IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/poango/v10y2022i3p251-263.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Framing Climate Policy Ambition in the European Parliament

Author

Listed:
  • Lucy Kinski

    (Salzburg Centre of European Union Studies, University of Salzburg, Austria)

  • Ariadna Ripoll Servent

    (Salzburg Centre of European Union Studies, University of Salzburg, Austria)

Abstract

The European Union’s climate policy is considered quite ambitious. This has led to a growing interest among political scientists investigating the European Parliament’s ability to negotiate such ambitious climate legislation. These studies generally focus on the voting behaviour of members of the European Parliament, which allows us to know more about their positions when it comes to accepting or rejecting legislative acts. However, we know surprisingly little about how they debate and justify their positions in Parliament. In these debates, members of the European Parliament not only identify the problem (i.e., climate change and its adverse effects) but also discuss potential solutions (i.e., their willingness or ambition to fight and adapt to climate change). In addition, plenary debates are ideal for making representative claims based on citizens’ interests on climate action. Therefore, this article aims to understand how climate policy ambitions are debated in the European Parliament and whose interests are represented. We propose a new manual coding scheme for climate policy ambitions in parliamentary debate and employ it in climate policy debates in the ninth European Parliament (2019–present). In doing so, this article makes a methodological contribution to operationalising climate policy ambition from a parliamentary representation and legitimation perspective. We find debating patterns that connect quite detailed ambitions with clear representative claims and justifications. There is more agreement on what to do than how to get there, with divides emerging based on party, ideological, and member-state characteristics.

Suggested Citation

  • Lucy Kinski & Ariadna Ripoll Servent, 2022. "Framing Climate Policy Ambition in the European Parliament," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 10(3), pages 251-263.
  • Handle: RePEc:cog:poango:v10:y:2022:i:3:p:251-263
    DOI: 10.17645/pag.v10i3.5479
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/5479
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17645/pag.v10i3.5479?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cog:poango:v10:y:2022:i:3:p:251-263. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: António Vieira or IT Department (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.