Reactions to policy action: socio-political conditions of backlash to climate change policy

Abstract

Public policymaking on issues requiring ambitious yet socially and economically costly action can face backlash from target groups and wider audiences, threatening policy adoption and durability. As an abrupt negative reaction to policy action, backlash is challenging to study and requires distinctive analytical approaches. This is especially pressing for climate change mitigation policy, which faces growing yet dispersed empirical experiences of backlash. We develop a framework to study the socio-political conditions (economic, cultural, practical) under which backlash to climate policy occurs to enable comparative empirical analysis. We posit that backlash arises from significant incongruence between policy action and its socio-political context across one or more of these dimensions. We illustrate this approach using three cases of backlash to carbon pricing policy in Canada, France, and Mexico, revealing different ways in which incongruence can arise. Our analysis highlights the need for configurational explanations and a policy-in-context perspective when studying contentious reactions to policy action.