the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 01 Aug 2023
Enabling a political tipping point for rapid decarbonisation in the United Kingdom
Abstract. Decarbonisation of the global economy is an ecological and humanitarian necessity. Much of the research on this defining task for humanity has focused on technological solutions, with less attention paid to the question of how to accelerate the political and policy changes needed. Like a growing number of countries, the United Kingdom (UK) has opted for a net zero by 2050 decarbonisation plan, based on least cost optimisation and designed to depoliticise the climate issue. The research presented here argues for a more radical, science and equity based rapid decarbonisation to net zero by 2035. Using the emerging concept of positive tipping points, it asks how advocates of rapid decarbonisation could transform UK climate politics and achieve decisive policy influence. Based on a thematic analysis of 47 expert interviews and 100 expert views in total, this multidisciplinary research examines the political, sociological, and psychosocial dimensions and proposes an adapted multilevel perspective to illustrate the enabling conditions for a political tipping point. It finds that the potential exists for an effective advocacy coalition for rapid decarbonisation, but the prospects for displacing the dominant coalition look very slim. It recommends combining top-down and bottom-up approaches to create a nationally coordinated movement that is also place-based and participatory, putting the public at the forefront of systemic change.
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CC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2023-1674', Frank Geels, 27 Oct 2023
Dear Steve
I read your paper, which I found interesting and worthwhile.
A few things came to my mind.
1) You could maybe make some further steps in conceptualising the ‘political system’ (given its centrality in your argument)
I found this table from Voss and Borneman (2011) quite useful, which distinguishes different levels and dimensions
Maybe you could use a wider (policy studies) literature on policy paradigms (starting with Hall, 1993), which is also at the macro-level
Hall, P.A., 1993, Policy paradigms, social learning and the state: The case of economic policy making in Britain, Comparative Politics, 25(3), 275-296
That literature strand also talks about policy paradigm change.
And from what I remember, that is not just about bottom-up movements, but also about destabilisation/erosion/weakening of the existing paradigm.
The former is certainly in your paper (using various dimensions that reminded of social movement theory, including framing, resource mobilisation and opportunity structures), but the latter is perhaps less elaborated (and can be linked to opportunity structures)
2) I did also wonder about the role of sectoral level change.
Your paper seems to be mostly about the macro-level.
But is it perhaps more feasible and doable to change policies and politics at the sectoral level.
The narratives/framings arguably differ between sectors and so do the actor coalitions, innovations, resources etc.
Maybe the macro-level can be changed through multiple sectoral level changes (through spillovers etc).
Perhaps that is too slow in your argument, but maybe it is more doable.
3) I saw your data-collection was mostly from 2019 and 2020, which is not a problem per se.
It’s just that the political debate has moved on since then, with a societal/political backlash now being much more prominent than 3-4 years ago (in the UK, German, France, Netherlands etc). So, I wondered if you should say something about this, as reviewers may otherwise say that you miss important recent developments (which arguably make rapid change more difficult).
Hope these thoughts and suggestions are usefulbest wishes
frank
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-1674-CC1 -
RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2023-1674', Anonymous Referee #1, 17 Nov 2023
This research article provides insights into how experts in the field of decarbonization suggest moving forward to decarbonize the UK. The result of the study of expert opinions is a series of suggestions for policies and policy characteristics along a number of dimensions. The study is fairly well situated in the literature (though see suggestions below) and the suggestions provided by the experts are interesting. However, there are some issues that should be addressed before this piece is suitable for publication.
First and foremost, the suggested policies and policy characteristics provided by the experts are all fairly well known and understood. They could have been culled from the decarbonization literature as well as from expert opinion in the grey literature that's already available (as indeed some of the suggestions were). For this to be more compelling, the paper should do more than present the expert opinions descriptively, there needs to be analysis that goes beyond thematic clustering. How do the themes fit together? Do the experts all agree? What are the implications of different opinions across the spectrum of opinions? Do the expert suggestions cluster by type of expert (e.g. do the academcs and businesspeople systematically disagree)? What the paper presents then, are fairly disconnected lists of suggestions of what should be done. What's necessary is more critical reflection on those suggestions and then more thoughts on how the potential of those suggestions can realized, individually or in concert.
The literature at the foundation of the piece is fairly well done, but it has a blind spot in the transnational and local politics of decarbonization and climate change where a good deal of discussion of leverage and tipping points has been taking place--see e.g. Bulkeley et all book Transnational Climate Politics and Bulkeley and Betsill on cities and climate change, Thomas Hale's work on nonstate action, Bernstein and Hoffmann on fractal politics and subnational catalytic action, Meckling's work on sequencing, Castan Broto's work on local climate experiments. The socio-technical transitions literature is very good, but it is not the only source for ideas about transition and decarbonization.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-1674-RC1 -
RC2: 'Comment on egusphere-2023-1674', Anonymous Referee #2, 10 Mar 2024
Overall, I found this manuscript to be very engaging and well written. I greatly commend the author for these research efforts, conducting and analysing nearly 100 interviews is a substantial effort of work. I also think this form of more qualitative, and social science methodological work, is deeply missing within the PTP literature, and is very important. I also think that the policy relevance of these findings is quite high – and greatly support developing such work towards publication in an interdisciplinary outlet such as ESD.
Yet, there are several issues that I found with the paper that I believe need to be addressed before the paper can be published. These issues limit the readers’ understanding of the background and design of this research, and most importantly, of the impact and relevance of these finding. Namely, the main takeaways and recommendations that can (and should) be developed from such rich data. I outline these concerns below, which I hope can be constructively adopted by the author to highlight these relevant findings to climate policy stakeholder and interdisciplinary academic readers alike.
Lastly, before I develop my comments, a bit of a disclaimer. I recognize that this paper is under review at an interdisciplinary journal, and is meant for an interdisciplinary audience. My disciplinary background is that of a social scientist. This paper, theoretically and methodologically, is largely a social science paper. I highly support such work being submitted to such interdisciplinary journals – I believe this is important to increase readership of such research. But, there are many things that are more standard to social science papers (e.g. theory, methods, discussion) that are quite limited in this paper. I do not intend to suggest that the author change the paper to be akin to a 10k word corpus that is common within social science journals, but there are several, crucial components that are missing. These components (in my view) limit the current manuscript, and should be addressed. I believe these components can be addressed and included in a much more cursory and parsimonious manner than is typical to social science journals, but are necessary for the reader to understand and assess this research.
Developing and defining the “theory of change”
- I full agree with the need to connect PTP frameworks more explicitly with political dynamics. There is some emerging work on this regard (for example Stadelmann-Steffen et al., 2021). Yet, what I find missing in this manuscript is the mechanism linking PTP with political dynamics, and how does this “theory of change” relate to other mechanisms? For example on page 4: “The transdisciplinary research presented here, theoretically underpinned by positive tipping points theory, the advocacy coalition framework, a theory of fields, social movement theory, and discourse theory, lies at the intersection of political, sociological and psychosocial dimensions of sustainable transitions research.” Yet, in the introduction, there is limited discussion of PTP theory, or how it related to these other dimensions. Recognizing the ESD readership, defining and developing the presumed PTP mechanism clearly should not be overly onerous, but this does need to be very clearly stated. The “theory of change” is likely very important here, and it is largely missing from the current version of the manuscript.
- Similarly, there are many undefined, technical terms that are important. For example, a non-PTP expert reader is unlikely to, on their own, relate the discussion of TP relates to these theories discussed in the background. Furthermore, key terms like “enabling conditions” are left undefined. What does this mean, why does it matter, and how does it differ from what has been research before?
- Similarly, the sections between lines 63-75 are very nicely written, but I think it would help to connect these to PTP – or more specifically to enabling conditions. Otherwise, these sections read as separate theories, and it is not 100% clear what the differences are about the PTP perspective.
- Is the theory of change more focused on enabling conditions (e.g. more systemic conditions), or micro-level triggering dynamics (e.g. lines 112-125), or the co-evolution of the two? Again, making this more clear to the reader could greatly benefit the understanding of the results that follow.
Methods
The section is comparatively quite brief. Important information is missing here. For example:
- What is the content of the semi-structured interviews (e.g. interview guide)?
- What is the sampling strategy? How were informants chosen, and why? Were they incentivized? How long did the interviews?
- What is the distribution of experts by occupation?
- How were themes identified? Were the data coded by just one researcher, or more? If many, were they any checks to confirm intercoder reliability?
- These comments are not meant to distract from these findings, but rather, the information currently present in the methods does not allow for the reader to assess the design in a particularly meaningful way.
Results
- This section is the absolute strength of the paper. This section is very well developed and strong. The section is written in a very tight manner and uses illustrative quotes appropriately while interspersed with other academic findings. This is very nicely done.
- But, as noted below, the ‘so-what’ of these findings is missing (see comments on the Conclusion and Discussion). This leaves much of the “connecting the dots” of these findings more implicit, and therefore runs the risk of being potentially missed by readers.
Conclusion and Discussion
- The conclusion and discussion is quite brief.
- I believe the aim of this paper is to provide direct policy recommendations. I would make these recommendations much more clear and direct. As opposed to using technical language like “advocacy coalition for rapid decarbonisation would need to combine top-down and bottom-up strategies…” I would suggest more simply stating what this would mean in practice. The readership of ESD may not be all that familiar with ACF – and using non-technical and targeted, politically relevant recommendations would help increase the impact of this work.
- Further, it would be nice to tie the findings to the theory of change. For example, the research question focuses around identifying the enabling conditions, but from my read, the conclusion does not tie this simply together with the results. A suggestion could be something like recommending a strategy that develops broad advocacy networks, which initially adopt the strategy of shifting the system further towards a tipped state (via A, B, C mechanisms) while at the same time, prepare themselves for how to advocate and implement the necessary change once a window of opportunity opens (e.g. when the enabling conditions are promising for tipping). This is mentioned throughout (e.g. communications, network building, policy preparation), but the explicit connection of these findings is currently missing. Such an inclusion in the discussion would allow for members of these advocacy networks to use the PTP framework to instigate their desired changes within a strategic manner.
- There is no discussion of limitations or future research. I would suggest adding a paragraph or two here. Particularly with regard to limitations. For example, one concern could be that the interviews were conducted immediately pre-Covid. Are there any anticipated changes in the data collected and the current situation in the UK? The interviews were conducted at the beginning of the Johnson government. Are there any potential differences, or limitations, based upon generalizing these findings to the current setting in the UK?
- Another limitation that, in my opinion, should be discussed is the inherent risks associated with PTP mechanisms. Milkoreit (2023, Wires Climate Change) makes a very clear and convincing argument that such theories of change are not without inherent risks. It would be good to make these risks more clear alongside the recommendations.
- Another issue that should be addressed is the generalizability of these findings. How would these related to other political dynamics? Maybe within different national contexts? Or on the regional or local level within the UK? How can these findings be used, or not used, within other contexts? This would be helpful, as many of the readers of ESD may not only be interested in developing climate actions within the federal government within the UK.
Smaller note:
- I would suggest using more conditional language on line 50, as it is not objectively clear if this is a positive tipping point: “Some positive tipping points are already well underway and unstoppable, for example the uptake of solar and wind energy generation, which is increasing exponentially (IEA, 2022)” (line 50)
Overall, I am very supportive of this manuscript, and believe it has a lot of potential. I would hope that these comments are constructive and are able to help guide a revision towards improving the understanding of theory, design and relevance of these findings for academic and non-academic readers alike.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-1674-RC2
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