From Statements of Intent to Institutionalised Practice: What Makes Climate Change Policies Stick?

Abstract

The growing literature on multi-level governance of climate change has emphasised horizontal networks and a broad range of actors shaping mitigation policies and outcomes. In seeking to come to terms with the novel networked configurations of actors engaged in climate change governance, this literature loses its focus on the role of formal institutions in enabling and inhibiting major shifts in policy and practice. The emerging literature on “bottom up” climate policy draws out key political and institutional variables that influence the adoption of climate change policies but take institutionalisation as a given. This paper responds to this neglect of institutions, which is particularly marked in developing countries, by enquiring into the factors that take mitigation policies from statements of intent to embedded institutional practices. The paper draws on institutional theory to argue that there are degrees of institutionalisation and to identify the factors that enable or inhibit the intensification of institutionalisation of mitigation policies. Using an inductive approach that involved qualitative interviews with key policy actors in South Africa, the paper finds that deliberative decision-making and discursive construction, constraints on cross-jurisdictional scope, and inter-scalar problem construction play a key role in shaping the process of institutionalisation.