Leigh Raymond

Indicators of 21st century socioclimatic exposure

Policies that attempt to curb greenhouse gas emissions, allocate emissions rights, or distribute compensation to those most damaged by climate change must explicitly incorporate the international heterogeneity of the climate change threat. To capture the distinct susceptibilities associated with lack of infrastructure, potential property loss, and gross human exposure, we develop an integration of climate change projections and poverty, wealth, and population metrics. Our analysis shows that most nations of the world are threatened by the interaction of regional climatic changes with one or more relevant socioeconomic factors. Nations that have the highest levels of poverty, wealth, and population face greater relative exposure in those dimensions. However, for each of those socioeconomic indicators, spatial heterogeneity in projected climate change determines the overall international pattern of socioclimatic exposure. Our synthesis provides a critical missing piece to the climate change debate and should facilitate the formulation of climate policies that account for international variations in the threat of climate change across a range of socioeconomic dimensions.

Making Change: Norm-Based Strategies for Institutional Change to Address Intractable Problems

This paper identifies and describes two new norm-based strategies for institutional change to address intractable social problems. In both strategies, advocates “foreground” and criticize norms supporting the institutional status quo before either promoting an alternative existing norm via normative reframing of the issue, or creating and promoting an entirely new norm via normative innovation to build support for new institutional arrangements. Drawing on examples of institutional change addressing the problems of climate change and violence against women, the analysis illustrates how these strategies are especially effective in the face of opposition from vested interests or problematic existing norms.

Localism in environmental policy: New insights from an old case

Determining the appropriate balance between local and national interests is an enduring issue in public and environmental policy. Study of this issue, however, has been impeded by the theory of agency capture. This paper demonstrates the limitations of capture theory with respect to localism and provides a new perspective on the issue by revisiting the case of the U.S. Division of Grazing, a common example in the literature of a ‘captured’ agency. Until now, the over-extension of capture theory to this case has obscured the divisions extensive efforts to balance local and federal influence over range policy and prevent domination by large private interests. At the center of this struggle was a prominent legal dispute over local control involving Colorado sheepherder Joseph Livingston. As a detailed debate over political representation and the merits of localism, the Livingston case holds important lessons for modern community-based conservation efforts seeking similar policy goals.

Ideas, Discourse, and Rhetoric in Political Choice

The distinction between ideas and discourse remains ambiguous in ideational theories of political choice. In addition, the role of rhetoric, or the strategic choice of language to represent a given idea, in ideational theories of political decision making is promising but underspecified. To explore these issues, this paper studies the impact of a specific discourse (i.e. an “ensemble of ideas”) about risk—often presented rhetorically as “the precautionary principle”—in a prominent political controversy: the regulation of Brominated Flame Retardants (BFRs). Widely used chemical compounds that improve fire resistance in many commercial products, BFRs have been measured in the fatty tissue of animals and human beings in increasing concentrations. The resulting concern about the safety of BFRs has led to regulatory action in a number of U.S. states. Although some have argued that a discourse of precaution facilitates the enactment of new environmental policies, we find that the rhetoric of the precautionary principle was an impeding factor for these BFR regulations. At the same time, we find that while political actors avoided the precautionary principle by name, they relied on certain ideas often attributed to the principle. Thus, the causal role of specific ideas in politics, we conclude, is significantly contingent on their precise rhetorical presentation.

Viewpoint: Are grazing rights on public lands a form of private property?

Some have argued that federal grazing preferences or permits are a form of private property and should be recognized as such by the federal government. This viewpoint studies the grazing controversy from 2 perspectives; legal and theoretical. A strict analysis of statutes and case law reveals some ambiguity in the law, but little that clearly supports the private property rights argument. A second analysis of several more theoretical approaches to the issue reveals a stronger case for private property based on the idea of customary use, as embodied in certain interpretations of the public trust doctrine and other alternative views. Because the non-legal argument is much more persuasive, it should be utilized more frequently by private property advocates. Opponents of the private property argument should consider that simple legal victory is often an inadequate solution to conflicts such as the grazing rights controversy. Advocates on both sides, as well as range managers and others simply wanting a better understanding of the issue, should make an effort to view the controversy from both of the perspectives presented here. Failure to do so will likely result in more lawsuits, more damaging controversy, and a continued lack of resolution to the conflict.

Defining the precautionary principle: an empirical analysis of elite discourse

The precautionary principle (PP) has gained influence in environmental politics as a ‘policy principle’ – an idea that can spur policy change. Yet, exact definitions of the PP remain elusive, making evaluation of its actual political influence difficult. Given the controversy over the PPs meaning and policy utility, broader empirical analysis of its public formulations is overdue. Elite discourse on the PP is analysed in the search for a dominant formulation among 238 articles in a variety of disciplines. The modal PP formulation is found to be a mix of stronger and weaker elements, broadly resembling Principle 15 of the 1992 Rio Declaration. The data suggest that the principle has become weaker over time, and that its critics formulate it more strongly than proponents. Contrary to some assertions, however, American and European authors do not differ significantly in their interpretations of the PP.

Normative Beliefs in State Policy Choice

This article introduces a new method, qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), to the study of state policy choice and the role of ideas in politics. The authors hypothesize an important role for normative beliefs in state policy choice even for policies that go beyond traditional subjects of “morality” policy. Specifically, the authors find that “precautionary norms” are influential determinants of recent state environmental policies regulating chemicals, even in the face of significant economic impacts. They conclude that these results offer new theoretical ideas relevant to the state innovation and diffusion literature as well as the study of ideas in the policy process.

Does climate denialism still matter? The prevalence of alternative frames in opposition to climate policy

ABSTRACT Issue frames portraying climate science as uncertain are cited as a key impediment to new climate change and energy policies. However, some have recently argued that the debate over policy impacts, especially policy impacts on consumers, has become more politically salient than the debate over science. This study applies qualitative content analysis to 340 documents from the conservative think tank, the Heartland Institute, to test whether certain policy frames have become more common among leading opponents of climate policy in the United States. The results indicate a continued reliance on science framing, with more directed attacks on climate scientists and fewer frames stressing the uncertainty of climate science. An increase in the use of policy frames related to effects on consumers also suggests that opposition to climate policy is taking new forms as the political debate evolves, with ramifications for climate change policy opposition on an international scale.

Normative Framing and Public Attitudes toward Biofuels Policies

Although the power of elite issue frames to shape public attitudes toward different policies is well established, the relative influence of different types of frames in competitive framing environments remains uncertain. For example, we do not fully understand the relative influence of economic versus normative frames on the publics policy attitudes, despite the common use of both types of frames to promote the same policy in many settings. Using data from a 2010 national Internet survey, this paper investigates the relative influence of economic versus normative frames on public attitudes toward the contentious policy issue of biofuels. The results indicate the importance of normative frames in shaping public attitudes on this issue, suggesting the relevance of normative frames more generally in shaping public opinion beyond the narrow confines of typical “morality” policies such as abortion or gambling.

REDD+ and climate: thinking beyond carbon

Scientific research shows that deforestation can drive climate not only through changes in carbon stocks but also through biophysical feedbacks. These can alter the climate effectiveness of emission reductions and will thus have important implications for REDD+. Explored here are the implications for motivating tropical developing country participation, and for motivating efforts to measure integrated biophysical–carbon climate impacts of land use change. In the tropics, biophysical impacts of deforestation are found to enhance local warming, which suggests that REDD+ participants benefit from a locally concentrated good in the form of local climate impacts, in addition to the global public good in the form of emissions reductions. To capture the breadth of climate impacts of land use change, composite biophysical–carbon indices have been proposed, but are hampered by issues of scale and uncertainty. These issues must at least be acknowledged in policy discussions to allow land-based initiatives to move forward in a holistic manner.