Democracy and Climate Change

• Main Author: Hanusch, Frederic
• Format: eBook
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Taylor & Francis 2017
• Series: Routledge Global Cooperation Series
• Subjects: Canada; Canada's Kyoto Protocol Process; Canada’s Climate Policy; Climate change; Climate Change Plan; Climate Performance; Climate Policy Making; comparative politics; Democracy; Democracy Barometer; Democracy Climate Nexus; Democratic Efficacy; Democratic Quality; Developing & Emerging Countries; Development studies; Earth Sciences, Geography, Environment, Planning; environment; environmental governance; Environmental policy and protocols; Explanatory Mixed Methods Design; Geography; Human Geography; Influence Climate Performance; Intended Climate Performance; Interdisciplinary studies; International relations; kyoto; Panel Regressions; Philosophy; Philosophy and Religion; Political Ideologies; Political Science; Political structure and processes; Political structures: democracy; Politics and government; Pollution and threats to the environment; Procedural General Performance; Reduce Green House Gas Emissions; Reference, Information and Interdisciplinary subjects; Social and political philosophy; Social Science; Society and Social Sciences; sustainability; The environment; Topics in philosophy
• ISBN: 9780415371162; 9781315228983; 9781351857734; 1351857738; 135185772X; 9781351857710; 131522898X; 9780367248048; 9781351857727; 0367248042; 0415371163; 1351857711
• DOI: 10.4324/9781315228983

Democracy and Climate Change explores the various ways in which democratic principles can lead governments to respond differently to climate change. The election cycle can lead to short-termism, which often appears to be at odds with the long-term nature of climate change, with its latency between cause and effect. However, it is clear that some democracies deal with climate change better than others, and this book demonstrates that overall stronger democratic qualities tend to correlate with improved climate performance. Beginning by outlining a general concept of democratic efficacy, the book provides an empirical analysis of the influence of the quality of democracy on climate change performance across dozens of countries. The specific case study of Canada’s Kyoto Protocol process is then used to explain the mechanisms of democratic influence in depth. The wide-ranging research presented in the book opens up several new and exciting avenues of enquiry and will be of considerable interest to researchers with an interest in comparative politics, democracy studies and environmental policies. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-ND) 4.0 license.