Caroline Kuzemko

Measuring and explaining policy paradigm change: the case of UK energy policy

This paper contributes to the literature on institutional change by creating a framework, based on the work of Peter Hall, that both measures and explains policy paradigm change. It claims that UK energy policy did undergo a paradigm shift according to the framework used here. Two initially separate narratives, climate change and energy security, are found to have performed central functions within the process of change. This finding runs contrary to assumptions within sociological institutionalism. Furthermore, this paper concludes that the policy paradigm change appears to have had limited impact so far on core socio-technical characteristics of the energy system.

Ideas, power and change: explaining EU–Russia energy relations

ABSTRACT This article explores the European Unions (EU) energy relations with Russia through new institutionalist concepts that understand ideas to be powerful within policymaking processes, in conferring credibility on certain governance norms as well as in contesting existing institutions. Explanations of the deterioration in EU–Russia energy relations have emphasized divergence in perspectives on energy, and how it should be governed, between these actors. Here it is argued that the proliferation of different ideas about energy within EU institutions has significant implications for this relationship. The paper analyses EU energy policy as a whole, including climate policy, and outlines what ideas have been influential over policymaking processes and with what consequences. Internal ideological differences challenge the dominance and credibility of market liberal ideas and policies, the EUs ability to speak with one voice in energy and attest to an increasingly complex and contradictory EU energy policy.

Dynamics of energy governance in Europe and Russia

Energy in Europe and Russia is in flux. The authors address key issues in this context and seek to analyze contemporary transition processes in the regions energy sector. They look at whether and how transnational policy mechanisms can generate sufficient steering capacity to address pressing energy policy issues, including environmental concerns, energy transit or rapidly changing natural gas markets. Moreover, they explore the impact climate change concerns have on policy making in the energy sector and to what extent market mechanisms provide for answers to these issues. Instead of taking a geopolitical or neoliberal approach, this energy policy debate acknowledges the strong interdependence of global, regional and domestic influences on the processes.

Politicising UK energy: what 'speaking energy security' can do

This paper explores one set of conditions under which a policy area, energy, became politicized. It also explores the relationship between concepts of ‘speaking security’, which claim that the language of security is politically potent, and notions of (de-)politicization. It argues that framing energy supply as a security issue influenced an opening up of UK energy, which had been subject to processes of depoliticization since the early 1980s, to political interest and deliberation. Speaking security about energy had a high degree of popular cognitive authority and to have been instrumental in revealing a lack of policymaking capacity in energy.

Historical institutionalism and the politics of sustainable energy transitions: A research agenda

Improving the understanding of the politics of sustainable energy transitions has become a major focus for research. This paper builds on recent interest in institutionalist approaches to consider in some depth the agenda arising from a historical institutionalist perspective on such transitions. It is argued that historical institutionalism is a valuable complement to socio-technical systems approaches, offering tools for the explicit analysis of institutional dynamics that are present but implicit in the latter framework, opening up new questions and providing useful empirical material relevant for the study of the wider political contexts within which transitions are emerging. Deploying a number of core concepts including veto players, power, unintended consequences, and positive and negative feedback in a variety of ways, the paper explores research agendas in two broad areas: understanding diversity in transition outcomes in terms of the effects of different institutional arrangements, and the understanding of transitions in terms of institutional development and change. A range of issues are explored, including: the roles of electoral and political institutions, regulatory agencies, the creation of politically credible commitment to transition policies, power and incumbency, institutional systems and varieties of capitalism, sources of regime stability and instability, policy feedback effects, and types of gradual institutional change. The paper concludes with some observations on the potential and limitations of historical institutionalism, and briefly considers the question of whether there may be specific institutional configurations that would facilitate more rapid sustainable energy transitions.

Energy Depoliticisation in the UK: Destroying Political Capacity

Provides new insights into depoliticisation literatures by applying depoliticisation beyond economic and monetary policy to energy and climate change policy. Demonstrates ways in which forms of depoliticisation can affect political capacity to respond to new policy challenges. Challenges climate change and energy transition literatures by explaining how and why UK energy policy institutions have constrained innovation and sustainable change. Depoliticisation, as a concept, has been utilised to explain specific aspects of economic governance as it has developed over the past thirty years, particularly in certain OECD countries. This article focuses on the outcomes of three forms of depoliticisation, marketised, technocratic and non-deliberative, for political capacity. Political capacity is defined in relation to a notion of politics as social interaction, deliberation, choice and agency. Using UK energy governance as a case study it claims that the depoliticisation of energy policy has resulted in embedded corporate power, a widening disjuncture between experts and majoritarian institutions and limited knowledge structures. As a result the state’s role is still confined to giver of market signals and to temporary interventions in the face of complex and unprecedented commitments to transition the UK towards a low carbon future.

Introduction: Bringing Energy into International Political Economy

Dynamics of Energy Governance in Europe and Russia provides substantial explanations and analyses of transitions, change and uncertainty in energy issues in the broad region of Europe and Russia. The book focuses on questions of energy governance and approaches this topic from an international political economy (IPE) perspective. As such, this represents an attempt to bring energy back into the mainstream of IPE.

Climate change benchmarking: Constructing a sustainable future?

This article analyses discourses on climate change and mitigation through the deconstruction of European Union (EU) rhetoric and practices on climate benchmarking. It critically examines the motivations behind climate benchmarking, the methods used to construct international benchmarks, and the reasons for variety in domestic compliance. Germany and the United Kingdom are analysed as cases where domestic politics drive very different reactions to the practice of climate mitigation, differences that have been largely hidden by the type of quantification that EU benchmarking involves. Through an exploration of the methods used to formulate climate benchmarks, the article demonstrates that these commitments have privileged certain responses over others, and thus helped to paint a picture of EU benchmarks as ‘reformist’ but not ‘radical’. EU climate benchmarks often end up concealing more than they reveal, making it difficult to fully engage with the scale and complexity of the far-reaching domestic changes that are required in order to comply with agreed international benchmarks. The deficiencies of benchmarks as a mechanism for driving long-term sustainable change, and importantly discouraging harmful policies, may ultimately undermine their credibility as a means for governing climate change at a distance in the EU.

Energy Security: Geopolitics, Governance and Multipolarity

During the 1990s hydrocarbon fuels were relatively cheap and plentiful and it was assumed that the investments of the international energy companies, together with a functioning global market, would deliver secure and affordable supplies of energy. Since the turn of the century, however, there has been growing concern about the ability of energy producers to match rapidly increasing demand. The increasing economic expectations of the populace of energy-exporting states and the geopolitical actions of some of the major oil and gas reserve holding states has raised concerns about both the affordability and security of current and future energy supplies. In addition, the demands of climate change policy in the guise of the low carbon energy transition add an additional layer of complexity given that the energy system is the single largest source of greenhouse gases (GHGs). This chapter is about energy security within an international relations context, about shifting patterns of energy supply and demand and their governance patterns and knock-on affects. It uses a geopolitical lens to highlight a shift in how OECD governments and international organisations now perceive and seek to govern energy security issues in the second half of the 2000s and into the 2010s.

Defining and Projecting EU Energy Policy

What is EU energy policy — and how successful is the EU in projecting it? Of course, posing questions about the nature of EU energy policy presumes that the EU has a collective energy policy. This has been a slowly emerging and contested area of EU competence — certainly in comparison with other sectors. The question of what EU energy policy is can be answered by pointing to the three ‘pillars’ that have historically constituted the objectives of EU energy policy: climate-change mitigation, energy supply security and establishing competitive, integrated markets (EC 2013a). EU energy policy might in this way be explained as the application of various strategies and instruments, and the establishment of institutions, in pursuit of these three objectives.