Abstract
Climate change policy poses challenges of unprecedented magnitude. It requires serious political commitment, coordination, integration, investments, law-making creativity and technological innovation. Solutions should strike a balance among a wide range of interests of a rich variety of involved parties. Elin Lerum Boasson’s coherent conceptual approach ‘facilitates more precise assessments of preference formation and influence distribution in climate-policy developments’ (p. 25) across countries, time and policy areas.
The principal research questions in Boasson’s book are as follows: Why do national climate policies emerge and change? To what extent and how are these processes influenced by the following actors and social mechanisms: politicians and the national political fields, business and organisational fields, EU policy and the European environment, and social and entrepreneurial mechanisms? The author implements a comparative case study method in order to develop a holistic multi-field theoretical framework that helps us understand and assess climate policy.
Part I of Boasson’s book introduces the theoretical foundation of the developed multi-field approach. Chapter 2 presents the fields and a theoretical building block, defined as ‘a circumscribed sphere of political and social life with an identifiable social architecture’ (p. 60), and the mechanisms on which they depend. Chapter 3 conceptualises the role of entrepreneurship and its mechanisms in climate policy-making.
Multi-level governance as a concept 1 was introduced by Gary Marks in 1992 2 in order to analyse European integration. Similarly, Boasson states that her framework ‘is intended primarily for assessing national climate policies in countries that are members of the EU, or otherwise affiliated to it’ (p. 13). In Part II, chapters 4–6 of the book, the author applies the multi-field framework to four Norwegian empirical climate policy case studies (carbon capture and storage, renewable electricity, renewable heating, and energy policy for buildings). From a methodological point of view, a distinct advantage in Boasson’s research approach is the careful justification for the case studies’ selection.
Also, a distinct strength of the book is that the proposed multi-field framework is open-ended. It can be adapted and applied for an analysis of national policies not only within the EU but also within other non-European geographical areas. In addition, it can be extended to further vital climate policy areas.
The book makes a significant contribution to the current debate on national climate policy-making. It can be recommended to scholars and practitioners with interests in this research area and is also suitable for university classes from a variety of disciplines, in particular political science, economics and law.