Stability per se is not a problem. It is the substance of what is locked in – the climate damage, the unjust/unequal hierarchies, the extractive system – that is the problem (see also Paterson, Tobin, and VanDeveer, Chapter 1, this volume; VanDeveer, Chapter 5, this volume). Certainly, disruption of the stable dynamics that comprise the current system of carbon lock-in (Unruh Reference Unruh2000) is desirable. But if a policy environment was stable that promoted and reinforced just low-carbon systems and societies, stability would be good.

The premise of this volume is that desirable disruption – unless driven by exogenous shocks – is constituted by politicization. The editors of this volume propose that even apparently desirable stability in “long-term emissions reductions pathways” or “policy design over time” – the second and third forms of stability they identify – if without politicization, will lead to ruin. For example, they worry that even stability in “long-term emissions reduction pathways” can entrench policy designs that in practice will lead to “scope expansion,” that introduce “new sources of emissions or sinks into the policy and political debate.” More broadly, they write that academics who promote policy stability can get “co-opted by the policymakers” who have a “deeper” commitment to stability than decarbonization and that prioritizing stability is “naïve” or “designed to avoid conflict” with entrenched interests, which has the effect of stabilizing policy regimes those interests support. The corollary is that stability is constituted by depoliticization in practice even when well-intentioned policy actors and analysts support stable policies they believe are desirable. We challenge this dichotomy, taking up the editors’ challenge to add nuance to how forms of stability and politicization interact. We do so by focusing on the political project of achieving both desirable disruption and desirable stability.

Our central argument is that the desired relationship between policy stability and politicization changes depending on the structural and institutional conditions in place that reinforce or support the transformation of carbon lock-in (Bernstein and Hoffmann Reference Bernstein and Hoffmann2019). We introduce what elsewhere we have called the “carbon trap” as a way to contextualize changes in this relationship (Bernstein and Hoffmann Reference Bernstein and Hoffmann2019). The carbon trap heuristic identifies thresholds below which systems are “locked in” to carbon, prone to getting stuck in climate policy trajectories, or entrench “solutions” that prevent desirable transformative action. Below those thresholds, stability is undesirable and the relationship between stability and politicization is more dichotomous. Stability under these conditions tends to get stuck in an “improvement trap” where even policies that initially reduce emissions can build political and economic resistance to further change or are removed from political arenas (i.e. depoliticized).Footnote ¹ The “trap” is that below this threshold, such policies are inadequate or contrary to required sociopolitical transformations. Above the threshold, the relationship between stability and politicization can change and be more synergistic, where the former reinforces political coalitions, norms, and capacities for transformative trajectories.

We proceed in three steps. First, we further unpack and reframe the false dichotomy between stability and politicization to show that both involve politics. Second, we introduce the carbon trap as a way to contextualize the relationship and identify desirable and undesirable stability. Third, we explore whether and how the concept and politics of just transition offer ways to understand and pursue desirable politicized disruption and catalyze stable policy and systems that enable it.

16.1 The False Dichotomy of Politicization and Stability

It is a category mistake to see stable policies as depoliticized. Attention to politics is central. As Paterson, Tobin, and VanDeveer (Reference Paterson, Tobin and VanDeveer2022: 4) argue, “[i]t is an empirical mistake to assume that climate policy can be addressed ‘outside politics’. Politics – when understood as conflicts of interest and power, and the ongoing necessity of collective decision-making – is simply intrinsic to social life.”

Building coalitions and designing institutions that shape and shove politics or entrench new path dependencies entails struggle and contestation over normative change, often with incumbent interests, even when the goal is achieving a new stable status quo. The practical concern for climate action, however, is that too many initiatives or new institutional arrangements touted as “solutions” are not fully disruptive of carbon lock-in. The search for policy stability is thus potentially dangerous when the substance of what is stable, and thus reinforced, is insufficient to prevent or counteract the climate crisis. Especially problematic is policy stability as an end. If the policy interventions that will plausibly achieve stability now, during carbon lock-in, are unlikely to disrupt the status quo, then stability as a goal is misguided. Worse, it may “lock in” stable but insufficient climate policies. Under such conditions, “repoliticization” of these policies or institutions – bringing them back into political arenas that open up contestation and expose power relations – is desirable.

Similarly, as scholars or policy actors, we may be tempted to identify institutional or structural conditions that lock in desired goals of just decarbonization policy trajectories toward low-carbon societies. However, doing so frequently neglects attention to the political conditions and processes required to create, maintain, and reinforce those institutions and structures. It risks producing naïve “solutions” that assume away the political struggles and processes that shape or undermine the conditions necessary for desirable stability. Normatively, we may also overestimate our ability to identify the requirements of just transformations and undervalue the importance of politicization and disruption in defining and motivating practices of just transition required to address the climate crisis.

These practices of climate action have structural and institutional consequences. In fact, that is the aim of climate action – replacing one status quo with a hopefully better one. If successful, transforming structures and institutions can tilt the system in ways that mitigate the size or strength of counter-coalitions and strategic action of incumbents or other opposing forces that aim to undermine or reverse specific policies or broader transformations. For example, there is a rich literature on institutional design, path dependency, and policy feedback that focuses on how institutions that reinforce political coalitions in favor of desirable policies, support normative change, or create material or ideational (e.g. reputational, social, or learning) incentives for ongoing policy responses in a particular direction are important for those policies to maintain or increase strength and durability (Auld et al. Reference Auld, Bernstein and Cashore2021; Levin et al. Reference Levin, Cashore, Bernstein and Auld2012; Lockwood Reference Lockwood2022; Meckling Reference Meckling2019; Millar et al. Reference Millar, Bourgeois, Bernstein and Hoffmann2021).

Institutions here do not replace politicization – their mere existence does not remove an item from contestation or debate (Kuzemko Reference Kuzemko2016). Analytically, this understanding of institutions recognizes that politics is not only about interest and ideas constantly battling it out; it is also about how they are shaped and channeled, recognizing the politics of design and institutional effects. Ignoring those politics gives ground analytically to existing institutional arrangements, as if they are immutable structures as opposed to themselves being the products of political struggles, power, and ideas that have become entrenched and reinforced over time.

Implicit in these debates is the volume editors’ concern that overly focusing on locking in policy trajectories by attempting to create legislative or institutional firewalls will ultimately fail because either (1) it underestimates opposing or incumbent forces, especially of well-documented corporate interests and lobbying (Allan Reference Allan2020; Hochstetler Reference Hochstetler2020; Levy and Newell Reference Levy and Newell2005; Stokes Reference Stokes2020); (2) inadvertently produces stasis or undermining feedbacks (Millar et al. Reference Millar, Bourgeois, Bernstein and Hoffmann2021; Patterson Reference Patterson2023); or (3) limits political struggle and motivation needed for deeper transformation and system change. We are agnostic over whether these effects are as pernicious as some of the existing literature suggests but believe an analytic position that examines how such arrangements create political conditions for ongoing policy toward desirable ends counters the claim of such moves being depoliticizing.

Normatively and pragmatically, our argument falls into the camp of those who see the merits of long-term policy trajectories. “Stability,” however, is a poor descriptor for such trajectories if it implies simple continuation, unchanging, conservative, or constant. Rather, our own work and that of others interested in entrenching, scaling, and reinforcing transformative policy trajectories is owing to a concern in building and maintaining support for transformative pathways that resist or counter tendencies of backsliding or outright oppositional coalitions and forces (Jordan and Moore Reference Jordan and Moore2020; Millar et al. Reference Millar, Bourgeois, Bernstein and Hoffmann2021; Rosenbloom et al. Reference Rosenbloom, Meadowcroft and Cashore2019). This reflects our normative commitment to transformation that informs virtually all the work under discussion in this volume.

Pragmatically, transformative pathways lock in trajectories in the sense that, by definition, they must continually support and reinforce change in the direction of the transformative goal. However, they need not lock in specific institutions, policy choices, or instruments. That would be counterproductive for reasons well-articulated by those in the “politicization” camp but also by institutional scholars. Empirical work on policy feedback, for example, has found that even positive feedback mechanisms on some aspects of policy – for example a particular policy instrument – can have unintended consequences for other levels. Moore and Jordan (Reference Moore and Jordan2020) found this exact pattern in their study of the EU’s emissions trading system, where positive feedback led to the strengthening of the policy instrument (the trading scheme) but weakened support for the broader objective of reducing overall emissions.

If institutions and instruments lead to unintended or socially undesirable outcomes, politicization not only “should” occur but inevitably will occur. Systems ought to be open and encourage politicization in order to maintain trajectories. Here, the arguments of Auld et al. (Reference Auld, Bernstein and Cashore2021) about building support and entrenching policy goals while fostering politicization over policy means are essential.

Focusing on the stability of some goals but politicization and opportunities for learning about all manner of means, participation, and accountability (see Auld et al. Reference Auld, Bernstein and Cashore2021) recognizes the political work that the editors, and scholars such as Jordan and Moore (Reference Jordan and Moore2020), highlight as necessary for securing just transition trajectories. Conversely, permanent revolution is unlikely to produce the necessary conditions for actors to follow through with commitments, engage in long-term planning, encourage investments, or reduce uncertainty in ways that build confidence in a transformative trajectory. Nor will it help protect against reactionary reversals or prevent the waves of apparent progress followed by backsliding that have characterized many climate policies and transformative efforts observed in many countries.

These dilemmas go to the heart of the stability/politicization friction. We need disruptive politics to challenge and unsettle the status quo and we need that to happen in ways that catalyze policy stability and even lock in desirable substantive policy and systems that support just decarbonization – the political goal. As scholars, we need an analytic and normative way forward that places politics at the center of analysis as opposed to ignoring or silencing it. In sum, we need a framework that neither depoliticizes stability nor fetishizes disruption.

Addressing this tension and overcoming the pattern of some progress and getting stuck or backsliding has been the central focus in our work on the “carbon trap” (Bernstein and Hoffmann Reference Bernstein and Hoffmann2019). To overcome this trap, politicization is exactly what comes into focus to produce stable trajectories toward decarbonization. A key dynamic the trap illustrates is that below a certain threshold overt politicization and disruption of the status quo is needed. As the old politics of the status quo is undermined and new institutional and structural conditions support a politics that shifts momentum toward just decarbonization, the emphasis shifts to a politics of stability.

16.2 The Carbon Trap

One reason that policy stability is such a source of handwringing and analysis is that climate policies in many places have failed to be durable (Jordan and Matt Reference Jordan and Matt2014; Jordan and Moore Reference Jordan and Moore2020; Levin et al. Reference Levin, Cashore, Bernstein and Auld2012).Footnote ² Policy interventions (carbon pricing, renewable energy portfolios, infrastructure spending, subsidies for low carbon products, etc.) frequently manage to get started (see Bernstein and Hoffmann Reference Bernstein and Hoffmann2018; Bulkeley et al. Reference Bulkeley, Andonova and Betsill2014; Hoffmann Reference Hoffmann2011) but often get stuck and are even reversed (Breetz et al. Reference Breetz, Mildenberger and Stokes2018; Meckling Reference Meckling2019; Rabe Reference Rabe2018; Stokes Reference Stokes2013, Reference Stokes2020). This pattern is observable whether states, non-state, or corporate actors initiate and govern the policies or actions, and whether they are domestic or transnational. That may not be surprising in a world locked in to the use of fossil energy. Yet fully grasping the source of the failure of policy stability is crucial for navigating the stability/politicization divide at the heart of this volume.

Figure 16.1 shows the logic of the carbon trap graphically. The x-axis is the current level of decarbonization in a system, and the y-axis is the expectation about the future level of decarbonization given the current state. The flat parts of the trajectory (we label them carbon lock-in and decarbonization) represent relatively stable state spaces where the array of factors (political, economic, technological, cultural) are aligned to generate reinforcing dynamics. The arrows represent the direction of expectations. If a system (city, market, nation-state) is currently below (point A) the critical threshold (Dcrit), the expectation is that the future state of the system will move toward the carbon lock-in attractor, that is, a label we borrow from complex system analysis of a relatively stable state space where the array of relevant factors (political, economic, technological, cultural) are aligned and generate reinforcing dynamics.

Figure 16.1 The carbon trap.

Figure 16.1 long description.

Figure 16.1Long description

Graph showing expected future level of decarbonization. The x-axis represents the current level of decarbonization, while the y-axis indicates the expected future level. The curve illustrates a rapid increase in decarbonization levels between points A and B, eventually plateauing at a high level.

When a new climate policy is introduced, it has the potential to move the system along the trajectory toward greater decarbonization. The Dcrit threshold could potentially be breached either by a sudden shift such as a technological breakthrough or through the progressive accumulation of incremental changes over time. Regardless, unless a new policy helps the targeted system to breach the Dcrit threshold (B), political-economy forces in the system will tend to drive the system back toward the carbon lock-in attractor. These forces include technology and technological practices (the range of choices available and the pace of innovation); economic factors (sunk costs, investment cycles, energy markets, cost structures, risk calculations of holders of climate-vulnerable or climate-friendly assets, and so on); cultural inertia (what people want and the practices that they consider normal); and political dynamics (coalitions, norms, institutions, and interests – including those that affect calculations of risks and benefits – that promote or resist change).

Below the critical threshold, the carbon locked-in status quo is dominant and needs to be disrupted (politicized) because transformative policies and action will be unstable. Policy interventions must ultimately navigate counter-coalitions supported by incumbent interests and industries, campaigns that appeal to entrenched cultural norms and practices, and extant institutional arrangements that often favor existing policies in path-dependent ways that can make change difficult to sustain. These forces are not static. Interventions engage and generate politics that can create positive and negative feedback, mobilization, and backlash (e.g. Breetz et al. Reference Breetz, Mildenberger and Stokes2018; Jordan and Matt Reference Jordan and Matt2014; Patterson Reference Patterson2023).

Consider a municipal policy to install electric charging stations to increase decarbonization in its transportation system. This policy would move the city away from the lock-in attractor and up the decarbonization curve a modest amount (perhaps to point A in Figure 16.1). However, once in place, other political-economic factors in the city and beyond could drive the city’s transportation system back toward the carbon lock-in attractor if the Dcrit threshold is not breached. These threshold-determining factors could include availability of affordable electric vehicles (EVs) determined by the actions of incumbent industries and government policies and investment decisions; cost and accessibility of charging station technology and places to put them within and outside the city, as well as battery capacity, which are intertwined technological, policy, and even psychological (range anxiety) issues; cachet or stigma of driving an EV, which could have both demographic and geographical determinants; and complementary incentives or disincentives at the sub-state or national level for purchasing EVs, which depend on interests and coalitions at other levels of government.

Policies designed to move systems toward decarbonization do not always make it over the threshold. Apropos of this hypothetical example, in 2019 in Ontario, Canada, the provincially controlled regional public transportation agency removed EV charging stations from its parking lots, citing high costs and low demand after an election shifted the political conditions for climate policy (Boisvert Reference Boisvert2019). That same government ended a rebate program for EVs (Benzie Reference Benzie2018). Not surprisingly, the result in the case of EVs is that, in 2023, Ontario sales continued to lag provinces British Columbia and Quebec, which have rebates and greater infrastructure investment (Rabson Reference Rabson2023). The larger global pattern of EV sales shows similar patterns. On the one hand, many major auto companies worldwide appear to have reached a tipping point in their plans to transition to EV production, and the market share of EVs continues to rise, given a combination of technological change, costs and subsidies, anticipated and real regulation, and normative change. Yet consumer surveys and purchasing patterns show that in many places sales are lagging expectations precisely because of inadequate infrastructure and range anxiety that give consumers pause. Meanwhile, investors and analysts are reinforcing negative market reaction over fears of oversupply and weaker than expected consumer demand (Mullaney Reference Mullaney2023). Thus, even when parts of the system shift, overcoming the threshold where the decarbonization attractor takes over requires multiple changes, many of which require ongoing politicization to overcome. Examples like these, across many sectors, are, unfortunately, common, for reasons ranging from changes in government to unexpected price shifts to active opposition (Millar et al. Reference Millar, Bourgeois, Bernstein and Hoffmann2021; Stokes Reference Stokes2013).

The key implication of the carbon trap for the politicization/stability divide is that if a system is located in the carbon lock-in equilibrium, we should not expect climate policies to be stable. We should expect that they face challenges and struggle to endure because the attractor is carbon lock-in. From this perspective, it is not surprising that a focus on policy stability has arisen. Those that care about climate change observe that many attempts to disrupt carbon lock-in and the status quo fail or get retrenched, and we are running out of time. A strong desire for durability and constraining our future selves is an understandable response (Levin et al. Reference Levin, Cashore, Bernstein and Auld2012). An analysis of the carbon trap adds to the debate on stability a focus on the political dynamics that stability generates. Climate interventions must disrupt coalitions and the normative/institutional context that supports the status quo to breach the critical threshold, while also generating the stability necessary for policies to be durable enough to contribute to the disruption of the status quo. Unfortunately, the quest for naïve stability that results in accommodation with status quo interests can go wrong in just the way that the editors explain, and the carbon trap is at work here too.

16.3 The Double Trap

One temptation in the face of the inability of climate policies to survive long enough to catalyze decarbonization is to seek policies that won’t be too disruptive or too politically contentious. Telling examples include the fractious debate over the proposed Green New Deal within the Democratic Party in the United States after President Joe Biden’s election in 2020, and critiques of the European Green Deal for hollowing out its more transformative substantive as well as democratic, equity, and redistributive elements (Adler and Wargan Reference Adler, Wargan, Tienhaara and Robinson2022; Alemany Reference Alemany2021). Specific policies that focus on modestly reducing emissions while avoiding disruption to the carbon locked-in status quo are often the result. Such efforts aim to improve the carbon efficiency of systems or offer modest reforms without generating sufficient decarbonization or challenging dependence on fossil energy. Examples include energy efficiency programs, switching to natural gas as a lower-emission “bridge fuel,” and carbon market schemes with prices much too low to generate real change in demand.

Such policies may be stable, but perniciously so, precisely because they are not political enough to challenge the status quo. This pattern suggests a double trap with the same kind of curve but with three equilibria: high carbon lock-in, more efficient carbon lock-in or improvement, and decarbonization (see Figure 16.2). Some climate policy efforts may generate emissions reductions but also generate dynamics that get systems stuck in improvement. Bridge fuel policies that promote natural gas as an alternative to coal will reduce emissions (assuming methane leakage is addressed). However, they may also entrench industrial interests that oppose moves toward deeper decarbonization, which cannot include natural gas (Betsill and Stevis Reference Betsill and Stevis2016). Similarly, returning to our auto sector example, Toyota, once a leader in transitioning the sector with its innovation and production of hybrid technology, shifted to lobbying against EV mandates because it has become entrenched in hybrid production and has bet on hydrogen technology, which lags significantly compared to EV technology (Tabushi Reference Tabushi2021). Depoliticized policy implementation strategies may yield similar patterns. For example, individual nudging efforts have been shown to decrease public support for broader policies such as carbon pricing, as people believe they have done enough (Hagman et al. Reference Hagmann, Ho and Loewenstein2019).

Figure 16.2 The double (improvement) trap.

Figure 16.2 long description.

Figure 16.2Long description

Graph showing expected future level of decarbonization with two critical points, Dcrit1 and Dcrit2.

The very characteristics that allow such “improvement” policies to escape high carbon lock-in (depoliticized, technocratic, emissions-focused) contribute to their stability precisely because they do not challenge the status quo in a threatening manner. In a political context in which achieving significant climate action can be difficult, scholars have rightly focused on the necessary conditions for initiating action and building stability. However, the improvement trap indicates that we should also give thought to how and under what conditions action can be ramped up following initial action and whether and how we can overcome the policy stability of the improvement trap.

16.4 Just Transitioning Out of the Carbon Trap

So far, our argument on how to reconcile the apparent politicization/disruption and stability tension has focused on putting politics at the center of analyses of why transformative policies have been so challenging to achieve, and how such policies might generate the politics to support stable trajectories. In this section, we highlight the pragmatic requirements and normative imperatives to produce the desired directionality. Here, repoliticization as understood by the editors – keeping or bringing climate action into political arenas where power, contestation, or competition is acknowledged and engaged – takes a more central role. We argue that just transition policies (Hughes and Hoffmann Reference Hughes and Hoffmann2020; Indigenous Environmental Network 2017; Jasanoff Reference Jasanoff2018; McCauley and Heffron Reference McCauley and Heffron2018; Newell and Mulvaney Reference Newell and Mulvaney2013; Newell et al. Reference Newell, Daley, Mikheeva and Peša2023) can add the right mix of politicization/disruption to promote stable trajectories in a more or less transformative direction, necessary to overcome the improvement trap and generate momentum toward decarbonization. We have three reasons for supporting this wager.

First, the empirical findings of our “politics of decarbonization” project (Bernstein and Hoffmann Reference Bernstein and Hoffmann2018, Reference Bernstein and Hoffmann2019) suggest that decarbonization initiatives that go beyond technological deployment to integrate justice, equity, and democracy concerns have more success scaling up and entrenching. This finding supports the case for entrenching goals that are explicitly justice-based, while allowing the necessary political processes to adapt and adjust. That will require significant political and normative work, and mobilization, up front. We already see several shifts in this regard that are a cause for optimism. Examples include the rise in youth mobilization driven by movements such as Fridays for Future (Fisher Reference Fisher2019), mobilization around the idea of just transitions even as its meaning remains contested (Stevis Reference Stevis2023; Wang and Lo Reference Wang and Lo2021), proliferation of just transition policies and debates at local, national, and international levels (Hughes and Hoffmann Reference Hughes and Hoffmann2020; Krawchenko and Gordon Reference Krawchenko and Gordon2021; Newell et al. Reference Newell, Daley, Mikheeva and Peša2023), and more general normalization of the need for climate action.

While entrenching normative goals is essential through political processes, we should not naïvely believe that the ongoing political work needed will be without struggle or that entrenching openness and accountability in policy and political processes will be simple. The ongoing contestation over and criticism of the European Union’s (EU) Just Transition Mechanism – arguably the world’s most extensive and comprehensive attempt to implement the idea of just transition – is a case in point: Since its passing, social movements and academic critics have continued to press for change, arguing its social dimension is underdeveloped, it lacks stakeholder participation, and its funding is inadequate. And that is just a microcosm of ongoing contestation over the European Green Deal’s broader contradictions and compromises, including its lack of consideration for distributional consequences or ecological harms (such as from mining for renewables) for countries and people outside the EU (Adler and Wargan Reference Adler, Wargan, Tienhaara and Robinson2022; Akgüç, Arabadjieva, and Galgóczi Reference Akgüç, Arabadjieva and Galgóczi2022).

Second, and following from this logic, just transition policies may provide a mix of politicized disruption and potential for stability. Efforts at improving justice and equity are inherently a political challenge to the status quo. Just transition thought and possible action are no exceptions. The concept is aimed at multiple areas of injustice related to climate change: injustice inherent to systems dominated by the extractive fossil energy sector (unequal distribution of the benefits and costs of fossil energy extraction); injustice in the distribution of the effects of climate impacts (those least responsible for causing the problem face the largest consequences); injustice in the distribution of costs/benefits of climate action itself (the very elements just transition policies are supposed to address, without which opposition is likely to grow on the left and right). Working in these areas challenges the status quo in multiple ways and underscores the inherent and multivalent injustice of the status quo.

Third, just transition is not just about disruption. It has the potential to (re)politicize the status quo in a critical way that offers a path toward new stable equilibria. Here, the reframing of the apparent paradox pays off and shifts to a pragmatic approach to transformation. If policy stability requires the generation of political/economic coalitions and underlying normative principles, just transition should have significant potential for generating stability. It identifies the “good” life in a low-carbon world. It also has the potential to activate and empower those marginalized by the carbon locked-in status quo and those potentially disrupted by decarbonization efforts, such as workers in the fossil fuel sector. More broadly, it has the potential to identify and connect winners from specific kinds of climate policies/actions in a way that could counter concentrated losers. In this way, just transition approaches could extend the kind of existential politics described by Colgan, Green, and Hale (Reference Colgan, Green and Hale2021) that occurs between owners of climate-vulnerable assets and climate-forcing assets. As our framework describes, the critical thresholds beyond which stability is desirable are made up not just of economic calculations but of the politics, norms, and institutions that shift perceptions of risks and benefits around these assets and expectations around the costs and benefits or societal acceptability of holding those assets in the future. Just transition policies have the potential to add a social dimension to this political conflict – for example by highlighting and possibly internalizing social costs of inaction and creating expectations around democracy, equity, and accountability – that could tip the balance of power toward stable, just low-carbon pathways.

16.5 Conclusion

The improvement trap we have identified highlights the importance of recognizing the risks of depoliticization and premature stability prior to reaching thresholds beyond which systems move toward the just decarbonization “attractor.” Even then, when stability is desirable, our framework highlights the importance of attention to politics to sustain that trajectory. We recognize that identifying those thresholds in practice may be challenging while they are unfolding, but the carbon trap heuristic can highlight patterns to look for when designing or engaging with politics in practice.

One final example nearly perfectly illustrates the challenge: the pursuit of “net zero.” The goal has proliferated, spurred by the 2015 Paris Agreement Article 4’s articulation of the aim, albeit with several caveats, to “achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century.” The goal is arguably now the “organizing principle” (Green and Reyes Reference Green and Reyes2023) of climate politics. As of 2023, 150 countries, 254 cities, and almost half of the 2,000 largest companies in the world, which together account for 88 percent of global emissions and 89 percent of the world’s population, have net zero policies or targets (Net Zero Tracker 2023). However, those impressive statistics mask the improvement trap.

“Net zero” pledges “solve” a wide range of political problems by ostensibly addressing climate change while creating a political consensus across left and right, thus being highly susceptible to depoliticization in pursuit of the goal. The trap becomes quickly apparent when examining the policies and consequences of net zero framing, which attracts a broad coalition precisely because it can support ongoing fossil fuel extraction and production, as we see prominently in cases like Canada’s Pathways Alliance of oil sands producers.Footnote ³ This pattern is observable in a wide range of net zero policies, from massive investments in carbon capture technologies that effectively (or explicitly) subsidize ongoing and increasing extraction to policies that support decarbonization in some locations while exporting costs and social and ecological harms elsewhere, whether unsustainable land use changes, ecologically and socially harmful extraction, or economic pressures that will exacerbate inequalities and likely ensure continued carbon lock-in. Absent politicization, net zero can easily lead to “mitigation deterrence” resulting in significant overshoot of temperature targets and little attention to other negative sustainability impacts (Carton et al. Reference Carton, Hougaard, Markusson and Lund2023). Additionally, attempts to depoliticize can backfire, as opponents of climate action can just as easily politicize net zero as proponents, as we have seen with the mobilization of anti-climate populists against “net zero” (Paterson et al. Reference Paterson, Wilshire and Tobin2023).

More generally, empirical and conceptual reviews of net zero policies and early implementation note a lack of attention to, and need for, politics (i.e. repoliticization) if net zero is to lead to just transformations toward climate goals (Carton et al. Reference Carton, Hougaard, Markusson and Lund2023; Fankhauser et al. Reference Fankhauser, Smith and Allen2021; Green and Reyes Reference Green and Reyes2023). As we have argued, pragmatic and normative attention to just transitions are key elements of navigating these tensions and dilemmas.

Putting our own normative cards on the table, we are also simply not sure there is any other ethically defensible way forward than resolving the politicization/stability tension through a focus on just transitions, even as we recognize that not all good things always go together. Adler and Wargan (Reference Adler, Wargan, Tienhaara and Robinson2022), for example, worry that the lesson so far of the EU’s European Green Deal is that climate action can occur without democracy, or even undermine it. Others worry about climate authoritarianism (Mittiga Reference Mittiga2022). Limping along with the false promise of stability in the improvement trap and low levels of climate action is also not a viable option. Fortunately, our own empirical work and the struggles we observe playing out in many places with the most active climate action suggest justice and necessary climate action are often aligned, and the politicization/stability debate suggests a normative imperative to ensure they continue to be (Patterson et al. Reference Patterson, Thaler and Hoffmann2018).

Contemporary political life is bewilderingly contradictory. In 2022, the six biggest oil companies doubled their annual profits to just over USD 200 billion. Meanwhile, December 2023 saw the conclusion of the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). For the first time at the COPs, there was recognition of the need for “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems.” This statement was not as ambitious as many wanted: “recognition of” is not as ambitious as a “commitment to,” while “transitioning away” does not equate to “phasing out.” Indeed, the winding path to securing this latest and underwhelming “landmark” document in December 2023 epitomizes the rationale behind this book. To date, humanity has struggled with how to navigate toward a transformation in our relationship with greenhouse gas (GHG) production over a multi-decade time period. Meanwhile, numerous assessments concluded that 2023 was, by far, the hottest year on record, with many significant climate “anomalies” (NOAA 2023; Schmidt Reference Schmidt2024). The year 2023 also saw record-high global GHG emissions (IEA 2024). Frankly, contemporary political life is extremely worrying, as well as bewilderingly contradictory.

The motivations for this book arose from a simple observation with complex and dynamic implications: As a political and policymaking issue, climate change requires long-term action and significant institutional change to transform our current environmental, economic, and governance systems yet faces a wide array of powerful and influential vested interests that are opposed to many of the changes required. Exactly how we achieve significant and transformational change remains deeply contested.

Within academic scholarship on securing long-term action, we see a clear antagonism between two persuasive yet seemingly mutually exclusive schools of thought (Paterson et al. Reference Paterson, Tobin and VanDeveer2022). On the one hand, the pursuit of stability in policymaking and governance appears intuitive for addressing a decades-long challenge: maintain, or even lock in, patterns of action that may, for example, constrain future behavior or self-reinforce to create coalitions of facilitators that continue activity (see Roberts et al. Reference Roberts, Geels and Lockwood2018; Rosenbloom et al. Reference Rosenbloom, Meadowcroft and Cashore2019). Yet scholars and practitioners have warned that such approaches bring their own difficulties, given the considerable influence of agents and institutions that wield the most power. At its most stark, opponents to climate action have funded lobbyists to oppose basic science, obstruct new proposals, and dismantle those that make it into law (Dunlap and Brulle Reference Dunlap, Brulle, Holmes and Richardson2020; Stokes Reference Stokes2020). Critics warn that an emphasis on stability that does not, or cannot, counteract these influences simply perpetuates them. In response, calls for re/politicization have placed conflict and disruption at the heart of their strategies (Allan Reference Allan2020; Kenis and Mathijs Reference Kenis and Mathijs2014), such that the vested interests opposing climate action over recent decades, particularly the highly resourced fossil fuel companies, are explicitly opposed. From this perspective, any approach that pursues stability while such influential actors hold the means to block ambition to protect their profits will, by definition, be inadequate.

In response to this antagonism between stability and re/politicization, we brought together twenty-six scholars to explore eleven country cases, and multiple policy areas, across governance contexts ranging from the local to global scale. We began, in Part I, by examining movement politics, as this is where much of the discussion around the need for re/politicization has arisen. In Part II, we turned our attention to the importance of political economy, as the industries we analyze have often been the subject of opposition for social movements, as well as commonly being well-funded centers of resistance and opposition to the political and economic changes needed to meet the challenges posed by climate change. In Part III, contributors’ chapters focused on comparative political dynamics, to see how these tensions play out in different countries across the world. Part IV shifted our attention to how the tensions play out in global politics, specifically with the UNFCCC and global trade governance. Finally, in Part V, our reflections, we critiqued the binary portrayal of stability and re/politicization.

We begin this concluding chapter by outlining what we have learned regarding stability from our chapters. We then do likewise for re/politicization. Third, we reflect on the importance of temporality for our analyses. Next, we turn to depoliticizing strategies and discourses. We then emphasize the importance of justice before finally offering concluding remarks and suggesting future avenues for research.

17.1 Understanding Stability

In Chapter 1, we identified four forms of stability: stability as the status quo, stability as engineering lock-in, stability as policy lock-in, and stability as long-term emissions reduction pathways. What have the chapters in between taught us about these forms of stability in climate politics?

First, there are many situations where the pursuit of stability in terms of engineering lock-in to generate long-term emissions reductions, or simply as stable policy environments, in practice generates stability as the status quo. While focusing on the Fridays for Future movement in Germany, Tosun and Debus (Chapter 2) argue that the steady growth of climate policies may face dismantling strategies, unless some degree of stability is pursued. Méndez (Chapter 3) shows how climate policy framed in terms of what he calls “carbon reductionism” narrows the scope of governance to one that is manageable within existing power arrangements at the expense of climate justice. And Tobin, Ali, MacGregor, and Ahmad (Chapter 4) show that stable policy environments can entrench existing racialized power hierarchies but also that the existence already of such hierarchies necessarily makes marginalized communities wish to avoid conflict and contestation for fear of greater repercussions. Using the case of peatland restoration, Paterson (Chapter 6) shows that as climate policy expands into new domains, the existing power relations within those domains limit the ability of climate policy to reshape them effectively. Chapter 7 by Stephens and Sokol and Chapter 8 by Haufler both show that in relation to the financial sector, actors tend to get “captured,” resulting in the pursuit of financial stability as opposed to aggressive emissions reductions.

The chapters show that a key question that arises is “stability for whom?” A stable policy environment inevitably works to the advantage of some and the disadvantage of others. Stephens and Sokol make this point most forcefully in the context of central bank climate activity, but it applies similarly to questions of climate justice (Méndez) and the participation of Muslim communities, as well as, by extension, other marginalized groups (Tobin, Ali, MacGregor, and Ahmad).

But other chapters complicate this picture somewhat. VanDeveer (Chapter 5) suggests that politicizing actors seek a form of stable, policy lock-in, as they work to phase out and permanently ban coal burning via universalizing anti-coal burning and anti-coal financing policy norms. Even when climate policy is depoliticized, and focuses on stable climate policy over time, there are important contexts where it is able, in practice, to generate fairly ambitious climate action. For example, Hochstetler’s contribution (Chapter 9) demonstrates this situation powerfully in her comparison of Brazil and South Africa, where depoliticized contexts and policy frameworks in Brazil are able to ramp up wind energy considerably, whereas highly politicized energy politics in South Africa works to impede energy transitions there. Sun, Shen, and Lewis (Chapter 10) find that the Chinese state is able to develop climate policy in ways that appear oriented toward stable policy environments, but at various points in time, this entails strategically organizing conflicts with incumbent interests to undermine their ability to block climate action. Farstad, Hermansen, and Lahn (Chapter 11) identify several important successes of depoliticized climate policy interventions in Norway, underscoring their emphasis on the need for agnosticism regarding the antagonism between stability and conflict. Torney (Chapter 12) shows that even while policymakers seek to generate stable policy over time, the framework climate laws they generate do so in ways that seek to undermine the status quo, destabilizing existing power relations to generate more aggressive climate action. Similarly, Mildenberger and Lockwood (Chapter 13) argue that the “depoliticized” character of prominent climate institutions is often misunderstood, as they arise out of political contestation and have been designed in recognition of the political conflicts inherent to climate action.

Our latter chapters provide a critical lens for reflecting on stability. Allan (Chapter 14) builds on her previous work outlining the “dangerous incrementalism” of the UNFCCC system (see Allan Reference Allan2019) through her analysis of climate action at the global level, in which she finds stability to be fragile and difficult to maintain. Nahm’s chapter on US-China relations and green industrial policy (Chapter 15) explores how politicization could be used in order to achieve stability but that in doing so it risks undermining the existing global economic order and the foundations for long-term climate collaboration. Building neatly on this interlinked relationship between politicization and stability, Bernstein and Hoffmann (Chapter 16) argue – and consolidate the points made by Farstad, Hermansen, and Lahn and Mildenberger and Lockwood, via their analysis of the “carbon trap” – that these two concepts are not dichotomous, and instead that pursuing stability is an inherently political process.

17.2 Understanding Politicization and Repoliticization

What do our contributors have to say about the four forms of re/politicization we identified in Chapter 1? We name these forms: politicization as pursuit of broader sociopolitical change; politicization as pursuit of partisan competition; politicization as rhetoric; and politicization as scholarly praxis. First, and perhaps most obviously, considering the origins of politicization activities, we see multiple examples of politicization emerging from explicit contestations by social movements. Indeed, the opening three-chapter Part I of our book, on movement politics, analyzes that topic directly. Our chapters in Part I assess this pursuit of politicization via the impacts of the Fridays for Future movement on the coal phaseout in Germany (Tosun and Debus), the ability of climate justice movements in California to contest “carbon reductionism” and broaden the scope of climate action in the state (Méndez), and Muslim communities’ challenging dilemma as to whether the pursuit of politicization creates risks for campaigners. Subsequent chapters build on these themes – for example, the chapter by Farstad, Hermansen, and Lahn, which discusses how various NGOs have effectively targeted particular tensions within Norwegian policy, notably over gas-fired power plants and carbon capture and storage (CCS), and the efforts of NGO campaigners to generate more ambitious climate action by insurers, in Haufler’s chapter. VanDeveer’s chapter draws attention to domestic and transnational activists – along with self-declared lead states – that are seeking to expand the list of states, subnational public sector units, and financial institutions declaring fossil fuel phaseout deadlines, or opposing the financing of new coal infrastructure. In some contexts, these activities entail the pursuit of broader sociopolitical change, while in others it is to effect more narrow gains in climate policy action. Sometimes, the logic of movement activism is more complex, with competing focuses of campaign activity across environmentalists, as in Paterson’s chapter on the differing uses and values of peatlands around which campaigns are organized.

But some chapters show that politicization comes from less obvious sources. In both Allan’s and Nahm’s chapters, highly powerful actors – states, especially dominant ones in global politics – repoliticize existing international agreements to pursue their interests (i.e. the United States regarding the Kyoto Protocol), or politicize the domestic climate policy of other states within other international fora, such as the World Trade Organization. Sun, Shen, and Lewis similarly show that politicization is sometimes pursued by the Chinese state (even within a broadly depoliticized policy regime) in order to secure compliance from particular companies or other actors. Conversely, other chapters show that politicization can generate dangers for marginalized actors, such as Muslim climate actors in the UK (Tobin, Ali, MacGregor, and Ahmad), for reasons such as unequal treatment via the justice system. But politicization can also generate dangers for undermining climate policy itself: As Nahm argues, seeking to onshore manufacturing in the United States for renewable energy technologies might build coalitions for climate policy in the United States, but it also raises costs and could slow down the rate of US solar installation. VanDeveer’s contribution argues that the movement to universalize coal phaseout policies has met, and sometimes engendered, politicized distributional and procedural justice debates at the local and global scale.

Many of our chapters entail politicization as an academic activity as well as an empirical focus. This scholarly praxis is usually pursued through normative arguments that propose the politicization of various aspects of climate policy – for example, politicizing central banks (Stephens and Sokol), the financial sector in general (Haufler), fossil fuel incumbents (Hochstetler; VanDeveer), or through rhetorical strategies such as just transitions (Bernstein and Hoffmann). Other chapters are less immediately normative but nevertheless assume that even if we do not yet see much politicization of a given aspect of climate policy, it is immanent to the logic of that policy domain (see, e.g., Paterson on peatlands). Indeed, as discourses and activism associated with justice, injustice, and anti-fossil fuel norms (Blondeel et al. Reference Blondeel, Colgan and Van de Graaf2019; Mitchell and Carpenter Reference Mitchell and Carpenter2019) are globalized, it is difficult to imagine what a related un-politicized or normatively stable climate change politics might look like.

17.3 Combining Stability and Politicization

A running thread through the book is that stability and politicization are not dichotomous strategies for policymakers or others to pursue, even if they appear to be competing approaches to climate action. In practice, they interact considerably in ways that are irreducible to the overall logic of “accomplishing” climate governance (Bulkeley Reference Bulkeley2015). Both Torney’s analysis of framework climate laws and Mildenberger and Lockwood’s of climate policy institution-building show that, contrary to the assumption that these processes are intended to be depoliticizing, they have the possibility of repoliticization built into them. Bernstein and Hoffmann complement this argument about how we understand climate policy and institutional design with a model of decarbonization over time, showing that the logics of capture we have seen already (how stability in policy design can become stability as the status quo) can generate semi-transitions to situations they call “improvement,” but this situation then is likely to generate additional politicizations that renew pressure for additional action. VanDeveer’s chapter demonstrates that politicizing coal burning, in pursuit of more significant and faster climate change mitigation via permanently banning coal burning and coal sector financing, can itself be repoliticized via justice and decolonial concerns at the local and global scale.

But for Mildenberger and Lockwood, and for Torney, it is not only academics who argue that the logic of climate policy means that stability-oriented policy regimes cannot be sustained over time. Certainly decolonial scholarship is often rather explicit about the need to politicize scholarship as well as broader political and social institutions. Beyond this “politicization as scholarly practice,” policymakers themselves have also designed institutions that enable future political conflict over climate change, recognizing the need for both elements in our framework to be integral to future climate strategy.

17.4 Depoliticizing Strategies and Discourses

Many of our chapters show that attempts to pursue stable policy regimes are very difficult to sustain over time, and that such attempts periodically unravel. They also show that in practice many such policy regimes are less depoliticized (Feindt et al. Reference Feindt, Schwindenhammer and Tosun2021; Wood Reference Wood2016) than often assumed, containing political bargains within them and at times designed to reshape power relations in favor of further decarbonization. Nevertheless, the urge for policymakers and many researchers to engage in depoliticizing strategies and discourses is powerful. Pursuit of depoliticization often arises out of the identification by policymakers with particular incumbent interests, which makes them seek to elide or obscure the contradictions in climate policy that result from these identifications. But it can also arise more simply because the normative rhetoric of “we are all in this crisis together” can be an effective discursive strategy for bringing diverse actors together around climate policy, including actors who may not otherwise choose to participate if engagement is – or appears to be – more “political” than they would wish. In our introductory chapter, we unpacked the term “politics” into its different elements. We deployed three such elements – politics as a site of collective decision-making, politics as power, and politics as conflict (see Paterson Reference Paterson2021). Resultantly, we can understand these depoliticizing urges precisely as the effects of power and conflict on how collective decision-making is made. Depoliticization strategies are therefore deeply political in their origins and effects.

We see the urge to present climate policy as depoliticized in various ways in our chapters. Tosun and Debus show that the politicization of climate change by Fridays for Future, and with the Green Party as a government coalition partner, threatened to undermine long-term climate policy and generated incentives for governing actors to depoliticize it in response. This effect has in part been generated by the nature of the German institutional framework, an effect that is even more obvious in Norway (see Dryzek et al. Reference Dryzek, Hunold, Schlosberg, Downes and Hernes2002), where Farstad, Hermansen, and Lahn show that deeply institutionalized norms about consensual decision-making produce these incentives for depoliticizing strategies. And while analyzing four countries (the UK, Australia, Norway, and Denmark), Mildenberger and Lockwood unpack neatly the political bargains involved in generating “stability-oriented” climate institutions. Yet they nevertheless show that such institutions are routinely presented rhetorically by policymakers and politicians as being “outside” partisan politics.

Stephens and Sokol, as well as Haufler, show the core rationale for depoliticization even more starkly. The powerful financial sector not only organizes and frames climate governance in depoliticized ways to avoid scrutiny of its activities in relation to climate change but also uses climate policy to advance its interests directly. Similar dynamics are detailed in Hochstetler’s chapter, whereby the complex and contentious politics around forests in Brazil incentivizes governments to avoid conflicts and focus on less conflictual areas of climate action, notably wind energy.

But while the incentives for dominant actors to engage in depoliticizing strategies are increasingly acknowledged and understood, Tobin, Ali, MacGregor, and Ahmad show that this can also be the case for marginalized actors. In their chapter, they show that many Muslim climate actors in the UK feel unable to participate in more contentious climate action because of the dynamics of structural or institutional racism, and hence often pursue more depoliticized strategies for reasons of personal security. In other contexts, depoliticization strategies arise out of the habitus of the more technically focused actors in many parts of climate governance. For example, the scientists who are involved in peatland management (Paterson) often focused on how to restore peatlands to minimize carbon losses (and even absorb carbon), rather than political questions around land ownership. Indeed, spending time on such topics would feel like a dangerous distraction.

Lastly, several chapters demonstrate that what depoliticizing actors are trying to avoid – and/or what they perceive as problematic about “politics” – also various substantially. For Stephens and Sokol, regarding the treatment of central banks, and for Haufler’s contribution on the insurance and reinsurance sector, we see actors who generally seek to keep contentious noneconomic politics “out” of their economic governance discourses. Paterson’s chapter on “peaty politics” similarly argues that many actors want to keep contentious areas of climate change politics out of peat governance. In all three of these contributions, highly technical discourses and bodies of knowledge are deployed to insulate or protect governance decision-making process from contentious or more explicitly normative aspects of politics. Certainly, there is a long tradition of such uses of science and technology in many areas of environmental politics (see, e.g., Jasanoff Reference Jasanoff1994). Meanwhile, for Farstad, Hermansen, and Lahn, depoliticizing Norwegian climate policy was, for many years, accomplished through the invocation and maintenance of societal and cross-political-party consensus that shows more recent signs of fraying.

17.5 Understanding Antagonisms and Iterated Politics over Time

If the urge to depoliticize climate policy in the pursuit of stable climate policy regimes is strong for many actors, so too is the desire in others to repoliticize. In part, this desire is integral to the logic of climate change itself: For many, there is a deep sense that attempts to depoliticize climate change – in the sense of presenting it as outside or beyond power relations and conflicts in society – is simply mistaken as both a strategy and an understanding of societal dynamics. From this perspective, depoliticizing strategies in climate policy are always in some sense merely tactical rather than coherent intellectually. However, this point means that the urge to repoliticize arises out of direct awareness of those broader power relations and conflicts in society. Particular groups of people have reasons to mobilize over climate change. Our chapters illustrate these actors in various ways – from youth-centered movements (Fridays for Future – see Tosun and Debus) or other climate justice groups (Bernstein and Hoffmann) to those affected negatively by either climate policy or climate change itself (see chapters variously by Méndez; Farstad, Hermansen, and Lahn; or Tobin, Ali, MacGregor, and Ahmad). Academics are of course actors in climate politics too, and several of our chapters (Bernstein and Hoffmann’s argument for just transitions, Méndez’s arguments about “climate change from the streets,” and Stephens and Sokol’s call to politicize central banking) can be read as repoliticizing interventions, as indeed can the book as a whole.

We need to see the relationships between stability and repoliticization as iterated over time. Each contains logics that arise out of the urges of some sets of political actors to frame and act on climate in specific ways, which then provoke reactions from other actors to frame and act on these differently. The institutionalization of stability-oriented climate policy also contains contradictory logics that tend to falter and create repoliticizing moments. Conversely, opening up new lines of political conflict risks opening up climate action to interventions by those pursuing a backlash to, or dismantling of, climate policy (Patterson Reference Patterson2023; Paterson et al. Reference Paterson, Wilshire and Tobin2024), generating new rounds of attempts to “lock in” climate policy to prevent such backsliding.

How you – a particular reader of this book – respond to these dynamics depends on your positionality within the various processes we analyze here. For many, activism that repoliticizes climate seems like the obvious option due to lack of influence within the current structures. This obviousness results from one’s own standpoint. For example, from a generational perspective, as many readers of the book will be students (and thus commonly young adults), activism is one of the few available opportunities for action and feeds off intergenerational resentments and conflicts that are intrinsic to the temporal dynamics of climate change. Climate change is indeed a phenomenon created by older, richer (white) people in the Global North, and imposed on the young everywhere, albeit highly unequally young people across the world. There is also a sense among many young students and activists that we are all running out of time to avoid catastrophic impacts (de Moor Reference de Moor, Sowers, VanDeveer and Weinthal2023), and that these will occur over the expected lifespans of today’s younger generations.

But for other readers, those with perhaps more of a sense of access – if mediated – to political decision-making, and perhaps also more to lose having established careers and families, or indeed, those with concern for unfair treatment in justice systems, such activism may seem inaccessible or unappealing. For these readers, the pursuit of climate action via political parties, lobbying, organized interest groups, or professional networks, which favor less conflictual action, may be more in line with their situation. This approach is not necessarily depoliticized – it would include partisan competition among political parties – but it is nevertheless not “climate change from the streets,” in Méndez’s words. Hence, it does contain the seeds of a more stability-oriented approach to climate change, seeking consensus where possible.

17.6 Concluding Remarks and Future Research

Our aim in this book was to provide an analytical framework based around the antagonisms between “stability” and “politicization” as a means for thinking about the political dynamics of long-term climate policy. We think the framework is useful empirically in that it captures common empirical phenomena within climate policy – both the urge to seek to “lock in” climate policy to pursue decarbonization in a way that prevents backsliding and the urge to open up political conflict that can destabilize existing power relations blocking ambitious climate policy action. And our framework is also useful normatively – both poles in our framework contain powerful arguments that motivate actors to act on climate change in specific ways, and hence clarifying what is at stake in these two approaches proffers analytical benefits. Moreover, it is important to recognize the normative value of both logics, and especially the value of the empirical relationships between them.

We have presented the framework in a deliberately open and flexible manner, and we hope others will find it useful in developing their own analyses. We particularly hope the four forms of stability and the four forms of politicization that we identify through this volume can serve to make future research in these fields even more nuanced. Indeed, these forms can be employed in myriad ways. Some may simply see our antagonist framework, and its attendant eight forms, as useful means to organize their own case study or comparative research. Others may prefer to develop the approach into a more formal model that might be constructed and tested.

While we have sought to maximize the diversity of empirical contexts in which the arguments have been developed, there are nevertheless many ways they could be evaluated and developed in other empirical contexts. For example, how does this antagonism play out in cities? The chapters by Allan and by Nahm extend the argument beyond the national policy level that dominates existing literature, but there is much more to be said about stability and repoliticization at inter-state and transnational spaces, where relationship dynamics are necessarily orchestrated differently than in national, subnational, and non-state arenas. Cities hold the potential to play a unique role in climate governance yet possess unique dynamics compared to other levels (van der Heijden Reference van der Heijden2019) and have not been analyzed in this volume. Similarly, what about the important sectors that we lacked the space to explore here? For instance, we have only one chapter here dealing with transport as part of its analysis, and which pertains to electric vehicle (EV) transitions, while there is nothing on agriculture and food or aviation and very little on buildings. Each of these sectors likely possess their own actor coalitions, priorities, conflicts, and focal issues (see Schmidt et al. Reference Schmidt, Tobin and Moore2022). It would be useful to test the arguments proposed in this book in various contexts to see how they hold up or need adapting according to their context. Furthermore, as we note in our introductory chapter, the bulk of our analyses pertain to climate mitigation rather than adaptation, yet the pursuit of long-term and effective policy, and the dynamics around how to do so, pertain as much to responding to the impacts of climate change as to its prevention. Further research into the antagonisms that underpin adaptation policy, and the inequalities of power that influence decision-making in this regard, is of the utmost importance and urgency to those regions already facing the harshest effects of climate change, often despite playing a limited role in their creation.

There is a lot at stake in getting our understanding of these dynamics right. We are finalizing this book in 2024, which is a year of a huge number of elections around the world: Amy Davidson Sorkin, writing in the New Yorker, dubbed it “the biggest election year in history” (Sorkin Reference Sorkin2024), with perhaps seventy-six countries with universal suffrage going to the polls, comprising more than 40 percent of the world’s population. The United States, the UK, Mexico, South Africa, India, Russia, Pakistan, and Iran are just some of the most prominent national elections for presidencies and/or parliaments to come during the year – a year that also includes European Parliamentary elections. Climate change is once again a partisan issue in many contexts, including those, like the UK, where it has until recently enjoyed bipartisan support (Carter and Pearson Reference Carter and Pearson2024). Many of these elections could destabilize the political conditions for climate policy in dramatic ways. And beyond electoral politics, there remains ongoing mobilization both to accelerate climate policy action and to undermine – or even dismantle – it. These activities are likely to put considerable pressure on existing climate initiatives around the world, and in particular on the institutionalized forms through which a previous round of climate policymaking has sought to “lock in” climate action over time. How these challenges play out empirically, and how different actors are able to use them not only to withstand the pressure for climate policymaking but perhaps also to intensify and accelerate climate action, is crucial for the future of the global response to the climate crisis.