Abstract
Climate change is considered by policymakers as one of the most pressing global issues of our time. International institutions and national governments are, to varying degrees, committed to tackling climate change, but it has only been possible to define a shared system of collective goals across countries through the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris (COP21). A growing interest in climate change policy has been present in the Italian political debate, yet we have little evidence regarding the nature of related climate change debates across Italian policymakers. By using Discourse Network Analysis (DNA) to investigate Italian policymakers’ discourses in the Chamber of Deputies during the 17th Italian Legislature (2013–2018), this study shows that debates on climate change-related strategies are largely unpolarized, except for certain issues, and that coalitions emerge over time around core strategies. Groups of policymakers with similar policy beliefs emerge independently from their political affiliations. Our analysis is thus the first to apply DNA to provide empirical evidence of the convergence across Italian policymakers and the potential for the bridging of political discourses on climate change.
Highlights
The first two decades of the 21st century have seen national governments become increasingly concerned with climate change issues (Pearce, Brown, Nerlich, & Koteyko, 2015)
It applies discourse network analysis (DNA) to investigate the political debate on climate change by the Italian Chamber of Deputies
Since Italian policymakers generally accept the evidence of climate change, situations of conflict arise when the debate focuses on the strategies to cope with this problem
Summary
The first two decades of the 21st century have seen national governments become increasingly concerned with climate change issues (Pearce, Brown, Nerlich, & Koteyko, 2015). The annual United Nations Conferences of the Parties (COP) aim to reduce these conflicts at an international level Their effectiveness had been limited in the past by their intrinsic weaknesses, that is until the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) and the Paris Agreement, which defined collective and binding goals (Victor, 2016). This international approach influenced political debate within countries, contributing to the definition of climate change issues and associated strategies for achieving the Paris targets (Kukkonen, Ylä-Anttila, & Broadbent, 2017). This agreement includes two collective goals, keeping the rise in average global temperature below 2°C (striving to limit the increase below 1.5°C) and achieving worldwide carbon neutrality between 2050 and 2100, while the strength of the agreement rests on the fact that it “lets countries set their own commitments” (Victor, 2016, p. 135)
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