The Comparative Politics of Climate Change Policy

Abstract:

My presentation will not be of an academic paper but of a proposal for a research project. The Balzan Prize for International Relations, which I was recently awarded, provides funding that I intend to use to stimulate the development of a subfield in which political science has lagged: the comparative politics of climate change policy. The project is designed to be comparative in method, simultaneously theoretical and empirical, and deeply collaborative. I also hope that the project will stimulate new thinking in comparative politics and international relations. Causal inference on the basis of observational data is weak in contemporary comparative politics, but new methodological innovations have not consistently been focused on substantively important issues. Perhaps innovating in an understudied field will also facilitate a combination of rigor and relevance. My presentation will be designed to stimulate theoretical, empirical, and methodological suggestions.

 

Speaker Bio:

Robert O. Keohane (PhD Harvard 1966) is Professor of Public and International Affairs (Emeritus) in the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. He has served as Editor of International Organization and as President of the International Studies Association and the American Political Science Association. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Academy of Sciences; and he is a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. He has been a recipient of the Balzan Prize: International Relations: History Theory, 2016; the James Madison Award, American Political Science Association, 2014, for lifetime achievement; the Centennial Medal, Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 2012; the Skytte Prize from the Johan Skytte Foundation, Uppsala Sweden, 2005; the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, 1989, and two honorary doctorates. His publications include Power and Interdependence (with Joseph S. Nye, Jr., originally published in 1977), After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (1984), Designing Social Inquiry (with Gary King and Sidney Verba, 1994), and Power and Governance in a Partially Globalized World (2002). His current work focuses on the international and comparative politics of climate change policy.