Irish Climate-Change Policy from Kyoto to the Carbon Tax: a Two-level Game Analysis of the Interplay of Knowledge and Power

Abstract

This paper examines Irish climate-change policy from the negotiation of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 to the abandonment of the proposed carbon tax in 2004. It explores what combination of factors explain why Ireland first made an international commitment to limit greenhouse gas emissions to a certain level, and took three years to develop a set of policy instruments to deliver that commitment, before ultimately abandoning the main policy designed to achieve the required reductions domestically. Using Putnam’s ‘two-level game’ framework as a basis for analysis, the paper finds that the answer lies in the combination of two axes of influence. One, the interaction of domestic and international factors, and the other, the interplay of knowledge-based and interest-based approaches to policy-making. At the commitment stage, international factors and expert advice dominated. At the next stage, which involved developing policy instruments, domestic interests mobilised for the first time and were as influential as the expert advice. At the implementation stage, domestic interests dominated and the role of expert advice diminished accordingly. Ultimately, the measures required to meet its international commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions did not fall within Ireland’s domestic ‘winset’ in Putnam’s terms.