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DeepDCarb |
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The Democratic Challenge of Navigating Governance Traps
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Understanding the scope for unlocking a profound impasse in society’s struggle to deliver deep decarbonisation
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DeepDCarb is a collaborative project between researchers at the University of East Anglia and the University of Heidelberg.
The standard advice to politicians confronting long-term challenges such as decarbonisation is to adopt time-consistent commitment devices such as binding policies. Yet politicians appear unable to do this. The state-of-the art struggles to explain the causes, and hence the solutions, to this impasse. Political scientists argue that politicians fear retribution at the next election; psychologists claim that citizens understand what is at stake, but expect politicians to lead. The untested assumption is that both are locked into a ‘governance trap’ which greatly reduces the political feasibility of rapid change.
DeepDCarb seeks to significantly advance the academic state-of-the-art by directly interrogating the relationship between politicians, citizens/voters and other actors in a uniquely detailed and comparative manner, drawing on an unconventional combination of methods and unrivalled new data sets.
The project is funded by the European Union (European Research Council, Advanced Grant, project number: 882601). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the team members only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
The standard advice to politicians confronting long-term challenges such as decarbonisation is to adopt time-consistent commitment devices such as binding policies. Yet politicians appear unable to do this. The state-of-the art struggles to explain the causes, and hence the solutions, to this impasse. Political scientists argue that politicians fear retribution at the next election; psychologists claim that citizens understand what is at stake, but expect politicians to lead. The untested assumption is that both are locked into a ‘governance trap’ which greatly reduces the political feasibility of rapid change.
DeepDCarb seeks to significantly advance the academic state-of-the-art by directly interrogating the relationship between politicians, citizens/voters and other actors in a uniquely detailed and comparative manner, drawing on an unconventional combination of methods and unrivalled new data sets.
The project is funded by the European Union (European Research Council, Advanced Grant, project number: 882601). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the team members only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
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