Public Attitudes toward Climate Science and Climate Policy in Federal Systems: Canada and the United States Compared1

Multilevel governance poses several challenges for the politics of climate change. On the one hand, the unequal distribution of power and interests can serve as a barrier to implementing coherent policy at a federal level. On the other, these features also enable policy leadership among sub‐federal units. In the context of wide variation in climate policy at both national and sub‐federal levels in Canada and in the United States, this paper utilizes an original data set to examine public attitudes and perceptions toward climate science and climate change policy in two federal systems. Drawing on national and provincial/state level data from telephone surveys administered in the United States and in Canada, the paper provides insight into where the public stands on the climate change issue in two of the most carbon‐intensive federal systems in the world. The paper includes the first directly comparable public opinion data on how Canadians and Americans form their opinions regarding climate matters and provides insight into the preferences of these two populations regarding climate policies at both the national and sub‐federal levels. Key findings are examined in the context of growing policy experiments at the sub‐federal level in both countries and limited national level progress in the adoption of climate change legislation.     

States on Steroids: The Intergovernmental Odyssey of American Climate Policy

Climate change has conventionally been framed as an issue that would be addressed by an international regime established through negotiation among nation‐states. The experience of policy development in the decade following the signing of the Kyoto Protocol indicates that climate change also needs to be examined as a challenge of multilevel governance. The increasingly central role of state governments in American climate policy formation squares with recent experience in other Western democracies that share authority across governmental levels. This paper examines the American experience, considering factors that have contributed to a state‐centric policy process and using that body of experience to assess competing strategic choices faced by individual states based on their mix of emission trends and policy adoption rates. In turn, the collective state experience allows for consideration of the varied political feasibility of competing climate policy tools that remain under active review in subnational, national, and international contexts. The paper concludes with a set of scenarios that explore different ways in which a state‐centric system may be integrated with expanding involvement at the national level.     

Wildfire Management in the United States: The Evolution of a Policy Failure

Wildland fires constitute a major crisis in American environmental policy, a crisis created by a longstanding policy failure. This article explores the political processes that generated and reinforced this policy failure over time. The concepts of bounded rationality, punctuated equilibria, and self- reinforcing mechanisms are applied to study the evolution of American wildfire policy between 1905 and the present. This study finds that a self-defeating wildfire suppression policy was established in the period 1905 through 1911, and subsequently reinforced for more than five decades. This policy did not include a complementary program to counteract the gradual accumulation of flammable organic materials (fuels) that occurred in many ecosystems when fires were suppressed. The resulting fuel accumulations have greatly increased the risk of damaging, high-intensity wildfires in a range of American wildlands. A combination of fire suppression and fuel reduction programs will be needed to manage this risk in the future.     

The Obama Administration and United States Trade Policy

For all the focus on economic issues in the wake of the crisis of 2008 the Obama administration has remained ambiguous about a central component of economic policy. As both candidate and President, Obama has sent mixed messages about trade policy. This ambiguity reflects wider uncertainty within the Democratic Party about global trading relationships and this paper explores and assesses the reasons for this uncertainty. A large part of the answer lies in the disparate sources of support for the Democrats. That is, the party has courted support from interest groups and core groups of voters that have widely divergent views about the value of trade liberalisation.     

The Policy Basis of Measured Partisan Animosity in the United States

Understanding and addressing the consequences of partisan animosity requires knowledge of its foundations. To what extent is animosity between partisan groups motivated by dislike for partisan outgroups per se, policy disagreement, or other social group conflicts? In many circumstances, including extant experimental research, these patterns are observationally equivalent. In a series of vignette evaluation experiments, we estimate effects of shared partisanship when additional information is or is not present, and we benchmark these effects against shared policy preference effects. Partisanship effects are about 71% as large as shared policy preference effects when each is presented in isolation. When an independently randomized party and policy position are presented together, partisanship effects decrease substantially, by about 52%, whereas policy effects remain large, decreasing by about 10%. These results suggest that common measures of partisan animosity may capture programmatic conflict more so than social identity–based partisan hostility.     

Direct Democracy Paradox: State Fiscal Policies in the United States and the Threat of Direct Initiatives

Many studies have argued that the initiative process in U.S. state governments strengthened the proximity between the citizens' preferences and policy output. In contrast, this study hypothesizes that the direct initiative process weakens, rather than strengthens, the link between citizen preferences and state fiscal policy. Governments respond to the threat of initiatives but only those of conservative agendas. The results show that while the level and the progressivity of tax rates in the states without direct initiatives are influenced by citizen preferences, those in states with direct initiatives are more conservative than those without direct initiatives and the former are insulated from the influence of the citizen preferences.     

Competitive Government in the United States: Policy Promotion and Divided Party Control

Divided party control of the executive and legislative branches of American government has traditionally been thought to contribute to the system's tendencies toward policy stalemate and paralysis. Based on a series of brief case studies over the past twenty-five years, this article argues that, under certain circumstances, divided party government may promote rather than hinder the enactment of legislation. It sketches an analytical framework that suggests a range of policymaking outcomes may result from party competition under conditions of divided government, including stalemate, neglect, accommodation, and promotion.     

Policy Adoption and Policy Intensity: Emergence of Climate Adaptation Planning in U.S. States

The United States is experiencing growing impacts of climate change but currently receives a limited policy response from its national leadership. Within this policy void, many state governments are stepping up and taking action on adaptation planning. Yet we know little about why some states adopt State Adaptation Plans (SAPs), while others do not. This article investigates factors that predict the emergence of SAPs, both in terms of policy adoption and policy intensity (goal ambitiousness). Applying the diffusion of innovation theory, I consider the relative influence of internal state characteristics, regional pressures, and test for conditional effects between government ideologies and severity of the problem. The results show interesting differences between predictors that influence policy adoption and ambitiousness. States are more motivated to adopt a policy when faced with greater climate vulnerability, have more liberal citizenry, and where governments have crossed policy hurdles by previously passing mitigation plans. The intensity of policies and goal setting, moreover, is more likely to be driven by interest group politics and diffuse through policy learning or sharing information among neighboring states in Environmental Protection Agency regions. These findings support an emerging scholarship that uses more complex dependent variables in policy analysis. These variables have the potential to differentiate symbolic from substantive policies and capture finer information about predictors of importance.     

Personal Income Tax Policy in China and the United States: A Comparative Analysis

Personal income tax has grown in importance in China's revenue system. Revenue from personal income tax was more than 2 trillion RMB yuan for the first half of 2008, a 27 percent increase from the previous year. And while similarities exist between China and the United States, distinctive features separate the two. Hua Xu of Auburn University at Montgomery and Huiyu Cui of Dongbei University of Finance and Economics underscore the need for equitable personal income tax reform in China. Using lessons from the United States, an agenda for future research on tax policy is outlined.     

Public Attitudes Toward Social Spending in the United States: The Differences Between Direct Spending and Tax Expenditures

This paper uses a survey experiment to examine differences in public attitudes toward ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ government spending. Federal social welfare spending in the USA has two components: the federal government spends money to directly provide social benefits to citizens, and also indirectly subsidizes the private provision of social benefits through tax expenditures. Though benefits provided through tax expenditures are considered spending for budgetary purposes, they differ from direct spending in several ways: in the mechanisms through which benefits are delivered to citizens, in how they distribute wealth across the income spectrum, and in the visibility of their policy consequences to the mass public. We develop and test a model explaining how these differences will affect public attitudes toward spending conducted through direct and indirect means. We find that support for otherwise identical social programs is generally higher when such programs are portrayed as being delivered through tax expenditures than when they are portrayed as being delivered by direct spending. In addition, support for tax expenditure programs which redistribute wealth upward drops when citizens are provided information about the redistributive effects. Both of these results are conditioned by partisanship, with the opinions of Republicans more sensitive to the mechanism through which benefits are delivered, and the opinions of Democrats more sensitive to information about their redistributive effects.     

Abnormal Daily Temperature and Concern about Climate Change Across the United States

The relatively low level of concern about climate change among Americans has important implications for climate policy. While many studies have examined individual characteristics associated with climate change attitudes, fewer studies have considered the effects of environmental conditions on such attitudes. Here, we use two national samples of American adults to explore the impact of abnormal daily temperatures on levels of concern about climate change. We test the hypotheses that (1) abnormally warm temperatures, and (2) both abnormally warm and abnormally cool temperatures are associated with higher levels of concern. Using a generalized ordinal logit, we find that the quadratic form of deviation from mean temperature on the date of the survey is significantly associated with higher levels of concern, thus supporting the second hypothesis. We discuss several theoretical frameworks that may explain this result including availability bias, mental models, and implicit stimuli, and the implications for climate policy.     

Chromium‐Based Regulations Applicable to Metal Finishing Industries in the United States: A Policy Assessment

This article seeks to briefly evaluate the context behind the development of regulations related to chromium pollution control in metal finishing industries. The available evidence suggests the possibility of elevation of the issue to the agenda for agency rule‐making, and subsequent implementation can occur even in the absence of focusing events. Based on historical evidence, this article illustrates that gradual accumulation of knowledge of harmful effects of chromium over the period of decades has been instrumental in the formulation and implementation of standards and guidelines to regulate chromium in the environment under major statutes such as the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and so on. The implementation of command and control regulations has resulted in appreciable reduction of chromium released into the environment, thereby minimizing the impact on human health and the environment. However, achieving full compliance from metal finishing industries is still an illusion. There are examples of violations committed by industries. In response to this realization, policy evolution in the chromium pollution control domain has occurred in two directions: (1) gradual replacement of existing standards with more stringent standards and guidelines and (2) emphasis on multimedia, voluntary, and participatory approaches to improve compliance. But the results from the latter are not as dramatic as previously envisioned. Borrowing from the experience of the Common Sense Initiative (CSI), this article argues that consensus‐based, multistakeholder collaboration can be a policy development tool.     

Mind the (Mobilization) Gap: Comparing Climate Activism in the United States and European Union

The barriers to concerted political action on climate change mitigation are steep, especially in multilevel systems where power is diffused and authority contested. This article seeks to explain how mobilization—galvanizing resources and people to participate actively—occurs in complex multilevel systems. It compares two different polities—the United States and the European Union—to tease out the key features of multilevel systems and how they affect climate activism and mobilization. To capture this dynamic, it proposes a three‐staged model of mobilization: awareness building, alliance building, and network creation. The latter stage features “mobilization networks”—stakeholder networks able to transcend levels and institutional inertia and steer polities toward particular climate goals. The article demonstrates how each stage of mobilization is highly contingent on stakeholders' ability to exploit—or at least navigate—multilevel institutional barriers.     

Institutional Congruence, Ideas, and Anticorruption Policy: The Case of China and the United States

While international comparisons of anticorruption policies abound, whether these policies are transferable and how they change inside national boundaries remain debatable. Kaifeng Yang of Florida State University proposes an institutional framework that emphasizes the role of congruence and ideas in institutional change. In comparing China to the United States, the author concludes that anticorruption institutional change is path dependent, as it is nested in fundamental political structures and meta-narratives. Professor Yang proposes the possibility that new ideas may cause gradual changes with radical results.     

Continuing Controversies Over State and Local Foreign Policy Sanctions in the United States

Recent state and local government sanctions on business withBurma and certain Swiss banks renews a debate over foreign policypowers in federal systems that operate in an integrated globaleconomy. International business promotion has become an acceptedfunction of state and local governments. More controversialis the imposition of foreign policy sanctions, where economicinvolvement becomes a lever to pursue political goals ratherthan an objective in itself. When compared with past cases,including South Africa and the Arab boycott, recent state andlocal initiatives demonstrate both continuity and fresh departuresin federalism's evolving adjustment to the global economy. Thesedevelopments can be used to examine theoretical concepts suchas constituent and multilayered diplomacy. They also argue forimproved practical cooperation among the multiple and diverseactors engaged in foreign policy issues.     

Mission Evolution: The United States Forest Service's Response to Crisis

After a long history as a bureaucratic success story, the United States Forest Service (USFS) found itself embroiled in crisis beginning in the late 1980s. This study examines the factors that led up to the crisis, arguing that the agency had become captured by its own core technologies. Historically, the USFS was successful in adapting to changes in its environment by employing its traditional management procedures. However, attempting to incorporate the northern spotted owl issue with its traditional core technologies threw the subsystem into crisis, during which the agency lost control over its management activities. Today, the USFS is attempting to adapt to the changes brought about by the political conflict of the era.