Abstracts

The ‘durability challenge’ for climate change policy: a comparative analysis of carbon pricing in Australia and British Columbia

by Catherine Alexander

While climate change poses a major threat to humanity, policymakers have struggled to enact policy responses capable of addressing it. Some policy instruments have been implemented only to be repealed, creating a ‘durability challenge’ for governments seeking to address climate change. In light of this challenge, this thesis asks: which government strategies are most likely to embed new climate policies so that they can persist long enough to produce the desired effects? Policy durability has received less scholarly attention than policy enactment. Some scholars emphasise the strategic management of stakeholders and interest groups to promote durability (Patashnik 2008), while alternative explanations highlight the importance of securing broad public acceptance for the reform, including by persuasive communication from political leaders. There is not yet enough empirical research to provide clear answers. Accordingly, this thesis presents a comparative study of two carbon pricing reforms, one of which was successful (the policy proved durable), and the other not (the policy was not durable); this approach approximates J. S. Mill’s Most Similar Systems Design. The durable case is the carbon tax implemented in British Columbia (BC), Canada, in 2008, which remains in place, while the non-durable case is Australia’s Carbon Pricing Mechanism, sometimes called ‘the carbon tax’, implemented in 2012 and repealed two years later. The cases are compared to analyse the government strategies that promote policy durability, with BC’s successful trajectory throwing the problems in the Australian case into relief. This study finds that the strategic management of interest groups is not enough to secure policy durability, nor is sophisticated policy design a sufficient condition, particularly if the policymakers stumble on the politics. Instead, the thesis finds that policymakers should focus, above all, on securing broad public acceptance of the reform. These findings challenge the assumption that durability strategies can be activated upon policy implementation (Patashnik 2008), concluding instead that policy durability is highly sensitive to the conditions of enactment. This thesis also challenges the applicability of general studies of policy durability to Westminster-derived jurisdictions, with the political party system, and the ideological orientation of the governing party, proving highly consequential in the two cases here. A key finding of this study is that Right-aligned political parties have a much greater chance of implementing durable climate policies than Left-aligned parties in Westminster political systems.