LIST OF PANELS

Carbon pricing is often identified as an effective means of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at lowest cost. Yet despite endorsement from a broad range of international organizations (e.g. OECD, World Bank, IMF), think tanks and economists of various political orientation, application of this approach continues to be limited in terms of the number of jurisdictions that have formally adopted carbon pricing, sectors covered by the policy, and in the level or stringency of the carbon price. Scholarly attention has focussed mostly on the optimal design of carbon pricing instruments, as well as the political obstacles toward implementing this policy tool. Much less research examines the factors that facilitate the implementation of carbon pricing, or the features that might enhance its durability over time.

In this context, the objective of this panel is to bring together scholars from around the world to reflect on and discuss the politics of carbon pricing across jurisdictions, with an emphasis on identifying best practices from international experience and research, as well as drawing lessons from policy failures and carbon price reversals that have occurred across multiple jurisdictions in recent months and years. Key themes in this endeavour include the identification of strategies to overcome political and social opposition to carbon pricing, advanced strategies for communicating benefits to a polarized public, and strategies for enhancing the durability of carbon pricing over time. These strategies might include policy design characteristics around incidence, price escalators, and revenue use ; policy framing, labelling, and packaging ; policy sequencing and coalition building ; as well as advanced strategies for communicating the effectiveness of carbon pricing that involve framing, counter framing, narration, and use of different messengers.

Moving beyond the obstacles facing optimal carbon pricing toward a focus on identifying strategies for implementation in a second-best setting is important for several reasons. First, carbon pricing is being considered by a large number of countries as a means of implementing targets submitted as national contributions to the Paris Agreement, yet it has also become a hotly contested political issue with several high profile reversals (e.g. Australia, Ontario) offering insight into the strategies actors have used to defend and repeal this policy tool. Insight into what works and doesn’t is crucial for governments looking to implement carbon pricing at home. Second, the amount of solid theoretical and empirical work on carbon price politics has increased in recent years, yet this research has for the most part focused on obstacles to optimal design and conducted on single case studies, with fewer studies looking at strategies to overcome these obstacles and even fewer taking an international or comparative approach. Third, much potential exists to develop more theoretical accounts of climate policy implementation and durability, by mobilizing existing theories of the policy process and behavioural public policy. The panel will thus help foster dialogue and learning among scholars working in a variety of jurisdictions, while allowing for an initial stock taking of findings from this literature to identify what works and doesn’t across space and time, with more careful attention to theorizing how and why carbon pricing might overcome political and popular resistance.

Carbon pricing is often identified as an effective means of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at lowest cost. Yet despite endorsement from a broad range of international organizations (e.g. OECD, World Bank, IMF), think tanks and economists of various political orientation, application of this approach continues to be limited in terms of the number of jurisdictions that have formally adopted carbon pricing, sectors covered by the policy, and in the level or stringency of the carbon price. Scholarly attention has focused mostly on the optimal design of carbon pricing instruments, as well as the political obstacles toward implementing this policy tool. In contrast, we seek papers that examine how political actors mobilize for and against carbon pricing proposals, the factors that facilitate the implementation of carbon pricing in different political contexts, as well as the features that might enhance the durability of carbon pricing policies over time.

The objective of this panel (or multiple panels) is to bring together scholars from around the world to reflect on and discuss the politics of carbon pricing across jurisdictions, with an emphasis on identifying best practices from international experience and research, as well as drawing lessons from policy failures and carbon price reversals that have occurred across multiple jurisdictions in recent months and years (e.g. Australia, Ontario). Key themes in this endeavour include the identification of strategies to overcome political and social opposition to carbon pricing, advanced strategies for communicating benefits to a polarized public, and strategies for enhancing the durability of carbon pricing over time. These strategies might include policy design characteristics around incidence, price escalators, hybrid strategies, and targeted revenue use; policy framing, labelling, and packaging ; policy sequencing and coalition building ; as well as advanced strategies for communicating the effectiveness of carbon pricing that involve framing, counter framing, narration, and use of different messengers.

Potential questions that might be addressed include :

1. What factors account for the relative success and failure of various carbon price proposals across jurisdictions?

2. How have carbon price proposals been designed, framed and communicated by different social actors (media, proponents, opponents) to promote acceptance or to mobilize opposition in different contexts around the world? 

3. What drives public support and opposition toward carbon pricing and under what conditions might political resistance toward carbon pricing be overcome?

4. What kinds of policy design (e.g. upstream/downstream, coverage, stringency, revenue use) are seen as more or less acceptable to different sets of social and political actors? How much are citizens willing to pay?

Papers examining a range of other issues affecting the political feasibility of carbon pricing – using quantitative and qualitative approaches – are most welcome.