American policy conflict in the hothouse: Exploring the politics of climate inaction and polycentric rebellion

Abstract

In 2021, the U.S. government unveiled a national climate action plan, signaling the Biden Administration's intention to return the country to negotiations organized under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The plan would zero out CO2 emissions from the U.S. energy sector by mid-century. In response, the national opposition party quickly declared its goal to prevent the plan from being implemented, exposing a cycle of American climate policy inaction in which cancel politics are practiced by the Republican Party after the Democratic Party attempts to fashion a national compromise. The pattern has been repeated for decades with a common result: U.S. failure to sustain a responsive national policy to the climate crisis. However, while the U.S. ‘hothouse’ of national policy conflict is unmoved by overwhelming evidence of American impact in the global greenhouse, a third party (led by alliances of social movements with state and local governments) has emerged that is aggressively designing, enacting and enforcing responsive policies far exceeding the aims of a national plan that appears to have no future. We offer a theory to explain American national climate policy inaction and its contestation by an American “polycentric” counterparty, arguing that polycentric success in this contest can be traced to its focus on principles of social justice and moral responsibility to mobilize social change and to gauge its effectiveness. We offer supporting empirical findings of the power of this polycentric counterparty to transform U.S. energy-climate-society relations.