Information exchange networks at the climate science-policy interface : Evidence from the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, and Portugal

Scientifically informed climate policymaking starts with the exchange of credible, salient, and legitimate scientific information between scientists and policymakers. It is therefore important to understand what explains the exchange of scientific information in national climate policymaking processes. This article applies exponential random graph models to network data from the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, and Portugal to investigate which types of organizations are favored sources of scientific information and whether actors obtain scientific information from those with similar beliefs as their own. Results show that scientific organizations are favored sources in all countries, while only in the Czech Republic do actors obtain scientific information from those with similar policy beliefs. These findings suggest that actors involved in climate policymaking mostly look to scientific organizations for information, but that in polarized contexts where there is a presence of influential denialists overcoming biased information exchange is a challenge.Peer reviewe

Climate Polarization on Czech Social Media After Trump's Announcement to Withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement

Donald Trump's announcement on 1 June 2017 to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement triggered public debate, potentially revealing patterns of climate change polarization. Political polarization refers to differences in opinions and political beliefs and it has been extensively studied on social media, but remains less explored in response to specific events. We study the Czech Twitter debate to demonstrate the event's impact on the interaction patterns of partisan, elite (policy-shaping actors outside social media), and non-elite (public) users. The event increased opinion divergence between ideological supporters and opponents, thus increasing polarization. Typically, belief homophily, interacting with like-minded users, accompanies polarization; here, it didn't increase due to expanded debate and resulting heterophilous interactions. Non-elite users drove polarization, likely following elite cues since elite users were extremely polarized already before the event. The event revealed a bipolar interaction pattern emerging afterward, likely indicating a latent coalition structure.KEY POLICY HIGHLIGHTSPolitical events can have a polarizing effect on climate debate.Increased user participation can decrease overall belief homophily - engagement with like-minded users - and increase polarization simultaneously.The political polarization of non-elite social media users likely follows elite cues.Political events that favor one side trigger the activity of the "losing" side in the debate on social media.Peer reviewe

Challenging the insider outsider approach to advocacy : how collaboration networks and belief similarities shape strategy choices

Advocacy strategies are a key success factor for public, private and third sector actors who participate in and seek to influence policy choices. Despite this, research on policy networks has paid little attention to the forms of advocacy studied by interest groups scholars. The interest groups' literature differentiates insider from outsider strategies and assumes that interest groups with strong access to policymakers opt for insider strategies, while those with weak access are constrained to the use of outsider strategies. This literature has not considered how the full set of actors that constitute a policy network use advocacy strategies. Furthermore, the insider/outsider dichotomy oversimplifies and neglects the possibility that actors' choices are interdependent. Using climate change policy network data from four countries that vary by interest group system, we investigate if policy actors' choices of advocacy strategies are similar to those in their collaboration network and to those with similar policy beliefs as their own. Results show that, irrespective of the context, actors are likely to use the same advocacy strategies as their collaboration partners and those whose policy beliefs are like their own. This research demonstrates the value of using a policy network approach to move beyond the insider/outsider dichotomy on interest groups' use of advocacy strategies. It makes a clear contribution to this scholarship by advancing the debate on strategies that policy actors employ to influence policymaking through evidencing interdependencies between the strategies used by policy actors due to belief similarity and a 'networking effect'.Peer reviewe

Network ties, institutional roles and advocacy tactics:Exploring explanations for perceptions of influence in climate change policy networks

The extent to which a policy actor is perceived as being influential by others can shape their role in a policy process. The interest group literature has examined how the use of advocacy tactics, such as lobbying or media campaigns, contributes to an actor’s perceived influence. The policy networks literature, in turn, has found that network ties and occupying certain institutional roles can explain why actors are perceived as influential. When investigating what explains perceptions of influence, interest groups scholars have not accounted for network interdependencies and network scholars have so far not examined the advocacy tactics used by interest groups. This paper addresses the gap at the intersection of these two literatures by investigating the relationship between network ties, institutional roles, advocacy tactics and the presence of influence attribution ties in climate change policy networks. Exponential random graph models are applied to network data collected from the organisations participating in the national climate change policymaking processes in six EU countries that vary by the extent to which they are majoritarian or consensual democracies: Czechia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Portugal, and Sweden. The results show that network ties and institutional roles are better predictors of influence attribution ties than advocacy tactics and that there is no pattern in the relationship between advocacy tactics and influence attribution ties across different institutional contexts. These findings suggest that because influence is primarily associated with structural factors (network ties and institutional roles) that more established policy actors are likely to have more influence, which may inhibit the need for a significant step change in climate policies.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio