Event Data Analysis Applied to Environmental Policy.

Event data has been proven to be fruitful for the analysis of political interactions that follow the pattern 'who did what to whom and when'. Traditionally most often applied in international conflict studies and international relations, event data provides a wide set of variables and measurements that can also be applied to other research areas. Moreover, automated coding systems today allow for the coding of the data nearly in real time. This paper applies event data analysis to environmental policy and demonstrates how this method can be valuable for the study of environmental policymaking. In particular decision-making on global environmental problems such as climate change involves a complex set of actors with myriad interests, comprising both state and non-state actors on the international, national, regional and local level, as well as various forms of interactions between these actors. Event data analysis may uncover cooperation and conflict patterns between these actors and groups of actors that are concerned with climate change in different ways over time. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]