 1990-2006

Source:National
greenhouse gas inventory data for the period 1990–2006, UNFCCC

Source:National
greenhouse gas inventory data for the period 1990–2006, UNFCCC

Table 2 – The Most Serious Problem

Source:
The Special Eurobarometer 300 – European attitudes towards climate change
Table 3

Source:
The Special Eurobarometer 300 – European attitudes towards climate change