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The requirement of bottom-up action from all the countries to deal with climate change makes it necessary to analyze the factors influencing policy adoption. This article contributes to the policy literature by shedding light on the conditions, which incentivize countries to adopt more climate mitigation policies. The theoretical argument builds on the integrated approaches to study policy diffusion, which include both internal and external determinants as explanations for the adoption of policies. While previous applications typically operationalize the latter by regional proximity, this study highlights the added value of network dependencies capturing political and cooperative interactions across countries. The article finds that the adoption of climate policies is a matter of social influence. Countries are more likely to adopt policies if they cooperate with countries that have adopted more climate policies and are in a similar structural position to countries that are active in climate protection. This article not only is an important theoretical contribution to the policy literature but also enriches our methodological and empirical understanding of climate policy diffusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses two related puzzles. The first puzzle is that parts of the environmental federalism literature suggest that federal states are ill-equipped to solve nation-wide or global environmental problems such as climate change, but climate policy scholars usually emphasise the opposite. The second puzzle is that Austria (a federal EU Member State) is regularly praised as an environmental policy leader but has missed its Kyoto target by about 19 %. The paper addresses both puzzles by analysing to what degree federalism is responsible for Austria's poor mitigation performance. Since the nine Austrian provinces are mainly responsible for regulating the building sector that accounts for about 25 % of total energy consumption and 13 % of the greenhouse gas emissions, the analysis focuses on the integration of climate change mitigation in building policies. The empirical core of the paper analyses all major EU, federal and provincial policies that aimed to green the building sector since the signing of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. After showing that these policy outputs cannot explain considerable sectoral emission reductions, we conclude that Austrian federalism did not facilitate but hinder climate change mitigation because it added a vertical dimension to an already complex horizontal integration challenge. However, since federalism can by far not explain Austria's failure to reach its Kyoto target domestically, we also conclude that it is only one of many independent variables that shape climate change mitigation. Finally, we argue that Austria is neither an environmental policy leader nor a laggard, but an opportunist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although in recent years great emphasis has been placed on global agreements and national commitments on climate change, ultimately action on mitigation and adaptation must take place at the local level. Many local authorities have to face questions of whether they should develop policies on climate change, and if so, on what evidence should policies be designed and delivered. This paper describes how academic research on the economics of low carbon cities (the 'mini-Stern review') helped create such an evidence base for the Leeds City Region and its constituent local authorities. We describe how the response to the evidence and the pathways to impact were different in the individual local authorities and what this means for our understanding of evidence in local policy making. In terms of Weiss' (Social sciences and modern states: national experiences and theoretical crossroads. Advances in political science, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, ) classification, the study was mainly useful as an argument and idea rather than being used instrumentally. We find that the policy and political context in each authority determines to a large extent whether such an academic study is useable as evidence. The contents and timing of the study need to align with existing policy and/or political agendas: is climate change on the agenda at all, with what priority and how is it framed. We find confirmation of a relationship between the policy problem type and the role of evidence as argument, idea or data. The mini-Stern study itself was just one contribution to wide-ranging processes of informing, convincing, pressurising, etc., not just within the different councils but also within the wider communities. Other contextual factors include composition, agenda and activities of local civil society and the local business community. Finally, it depends on the expertise of policy officers in the councils what use is made of evidence. Making policy takes (much) time, translation and negotiation across levels and sectors. Policy work describes how policy officers bring their diverse forms of knowledge to bear on policy questions; how this work is done is something that is learned from practice rather than from the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution analyses under what conditions expert input is most likely to be regarded by government representatives as useful and how government representatives use input provided by experts. It widens the analytical lens examining multilateral negotiations within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) between 2009 and 2011. The findings confirm the importance of deep knowledge, long-term involvement in the policy subsystem and networks. This research illustrates the importance of policy-entrepreneurial strategies such as proactively approaching government representatives and volunteering knowledge. Joining government delegations can increase expert input as they may gain access to the negotiation text. It is crucial to provide input early on in the negotiation cycle before the national negotiation position is decided. Scientific consensus on climate change facilitated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) resulted in a convergence of the actor's beliefs towards understanding climate mitigation and adaptation as normative imperative. Actors, however, interpret expert input based on the consensual IPCC findings differently depending on their conflicting political objectives. Thus, instrumental and political use of expert input by the interest groups overlaps in the UNFCCC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]