COMPON

Since 2018, I am involved in the research project COMPON Comparing Climate Change Policy Networks. The research project is focussing on meso-level policy networks.

We are asking why do some countries enact more ambitious climate change policies than others? The United Nations has strived to create global norms to reduce emissions, but we do not know enough about why countries vary so widely in their adherence to these norms.

Macro level economic and political structures, such as the economic weight of fossil fuel industries, play an important role in shaping national policies. But the process by which such macro-structural factors translate into political power and national climate change policies can be analyzed through focussing on meso level policy networks. The COMPON project studies climate change policy networks and media discourse networks in twenty countries.

Research focussing on meso-level policy networks sheds light on what organizations exert influence on policymaking, what beliefs they carry, what kind of coalitions these organizations form to push for their agenda, how they are connected to state organizations and how their opponents are organized. Identifying these actor constellations makes it possible to assess the prospects of change towards less carbon intensive societies.

Last year in March 2023, I organized a four-days COMPON workshop at the University of Tübingen and invited the COMPON colleagues and scientific community. About 45 international participants presented their current research and in workshop groups we discussed further collaboration and reserach projects.

We presented at this Workshop our proposal of an EU Horizon application initiated and designed by me and submitted in April 2023 with the title “ADAPTNET- NETWORKING FOR ADAPTATION: BROKERS, BRIDGES, AND BARRIERS ACROSS MULTIPLE LEVELS OF CLIMATE GOVERNANCE” total volume 5 million EUR, consortium 12 countries, main applicant was the University of Helsinki (Prof. Maria Brockhaus) (which was unfortunately not successful).

In our scientific work together with Volker Schneider and Keiichi Satoh at the University of Konstanz, we analyzed organizations and scientific advisory committees in climate policymaking in Germany and Japan. We published the following papers:

Nagel, M., Satoh, K., & Henry, A. D. (2023). Network analysis of scientific advisory committee integration in climate change policy: A comparison of Germany and Japan. PLOS Climate, 2(6), e0000222. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000222

Satoh, K., Nagel, M., & Schneider, V. (2023). Organizational roles and network effects on ideational influence in science-policy interface: Climate policy networks in Germany and Japan. Social networks, 75, 88-106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socnet.2022.01.014

Novotný, V., Satoh, K., & Nagel, M. (2021). Refining the multiple streams framework’s integration concept: Renewable energy policy and ecological modernization in Germany and Japan in comparative perspective. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, 23(3), 291-309. https://doi.org/10.1080/13876988.2020.1770089